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...
16-03-2019
Hoe nanosatellieten het zonnestelsel veroveren
Hoe nanosatellieten het zonnestelsel veroveren
Caroline Kraaijvanger
De interplanetaire missie is niet langer enkel het domein van grote, logge satellieten: de CubeSat wil ook mee.
Rond de millenniumwisseling wordt de allereerste nanosatelliet of CubeSat gelanceerd. Inmiddels zijn we bijna 20 jaar verder en hebben al meer dan 1000 van deze piepkleine satellieten het luchtruim gekozen. Het merendeel ervan bevindt zich in een baan rond de aarde. Maar ook voor interplanetaire missies lijken de kleine satellieten heel geschikt. Het is dan ook een kwestie van tijd voor deze satellieten – die vaak niet veel groter zijn dan een aktetas – het zonnestelsel gekoloniseerd hebben.
Afbeelding: Rasmus G. Sæderup AAUSAT Team (University of Aalborg, Denmark).
Wat is een CubeSat? Een CubeSat of nanosatelliet is een kleine satelliet die is opgebouwd uit één of meerdere eenheden die slechts 10 bij 10 bij 10 centimeter groot zijn. De kleine satellieten hebben verschillende voordelen ten opzichte van de grote satellieten die de mensheid al decennialang inzet om bijvoorbeeld de aarde en andere hemellichamen te monitoren. Het ontwikkelen van de kleinere satellieten kost minder tijd en is veel goedkoper. Maar wat nog veel belangrijker is, is dat de lanceerkosten heel laag liggen. Dat heeft twee redenen. Allereerst wegen de CubeSats heel weinig (en bij een lancering betaal je per kilo). Daarnaast is het vanwege de geringe omvang van de CubeSats heel goed mogelijk om deze tegelijkertijd met andere satellieten te lanceren. Zo heeft de Indiase ruimtevaartorganisatie het gepresteerd om meer dan 100 nanosatellieten tegelijkertijd te lanceren!
Hoe het begon In eerste instantie werden CubeSats voornamelijk geprezen om hun educatieve waarde. Doordat ze in vrij korte tijd ontwikkeld en goedkoop gelanceerd kunnen worden, bieden CubeSats studenten de kans om hun eigen satelliet te ontwikkelen, lanceren en daadwerkelijk in de ruimte te testen en zelfs data te laten verzamelen. Maar hoewel studenten wereldwijd nog altijd aan CubeSats knutselen, begint de nanosatelliet zijn studentikoze karakter langzaam van zich af te werpen. Ook ruimtevaartorganisaties en -bedrijven zien namelijk grote mogelijkheden voor de CubeSat. En niet alleen in een baan rond de aarde…
Naar Mars Vorig jaar toonde NASA al aan dat CubeSats ook ingezet kunnen worden tijdens interplanetaire missies. De ruimtevaartorganisatie lanceerde in mei 2018 niet alleen Marslander InSight, maar ook de allereerste twee interplanetaire CubeSats: MarCO-A en MarCO-B. Beide CubeSats maakten zich kort na de lancering los van InSight en vlogen vervolgens op eigen houtje naar de rode planeet, waar ze de landing van InSight monitorden. De missie van de twee CubeSats verliep geheel volgens het boekje: ze overleefden de lange reis, maakten onderweg foto’s en stuurden die naar de aarde, waren getuige van InSights landing en vlogen nog maandenlang verder alvorens zich in radiostilte te hullen.
Beelden gemaakt door één van de twee CubeSats die recent op Mars afstevenden.
Afbeelding: Afbeelding: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Naar een planetoïde Het succes van die missie smaakt naar meer. En inmiddels worden verschillende ruimtemissies ontwikkeld waarbij er plek is voor een extra, kleine verstekeling. Zo werkt ESA momenteel aan de Hera-missie die naast een ruimtesonde uit twee CubeSats zal bestaan. Het gezelschap moet in 2023 afreizen naar het Didymos-systeem: een 780 meter grote planetoïde waar een 160 meter grote maan omheen cirkelt. Beide CubeSats zullen worden uitgerust met verschillende instrumenten en uitgebreid onderzoek doen naar het Didymos-systeem en zelfs op één van de twee planetoïden landen.
Een artistieke impressie laat zien hoe Hera en twee CubeSats rond Didymos cirkelen. Afbeelding: ESA – ScienceOffice.org.
Europa En ook NASA speelt met het idee om CubeSats in te zetten tijdens een toekomstige interplanetaire missie. Zo zouden er in 2023 enkele mee kunnen liften met de Europa Clipper: een ruimtesonde die onderzoek gaat doen naar Jupiters maan Europa. De kleine satellieten zouden onder meer ingezet kunnen worden om dwars door Europa’s geisers te vliegen en meer inzicht te geven in de samenstelling van Europa’s ondergrondse oceaan.
Verlengstuk De CubeSat lijkt het dus steeds verder te schoppen. Maar blijft daarbij wel een verlengstuk van een veel grotere ruimtesonde. Dat is niet zo gek; de ruimte die zo’n CubeSat te bieden heeft, is maar beperkt. En als je eenmaal miljoenen kilometers hebt afgelegd om een bepaald hemellichaam te bereiken, wil je daar natuurlijk wel de beschikking hebben over een breed scala aan instrumenten. De CubeSat maakt de grote ruimtesondes en satellieten dus zeker (nog) niet overbodig. Of dat in de toekomst gaat veranderen? De tijd zal het leren.
Sprite: een satellietje dat slechts enkele centimeters groot is.
Mag het nog ietsje kleiner? Terwijl de CubeSat langzaam maar zeker zijn grenzen verlegt, sleutelen onderzoekers ook nog aan nóg kleinere satellietjes die het uiteindelijk mogelijk nog veel verder gaan schoppen dan de CubeSat: de Sprites. Deze satellietjes lijken meer op een chip en zijn ongeveer 3,5 bij 3,5 centimeter groot. Ze kunnen wel eens heel geschikt zijn voor interstellaire reizen. Doordat ze piepklein en licht zijn, kunnen ze aangedreven door bijvoorbeeld zonnezeilen enorme snelheden bereiken en afstanden afleggen. Onder meer het Breakthrough Starshot-project – dat een ruimtemissie naar het dichtstbijzijnde stersysteem Alpha Centauri op poten wil zetten – zou met zo’n piepkleine ruimtesonde geholpen kunnen zijn.
Ook voor satellieten geldt dus: klein, maar fijn. En terwijl CubeSats ons zonnestelsel verkennen, lijken nog kleinere satellieten zich aan de interstellaire ruimte te gaan wagen. Grote kans dus dat er straks enkele opzienbarende ontdekkingen op naam van deze satellieten komen te staan. Niet slecht voor zulke kleintjes!
Bronmateriaal:
ESA
NASA
Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: ESA - ScienceOffice.org
Aarde werd bijna 2700 jaar geleden getroffen door zeer zware zonnestorm
Aarde werd bijna 2700 jaar geleden getroffen door zeer zware zonnestorm
Caroline Kraaijvanger
“Als deze zonnestorm vandaag de dag zou plaatsvinden, zou deze ernstige gevolgen hebben voor onze high tech society.”
Aan het woord is Raimund Muscheler, werkzaam aan de Lund University en één van de wetenschappers die bewijs hebben gevonden voor een uitzonderlijk zware zonnestorm die de aarde rond 660 voor Christus moet hebben getroffen. De bevindingen van Muscheler en collega’s zijn terug te vinden in het blad Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Zonnestorm Onze planeet wordt continu bekogeld met kosmische deeltjes. Maar zo af en toe is die aanhoudende stroom van kosmische deeltjes extra krachtig. En wel wanneer er op het oppervlak van de zon beroering ontstaat en een zonnestorm wordt geboren. Zo’n zonnestorm is eigenlijk niets anders dan een enorme verzameling hoogenergetische deeltjes. Waartoe zo’n zonnestorm in staat is, hebben we in de afgelopen decennia kunnen zien. Zo leidde deze in 1989 tot stroomuitval in Quebec (Canada) en in 2003 tot stroomuitval in Malmö (Zweden). Door die waargenomen zonnestormen te bestuderen, hopen onderzoekers een beter beeld te krijgen van waartoe de zon in staat is. Maar een nieuw onderzoek suggereert nu dat zonnestormen nog veel heftiger kunnen zijn dan directe, recente waarnemingen doen vermoeden.
IJskern De onderzoekers trekken die conclusie nadat ze zich bogen over ijskernen afkomstig van Groenland die een periode van zo’n 100.000 jaar besloegen. In die ijskernen vonden ze bewijs voor een krachtige zonnestorm die rond 660 voor Christus zou hebben plaatsgevonden. Deze zonnestorm was veel krachtiger dan de zonnestormen die in 1989 en 2003 zijn waargenomen. En de zonnestorm uit 660 voor Christus staat niet op zichzelf; Muscheler heeft in ijskernen en groeiringen van bomen ook aanwijzingen gevonden voor zeer krachtige zonnestormen die in 775 en 994 hebben plaatsgevonden.
Het onderzoek laat twee dingen zien. Allereerst zijn superkrachtige zonnestormen vrij zeldzaam. Ten tweede horen ze echter wel bij onze zon en kunnen we er maar beter op voorbereid zijn dat de geschiedenis zich vroeg of laat herhaalt en een zeer krachtige zonnestorm acte de présence geeft. “Daarom moeten we de samenleving beter beschermen tegen zonnestormen,” aldus Muscheler. Wanneer men op dit moment de risico’s die een zonnestorm met zich meebrengt, in kaart brengt, wordt vaak gekeken naar recente zonnestormen. Maar het lijkt Muscheler verstandig als ook de drie super-zonnestormen die in het eerste millennium voor en eerste millennium na Christus plaatsvonden, worden meegenomen. “Ons onderzoek suggereert dat de risico’s momenteel onderschat worden. We moeten ons beter beschermen.”
The Beginning: UFOs Encounters over Washington D.C.
Welcome to Open Minds Magazine. In this new monthly UFO news magazine show (view above), we will take a closer look at the mystery posed by Unidentified Flying Objects, in hopes to gain a better understanding of the nature of the phenomenon and how the government, including the military, and the public react to it.
Perhaps the most thorough examination into the UFO issue was conducted by the U.S Air Force. They began their investigation in 1948. It was called Project Sign, then changed its name to Project Grudge, and finally changed its name once again to Project Blue Book.
As a result of these investigations and studies and experience gained from investigating UFO reports since 1948, the conclusions of Project BLUE BOOK are:(1) no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security;(2) there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as “unidentified” represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge; and(3) there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as “unidentified” are extraterrestrial vehicles.
However, upon closer examination of the thousands of files released regarding the Blue Book investigations, it becomes apparent that the Air Force’s conclusions were not shared by everyone involved in the investigation, and that there were some truly fascinating cases that remain unsolved.
Often people say they will not believe in UFOs until they land on the White House lawn. Well, one of the most famous and mysterious Blue Book cases came close.
UFO sightings over Washington, DC in July 1952 made worldwide headlines and left the U.S. Air Force dazed and confused. The events spanned several days and included multiple radar identifications of unknown aircraft, some of which were correlated by witnesses on the ground. Many of the sightings caused the air force to scramble jet fighters, and in each of these cases, the UFOs outmaneuvered the jets. This all culminated into what may be the most important official U.S. Air Force UFO investigation of all time.
The U.S. Air Force’s investigation of the events in Washington, DC is best explained in a book written by the lead air force investigator, Captain Edward Ruppelt. Ruppelt—who was the head of the U.S. Air Force’s official UFO investigation department, Project Blue Book, from its inception in early 1952 until late 1953—published The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects in 1956.
The summer of 1952 was a busy time for the Blue Book investigators; Ruppelt referred to this period as, “The Big Flap.” Some of the most credible reports were coming from the Washington, DC area.
On July 10, a National Airlines crew reported a UFO over nearby Quantico, Virginia. They described the object as, “too bright to be a lighted balloon and too slow to be a big meteor.”
Then, on July 13, another commercial airline crew reported a UFO sixty miles southwest of Washington, DC. The crew was flying at 11,000 feet when they spotted a light below them. The object came up to their level, and when they turned on their headlights, it shot up in a steep climb.
The next day, on July 14, yet another commercial airline crew reported a UFO. This time it was during a flight from New York to Miami. While flying in the area of Newport News, Virginia, approximately 130 miles south of Washington, DC, the crew reported seeing eight UFOs.
Two days later, on the night of July 16, at around 9:00 p.m., a “high-ranking” scientist from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Laboratory at Langley Air Force Base reported seeing a UFO with a friend. They were standing near the ocean when they saw two amber-colored lights off to their right. The lights were silently moving to the north. The scientist said they were “much too large to be aircraft lights.”
Ruppelt and his investigators had decided that this object would have been too big to be a plane given the description of the lights, and they could not find an answer as to what the scientists and his friend had seen. Ruppelt said it was a moot point, however, because the scientist “was a very famous aerodynamicist and of such professional stature that if he said the lights weren’t airplanes they weren’t.”
On July 20, Ruppelt was flying to Washington, DC on unrelated business. His plane landed at Washington National Airport in the morning, and he grabbed a paper to catch up on the latest news. There he found in big, bold, capitalized font, “INTERCEPTORS CHASE FLYING SAUCERS OVER WASHINGTON, D.C.”
Washington National Airport control tower.
(Credit: Jack Delano/Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons)
Ruppelt immediately called his superior officer at the Pentagon, Major Dewey Fournet, who told Ruppelt there was an investigation happening at Bolling Air Force Base. Rupplet headed there and received a briefing from the intelligence officer. At the meeting, they learned that at 11:40 p.m. the previous night, seven objects were caught on radar at Washington National Airport. At first, the radar operators thought the objects were a formation of planes, but nothing like that was scheduled. The objects moved slowly at about 100 to 130 miles per hour, but then would streak across the scope in sudden bursts of speed. The targets had moved all over the area, including over prohibited areas, such as the airspace over the White House and the U.S. Capitol building. One of the objects was clocked at speeds of more than 7,000 miles per hour.
The targets appeared to have flown near commercial airliners, and soon thereafter reports of strange lights were being reported by pilots. The first sighting from a pilot was from a Capital Airlines flight leaving Washington National Airport. The control tower asked the pilots of that airplane to keep an eye out for strange lights. During the flight, the pilot yelled, “There’s one—off to the right— and there it goes.” The radar correlated that an object had been tracked on the plane’s right side. The pilot reported seeing six more lights in the next fifteen minutes.
Several similar incidents took place that night. However, one of the more notable incidents was when the Washington National Airport traffic controller called the Andrews Air Force Base tower to tell them they were tracking an object south of the base. The tower operators looked out of their windows to see what they described as a “huge fiery-orange sphere” hovering in the sky.
F-94 Starfire. One of the types of jets scrambled to intercept the unknown objects.
(Credit: United States Air Force)
At the beginning of the excitement, once the Washington National Airport radar operators had determined their equipment was working properly, they began calling the air force to ask them to investigate. However, they didn’t receive a response. They called over and over, but the air force didn’t respond until daybreak the next morning. One interceptor checked out the area, but by then the UFOs were gone.
The events and the subsequent press coverage sent the U.S. Air Force into a state of pure confusion, complicated by bureaucratic bumbling. It was decided that Ruppelt would stay in Washington, DC to further investigate and formulate a response for the press, who was growing steadily impatient with the air force’s official “no comment” response. However, the USAF finance department would not improve the extension to his stay and sent him home.
Back in his office in Dayton, Ohio, Rupplet says he was too swamped with other UFO sightings to investigate the Washington DC incident. Several of these sightings also included jets being scrambled to check out the UFOs.
Then, exactly one week after the first major Washington, DC event, at about 10:00 p.m., Ruppelt received a call from Life Magazine’s UFO expert asking what the air force was going to do about that night’s UFOs. Ruppelt said, “I have no idea what the Air Force is doing; in all probability it’s doing nothing.”
He had heard anything about a new UFO event and guessed no one else in the air force had either. He called air force intelligence and the Pentagon, and he found out he was right. Several people from the Pentagon hurried out to Washington National Airport including the air force’s press chief Al Chop, Major Fournet, and a U.S. Navy electronics specialist assigned to the U.S. Air Force Directorate of Intelligence. All of them had a front row seat to the evening’s spectacular performance.
From left: Fournet, Chop, and Ruppelt.
Ruppelt had to wait until 5:00 a.m. the next morning to hear what had taken place. He was told at about 10:30 p.m. that Washington National Airport had once again picked up the slow-moving targets. The objects were in an arc surrounding the Washington, DC area. The objects spanned from Herndon, Virginia to Andrews Air Force Base. The same radar operators were present from the prior event, so they were prepared and worked quickly to mark and track the UFOs. They contacted Andrews Air Force Base who confirmed they were also tracking the objects.
At 11:30 p.m., it was decided to call in interceptors to check out the objects. Again they were slow to respond, but two Lockheed F-94 Starfires were in the air by midnight. At this point, reporters and photographers were asked to leave the radar room.
Ruppelt says the radar room was cleared because some of the air force officers thought this might be the night they got a good up-close look at a UFO.
Visibility that night was good. However, when the jets approached the targets, the objects disappeared from the radar screens. The jets returned to their base; however, a few minutes later, strange lights were seen near Langley Air Force Base. The lights were described as “rotating and giving off alternating colors.” The radar tower operators also saw the lights, so they called in an F-94 jet to check it out.
The jet pilot spotted the UFO’s lights and began moving towards it when the light disappeared. The pilot continued to fly around the area, and achieved a radar lock on an object, but whatever it was sped away. The same thing happened two more times.
Soon after the events near Langley Air Force Base, objects were again observed above Washington National Airport. Jets were scrambled again, but this time the objects stayed on radar as the jets approached. The tower controllers gave the jets the coordinates of the objects, but each time a jet closed in the objects would speed away.
This interaction continued for a few minutes until one object did not speed off. The F-94 pilot saw a bright light and hit his afterburners to try to pursue the object. However, as he got closer, the light just disappeared, and he could not get anything on his radar set.
The jets stayed in the area for twenty minutes, but finally ran low on fuel and had to return to the base. Dawn began to break, and soon the targets all disappeared.
The next day the press reported that fighter pilot, Lieutenant William Patterson, said,
I tried to make contact with the bogies below 1,000 feet, but [the radar controllers] vectored us around. I saw several bright lights. I was at my maximum speed, but even then I had no closing speed. I ceased chasing them because I saw no chance of overtaking them. I was vectored into new objects. Later, I chased a single bright light which I estimated about 10 miles away. I lost visual contact with it about 2 miles.
Ruppelt was informed that “everybody in the radar room was convinced that the targets were very probably caused by solid metallic objects. There had been weather targets on the scope too, he said, but these were common to the Washington area and the controllers were paying no attention to them.”
The papers were once again packed with headlines about the UFO chase. Ruppelt flew to Washington, and when he got to his hotel he was mobbed by reporters and photographers. With the help of a colleague he pushed his way to an elevator without making any comments.
According to Ruppelt, the U.S. Air Force was in a state of confusion. They all agreed that the UFO event should be investigated, but no one actually did anything about it. Unable to dodge the public’s fascination with the Washington events, on July 29, Major General Samford notified the press that he would have a press conference on the Washington UFO incidents. Ruppelt felt it a bit odd that none of the men in the radar room at Washington National Airport were involved in the press conference. Instead, the press conference was held by Major General Samford and another officer, neither of whom had been fully briefed.
Samford told the press that the UFO investigations had turned out to be mostly misidentifications, but that the other twenty percent of the reports that came in were from “credible observers of relatively incredible things.”
Edward Ruppelt (standing center) at July 29, 1952 Pentagon UFO press conference. Also pictured, Major Generals Roger Ramey (seated left), USAF operations chief, and John A. Samford (seated right), USAF director of intelligence.
(image credit: Wikipedia)
He said the air force would continue to investigate those reports, but they suspect that the Washington, DC events may have been false radar readings due to temperature inversions.
According to Ruppelt, the actually investigation ruled out temperature inversions. In fact, he discovered that every single night of the UFO sightings in Washington, DC, there was indeed a temperature inversion but none of these had previously been mistaken for UFOs.
Ruppelt also discovered that UFOs were a common occurrence in Washington, DC that summer. On May 23, from 8:00 p.m. until midnight, fifty unknown targets had been tracked on radar. There were several similar incidents throughout the summer, including the night of the press conference. As a result, to Ruppelt the objects could only be designated as “unknowns.”
Alleged pictures and videos of this event can be found on the internet. However, they are all either reflections or recreations of the events. No pictures or video was actually captured. However, the cases remain unsolved.
Image often mistaken for 1952 UFO encounter. The lights in the sky are actually reflections from the lights on the posts.
Ruppelt says this case convinced many that that UFOs were interplanetary spaceships.
If the objects over Washington DC in 1952 could not be explained, it seems obvious that an incursion of this sort would pose a threat to national security.
In the government’s UFO files there is a memo that claims the cases that posed a real threat were not included in the Blue Book files, and researchers have been tracking where those cases went.
They have discovered that the U.S. Air Force has taken UFO incidents seriously after the closing of Blue Book in 1969. And the cases that made it to this high-level reporting system are even more fascinating and alarming than the events in 1952.
We’ll take a look at this reporting system and the cases that have been discovered to have prompted its use in the next episode of Open Minds UFO Magazine.
Public interest in the possibility of unusual objects flying around in American airspace may be experiencing a resurgence thanks to the revelation that the Pentagon had been secretly funding investigations into the phenomena as recently as 2012, but the American military has already had a long and storied history of playing cat and mouse with mysterious lights in the sky (and elsewhere).
From sightings of “Foo Fighters” over the European theater in World War II to reports of Air National Guard P-51 Mustangs chasing lights through the skies of North Dakota in 1948, it’s clear that the United States military has had an interest in unexplained sightings reported by trained aviators dating back decades, and some would contend that this interest is justified. All professional pilots develop a keen understanding of norms in the sky, but military aviators—perhaps better than any—have been trained to look for and identify potential threats on the horizon. They know better than most what is and isn’t actually there, despite the sky’s propensity for weather-system-based tomfoolery.
It’s because of that trust in the judgment of military aviators that many of the most intriguing and long-lasting UFO-related mysteries tend to revolve around such reports. The eyewitness account of now-retired Navy Commander David Fravor regarding a series of attempted intercepts over the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004, for instance, has served as an interesting—and troubling—addition to FLIR footage captured from the nose of his F/A-18 Super Hornet as he and another fighter attempted to intercept the unusual object that seemed to toy with them in the airspace around their carrier. The combination of video evidence, official Navy reports, and the clear and sober recollection of a fighter pilot have made the Nimitz incident perhaps the most prominent UFO sighting in modern history…but then, there have been some spectacular sightings in the past that seem to fall away from the American consciousness over time. That includes some that have involved scrambled fighters, official reports, and credible eyewitness accounts.
Back in July of 1952, while (it’s important to note) America was gripped by both the pop-culture phenomenon of “flying saucers” and a growing concern for Soviet aggression, a series of unusual blips appeared on the radar screens of Washington National Airport in the nation’s capital. These seven radar signatures were first spotted by controller Ed Nugent, who quickly got the attention of his supervisor, Harry G. Barnes.
“Here’s a fleet of flying saucers for you,” Nugent recalls kidding with his boss. Soon after spotting the strange readings on their radar screens, however, the humor in Nugent’s joke began to wain.
“Look at that bright light,” another flight controller, Joe Zacko, recalled interjecting in a 2002 interview. “If you believe in flying saucers, that could sure be one.”
Radar at two nearby military installations, Andrews Air Force Base and Bolling Air Force Base, both tracked the same objects. Soon, two Air Force F-94 fighter jets were scrambled to intercept these aircraft flying over the nation’s capital.
Lockheed F-94C Starfire at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. (U.S. Air Force photo)
“They acted like a bunch of small kids out playing,” Barnes, the head controller, wrote in a piece for a New York newspaper days after the incident. “It was helter-skelter, as if directed by some innate curiosity. At times, they moved as a group or cluster, at other times as individuals.”
The lights and radar returns promptly vanished. Unusual as it was, some may have been happy to forget about the incident and move on…but then it happened again the following weekend.
This time, it was a dozen blips on the radar screen and F-94s were promptly scrambled to intercept. As the fighters closed with the radar readings, a number of their pilots reported seeing lights in the sky that coincided with the technical data.
“I tried to make contact with the bogies below 1,000 feet,” pilot William Patterson later told investigators. “I was at my maximum speed but…I ceased chasing them because I saw no chance of overtaking them.”
Not all the pilots dispatched that night saw similar lights, however. One B-52 pilot passing through the airspace looked in the vicinity of one of the radar returns but saw only a small passenger boat bobbing along in the Potomac River—certainly nothing that could provide a return on radar screens from three separate airstrips.
These two incidents now had the nation, and its president, concerned. Headlines across the country brought the sightings to the nation’s attention. Stories out of Washington included “Radar Spots Air Mystery Objects Here” in the Washington Post and “Air Force ‘Saucer’ Expert Will Probe Sightings Here” in the Washington Daily News. The Cedar Rapids Gazette ran the headline, “SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL.”
“We have no evidence they are flying saucers,” an unnamed Air Force official reportedly told reporters. “Conversely, we have no evidence they are not flying saucers. We don’t know what they are.”
President Truman dispatched his Air Force aide, Brig. Gen. Robert B. Landry, to find out what these unusual objects were that kept flying over his house. Landry returned touting what would become the official Air Force line: The sightings were the result of a weather-related mirage.
The radar returns and the lights witnessed by pilots were formally attributed to a naturally occurring phenomenon known as temperature inversions.
“It’s very much like when you’re riding down the highway and it’s very hot out and you see a mirage on the highway,” explained Bruce Press of National Capital Area Skeptics, a group dedicated to debunking reports of the paranormal. “As you drive toward it, it doesn’t get any closer, so you assume that because it doesn’t get any closer, it’s moving away from you at the same speed you’re driving.”
Some aren’t as eager to dismiss the 1952 sightings, however, arguing that fighter pilots are trained observers that wouldn’t be so easily fooled by a weather system. Others, like Robert Swiatek of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) contend that the radar operators believed “the anomalous signals were good, solid targets, as though they were being reflected from the surface of metallic aircraft.”
Bruce Maccabee, a civilian physicist who worked for the U.S. Navy, counters those claims with another government report produced in 1969 called the “Quantitative Aspects of Mirages.”
“They proved in their own study that there wasn’t enough temperature inversion to cause this effect,” he says. “The Washington sightings cannot be explained as a radar mirage.”
Ultimately, for believers, the most frustrating thing about this pair of sightings over the nation’s capital in the summer of 1952 has been how quickly the American public forgot all about it. Some UFO sightings, like the infamous Roswell incident of 1947 or the “Phoenix Lights” of 1997, manage to worm their way into the American cultural identity, regularly resurfacing in discussion or debate. Somehow, though, the Washington incident of 1952 just never developed that level of notoriety.
Among believer and skeptic circles, however, the debate regarding this incident rages on as it does for every supposed sighting.
“You have dueling experts and dueling reports,” said Kevin D. Randle, who wrote the book “Invasion Washington: UFOs Over the Capitol.” “One expert says it was temperature inversion. Another says it wasn’t. In that situation, you have to refer back to the air traffic controllers and the pilots who actually saw the objects.”
I cover science and innovation and products and policies they create.
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A startup with alumni from MIT and Yale says it's made a breakthrough in creating a next-generation material that should make it possible to 3-d print literally anything out of thin air.
New York-based Mattershift has managed to create large-scale carbon nanotube (CNT) membranes that are able to combine and separate individual molecules.
"This technology gives us a level of control over the material world that we've never had before," said Mattershift Founder and CEO Dr. Rob McGinnis in a release. "For example, right now we're working to remove CO2 from the air and turn it into fuels. This has already been done using conventional technology, but it's been too expensive to be practical. Using our tech, I think we'll be able to produce carbon-zero gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels that are cheaper than fossil fuels."
CNTs have been identified as holding promise for a number of potential applications, from better golf clubs, fuels and medicines to far-out concepts like space elevators. A study published this week in the journal Science Advances confirms that Mattershift's large CNT membranes perform as well as the small prototypes we've seen so far.
The company says their breakthrough brings down the difficulty and cost of manufacturing the material, which should allow the technology to burst out of the confines of university labs.
"It should be possible to combine different types of our CNT membranes in a machine that does what molecular factories have long been predicted to do: to make anything we need from basic molecular building blocks," said McGinnis. "We're talking about printing matter from the air. Imagine having one of these devices with you on Mars. You could print food, fuels, building materials, and medicines from the atmosphere and soil or recycled parts without having to transport them from Earth."
A molecular factory is a long-predicted technology that, in theory, should be able to accomplish some of what the Replicator from "Star Trek" does, although not nearly as cleanly as on the show. Mattershift's approach is more about separating and combining molecules to form new raw materials, which is why working on creating fuels is a logical place to start.
But as McGinnis points out, if it works well there's no reason that more complex molecular factories can't be combined to become the future of manufacturing, and yes, maybe eventually serve up a drink out of thin air at some point by simply asking a future version of Alexa for "tea, earl grey, hot."
To jack in to my brain and get more on the latest in science, tech and innovation, follow me on Twitter @ericcmack
We don't understand the concept of time much at all.
Everyone experiences time — literally every day — but rigorous and comprehensive understanding of the topic is … lacking. Then again, we do know some things, especially when we look at time through the lens of specialandgeneral relativity. Einstein's work taught us many things: that space and time are connected, that you can never travel faster than light, that our universe has a finite age and that different observers experience different lengths of time.
All these revelations lead to some interesting questions. It's time (pun intended) for a roundup.
Our universe is 13.77 billion years old, according to our current best estimates, which are very good, thank you very much. But when special relativity is invoked, we also understand that everyone measures time differently, depending on their speed. We, on Earth, whizzing around the sun, with the sun spinning around the Milky Way, and the Milky Way blasting through the intergalactic vacuum, should have a different perspective on the flow of time than someone else on a different planet around a different sun in a different galaxy. That said, how can we possibly pin down a "real" age of the universe?
Here's the trick. Yes, according to special relativity, different observers have different measures of time. But our whole entire universe is not fully described by special relativity. The tools that we use to understand matters cosmological are provided by its bigger brother, general relativity. And when we look at the history of the universe from general relativity's viewpoint, we find that the cosmos … well, has a history.
Our universe expands with time. It was smaller in the past, and it will be bigger in the future. There's a direct connection between a particular moment in time and a particular size of the universe. This allows us to construct what amounts to a universal clock, a timepiece that has been ticking away for over 13 billion years.
Yes, the motion of Earth through the universe changes that clock slightly, but with the tools of general relativity, we can essentially subtract that out and work out the "real" age of the universe … and so can any other observer in the cosmos (assuming that they've also cracked general relativity, but that's on them)
Does light experience time?
Moving clocks run slow. The faster you move in space, the slower you move in time. This is one of the most amazing results from Einstein's special relativity theory, and it's one way of visualizing the unique relationship between time and space. This "time dilation" effect is totally unnoticeable at speeds you'll typically encounter (hopefully) in everyday life. It's only once you get up close to the speed of light that time seems to go a little wonky.
So, if time slows down for you the faster you get to the speed of light, what about light itself? It's moving at the maximum posted speed limit of the universe. Does light … not experience time at all?
Kind of, but also not quite. Our knowledge of the relationship between time and space rests in what's wrapped up in special relativity. And while the theory produces all sorts of crazy results, it's grounded in some very simple ideas, the most important of which is the concept of the universality of physical laws: What goes for one observer, at a fundamental level, goes for all.
And one thing we know in physics, via Maxwell's equations, is that the speed of light is constant. Every observer, no matter their speed, will measure the exact same speed for light.
So, if we want to apply our knowledge of special relativity to movement at the speed of light, we run into a little sticking point. In order to ask the question, "How does light experience time?" you have to put yourself in a frame of reference that rides along with a beam of light. But in that frame of reference, light would appear to be stationary to you.
That's not allowed by our laws of physics. So there is no such frame of reference that rides along with light. And with no frame of reference, special relativity breaks down. And with no special relativity, you have no way of gauging the relationship between space and time.
The end result of all this twisting? It's not so much that light doesn't experience time. It's that our very concept of time doesn't even apply to light.
Light doesn't even know what time is.
Which twin is right?
One twin jets off close to the speed of light. The other stays at home. The faster of the pair blasts around the galaxy, having a ball, before returning to the boring ball of Earth. The other … does laundry.
According to the rocket twin, maybe a few weeks or months elapsed on ship time. A long trip, for sure, but nothing serious. But the ground-bound twin suffered years, even decades, of agonizing solitude.
This part's not surprising. Moving clocks run slow and all that. According to the twin left on Earth, the rocket twin moved close to the speed of light — and thus had a slower clock.
But wait. The twin on the rocket could rightly claim that they were the stationary one, and the whole universe, including the Earth twin, were the ones to move. Relativity is relativity, after all. Nobody's perspective is especially special. So according to that twin, the one on Earth should've barely aged at all.
Who wins the age argument?
The lonely, unadventurous, Earth-bound twin does, and they do because theydidn't turn around. As long as the rocket-loving twin stayed moving in a single direction, their perspectives were exactly symmetric, with each having their own unique perspective that they could rightly call correct. But once that rocket slowed, stopped and reversed, the symmetry broke. Their perspectives were no longer mirrors. The twin on the rocket would see the horrible reality catch up to him in a blink: The Earthbound twin had aged, too much, and there was nothing they could do about it.
Learn more by listening to the episode "What happens when galaxies collide?"on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunes and on the Web at http://www.askaspaceman.com. Thanks to Kandi M., Mihail E., Men B., Carlos D., Alan P., Derrick M., Rose J., Kirk B., Rueben F., Chris F., Diego S., and R. S.for the questions that led to this piece! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter.
Future spaceships could use black holes as powerful launch pads to explore the stars.
A new study envisions firing laser beams that would curve around a black hole and come back with added energy to help propel a spacecraft to near the speed of light. Astronomers could look for signs that alien civilizations are using such a "halo drive," as the study dubs it, by seeing if pairs of black holes are merging more often than expected.
Study author David Kipping, an astrophysicist at Columbia University in New York, came up with the idea of the halo drive through what he calls "the gamer's mindset."
"Sometimes, in a computer game you find an 'exploit,' a hack which allows you to do something overpowered that would otherwise be forbidden by the rules of the game," Kipping told Space.com. "In this case, the game is the physical world, and I tried to think about exploits that would allow a civilization to achieve relativistic flight back and forth across the galaxy without the vast energy expense that one might naively assume."
A key challenge to using rockets to fly through space is that the propellant they carry with them has mass. Long trips need a lot of propellant, which makes the rockets heavy, which in turn requires more propellant, making the rockets even heavier, and so on. That problem gets exponentially worse the bigger the rocket gets.
Instead of carrying propellant for propulsion, however, spacecraft equipped with mirror-like sails could rely on lasers to push them outward. The $100 million Breakthrough Starshot initiative, announced in 2016, plans to use powerful lasers to propel swarms of spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our own, at up to 20 percent the speed of light.
The spacecraft that Breakthrough Starshot aims to launch are each only about the size of a microchip. In order to accelerate larger spaceships to relativistic speeds — to a significant fraction of light speed — Kipping sought the aid of gravity.
Spacecraft now regularly use "slingshot maneuvers," in which the gravity of a body, such as a planet or moon, hurls the vessels across space and boosts their speed. In 1963, famed physicist Freeman Dyson suggested that spaceships of any given size could rely on slingshot maneuvers around compact pairs of white dwarfs or neutron stars to fly at relativistic speeds. (Dyson came up with the notion of what became known as a Dyson sphere, a megastructure that encapsulates a star to capture as much of its energy as possible to power an advanced civilization.)
However, a "Dyson slingshot" runs the risk of damaging a spacecraft through extreme gravitational forces and hazardous radiation from those pairs of dead stars. Instead, Kipping suggests that gravity might assist spaceships by increasing the energy of laser beams fired at the edges of black holes.
Black holes possess gravitational fields so powerful that nothing can escape them once it gets close enough, not even light. Their gravitational fields can also distort the paths of photons of light that do not fall into the holes.
In 1993, physicist Mark Stuckey suggested that a black hole could, in principle, act like a "gravitational mirror," in that the black hole's gravity could slingshot a photon around so that it flew back at its source. Kipping calculated that if a black hole was moving toward a photon's source, the "boomerang photon" would siphon away some of the black hole's energy.
Using what he called a "halo drive" — named for the ring of light it would create around a black hole — Kipping found that even spaceships with the mass of Jupiter could achieve relativistic speeds. "A civilization could exploit black holes as galactic waypoints," he wrote in a study accepted by the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society and detailed online Feb. 28 in the arXiv preprint server.
The faster a black hole moves, the more energy a halo drive could draw from it. As such, Kipping largely focused on using pairs of black holes spiraling toward each other before a merger.
Astronomers could look for signs that alien civilizations are exploiting pairs of black holes for travel with such an engine. For example, halo drives would effectively steal energy from such binary black hole systems, increasing the rates at which pairs of black holes merge above what one would expect to see naturally, Kipping said.
His findings were based on boosts from pairs of black holes orbiting each other at relativistic speeds. Although there are an estimated 10 million pairs of black holes in the Milky Way, Kipping noted that few of those likely orbited at relativistic speeds for long, since they would merge rather quickly.
Still, he noted that isolated, spinning black holes could also launch halo drives at relativistic speeds, "and we already know of numerous examples of relativistic, spinning supermassive black holes."
The major drawback of a halo drive would be that "one has to travel to the nearest black hole," Kipping said. "It's akin to paying a one-time toll fee to ride the highway system. You have to pay some energy to reach the nearest access point, but after that, you can ride for free as a long as you like."
The halo drive works only in close proximity to a black hole, at a distance of about five to 50 times the black hole's diameter. "This is why you have to travel to the nearest black hole first and [why you] can't simply do this across light-years of space," Kipping said. "We still first require a means to travel to nearby stars to ride the highway system.
"If we want to achieve relativistic flight, it takes immense energy levels no matter what propulsion system you use," he added. "One way to get around this is to use astronomical objects as your power source, since they possess literally astronomical levels of energy within them. In this case, the black-hole binary is essentially a giant battery waiting for us to tap it. The idea is to work with nature and not against it."
Kipping is now investigating ways to exploit other astronomical systems for relativistic flight. Such techniques "may not be quite as efficient or fast as the halo-drive approach, but these systems possess the deep energy reserves needed for these journeys," Kipping said.
The stellar spinner is a magnetar, which is a type of neutron star — a Manhattan-size remnant of a larger star, and the densest type of object besides black holes that we've detected anywhere in the universe.
This particular magnetar is called XTE J1810–197. It's one of only 23 magnetars and one of just four radio magnetars ever discovered, and it first turned up in 2004. Then, in late 2008, it went dormant and no longer emitted radio waves. On Dec. 8, 2018, it woke up again, and it's a bit changed. The researchers who spotted its awakening reported their finding in a paper uploaded March 6 to the preprint server arXiv.
Astronomers have long believed such magnetars carry magnetic fields more than a million times more intense than typical neutron stars and more than a quadrillion times more powerful than Earth's own. Those magnetic fields seem to be the source of intense flashes of electromagnetic energy we can detect from Earth as the magnetar spins. [7 Surprising Things About the Universe]
(Other neutron stars also emit regular flashes of energy, which gives them their second name, pulsars.)
Even so, scientists don't know why XTE J1810–197's radio emissions went to sleep or why they woke up; magnetars are among the rarest and least-well-understood objects in humanity's stellar catalog. But in the two months since its reappearance, it's behaved significantly differently than it did between 2004 and 2008.
When XTE J1810–197 last flashed across human telescopes, it acted erratically, wildly shifting its pulse profile over relatively short time periods. Now, its behavior is more stable, the astronomers reported. At the same time, the torque spinning the star has seemed to increase significantly — a trait the researchers said is common to pulsars after their dormant periods.
One remarkable aspect of XTE J1810–197's reappearance is that astronomers might have missed it. From the perspective of Earth, the magnetar is in the same part of the sky as the sun is right now. So the soft pulses announcing its reawakening were too soft to trip any general-purpose detectors watching the sky at that time. Against the sun's bright electromagnetic blast, XTE J1810–197 was barely a blip.
But a team of astronomers led by Lina Levin of the University of Manchester in the U.K. had tasked a radio telescope with periodically observing the pulsar ever since it went silent. And, more than a decade later, that close scrutiny has paid off. Levin and her team noticed what others had missed.
The researchers also reported oscillations in the radio signal that might be the result of waves rushing across the surface of the distant magnetar.
Historyhas given the greenlight toUnidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, a six-part docuseries that the network says will expose new evidence about the U.S. government’s secret program investigating the UFO phenomenon. The series will premiere sometime in May.
Unidentified, from A&E Originals, will be executive produced by Tom DeLonge, co-founder and president of To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, who along with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Intelligence Chris Mellon and their team will provide new information about UFO encounters and embark on new investigations.
It will include the first interview with former military intelligence official Luis Elizondo, who in 2017 in a New York Times report confirmed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a hidden Pentagon government unit that he directed. He eventually resigned after expressing to the government that the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena the program investigated could pose a major threat to national security.
“With this show, the real conversation can finally begin,” said Delonge of the series, which will reveal newly authenticated evidence and footage, as well as interviews from eyewitnesses and former military personnel. “I’m thankful to History for giving the To The Stars Academy team of world-class scientists, engineers and intelligence experts the opportunity to tell the story in a comprehensive and compelling way. I think everyone that watches the show will walk away with questions answered and a feeling of, ‘Wow, I get it now.’ “
Steve Ascher, Kristy Sabat and Anthony Lappé are executive producers for A+E Originals. Mike Stiller serves as executive producer for History.
DeLonge is repped by APA, Management 360 and Jackoway Austen.
BILL CLINTON AND UFOS: DID HE EVER FIND OUT IF THE TRUTH WAS OUT THERE?
BILL CLINTON AND UFOS: DID HE EVER FIND OUT IF THE TRUTH WAS OUT THERE?
In 1999, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would have required across-the-board cuts to most federal agencies and departments, including the Department of Education, which President Clinton learned about as he was about to meet with a delegation of educators. The budget cuts also meant that teachers would probably not be getting any raises, something that irked Clinton to the point where, in an impromptu and unscripted remark, he said, channeling Ronald Reagan’s famous statement, “If we were being attacked by space aliens, we wouldn’t be playing these kinds of games.” Funny how when Ronald Reagan said the same thing to the United Nations, folks commented that Reagan sure knew how to illustrate a point. When Clinton made his statement, Rush Limbaugh thundered into his microphone, “What’s he going to do, arrange one?”
Just three years earlier, while on a trip to Ireland where he was visiting a very troubled Belfast, Clinton read a letter he received from a child named Ryan, who had asked him about what he knew regarding stories of a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico. Clinton hadn’t come to talk about UFOs. He was trying to make a point regarding how children can be victimized by political violence. In front of his Belfast audience, Clinton said to Ryan, “No, as far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.” But then he added, to the delight of his audience, “and Ryan, if the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies, they didn’t tell me about it, either, and I want to know.”
Clinton did want to know, Webster Hubbell, Clinton’s associate attorney general, wrote in his own memoir. As AAG, Hubbell claimed that President Clinton asked him to find out all that he could about two things: who killed JFK and what the government knew about UFOs. He reported to the president after being stonewalled by the relevant agencies that there was a secret government that closely holds secrets to which the president doesn’t even have access.
Bill Clinton talks about UFOs and Area 51 again
Even though it is Jimmy Carter who famously had a UFO sighting, Bill Clinton seems to be the one who talks the most about them, and he is open to the idea of extraterrestrial visitation. He has a long history of association with the UFO subject and Area 51 that spans back throughout his presidency.
UFO buffs, and reporters, where poised at their televisions last night, ready to find out if Jimmy Kimmel would keep his promise when the other night he said he would ask Clinton about UFOs when he came on the show. Kimmel kept his promise, and in typical Kimmel fashion, in a light hearted and funny way. However, he did get some interesting and heartfelt comments from the former president.
Kimmel brought up the subject by saying that if he were president he would immediately go find out about UFOs. He said, “I probably wouldn’t even finish the oath. I would run to the White House. I’d demand to see all of the classified files on the UFOs because I want to know. I want to know what has been going on. Did you do that?”
Clinton replied, “Sort of.”
Clinton said he began looking into it at the beginning of his second term, during the 50thanniversary of the alleged Roswell UFO crash. Kimmel was surprised he waited so long. Clinton also said he looked into Area 51.
Clinton says there was a sci-fi movie that about an alien being held in Area 51. So he says he first had people look into Area 51 to find out if there really was an alien down there. He says he found out it was a secret base and the people who worked there even had to wear special clothing, but they were dealing with secret stealth technology, not aliens.
As for Roswell, he says he knew they were going to receive “zillions” of letters about it for the anniversary, so he had all of the Roswell papers reviewed. Clinton didn’t get into the results of that inquiry before Kimmel’s next question, but we do know from previous comments that Clinton says he found no evidence of aliens at Roswell either. More on the later…
As soon as Clinton mentioned he had the Roswell files reviewed, Kimmel asked, “If you saw that there were aliens there would you tell us?”
Clinton replied that he would, to which the crowd clapped. He then said:
What do we know now? We know we live in an ever expanding universe. We know that there are billions of stars and planets, literally, out there, and the universe is getting bigger. We know from our fancy telescopes that just in the last two years more than 20 planets have been identified outside of our solar system that seem to be far away enough from their suns and dense enough that they might be able to support some form of life. So, it makes it increasingly less likely that we are alone.
Kimmel suggested, “Oh, you are trying to give me a hint that there are aliens.”
Clinton replied, “No, I am trying to tell you I don’t know, but if we were visited some day I wouldn’t be surprised. I just hope it’s not like Independence Day the movie. “
Finally, Clinton embarked some sentiments, similar to those given by Reagan in the 80s and repeated several times, that if there was an alien threat that humans would need to unite and forget our petty difference. He noted that was the point behind the Independence Day movie.
Clinton’s UFO History
Clinton wasn’t kidding when he says he looked into UFOs during his presidency. In fact, a story that would make Kimmel proud was printed in a book by Clinton’s friend William Hubbell.
Hubbell was a friend of the Clintons from Arkansas, and was actually indicted for fraud in the Whitewater scandals. Before his indictment he was assigned to the Attorney General’s office as the Associate Attorney General. Hubbell wrote in his book Friends in High Places:
Clinton had said, ‘”If I put you over at Justice, I want you to find the answers to two questions for me,” Hubbell recounts. “One, who killed JFK. And two, are there UFOs?” Clinton was dead serious. I had looked into both, but wasn’t satisfied with the answers I was getting.
In a speech he gave in Belfast in Northern Ireland in 1995, Clinton brought up Roswell. He said, “I got a letter from 13-year-old Ryan from Belfast. Now, Ryan, if you’re out in the crowd tonight, here’s the answer to your question. No, as far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. And, Ryan, if the United States Air Force did recover alien bodies, they didn’t tell me about it, either, and I want to know.”
Someone else who wanted to know was Laurence Rockefeller. Laurance, one of the Rockefeller heirs, worked diligently during Clinton’s administration to fund research into UFOs, and to get official government information released.
Laurance, who passed in 2004, was by no means a black sheep of the powerful Rockefeller family. He held a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, and was the founding trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund for forty-two years. He was a venture capitalist who was involved with, among other things, the rise of the computer era. He helped shape history, and before he passed he wanted the public to be informed about UFOs.
Researcher Grant Cameron, who runs the website HillaryClintonUFO.net, was able to retrieve documents through the Freedom of Information Act that showed Rockefeller was soliciting help from Hillary’s staff on drafting a document to President Bill Clinton in 1995. The title of the document was Lifting Secrecy on Information About Extraterrestrial Intelligence as Part of the Current Classification Review.
The Clintons never did publicly involve themselves with Rockefeller’s quest for UFO truth, but like he told Kimmel, Clinton did make his own inquiries. Another time when he discussed his Area 51 and Roswell investigation was after his presidency in Hong Kong in 2005.
Clinton took part in a Q and A session with an audience for CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, a large independent equity broker and financial services group. The moderator asked Clinton if there was a list that was passed from president to president with a list of secrets like “’Where is Jimmie Hoffa?” and “What really happened at Roswell?” He added, “Is there something for us to look forward to that will be released that will make the National Inquirer required reading?”
Clinton chuckled, and although he wasn’t asked about it, his answer mostly referenced Area 51:
Well, I don’t know if you all remember this, but there was actually, when I was president in my second term, there was an anniversary observance of Roswell. You Remember that? People came to Roswell, New Mexico from all over the world. And, um… and there is also a site in Nevada where people were convinced that the government had buried a UFO and perhaps an alien deep underground, because we wouldn’t allow anybody to go there. And um… I can say now, because it has now been released into the public domain, I actually had so many people in my own administration convinced that Roswell was a fraud, but this place in Nevada was really serious, there was an alien artifact there. So, I actually sent someone there to figure it out, and it was actually just a secret defense installation, alas, doing boring work that we just didn’t want anybody else to see.
This wasn’t the first time Clinton referenced Area 51. He was forced to do so in 1994. Due to the burning of unknown chemicals at Area 51, several civilian contractors got sick and two of them died. Five of these employees, who remained unnamed, and the families of two of the deceased sued the US Air Force and the EPA in 1994.
The Air Force had a difficult time denying the existence of the base to the media, while at the same time acknowledging the law suit existed. Because of its secret nature, the Air Force said they could not reveal the chemicals that were being burnt at the base, and President Clinton reinforced this decision with a Presidential Determination which exempted “The Air Force’s Operating Location Near Groom Lake, Nevada” from environmental disclosure laws. Thus, the victims’ case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence. The determination requires being reviewed and renewed every year, and every president since Clinton has done so.
The determination did not include the name Area 51, because the name of the base was officially classified until recently. In fact, President Obama had the honor of being the first president to speak the name of the base. Clinton’s appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel may, in fact, be the first time he has uttered those words in public.
Clinton’s UFO Buddy
Johh Podesta was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and aided in Obama’s transition into the White House in 2008, and is currently a White House advisor. He is also known to be a sci-fi enthusiast, and has been involved with efforts to get the government to disclose all it knows about the UFO phenomenon.
John Podesta (Image from www.americanprogress.org)
Podesta served on Clinton’s staff from 1993 until Clinton left office. His final position was as Clinton’s Chief of Staff. He has remained influential in politics through a liberal think tank that he founded called the Center for American Progress.
It has always been known that Podesta is a big sci-fi buff. He made headlines during his tenure in the White House when he had an X-files themed birthday party. He was especially keen on that TV series. For a man at his level to have an interest in sci-fi is not that unusual. However, the depth of his interest in UFOs was revealed when he spoke at a press conference at the National Press Club asking the government to release its secret files on UFOs so that scientists can determine the nature of the phenomena.
In 2002 the Coalition for the Freedom of Information headed by journalist Leslie Kean, along with the Sci-Fi channel (now SyFy), held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. to address the issue of secrecy regarding the subject of UFOs. At that meeting Podesta stated, “It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old, and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon.” He made this comment in front of several major media representatives in attendance. The video can be seen below.
Clinton by far, more than any other president, has demonstrated the biggest presidential interest in UFOs. Every time he has talked on the subject he has left open the possibility that there could be more to the subject than we know. It seems he has been open to the idea of alien visitation for some time, even before it was cool. And yes, it is now very cool to believe in aliens.
For the first time, scientists made a successful in situ collection of bacteria living in hot springs in Yellowstone National Park and using an unconventional source – electricity – for food and energy
Pools of hot water like this one – in Heart Lake Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming – are the home to bacteria that can eat and breathe electricity.
Bacteriaare some of the most diverse and adaptable organisms on Earth. They can be found in harsh environments where few other living creatures can survive. They’re known to use a wide range of sources for energy and sustenance. This month (March 5, 2019), scientists at Washington State Universitydescribedthe first-ever successful in situ collection of a little-known species of bacteria that eats and breathes electricity.
They successfully captured the enigmatic electricity-eating bacteria last August in the Heart Lake Geyser Basinarea of Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park. Their work took them on long hikes to four pristine hot springs in that area. WSU graduate student Abdelrhman Mohamed, who is first author on the study, commented:
This was the first time such bacteria were collected in situ in an extreme environment like an alkaline hot spring.
He added that temperatures in the springs ranged from about 110 to nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit (43 to 93 degrees Celsius).
Image via uri Gorby/Rensselaer Polytechnic institute.
The research team was able to coax the bacteria out of hiding by inserting a few electrodes – electric conductors – into the edge of the water in the hot spring.
Thirty two days later, the researchers returned to retrieve the electrodes, which had attracted the bacteria from the water. Mohamed and postdoctoral researcher Phuc Ha analyzed the results. Their statement exclaimed:
Voila! They had succeeded in capturing their prey — heat-loving bacteria that ‘breathe’ electricity through the solid carbon surface of the electrodes.
It sounds a bit like something out of science fiction, but it’s another example of how microorganisms can adapt to a wide range of extreme environments, using whatever resources are available for energy and as nutrients.
Similar bacteria have been cultivated before, but not taken in-situ from this kind of extreme environment – in this case an alkaline hot spring pool of water. Their statement explained more about them:
Most living organisms — including humans — use electrons, which are tiny negatively-charged particles, in a complex chain of chemical reactions to power their bodies. Every organism needs a source of electrons and a place to dump the electrons to live. While we humans get our electrons from sugars in the food we eat and pass them into the oxygen we breathe through our lungs, several types of bacteria dump their electrons to outside metals or minerals, using protruding hair?like wires.
Observing these bacteria in a laboratory isn’t easy, these scientists said, which is one reason the team wanted to study then in their own habitat. According to Haluk Beyenal of WSU, who supervised the research:
The natural conditions found in geothermal features such as hot springs are difficult to replicate in laboratory settings. So, we developed a new strategy to enrich heat-loving bacteria in their natural environment.
In order to collect the bacteria in such a challenging location, Mohamed used a cheap portable potentiostat, an electronic device to control the electrodes submerged in the hot springs for long periods of time.
Geobacter, another kind of bacteria that uses electricity.
Image via Science Photo Library/Corbis.
These scientists said:
These tiny creatures are not merely of academic interest.
They might also provide clues to solutions to some of humanity’s biggest environmental problems, including pollution and sustainable energy. These bacteria could literally “eat” pollution, converting toxic pollutants into less harmful substances. And, in the process, they might even generate electricity. As noted by Beyenal:
As these bacteria pass their electrons into metals or other solid surfaces, they can produce a stream of electricity that can be used for low-power applications.
How cool is that?
Some bacteria can use a rather unconventional source for food and energy – electricity.
As also reported back in 2015, some bacteria can even live on electrons alone. According to Annette Rowe, a postdoc researcher at the University of Southern California:
It’s a crazy phenomenon. I’ve kept some of these bugs for over a month with no addition of carbon.
As Rowe noted, they must have been subsisting solely on electricity from the electrode, because there was nothing else available as an energy source.
Bacteria were among the first known life forms to appear on Earth, and can be found in soil, water, hot springs, radioactive waste and the deep portions of Earth’s crust. There is even evidence for them existing the deepest part of the ocean – the Marianas Trench – according to a study in 2013. They also live in symbiotic and parasitic relationships with plants and animals.
These new findings show just how resilient and adaptable some species of bacteria can be. They can survive and flourish in hot springs and also make use of an unconventional source for their food and energy: electricity. Perhaps they will aid scientists looking for new ways to combat environmental pollution and provide sustainable energy for humanity in the future.
Bottom line: For the first time, scientists made a successful in situ collection of bacteria living in hot springs in Yellowstone National Park and using an unconventional source – electricity – for food and energy.
There are at least 200 billion stars in our galaxy, and perhaps even a greater number of planets. Now a new study suggests there could be an additional 50 billion rogue planets, not orbiting any stars.
Based on findings from space- and ground-based telescopes in recent years, astronomers now estimate there are billions of exoplanets – planets orbiting distant stars – in our galaxy alone. But what about planets that don’torbit stars? How many rogue, or free-floating planets wander the depths of space unbound? Some have already been found, and earlier this year astronomers at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands announced results of their new study, suggesting there are some 50 billion free-floating planets in our Milky Way galaxy.
Only a dozen or so rogue planets have been discovered. How did these astronomers’ research determine there might be 50 billion more?
They ran computer simulations of 1,500 stars in the Trapezium star cluster, a well-known region of star formation located some 1,300 light-years away in the Orion Nebula, in the direction of our constellation Orion.
The simulation included 2,522 planets orbiting 500 stars within the Trapezium cluster and showed that 357 of them would become free-floating planets within the first 11 million years of their evolution.Simon Portegies Zwart, an astronomer at the University of Leiden, recently told Bruce Dorminey of Forbes:
Of these, 281 leave the cluster, others remain bound to the cluster as free-floating intra-cluster planets.
View of the Orion Nebula – a well-known region of star formation – via the Hubble Space Telescope. The Trapezium star cluster is the bright area just left of center. It contains about 2,000 known stars, but there may be more as well. It is a young open cluster where the stars are all roughly the same age.
Image via NASA/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope.
So 281 of 2,522 newly born planets would leave their original star-forming cluster altogether, to roam the space between stars and star clusters, according to this computer simulation. The researchers then extrapolated those numbers to the rest of the galaxy, based on estimates of 200 billion stars in our galaxy. After all, the Trapezium star cluster is just one of thousands of known star clusters. All of the Milky Way’s stars are thought to have originated in vast star-forming clouds like those in the Orion Nebula, and to have started life in star clusters much like the Trapezium star cluster.
If, as calculated, about a quarter of the Milky Way’s stars have lost one or more planets, as many as 50 billion planets should be rogue or free-floating, in our galaxy alone!
Bound exoplanets likely outnumber stars in the galaxy; our single sun has eight major planets, and we’ve now seen thousands of planets orbiting single stars in multiple-planet systems. The estimates for the total numbers of planets in our Milky Way – both bound to stars, and rogue – is staggering.
Just a few decades ago, it wasn’t yet known if any exoplanets existed. Now, current observations suggest there are hundreds of billions. Combine that with the billions of galaxies, and the implications are mind-blowing.
Closer view of the Trapezium star cluster in the Orion Nebula (bright stars near center of photo).
Image via ESO/M.McCaughrean et al. (AIP).
Here is another question. Might any of those free-floating planets collide with other planets or with their stars? They can and do, according to these astronomers’ recent computer simulation. Zwart said in Forbes:
Collisions among planets and between planets and their host star are common. This happens in more than three percent of planetary systems.
Zwart also thinks that our own solar system might have lost one or two planets – probably less massive than Neptune – earlier in its youth. He said:
But who knows what happened very early on, when Jupiter and Saturn had just formed and the rocky planets just started to emerge.
Artist’s concept of exoplanet Kepler-186f. Most exoplanets – as might be assumed – orbit their own stars, but there may be billions more in our galaxy alone that do not.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle.
The ejection of planets from their home planetary systems might be more common in denser star clusters (the Trapezium star cluster is considered a “looser” cluster), since more frequent encounters between stars in dense clusters will make the planetary systems unstable. But the study of the Trapezium cluster shows that planets leave their home systems in looser clusters as well.
Rogue planets are not easy to detect, but as astronomers learn more about them, they’ll be able to find more in the coming years. If this new study is any indication, there are many of them awaiting discovery.
Bottom line: The existence of 200 billion stars in our galaxy – and an even greater number of planets – is difficult enough to wrap our minds around. The idea of another 50 billion planets just floating around, not bound to any stars, is even more incredible. It might sound like science fiction, but, if astronomers at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands are right, these 50 billion rogue planets do exist.
UFO Researcher Says Space Force Running Secretly Since The 1960s
UFO Researcher Says Space Force Running Secretly Since The 1960s
A wry smile was what Dr Steven Greer gave when told he was being interviewed on World UFO Day on July 2.
From his home in Virginia, Greer said that two things are going on. One is the silly seasons of the UFO subject, and the other one are the critical operations that are going on. He said that the silly stuff gets more attention because it is silly.
Greer revealed that he had been involved in providing information on UFOs to at least two presidents of the United States since 1993.
He had an insider’s perspective when President Trump announced in June that he planned to make a Space Force that would be a new military branch.
Greer said that Trump is somewhat calling for acknowledging something that has existed in black project, an unacknowledged special access project, that has been operational since the mid to late ‘60s.
Greer continued that he knows someone who is a Pentagon’s very top secret technology management office whistleblower. This man, Greer said, has acknowledged to him that they have operating systems on satellites in space that can track, target, and destroy any object in space. The whistleblower further told that these systems have been fully operational for many years.
Efforts of Greer to gain disclosure on secretive government topic can be explored on YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon.
Greer does not fault President Trump for not knowing on secretive projects conducted for over 50 years, saying that the White House is a bubble in which disinformation is funnelled.
Greer said that the unacknowledged extra access projects are run in a way that leaders in Congress and the presidency rarely have full access. Greer believes this is something that needs correcting as soon as possible.
According to data from the National UFO Reporting Center, UFO sightings around the world have reached an all-time high. Statistics show individuals in the US are more likely to witness a UFO
Video – A compilation of stunning UFO footage from NASA’s archives – NASA’s Alien Anomalies caught on film
Video – A compilation of stunning UFO footage from NASA’s archives – NASA’s Alien Anomalies caught on film
This compilation includes many of my favorite NASA UFO encounters/sightings that I have archived over the years. All of these examples (with the exception of the second-to-last one) were captured on film by NASA astronauts or Russian Cosmonauts over the past half-century – showing many amazing examples from different eras – Gemini, Apollo, Apollo/Soyuz Test Project, Skylab, STS, the ISS, plus a couple Russian-source additions from their unmanned Zond and Mir Space Station programs as well thrown in to round things out.
The second last example is the only one in the compilation that features footage that was not taken in space and is not official-source (NASA or Soviet/Russian Space Agency). That clip shows an LTP (Lunar Transient Phenomenon) event captured through a camera connected to the eyepiece of a terrestrial-based telescope that luckily was being focused on the Moon at the time. In this case, the LTP manifests as an object transiting across the face of the lunar disc. Many thanks to amateur astronomer Alberto Mayer of Italy for doing a wonderful job of filming this stunning event (and for stacking the footage for us all to see).
While the examples you will see here captured on film can all be “officially” classified as “unidentified” objects, that absolutely does NOT mean that NASA, the DoD, and certain elements within the scientific community worldwide are completely in the dark as to what these things you are seeing are. Make no mistake: The Powers That Be are indeed aware of far more about our mysterious Universe than they are ever willing to admit to us. We, the plebeian masses of this planet, are being held in a state of enforced ignorance, deemed not worthy of knowing the full truth by those who are REALLY “running the show” down here on Earth. As this video shows over and over again however, there are indeed snippets of that amazing truth that have been left scattered about the official government archives over the decades, there for us to find so we may begin to educate ourselves about what is the most monumental coverup in human history – where the only thing more incredible than the lies is the truth! Also, be sure to check out Jose Escamilla’s new motion picture documentary “MOON RISING”, where we go into much further depth about what is, without exaggeration, the most monumental coverup in human history. You have NO idea what you have been missing!
Video – Stunning NASA UFO Anomalies Captured On Film
Video – Stunning NASA UFO Anomalies Captured On Film
After receiving such a positive response to my first “NASA Alien Anomalies” compilation video, I decided I would do a follow-up effort, presenting a few more of my favorite anomalous audio soundbites, videos, and still images that I have archived during my years of research and investigation into this most monumental of all cover-ups.
Hopefully, you will see some new evidence here in this video that you were not aware of, as I made sure to include a few less-publicized (though in my opinion still highly compelling) images in this presentation.
I also include audio portions of another radio interview with Doctor Edgar Mitchell , Lunar Module Pilot for the Apollo 14 mission and the sixth man to walk on the Moon. This particular interview is from July of 2008, and as you will hear, Mitchell is VERY candid about the existence of intelligent extra-terrestrial life and of the long-term and on-going effort to conceal this information from the public. In addition to his fame as an Apollo astronaut, here is a brief look at some of Doctor Mitchell’s other very impressive credentials. He is not exactly some “crazy hick farmer talking about swamp gas”, now is he?
Edgar Mitchell – BIOGRAPHY
US Naval Aviator (carrier/research/test-qualified)
Instructor at the Navy’s research pilot school.
Astronaut selection – 1966
Backup LMP for Apollo 10
LMP for Apollo 14 – lunar landing (Fra Mauro highlands)
Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University, Bachelor of Science from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Doctor of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT,
Honorary Doctorates in engineering from New Mexico State University,
the University of Akron,
Carnegie Mellon University,
and a Doctor of Science from Embry-Riddle University.
Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
the United States Navy Distinguished Medal,
three NASA Group Achievement Awards.
Inducted into the Space Hall of Fame in 1979
and the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1998.
Nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
Member of Kappa Sigma fraternity
Advisory Board Chairman of the Institute for Cooperation in Space,
Co-founder of The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) to encourage and conduct research on “human potentials”.
Also, I may as well draw attention to the fact that more than once in this interview, Dr. Mitchell mentions a “60-year” timeframe for this coverup (The “Roswell Incident” was in 1947 remember), and he confirms that the reverse-engineering of advanced alien technology has been going on since then. This is VERY important for many reasons, and knowing this, you must also realize and accept that what you think may be “State Of The Art” technology in the public realm is in fact DECADES behind the true “Beyond State Of The Art” technology the military industrial complex have covertly developed and have been playing with (paid for by all of you of course!).
Also, be sure to check out Jose Escamilla’s new motion picture documentary “MOON RISING”, where we go into much further depth about what is, without exaggeration, the most monumental coverup in human history. You have NO idea what you have been missing!
Video – Was Baalbek – Lebanon, a landing pad for 10,000 years old aircrafts?
Video – Was Baalbek – Lebanon, a landing pad for 10,000 years old aircrafts?
The history of settlement in the area of Baalbek dates back about 9,000 years, with almost continual settlement of the tell under the Temple of Jupiter, which was a temple since the pre-Hellenistic era.
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.
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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.
