NASA waarschuwt voor ruimteherpes - HLN.be

Bron: Science Daily, Futurism

“NASA-astronauten worden gedurende weken of zelfs maanden blootgesteld aan microzwaartekracht en kosmische straling, en dan zwijgen we nog van de extreme G-krachten bij het opstijgen en de terugkeer naar de aarde”, zegt dr. Satish Mehta, hoofdauteur van de studie en medewerker van het Johnson Space Center. “De fysieke uitdaging wordt verstrekt door andere stressfactoren zoals sociale scheiding, opsluiting en een gewijzigde slaapcyclus.”

Lees ook

NASA onthult: in december ontplofte metersgrote meteoriet boven Beringzee met kracht van 10 atoombommen

In de studie, die werd gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift Frontiers in Microbiology, drukken de onderzoekers hun bezorgdheid uit over de reactivering van het virus. Het gaat dus niet over een nieuw virus dat zich in de ruimte ontwikkelt.

Immuunsysteem onderdrukt

NASA volgt de fysiologische impact van ruimtevaart bij de astronauten op via hun speeksel, bloed en urine. “Tijdens de ruimtevlucht is er een toename van de afscheiding van stresshormonen zoals cortisol en adrenaline, waarvan geweten is dat ze het immuunsysteem onderdrukken”, stelt de studie. “In overeenstemming hiermee ondervinden we dat de immuuncellen van astronauten – vooral diegene die normaal gezien virussen onderdrukken en elimineren – minder efficiënt worden tijdens ruimtevluchten en soms tot 60 dagen daarna.”

Wanneer het immuunsysteem onderdrukt wordt, is het voor het lichaam van een astronaut moeilijker om slapende virussen onder controle te houden, waardoor die weer de kop opsteken.

53 procent

“Tot op heden scheidden 47 van de 89 astronauten (53 procent) op korte ruimtevluchten, en 14 van 23 (61 procent) van diegenen op langere ISS-missies, herpesvirussen af in hun speeksel- of urinestalen”, aldus dr. Mehta. Dat is opvallend meer dan in stalen die voor of na de vlucht werden afgenomen.

Hoe langer de ruimtereis duurt, des te vaker staken de virussen dus weer de kop op. Slechts zes astronauten ontwikkelden ook echt symptomen als gevolg van de virale reactivering. Volgens Mehta ging het bij elk van hen om slechts lichte symptomen.

Gevaar voor lange ruimtereizen

Er zijn acht gekende herpesvirussen, waaronder de stam voor de waterpokken en gordelroos. Eens er een besmetting heeft plaatsgevonden, blijven de virussen aanwezig in de zenuwcellen van de drager voor de rest van zijn leven. Het immuunsysteem kan de virussen meestal onderdrukken, maar als het immuunsysteem zelf onder druk komt te staan, bijvoorbeeld tijdens ruimtereizen, dan kan dit grote risico’s met zich meebrengen voor astronauten die naar Mars of zelfs verder willen reizen.

De ontwikkeling van tegenmaatregelen tegen virale reactivering is essentieel voor het succes van langdurige ruimtemissies, betoogt Mehta. “De ideale tegenmaatregel voor astronauten is vaccinatie, maar dat is tot nu toe alleen beschikbaar voor waterpokken en gordelroos.”

“Testen met andere herpesvirusvaccins zijn weinig beloftevol, dus onze huidige focus ligt op de ontwikkeling van gerichte behandelingsschema’s voor personen die lijden aan de gevolgen van virale reactivering”, stelt de arts.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

19-03-2019 om 00:19 geschreven door peter  

5 buitenaardse rampen die de mensheid kunnen uitroeien - HLN.be

Bron: Forbes

We moeten er onze slaap niet meteen voor laten, maar wetenschappelijk gezien kunnen bepaalde gebeurtenissen die zich buiten onze planeet afspelen ons helemaal uitroeien. Het hangt meestal van erg groot toeval af, maar er is wel één zekerheid: na ongeveer 2 miljard jaar zal de zon onze oceanen volledig opbranden en is het onherroepelijk gedaan met ons. Maar dat ligt nog héél erg ver weg. Tegen dan kunnen ons ook potentieel de volgende scenario’s overkomen:

1. Asteroïde- of komeetinslag

Simpel gesteld: als een enorme massa uit de ruimte aan hoge snelheid op de aarde zou crashen, dan zou dat kunnen leiden tot massa-extinctie. Dat soort incidenten is uiterst zeldzaam. We kunnen nog makkelijk miljarden jaren verder zonder zo’n fatale inslag. De laatste keer is intussen alweer 65 miljoen jaar geleden, toen de dinosaurussen uitgeroeid werden. Een reële dreiging is de komeet Swift-Tuttle, waaraan we de Perseïden-meteorenzwerm te danken hebben. De komeet zou in het jaar 4479 kunnen inslaan op de aarde, al blijft die kans klein.

2. Gammaflitsen

Een heftige uitbarsting van hoogenergetische gammastraling - met een energie-uistoot die honderden keren groter is dan de straling van een supernova-uitbarsting - zou de ozonlaag kunnen vernietigen, wat de ondergang van de mensheid zou betekenen. Dat kan alleen als een van de stralen naar de aarde is gericht en voldoende dichtbij is, te weten binnen ongeveer 6.000 lichtjaar. Die kans is amper één keer in één miljoen jaar. De uitbarsting kan erg kort zijn maar ook minutenlang duren.

3. Zomaar een clash

De Melkweg zit vol sterren, planeten, sterrenresten en zwarte gaten. Als daarvan iets door ons innerlijke zonnestelsel gaat, dan zou dat door de zwaartekracht onze planeet kunnen verstoten en ons allemaal vernietigen. Dat kan alleen gebeuren als de ster even dicht bij de aarde komt als de zon, en die kans is minder dan 1 op 1 miljard. Als het toch zou voorvallen, dan zou de aarde in korte tijd bevriezen en zou het menselijke leven er uitsterven.

4. Supernova

Supernova’s hebben onze planeet al vaker belaagd, tot nu toe zonder noemenswaardige schade. Een supernova van het meest voorkomende type II op minder dan 25 lichtjaar van de aarde zou een bedreiging voor onze ozonlaag kunnen vormen, maar dat is een hoogst uitzonderlijk fenomeen. Het komt naar schatting minder dan één keer in een paar miljard jaren voor.

5. Onze zon

De zon zal ons uiteindelijk verbranden, dat is onvermijdelijk. Vandaag kookt het water van de zee enkel als er lava vrijkomt bij een vulkaanuitbarsting of als er iets anders superheets in de oceaan terechtkomt. Maar dat verandert ooit. De zon is sinds haar ontstaan toegenomen qua omvang, helderheid en temperatuur, en die kenmerken zullen ook in de toekomst blijven evolueren. Binnen de twee miljard jaar zal de energie van de zon zo fel zijn dat het de oceanen zal doen koken en zo een einde zal maken aan het leven op aarde.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

19-03-2019 om 00:09 geschreven door peter  

When playing a game of “What’s the weirdest thing you can imagine happening” (don’t tell me I and my friends are the only ones who play this), it pays to google your crazy idea first because 9 times out of 10, it already happened in Siberia or somewhere else in Russia (this isn’t cheating, according to the official rule book). Black snow? Check. Green snow? Check. Black living snow? No need to google it … we already did and it’s true. Plausible explanation? Safe for humans? Something sinister behind their appearance? Let the game continue!

This story comes from the village of Balasheika (or Balasheyka) in the Samara region, a heavily-populated urban area in the southeastern part of Russia at the convergence of the Volga and Samara rivers near the border with Kazakhstan (in case you want to go and see this for yourself). According to Pravda.Ru, residents of Balasheika awoke on the morning of March 12 to that everything outside looked to be covered with a black snowfall. Fearing it was caused by coal pollution like the black snowfall in multiple places this winter across Russia (some being so embarrassing that local officials painted it white – only in Russia!) and worried their children would run out and taste it, parents went out to inspect it and were confronted with a nightmarish scene far worse … the black snow appeared to be alive and moving! (Watch the video here.)

Upon closer inspection, they saw that the movement was caused by a blanket of insects they assumed had fallen from the sky in the previous night’s snowfall. While waiting for an official answer (or for someone to google it), they assumed the tiny bugs were blown in from Kazakhstan (it’s always Kazakhstan) during recent heavy “cyclonic” winds. Before you use this in your next game of “What’s the weirdest thing?”, that’s the wrong answer.

“These creatures are known as Collembola springtail insects, and they do not fall down from the sky. They crawl from under the ground to the surface, and they will return there as soon as it gets warmer.”

[Source: Flickr Creative Commons © mbalazs2]

Actually, they’re more commonly called “snow fleas,” which is a misnomer since they’re neither fleas nor snow nor even insects. Collembola are hexapods that are not considered to be insects because they have internal mouthparts. They’re omnivorous, free-living organisms that prefer moist conditions and are named Collembola for their collophore (a straw-like body tube used for excretion and maintaining water balance) and their abdominal, spring-like furcula that is used for jumping when threatened. They generally live in decaying matter and one of the world’s most abundant tiny creatures, with about 100,000 per square meter of ground. Even in those numbers, their minute size, while visible to the naked eye, still makes them hard to see … except for the snow fleas, which sometimes emerge from winter hibernation when the temperature is warm enough to trick them into thinking it’s spring but not enough to melt the snow, giving the contrast that makes them easy to spot.

“These insects are absolutely safe for humans, domestic animals and grain crops. They may emerge on the ground surface too early, when it gets unusually warm for a few days.”

Pravda.Ru knows what its readers are thinking. Being wrongly called “fleas” makes Collembola springtails subject to the same fears of fleas, which truly deserve to be feared and avoided by warm-blooded creature. However, Collembola springtails are truly harmless and in fact are beneficial as lab test subjects for the early detection of soil pollution.

Conspiracy theorists may also know of Collembola springtails for their alleged use as biological weapons during the Korean War. They were rumored to have been infected by the U.S. military with anthrax, dysentery, cholera and small pox and dropped by airplanes on enemy villages. The rumors surfaced again in 1971-72 when the Nixon administration ordered all biological weapons stored at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas to be destroyed. The government denied snow fleas were ever used as six-legged biological weapons carriers.

Were they? Are they? Should the good folks of Balasheika be fearful of the sudden appearance of huge numbers of snow fleas? Should they question their government? Our? Anybody’s?

It’s too bad we can’t ask the bugs.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-03-2019 om 23:59 geschreven door peter  

Oumuamua-like Alien Craft found on Google Sky

It is not the first time huge cigar-shaped UFOs have been spotted on google sky or by telescope.

The following object has been found by TruthSeeker on Google Sky which resembles a huge cigar-shaped craft.

The cigar-shaped craft is very similar to infamous Quamuamua and even it is the equivalent of our battleships or submarines.

Besides,you can see the sort of bridge on top of this craft and a large square hangar or docking facility for smaller incoming and outgoing UFOs on the craft’s side.

This discovery confirms once again that such interstellar alien spaceships do exist.

The craft is 1,400 meters width and 120 meters high and can be found on the following Google sky coordinates: 2 41 32.38 7 53 16.51

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

18-03-2019 om 23:36 geschreven door peter  

Jamie Carter

Contributor

Toyota's proposed lunar rover will be self-driving and use zero-emission electric fuel cell technology.

 JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATION AGENCY & TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION

Japan is planning a moon landing for 2029 and wants its astronauts to explore the lunar surface in a vehicle built by Japanese automaker Toyota.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Toyota announced Tuesday that it will collaborate on international space exploration, specifically on developing a manned, pressurized rover that uses Toyota's fuel cell vehicle (FCV) technologies.

Toyota's concept for a lunar rover will travel 10,000km.

 JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATION AGENCY & TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION

“Manned, pressurized rovers will be an important element supporting human lunar exploration, which we envision will take place in the 2030s, " said Koichi Wakata, JAXA Vice President. "We aim at launching such a rover into space in 2029."

JAXA, which earlier this month landed its Hayabusa2 probe on the asteroid Ryugu, is hoping the collaboration with Toyota will "give rise to intellectual properties" needed for international space exploration.

The lunar rover will also have solar panels, which will be useful in lunar daylight, which lasts for two weeks in each month.

JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATION AGENCY & TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION

An FCV is a type of electric vehicle that, instead of using a battery, uses a fuel cell of oxygen and compressed hydrogen, which react with each other to generate electricity. The zero-emissions technology is already used on Toyota's Mirai vehicle. “Fuel cells, which use clean power-generation methods, emit only water, and, because of their high energy density, they can provide a lot of energy, making them especially ideal for the project being discussed with JAXA," said Shigeki Terashi, Executive Vice President at Toyota. He also mentioned that Toyota's automated driving technologies were part of the project.

Although the amount of fuel that could be taken to the moon would be limited, said JAXA and Toyota, the pressurized rover would have a total lunar-surface cruising range of more than 10,000 km.

However, Toyota’s ‘space mobility’ concept for the pressurized rover being studied by JAXA and Toyota is pretty small. It envisions a 6 meter by 5.3-meter vehicle standing 3.8 meters tall. That's enough room for two people, say JAXA and Toyota, or four in an emergency. Toyota and JAXA also revealed that they have been jointly studying the concept of a manned, pressurized rover since May 2018.

The moon presents some special challenges for any vehicle. Gravity is one-sixth of Earth's, and the lunar surface is pocked by craters, cliffs, and hills. "It is exposed to radiation and temperature conditions that are much harsher than those on Earth, as well as an ultra-high vacuum environment," said Wakata. "For a wide-ranging human exploration of the moon, a pressurized rover that can travel more than 10,000 km in such environments is a necessity." Wakata also stressed the need for a 'Team Japan' approach to space exploration.

ispace's HAKUTO-R mission will launch on a SpaceX rocket in 2020 to orbit the moon and be followed by a mission to land on the surface in 2021.

HAKUTO/ISPACE

That's a message that appears to be finding favor. Japan Airlines-backed startup ispace last month announced that its HAKUTO-R mission will orbit the moon in 2020 ahead of a mission to land on the surface in 2021. An finalist in the ill-fated Google Lunar XPRIZE, ispace plans to map, and eventually recover, water ice on the moon and learn how to use it as a resource. If it can separate lunar water into hydrogen and oxygen, it could provide fuel for Toyota's moon buggy, as well as for a self-sufficient moonbase, and even rockets.

Aside from Japan Airlines, HAKUTO-R's corporate partners include Japanese national daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun and Japan NGK Spark Plug, which wants to test solid-state battery technology on the moon in 2021. Another is Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, which last month announced a new lunar insurance service. “The availability of lunar exploration insurance will encourage new players to participate in the lunar industry by reducing the risk of entry,” said ispace founder Takeshi Hakamada last month. “With the ability to insure our landers and rovers, ispace and its customers will be able to concentrate on realizing our vision without hesitation."

{ https://www.forbes.com/ }

18-03-2019 om 18:23 geschreven door peter  

Did Interstellar get it right? Researchers say rotating black holes COULD be used as portals for hyperspace travel

•  Researchers found all black holes are not created equal
• If the black hole  is large and rotating, 'gentle' travel could be possible

By GAURAV KHANNA FOR THE CONVERSATION

One of the most cherished science fiction scenarios is using a black hole as a portal to another dimension or time or universe. 

That fantasy may be closer to reality than previously imagined.

Black holes are perhaps the most mysterious objects in the universe. 

A University of Massachusetts study found that black holes that are large and rotating enough could allow 'gentle' hyperspace travel.

HOW WOULD INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL WORK? 

They are the consequence of gravity crushing a dying star without limit, leading to the formation of a true singularity – which happens when an entire star gets compressed down to a single point yielding an object with infinite density. 

This dense and hot singularity punches a hole in the fabric of spacetime itself, possibly opening up an opportunity for hyperspace travel. 

That is, a short cut through spacetime allowing for travel over cosmic scale distances in a short period.

Researchers previously thought that any spacecraft attempting to use a black hole as a portal of this type would have to reckon with nature at its worst. 

The hot and dense singularity would cause the spacecraft to endure a sequence of increasingly uncomfortable tidal stretching and squeezing before being completely vaporized.

My team at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a colleague at Georgia Gwinnett College have shown that all black holes are not created equal. 

If the black hole like Sagittarius A*, located at the center of our own galaxy, is large and rotating, then the outlook for a spacecraft changes dramatically. 

That's because the singularity that a spacecraft would have to contend with is very gentle and could allow for a very peaceful passage.

'Interstellar' was based on a book written by Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Kip Thorne and Gargantua's physical properties are central to the plot of this Hollywood movie.

The reason that this is possible is that the relevant singularity inside a rotating black hole is technically 'weak,' and thus does not damage objects that interact with it. 

At first, this fact may seem counter intuitive. 

But one can think of it as analogous to the common experience of quickly passing one's finger through a candle's near 2,000-degree flame, without getting burned.

My colleague Lior Burko and I have been investigating the physics of black holes for over two decades. 

This graph depicts the physical strain on the spacecraft’s steel frame as it plummets into a rotating black hole. The inset shows a detailed zoom-in for very late times. The important thing to note is that the strain increases dramatically close to the black hole, but does not grow indefinitely. Therefore, the spacecraft and its inhabitants may survive the journey.

In 2016, my Ph.D. student, Caroline Mallary, inspired by Christopher Nolan's blockbuster film 'Interstellar,' set out to test if Cooper (Matthew McConaughey's character), could survive his fall deep into Gargantua – a fictional, supermassive, rapidly rotating black hole some 100 million times the mass of our sun. 

'Interstellar' was based on a book written by Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Kip Thorne and Gargantua's physical properties are central to the plot of this Hollywood movie.

Building on work done by physicist Amos Ori two decades prior, and armed with her strong computational skills, Mallary built a computer model that would capture most of the essential physical effects on a spacecraft, or any large object, falling into a large, rotating black hole like Sagittarius A*.

What she discovered is that under all conditions an object falling into a rotating black hole would not experience infinitely large effects upon passage through the hole's so-called inner horizon singularity. 

This is the singularity that an object entering a rotating black hole cannot maneuver around or avoid. 

Singularity of massive black hole or wormhole. Researchers previously thought that any spacecraft attempting to use a black hole as a portal of this type would have to reckon with nature at its worst.

Not only that, under the right circumstances, these effects may be negligibly small, allowing for a rather comfortable passage through the singularity. 

In fact, there may no noticeable effects on the falling object at all. This increases the feasibility of using large, rotating black holes as portals for hyperspace travel.

Mallary also discovered a feature that was not fully appreciated before: the fact that the effects of the singularity in the context of a rotating black hole would result in rapidly increasing cycles of stretching and squeezing on the spacecraft. 

But for very large black holes like Gargantua, the strength of this effect would be very small. So, the spacecraft and any individuals on board would not detect it.

The crucial point is that these effects do not increase without bound; in fact, they stay finite, even though the stresses on the spacecraft tend to grow indefinitely as it approaches the black hole.

WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?

Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them - not even light.

They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them.

Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around.

How they are formed is still poorly understood.

Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas in the centre of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times that of the sun. They cause dips in space-time (artist's impression) and even light cannot escape their gravitational pull

Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole.

Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy.

Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun's mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses.

When these giant stars die, they also go 'supernova', a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space. 

There are a few important simplifying assumptions and resulting caveats in the context of Mallary's model. 

The main assumption is that the black hole under consideration is completely isolated and thus not subject to constant disturbances by a source such as another star in its vicinity or even any falling radiation. 

While this assumption allows important simplifications, it is worth noting that most black holes are surrounded by cosmic material – dust, gas, radiation.

Therefore, a natural extension of Mallary's work would be to perform a similar study in the context of a more realistic astrophysical black hole.

Mallary's approach of using a computer simulation to examine the effects of a black hole on an object is very common in the field of black hole physics. 

Needless to say, we do not have the capability of performing real experiments in or near black holes yet, so scientists resort to theory and simulations to develop an understanding, by making predictions and new discoveries.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

18-03-2019 om 18:04 geschreven door peter  

Physicists have discovered that rotating black holes might serve as portals for hyperspace travel

18-03-2019 om 17:33 geschreven door peter  

The robotics community likes to say that we’re at an inflection point, something akin to software’s position in the 1980s. In 1984, around eight percent of households had a computer, according to US Census data, a percentage that grew to more than 23 percent by the early 1990s. That’s roughly two million households buying a new computer each year.

Similar projections exist for the adoption of household and workplace robotics. About 4 million robots were sold in 2015, according to data from Loup Ventures, the vast majority of which were vacuum cleaners. That number is expected to soar to 23 million by 2025. By then, either robots or some other form of automation will be completing roughly 52 percent of tasks worldwide, according to a recent projection from the World Economic Forum.

There are a few factors at play in this acceleration. Each week, the field overcomes new hurdles, and as 5G networks drastically expand network capacity over the next two years, that pace of progress will get even faster. If you don’t have robot colleagues already, it’s only a matter of time.

It should come as some relief to hear that research is already underway to see how robot growth is going to affect your workday.

Robots Don’t Need to Take Jobs to Take a Toll on Workers

It’s obviously awful to be automated out of a job. But what if the robots you work with are simply colleagues? That’s the question underlying a study from a fascinating group of researchers at Cornell whose expertise spreads across engineering, robotics, and behavioral economics. In the study, published last month, the researchers tried to tease out the emotional impact of working alongside a robot with an identical job. The workplace, after all, is a competitive place — what happens when you make workers compete with robots who, obviously, don’t mess up or get tired? It turns out, they don’t like it.

“People thought they were worse at the job when the robot was there,” Guy Hoffman, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who specializes in robot-human interaction, tells Inverse. “To me, this raises the question of whether there’s this downside to highly productive robots working alongside people.”

To test for this effect, Hoffman, along with lead author Alap Kshirsagar, co-author Ori Heffetz, and two graduate students, pitted humans and robots against one another in a pretty tedious task, identifying G’s out of a string of letters. The better the human or the robot did, the greater their odds of winning a prize.

Throughout the challenge, the players were able to see their odds of winning, which allowed the researchers to assess whether working with a fast or slow robot had a different effect on the human participants. What they found leaves room for concern: The better the robot was doing, the less the human participants tried.

How Loss Aversion Comes Into Play

Ori Heffetz, an economics professor at Cornell and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explains that this is likely due to loss aversion, a common theory in behavioral economics which holds that people tend to prioritize avoiding losses over pursuing gains. Loss aversion, he said in an email, explains why people tend to slack off more when competing against a robot they thought would win anyway.

“People evaluate their outcomes not only in absolute terms, but also relative to a reference point,” Heffetz explained in an email. “Our task-competitors seemed to evaluate winning the prize relative to how much they expected to win it; when the robot was slower, they expected to win the prize more and worked harder to avoid disappointment. When the robot was faster, they knew their overall chances to win the prize are lower, and they tried less hard.”

Loss aversion is powerful. It explains why we’re too hesitant to bet our chips in poker, and why we’ll sometimes slack off when a goal seems unrealistic to us. In terms of financial behavior, it also explains why most people who invest tend to do the opposite of what they’re supposed to do, and buy assets when they’re high and sell them when they’re low. This effect is said to be about twice as psychologically powerful as the effect of equivalent gains, according to a famous 1992 paper by the Nobel-winning economist Daniel Kahneman.

As to how we can triumph over loss aversion when robots are in the picture? More research needs to be done. And after all, spotting the “G” in a long strings of letters isn’t the same as doing a job where you can (at least hopefully) gain some satisfaction from seeing tasks being accomplished.

Heffetz says the next step is to continue studying how and where humans form reference points for when they feel like they’re winning and losing. A robot, after all, is obviously not a fair reference point to assess human ability. If we can crack the code to that particular question, then we might be able to crack the code for how to make robot-human collaboration a win-win for everyone.

• Media via World Economic Forum , Last Week Tonight/YouTube, Boston Dynamics

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

18-03-2019 om 17:11 geschreven door peter  

UK's air-breathing rocket engine set for key tests

18-03-2019 om 16:15 geschreven door peter  

Sudden Change On YouTube Could Be The End Of UFO Research

I subscribe to the Secureteam10 UFO channel on YouTube and they just released this disturbing discovery. Yes, I know, it's Secureteam10, but it affects all alternative UFO channels.

Now, there have been talks and actions by YouTube about removing Conspiracy videos from the suggested video lists but they now apparently made it almost impossible to find them on their search as well.

• Note: The video talks of UFOs searches but this also is happening with conspiracy searches too. Already tested it.

Some of the conspiracies out there are outlandish and sometimes dangerous but not all of them fall into this category and what is concerning about this is that now any coverage of any nefarious activities of corrupt wealthy people or companies will never get to see the light of day through YouTube and possibly other sites if this trend continues to other popular sites.

I'd say it's more just Google clamping down on information control.

Massive censorship on the Internet is now a reality

First came mass surveillance, now comes mass censorship.

What we are witnessing here is the slow dissolving of the internet as we know it. And it can all be traced back to the ending of net neutrality which officially went into effect on June 2018. Just take a look at what soon followed.

On August 6th, a mere two months after net neutrality was repealed, Alex Jones lost his entire internet presence. This was clearly a planned and coordinated effort. In a single day Apple, YouTube, Facebook and Spotify entirely wiped him from the net with others to follow suit soon after.

This was just the first and most public example and it set the stage for where we are today. It continues happening widespread across the internet with increasing regularity. Common voices are being silenced and replaced by those of “Authority.” You can see examples of this censorship happening on all the major sites (recently rotten tomatoes deleted 50,000 user reviews from a film and there is already talk of them eliminating the user reviews altogether).

This isn’t just about Alex Jones or UFO videos on YouTube. This is about the internet itself. The message is clear: the internet is no longer a place for open discussion. Just like television and print before it, the internet is now to be made a place for the one-way ingestion of information. You will be free to parrot and repeat the views chosen by those in authority, but any deviation from those selected viewpoints will no longer be tolerated.

Eventually even the ability to point out that this is happening will be silenced.

Youtube deliberately broke the ability to sort by new/date hurting an untold number of content creators because of "The event"

This type of worldwide extreme censorship is a test run to remove en mass anything that the establishment/TPTB doesn't like or want you to see or know. This has a chilling effect and is a slippery slope to tyrannical abuse of power by corporations-states. The line between state authority and corporate governance becomes more Orwellian.

Youtube's response:

twitter.com/...

We're aware! This is only temporary and part of our efforts to better respond, review and remove graphic, violative content from YouTube. Thanks for your patience while we work through this.

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

18-03-2019 om 15:51 geschreven door peter  

A huge fireball exploded in the Earth's atmosphere

The US coupled with space organization, NASA, has identified a huge explosion in the Earth’s atmosphere. The blast has been described as the second largest of its kind in 30 years, and the biggest since the fireball over Chelyabinsk in Russia six years ago.

It has largely been unnoticed until now as it blew up over the Bering Sea, off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. To put it into perspective, the space rock exploded with 10 times more energy than that which was released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Planetary defense officer at NASA, Lindley Johnson, has said that a fireball this big is only expected about two or three times every 100 years so it's definitely a rare occurrence.

What actually happened?

On 18th December in 2018, at about noon local time, the asteroid came storming through the atmosphere at a speed of about 32km/s, on a steep trajectory of seven degrees. The space rock, which measured several meters in size, exploded 25.6km above the Earth's surface, with an impact energy of 173 kilotons, which is huge.

Simon Proud@simon_sat

On 18th December 2018 a huge #meteor exploded over the North Pacific:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47607696 …

The Japanese #Himawari satellite caught the meteor smoke trail, which is almost vertical - the meteor entered the atmosphere very steeply! You can also see the trail's long shadow.

• 192

10:26 AM - Mar 18, 2019

• 97 people are talking about this

The amount of energy was massive, it was still only 40% the energy release of Chelyabinsk, and it was over the Bering Sea, so it didn't have the same type of effect, which is why most people probably didn't see it in the news. Fortunately, that is something Earth has in its defense - there's plenty of water on the planet to absorb meteorites such as this one. There is a higher chance of the rock landing in water than making contact with land, and more worryingly, human civilizations.

We're the authorities aware of this?

Military satellites picked up the blast last year, at which point NASA was notified of the event by the US Air Force. It has been said that the huge rock came in over an area which isn't too far from routes used by commercial planes flying between North America and Asia. Researchers have since been checking with airlines to see if there were any reported sightings of the event. NASA was unaware of the meteorite until it was too late and it had exploded.

Fortunately, it did occur over the Bering Sea. However, it still shows that larger objects can collide with us without warning. Next time, Earth might not be so lucky. A more robust network would be dependent on both ground telescopes, as well as space-based observatories. There is currently a mission concept in development which is effectively a telescope called NeoCam that would be launched to a gravitational balance point in space, where it would discover and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids larger than 140m. This would allow researchers to identify objects before they collide with Earth and calculate where they will impact in case of any dangers.

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

18-03-2019 om 15:40 geschreven door peter  

This Temple Was Carved Out Of A Single Rock. Nobody Knows How 'The Builders' Made It!

In what could be the next wonder of the world, archaeologists have recently unearthed a temple that ancients have carved out of a mountain rock. Located in Elora, Maharashtra, India, the temple is known as The Kailasa Temple. Some name it the Kailash. The Kailasa temple is dedicated to the Hindu faith and was ordered to be built by King Krishna I of the Rashtrakuta dynasty in ancient India.

Archaeologists Baffled By The Kailasa Temple

It forms part of a temple complex of 34 cave temples which were of similar construct.

The Construction

What has boggled and amazed scientists is the construction of the temple. Unlike many temples that were built from ground up, the Kailasa temple was carved out straight from the rock of a mountain. To add further amazement, a staggering 400,000 tonnes of rock were excavated and hauled out. During the construction of the temple.

The temple originated around 8th century A.D, and it is intriguing that technology of the period could have contributed to such a momentous construction task. One may wonder at the scope of the construction and estimate the temple to be completed after many decades or centuries. However, the temple only took less than 18 years to finish, according to scientific estimates.

It was estimated that 60 tonnes of rock were being removed every day during temple's construction phase. The temple workers laboured for 12 hours a day hauling at least 5 tonnes of rock out from the mountain per hour. Scientists still have not fully figured out the constructions methods used in conjunction with the tools available during the period and were left baffled at the scope of the operation.

Architecture

The Kailasa temple is part of a complex of 34 monasteries and temples which span over an area of 2 kilometres. As they were all cut out of the mountainside, they are collectively known as the Elora caves, carved out from a basalt cliff.

The temple has a height of 98 feet, was 109 feet wide, and had a depth of 164 feet. This makes it possibly one of the biggest known structures of its kind on the planet. The entrance of the temple faces the west. What is remarkable about the entrance is the degree of accuracy of its facing, giving it a 270-275 degree on a compass.

A 2 storey gateway adorns the entrance to the temple, which further leads to a U-shaped courtyard. The temple is dedicated to the worship of Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva, and deities of both lords align the interior of the temple. Three storey arcades line the perimeter of the courtyard and showcase many sculptures and panels of marvellous beauty and design.

Complex and majestic staircases and bridges link the many different areas of the temple together, adding to the splendour of the place.

Built By Extraterrestrials?

As mentioned before, the time when the temple was built and the available technology of the period coupled with the time it took to build and the momentous scope of the construction had left many baffled. The entire feat would be extremely difficult if not impossible to achieve at that time.

However, the video below reveals a theory which may offer an explanation, that extraterrestrials gave a hand in the construction of this temple.

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

18-03-2019 om 15:24 geschreven door peter  

NASA onthult: in december ontplofte metersgrote meteoriet boven Beringzee - HLN.be

Bron: BBC

De onthulling werd gedaan tijdens de 50ste Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, bij Houston in de Amerikaanse staat Texas. Dat meldt de BBC.

Lees ook

Meteoriet explodeerde 20 kilometer boven aarde

Leger

Het was het Amerikaanse leger dat de gigantische explosie op 18 december detecteerde, dankzij een van zijn militaire satellieten. De luchtmacht nam daarop contact op met de NASA.

Het incident gebeurde voor de kust van het Russische schiereiland Kamtsjatka, rond de middag (plaatselijke tijd, bij ons was het op dat moment 1 uur ’s nachts). De asteroïde van “verscheidene meters groot” raasde toen met een snelheid van 32 kilometer per seconde door onze atmosfeer, in een hoek van 7 graden. Op 25,6 kilometer boven het aardoppervlak spatte hij uit elkaar, met een impact van ongeveer 173 kiloton.

Omdat het boven zee gebeurde, werd de explosie door niemand waargenomen. Wetenschappers probeerden nog bij een aantal vliegmaatschappijen – het incident gebeurde niet zo ver van een aantal commerciële vliegroutes tussen Noord-Amerika en Azië – om te weten te komen of niemand iets gezien had, maar dat bleek niet het geval te zijn.

Tsjeljabinsk

Het zou om de op één na zwaarste ontploffing van een meteoriet gaan in 30 jaar. De zwaarste gebeurde iets meer dan 6 jaar geleden boven de Russische stad Tsjeljabinsk. Die veroorzaakte flink wat meer opschudding omdat ze geregistreerd werd door tientallen getuigen. 1.600 mensen raakten ook gewond en heel wat gebouwen liepen schade op.

Volgens Lindley Johnson – ‘planetary defence officer’ bij de NASA – zou een explosie van dergelijke omvang maar twee tot drie keer per 100 jaar voorkomen.

Interessant om weten: in 2005 droeg het Amerikaanse Congres de NASA op om tegen 2020 zo’n 90 procent van de asteroïden van 140 meter en groter in de buurt van de Aarde te lokaliseren. Die worden als potentieel gevaarlijk beschouwd mocht het ooit tot een botsing komen met onze planeet, omdat ze een zware impact kunnen hebben op grote gebieden. Maar wetenschappers schatten dat het nog 30 jaar kan duren eer ze die taak vervuld hebben.

Telescopen

Er zou niet alleen een beter ontwikkeld netwerk van telescopen op Aarde voor nodig zijn, maar ook in de ruimte. Een concept dat nu op tafel ligt, omvat onder meer een telescoop – NeoCam – die in de ruimte gebracht zou worden en onder meer zou werken op basis van infraroodstralen.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

18-03-2019 om 12:16 geschreven door peter  

Over the years, quantum physics has fed us a constant drip of mind-bending implications for the nature of reality. Of course, a lot of those mind-bending implications have been grossly misinterpreted, blended up, and turned into nonsense and predatory self-help books. It’s a funny field of research because while it is grossly misinterpreted, often and loudly, it also does challenge our assumptions about reality itself. Many of these challenges haven’t made it past the thought experiment phase. Recently, however, a real-life test of a famous quantum physics thought experiment was performed, and, according to the MIT Technology Review, the results are as weird as you could hope for.

The thought experiment is called the “Wigner’s Friend” experiment. Developed by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner in 1961, the Wigner’s Friend thought experiment deals with quantum weirdness of light and the effect of the observer on quantum superposition. The thought experiment asks if two people can observe one event, see different things, and both be correct, essentially creating two different realities that are forced to coexist.

It works like this: A single polarized photon can have either a vertical polarization or a horizontal polarization. Until the measurement of it’s polarization happens, according to the laws of quantum physics, it has both states at once and exists in something called a quantum superposition. It’s worth pointing out that scientists have observed that superpositions exist, and have devised experiments to show it. That becomes important in a minute.

So you have one polarized photon in a superposition of being both vertically and horizontally polarized at once, and you have two scientists: Wigner, and Wigner’s friend. Wigner is performing an experiment to show that the photon is in a superposition and has all possible states of polarization. In Wigner’s reality this is now “fact.”

Meanwhile, Wigner’s friend has sneaked in, without Wigner’s knowledge, to another lab looking at the same photon. Wigner’s friend measures which polarized state it’s in, which snaps it out of superposition and into a definitive state, and records the result without ever telling Wigner. They then compare notes and find that something very strange has then happened. At the exact same time, Wigner and his friend recorded two different versions of reality and they are both correct.

The double slit experiment is one that shows how quantum superposition exists.

Until now, that was simply a thought experiment. Just last week, however scientists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh say they have performed a real life test of the Wigner’s friend experiment, and it worked out exactly as the thought experiment said it would. I’ll use the description of the experiment published in the MIT Technology Review:

The breakthrough that Proietti and co have made is to carry this out. “In a state-of-the-art 6-photon experiment, we realize this extended Wigner’s friend scenario,” they say.

They use these six entangled photons to create two alternate realities—one representing Wigner and one representing Wigner’s friend. Wigner’s friend measures the polarization of a photon and stores the result. Wigner then performs an interference measurement to determine if the measurement and the photon are in a superposition.

The experiment produces an unambiguous result. It turns out that both realities can coexist even though they produce irreconcilable outcomes, just as Wigner predicted.

If this experiment turns out not to have missed something, some loophole they were unaware of, then the implications are staggering. It means that the fundamental idea that there is one shared reality, that things that exist, exist for everyone, must be wrong. What does this say about strange phenomena like, say, the Mandela effect? According to the MIT Technology Review, the next step for these scientists is to push the idea further and see how drastically different they can make the two coexisting realities. As if the world wasn’t already confusing enough, leave it to quantum physics to make it even more nonsensical.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-03-2019 om 11:59 geschreven door peter  

As of this week (March 12, 2019), the total number of known expolanets has grown to a whopping 4,001 according to the Exoplanet Team which is led by the Observatoire de Paris. And the number should grow a lot higher from there.

On their website, called The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, the team posted the announcement which read, “Today is a celebration day as we are now over 4,000 planets validated in our database, and this number will grow very quickly thanks to intensive ongoing work!”

Many new exoplanets will probably be discovered very soon, as NASA’s new Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (or TESS) is analyzing around 85 percent of the sky which is approximately 350 times more than the Kepler Space Telescope viewed, although it did discover over 2,700 exoplanets.

The team discovered two new planets orbiting a distant star system called EPIC 203868608 which is located 499 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the Scorpius the Scorpion constellation, bringing the total to 4,001 exoplanets to date.

The discovery of exoplanets first began in the 1990s when two astronomers, named Alex Wolszczan and Dale Frail, found the first three known planets that were orbiting around pulsar PSR B1257+12, which was the remains of a once-massive star.

Not long after, in 1995, scientists discovered a planet near 51 Pegasi, which was very exciting as it was the first planet ever to be seen around a star in the about the same evolutionary stage as our own sun.

Through equipment both on the ground and in space, thousands more exoplanets have been discovered, some of which have a wide range of orbits including some planets in more than one system. In fact, some of those systems have two or three suns.

Abel Mendez, who is the director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, told EarthSky, “At least 49 of the known exoplanets are potentially habitable.” In order to sustain life, the planets need to be at a safe distance orbiting its star – not too close, not too far – which would allow them to possibly hold water on the surface.

Some of the closest stars to our sun, which include Proxima Centauri (4.3 light-years away) and Barnard’s Star (5.98 light-years away), have planets orbiting them and astronomers have suggested that there could be billions of exoplanets within our Milky Way Galaxy.

So if that’s true, if billions of exoplanets are located in our galaxy, and we have already found 4,001 of them, that means there is a lot of work that still needs to be done in order to located as many of these planets as possible. And maybe some of those that haven’t been discovered yet could possibly contain life. How exciting!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-03-2019 om 11:51 geschreven door peter  

Ancient UFO Found Crashed On Mars Near Curiosity Rover, March 2019, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: March 18, 2019
Location of discovery: Mars, Sol 2350
Source photo: 

• https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/proj/msl/redops/ods/surface/sol/02350/opgs/edr/ncam/NRB_606125316EDR_F0750060NCAM00290M_.JPG
  
  

I found a crashed disk on a hilltop of Mars in this weeks most recent Curiosity Rover photos. The disk was half visible and about 30% of it was buried below the surface of the hill. Estimated size of the UFO...about 40 meters across.

Now here on Earth, ancient Aztec and Mayan ruins are similar to the top of this craft, but the bottom of the craft gives it away. Why? Because when have you ever seen the base of any pyramid stick out like this? Never. But you can see that the object landed in this location, and was not built that way. 

It looks like the rover was not heading in this objects direction, but rather the camera accidentally swept past it when looking around. I would really like to drive that rover over to this hill top and get a closer look at this ancient craft. 
Scott C. Waring

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

18-03-2019 om 11:35 geschreven door peter  

What If Elon Musk Salvaged The 10 Mile Long UFO on Earths Moon In Waterman Crater? UFO Sighting News.

NASA photo: 

• https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS15-P-9589
  

Old Post of my discovery in 2011:

•  https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/2011/03/nasa-released-10-km-mothership-in.html
  
  

I Tweeted Elon Musk and was surprised at all the retweets people gave it. Apparently there are a lot of people who think its a good idea for Musk to look into. 

I felt like maybe I should let Elon Musk know about on of the 10 mile long aliens ships that I found. This particular craft is in Waterman Crater on Earths moon. I thought that if I let him know that such a high tech ship with a length of about 10-11 miles long existed, that perhaps he may take an interest in salvaging it. Humanity needs to travel out of our solar system to colonize on other worlds and this craft may still be working. What I mean by working is that you know how a phone gets outdated in a few years, so you toss aside the old one? Well this may only have been replaced with a newer model. Think about how many people a 10 mile ship could accommodate on it. It  would be enough to begin new colonies on other distant planets. 

One person said Elon should salvage it and slap on a Tesla Logo on its side...so I made a photo of such a craft below for inspiration. LOL, what if Tesla did salvage the ship? Imagine how it would change our whole planet. 
Scott C. Waring

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

18-03-2019 om 11:31 geschreven door peter  

A replica of the appendage creates bubbles that produce high pressures and temperatures

BY EMILY CONOVER 

OH SNAP!  Snapping shrimp slam their claws shut, producing bubbles that generate plasma and unleash shock waves at prey. Scientists have now reproduced this phenomenon using a 3-D printed claw replica.

CHRISTIAN GLOOR/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0)

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

18-03-2019 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

NASA cover-up? Astronauts 'stopped from revealing TRUTH about aliens by agency'

A HOLLYWOOD producer claims NASA astronauts have been prevented from talking about UFO sightings by the agency.

By Katy Gill

Conspiracy theorists have claimed for years that NASA has hidden the truth about alien lifeforms, pointing to live feeds being cut and mysterious blackouts as supposed evidence.

History Channel series Ancient Aliens also aired an episode about the conspiracy.

It revealed how computer hacker Gary McKinnon claimed to have discovered an image of a UFO on the NASA database, before his machine was mysteriously “shut down”.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news }

18-03-2019 om 00:21 geschreven door peter  

Atlantis in the Sahara?  Researcher Claims ‘Eye of Sahara’ is Atlantis’ Ruins

Based on ancient writings by Plato, a striking hypothesis compares the details described by the Greek philosopher with photographs taken by modern satellites.

Written in 360 BC, Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus:

“…For it is related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic Ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, ‘the pillars of Heracles,’ there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent.”

In Critias, Plato wrote how some 9,000 years before our lifetime, a terrifying war took place between cavillations located outside the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar and those who dwelt within them.

Plato explains in his work that the mighty Atlanteans had already conquered great parts of Libya within the Pillars of Hercules, venturing inland as far as Egypt. In Europe, they conquered lands as far as Tyrrhenia—Etruria, a region of Central Italy, located in an area that covered part of what are now Tuscany, Lazio, and Umbria—subjecting its people into slavery along the way.

For centuries has the story of Atlantis been discussed among philosophers, historians, and archaeologists, and countless researchers set out to find the legendary lost city of Atlantis.

However, despite searching for evidence that may prove Atlantis once existed, no one has ever found conclusive evidence to back up Plato’s claims.

Nevertheless, a number of authors have suggested various locations as to where Atlantis may be located, and in modern times, thanks to tools such as Google Earth, UFO hunters as well as self-proclaimed researchers have discovered what they believe are traces of the long-lost Atlantean civilization.

Now, a YouTuber called Jimmy Bright proposes an original theory: that the mythical Atlantis was located in the Sahara Desert. Bright explains his theory in a video uploaded to YouTube which has already been viewed more than 2 million times.

According to Bright, and his hypothesis, the geological structure of Richat – also known as “the Eye of the Sahara” and located in the northwest part of the continent – could be the place where the mysterious city was located.

The blogger bases his theory on texts that describe Atlantis written by Plato.

According to Bright, the Eye of the Sahara perfectly fits into the description by Plato written in Critias and Timaeus.

According to Bright, the diameter of the Richat Structure is 23 kilometers which curiously corresponds to the description of Atlantis by Plato.

Likewise, Richat’s form is very similar to that of Atlantis, which, as he relates, was composed of three concentric circles of earth and three concentric circles of water.

To support his hypothesis, Bright explains that Plato described that the city of Atlantis was surrounded by mountains and “protected from the north.”

From this data, the YouTuber explains that these alleged mountains are located north of the Eye of the Sahara. He also notices traces in the surrounding terrain of what he believes is evidence of ancient dry rivers.

Another clue which Plato wrote about was that of the country or territory that surrounded that city of Atlantis.

According to the Greek philosopher, Atlantis was located on a “flat and smooth plain”, a detail that curiously corresponds to the Sahara Desert, according to the YouTuber.

A good number of YouTubers, amazed by this theory, highlights that there are many coincidences between Plato’s description of Atlantis and Richat’s Structure.

Others, however, point out that it is only a misinterpretation of ancient texts, and that there are many ambiguities in the logic of the proposed theory.

The academic community, for its part, showed no interest in such revelations.

In fact, modern scholars are convinced that Plato’s Atlantis was not real and that a world-power that existed some 9,000 years ago before our time, “beyond the Pillars of Hercules” is nothing more than pseudoscientific speculation

{ https://curiosmos.com/ }

17-03-2019 om 23:58 geschreven door peter