Are We In A 'Galactic Zoo' Protected By Aliens? Scientists Meet To Investigate The 'Great Silence'

Jamie Carter

Contributor

Should we be sending more messages to aliens? 

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Are we alone? Probably not. After all, astronomers have already found 4,001 confirmed exoplanets in our Milky Way galaxy, and expect there to be over 50 billion exoplanets out there. For scientists gathering in Paris today, the question is different: why haven’t we made contact with alien civilizations?

What is the Fermi Paradox and the "Great Silence?"

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi asked 'where is everybody?' back in 1950 in what's now called the Fermi Paradox. It addresses a contradiction in astronomy, and can be summarized thus: if extraterrestrial life and even intelligent alien civilizations are not just likely, but highly probable, then why have none of them been in contact with us? Are there biological or sociological explanations for this "Great Silence?"

“We are very interested in the scientific approach used in the analysis of the Fermi Paradox and the search for intelligent life in the universe,” said Cyril Birnbaum and Brigitte David at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (Cité), the science museum in Paris that's hosting today's meeting. “The question 'Are we alone?’ affects us all, because it is directly related to humanity and our place in the cosmos.”

Illustration of the view from the innermost of the two exoplanets orbiting Gliese 667 C (largest star, a red dwarf) in the Gliese 667 system, which lies around 24 light years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius.

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What are scientists doing in Paris?

Today, leading researchers from the fields of astrophysics, biology, sociology, psychology, and history are meeting at the Cité. “Every two years, METI International (METI stands for messaging extraterrestrial intelligence) organizes a one-day workshop in Paris as part of a series of workshops entitled What is Life? An Extraterrestrial Perspective,” said Florence Raulin Cerceau, co-chair of the workshop and a member of METI’s Board of Directors. The scientists are discussing some pretty insane-sounding questions:

• Are extraterrestrials staying silent out of concern for how contact would impact humanity?
• Do we live in a "galactic zoo?"
• Should we send intentional radio messages to nearby stars to signal humanity’s interest in joining the "galactic club?"
• Will extraterrestrial intelligence be similar to human intelligence?
• Did life get to earth from elsewhere in the galaxy (interstellar migration)?

"This puzzle of why we haven’t detected extraterrestrial life has been discussed often, but in this workshop’s unique focus, many of the talks tackled a controversial explanation first suggested in the 1970s called the 'zoo hypothesis,’” said Raulin Cerceau. Ah yes, the idea that we're being watched by aliens and ... perhaps even being protected by them.

If a zebra started pounding out a series of prime numbers in a zoo, would we re-evaluate their intelligence? That's how some scientists are characterizing the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

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What is the "zoo hypothesis"?

This is a mind-warping idea that there are alien civilizations out there (no, not on Oumuamua) that know all about us, but purposefully hide from us. It certainly explains the "Great Silence." "Perhaps extraterrestrials are watching humans on Earth, much like we watch animals in a zoo," explains Douglas Vakoch, president of METI. "How can we get the galactic zookeepers to reveal themselves?" At a workshop, Vakoch proposed that humans should be more active in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. “If we went to a zoo and suddenly a zebra turned toward us, looked us in the eye, and started pounding out a series of prime numbers with its hoof, that would establish a radically different relationship between us and the zebra, and we would feel compelled to respond," he said.

It's hard to disagree with that. "We can do the same with extraterrestrials by transmitting powerful, intentional, information-rich radio signals to nearby stars,” he said.

No, there are no aliens watching us from Oumuamua, the first interstellar asteroid that passed through the solar system in late 2018.

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What is the "galactic quarantine" theory?

Think the "zoo hypothesis" theory is insane? That's nothing compared to another theory about alien benevolence. “It seems likely that extraterrestrials are imposing a ‘galactic quarantine’ because they realize it would be culturally disruptive for us to learn about them,” said Jean-Pierre Rospars, the honorary research director at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique and co-chair of the workshop. “Cognitive evolution on Earth shows random features while also following predictable paths ... we can expect the repeated, independent emergence of intelligent species in the universe, and we should expect to see more or less similar forms of intelligence everywhere, under favorable conditions,” he added. “There’s no reason to think that humans have reached the highest cognitive level possible. Higher levels might evolve on Earth in the future and already be reached elsewhere.”

The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) at the Green Bank Observatory, West Virginia, is the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope.

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What does the Drake Equation try to do?

A formula to estimate the number of technological civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy, the Drake Equation is an attempt to put the Fermi Paradox into numbers. The Drake Equation was posited in 1961 by Dr. Frank Drake, a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.

What is the Drake Equation?

OK, don't expect any answers here. The formula below, which comes from the SETI Institute might seem impressive, but it's mostly guesswork. Practically speaking, its purpose is not to find a definitive answer, but to keep the discussion going about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

N = The number of civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.

R = The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.

fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.

ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.

fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.

fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.

fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

METI puts a special emphasis on those last three terms, which explore not just the frequency of intelligence-bearing worlds, but how long they last (before they get wiped out).

Radio astronomy Vs interstellar colonization

While for now, radio astronomy is the only practical way of humans sending messages out into the cosmos, says one scientist, only full-blown colonization of other stars is the only way to prove the existence of intelligent life. “It appears that although radio communications provide a natural means for searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence for civilizations younger than a few millennia, older civilizations should rather develop extensive programs of interstellar colonization," said Nicolas Prantzos, director of research of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), in advance of Monday's meeting. "This is the only way to achieve undisputable evidence, either for or against the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, within their lifetime.” 

In 1960, Dr. Frank Drake at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia used the 25-meter dish for his Project Ozma, in which he searched two nearby stars called Epsilon Eridani (an artist's impression pictured here) and Tau Ceti for signs of alien life.

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Why aliens could be very different from humans

Why should they be even remotely similar? “The environment on an exoplanet will impose its own rules,” said Roland Lehoucq, an astrophysicist who works at the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA). “There is no trend in biological evolution: the huge range of various morphologies observed on Earth renders any exobiological speculation improbable, at least for macroscopic ‘complex’ life.” Skeptical that humans would have much in common with extraterrestrial life forms, Lehocq discussed "our persistent anthropocentrism in our understanding and description of alien life" and how difficult it is for humans to imagine extraterrestrial intelligence radically different from ourselves.

In short? We're too self-obsessed to even imagine extraterrestrial life, let alone find and communicate with it, and if there's not going to be proof within our lifetimes, we're not much interested in looking. Is there intelligent life out there? Probably, but we'll probably never find it.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes

{ https://www.forbes.com/ }

20-03-2019 om 01:11 geschreven door peter  

Mystery glowing ball streaks through skies above Russia: Footage of unidentified object was captured close to site of the most powerful meteor explosion in recent history that landed with the force of 185 Hiroshima bombs

• A mysterious 'UFO' was observed firing across the sky in remote central Russia 
• The bright light looked like it was headed for a collision with the Earth's surface 
• It was observed a few hundred miles from a famous explosion site 111 years ago  
• No crash has been reported and no debris has been retrieved from any landing

By WILL STEWART IN MOSCOW FOR MAILONLINE

A mystery glowing ball was spotted streaking across the Russian night sky close to the site of the largest meteor explosion in modern history.  

A dashcam captured a dazzling flash changing colour from green to yellow to orange in a remote area of Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia.

It was spotted near the impact site of the Tunguska meteor that struck the region with the force of 185 Hiroshima bombs in 1908. 

A dashcam captured a dazzling flash changing colour from green to yellow to orange in a remote area of Krasnoyarsk region in Russia. One theory is that the spectacular luminous UFO streaking over the Siberian hills was caused by a meteor yet so far there is no evidence for it

Pyotr Bondarev, from Tura village where the flash was seen, said: 'The night got bright and warm, as if a giant light bulb was switched on in the sky'.

Experts believe the object seen streaking over the Siberian hills was also a meteor but no conclusive evidence has been found so far.

The shining body was also seen as far as 250miles (402km) away, but appeared less, bright.

Witnesses say it appeared to be heading for a crash landing.

No debris from a meteorite has been found so far and experts are keeping an open mind as to what caused the stunning spectacle. 

The latest sighting lies several hundred miles from the site of the monumental Tunguska Event 111 years ago which caused devastation in the region

Mr Bondarev added: 'It was about 7.30pm, it was dark. I was outside having a walk with my wife and children, when the sky flashed green and yellow.

'Many people saw it and got very excited.'

Another local source said: 'It's impossible to tell what the shining object was. It might have been a meteor or something else.'

Krasnoyarsk Kirensky Physics University researcher Sergey Karpov said it was likely a small meteorite.

'Most likely it was something up to 10 centimetres [4inches] in diameter',' he said.

But this has not been confirmed by the Russian emergencies ministry.

There has been no suggestion that a stray missile or debris from a space launch was behind the 'UFO' sighting. 

One theory is that the spectacular luminous UFO streaking over the Siberian hills was caused by a meteor yet so far there is no conclusive evidence that anything has landed nearby 

The Tunguska explosion is thought to have been produced by a comet or asteroid hurtling through Earth's atmosphere at over 33,500 miles per hour (50, 000km/h), resulting in an explosion equal to 185 Hiroshima bombs as pressure and heat rapidly increased

Some have claimed it was a 'second Tunguska', as the site of the explosion 111 years ago which caused devastation across the region is within a few hundred miles.

More than 770 square miles (2,000 sq km) of forest was wiped out after a fireball - believed to be some 330ft (100m) wide - tore through the atmosphere and exploded in 1908, according to scientists.

An estimated 80million trees were destroyed and thousands of charred reindeer carcasses were left behind.

It is believed to have exploded three to seven miles (5 to 12km) above the earth's surface yet despite the carnage there was no impact crater.

There were no reports of casualties in the sparsely populated area, despite the power of the impact.

However, some experts have disputed the cause of 1908 Tunguska explosion. 

The remote Tura village where the bright light was observed streaking over the Siberian hills in Russia. Tura is a mere few hundred miles from an infamous explosion caused by a meteorite landing over a century ago in the remote forests of Russia that caused devastation 

No debris from a meteorite - a meteor that strikes the ground - has been found so far and experts are keeping an open mind as to what caused the stunning spectacle

WHAT WAS THE CHELYABINSK METEOR STRIKE?

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

20-03-2019 om 00:27 geschreven door peter  

UFO 'warms -20C Russian air' near site of world's biggest ever meteor strike

A dashcam captured a dazzling flash changing colour from green to yellow to orange in a remote area of Russia's Krasnoyarsk region

By Will Stewart & Kelly-Ann Mills

A mystery UFO that looked like a  "glowing ball" in the sky turned the evening "bright and warm" despite it being a chilly -20C.

A dashcam captured a dazzling flash changing colour from green to yellow to orange in a remote area of Russia's Krasnoyarsk region.

It was spotted close to the Russian site of the world’s largest ‘meteor explosion’ which had the force of 185 Hiroshima bombs.

One witness claimed the edge was taken off the -20C cold by the eerie phenomenon shortly before 7.30pm on Friday.

“The night got bright and warm, as if a giant light bulb was switched on in the sky’, said witness Pyotr Bondarev from Tura village.

One theory is that the spectacular luminous UFO streaking over the Siberian hills was caused by a meteor, yet so far there is no conclusive evidence.

The shining body was also seen as far away as 250 miles and appeared to be heading for a crash landing.

No debris from a meteorite has been found so far and experts are keeping an open mind as to what caused the stunning spectacle.

Mr Bondarev said: “It was about 7.30 pm, it was dark.

“I was outside having a walk with my wife and children, when the sky flashed green and yellow.

"Many people saw it and got very excited.”

A local source said: “It’s impossible to tell what the shining object was. It might have been a meteor or something else.”

Some claimed it was a “second Tunguska”.

Tura lies several hundred miles from the site of the Tunguska meteor strike 111 years ago.

More than 770sq miles of forest was wiped out after a fireball - believed to be some 330 ft wide - tore through the atmosphere and exploded, according to scientists.

An estimated 80million trees were destroyed, and there were thousands of charred reindeer carcasses.

It is believed to have exploded three to seven miles above the earth’s surface yet despite the carnage there was no impact crater.

There were no reports of casualties in the sparsely populated area, despite an explosion with the force of 185 Hiroshima bombs.

Experts are unclear as to what the strange object was 

(Image: The Siberian Times)

The forest that was flattened by the blast from the Tunguska meteorite in 1908 

(Image: UIG via Getty Images)

However, some experts have disputed the cause of 1908 Tunguska explosion.

One the recent "glowing ball", Krasnoyarsk Kirensky Physics University researcher Sergey Karpov said it was likely a small meteorite.

“Most likely it was something up to 10 centimetres in diameter,” he said.

But this has not been confirmed by the Russian emergencies ministry.

There has been no suggestion that a stray missile or debris from a space launch was behind the colourful UFO.

A dashcam captured a dazzling flash changing colour from green to yellow to orange in a remote area of Krasnoyarsk region in Russia. One theory is that the spectacular luminous UFO streaking over the Siberian hills was caused by a meteor yet so far there is no evidence for it

The latest sighting lies several hundred miles from the site of the monumental Tunguska Event 111 years ago which caused devastation in the region

{ https://www.mirror.co.uk/ }

20-03-2019 om 00:14 geschreven door peter  

Budget Docs Show Pentagon Aims To Loft Particle Beam Anti-Missile Weapon Into Space In Four Years

After three decades, the Pentagon is betting big on their belief that a dream of the Star Wars initiative may now be closer to a practical concept.

20-03-2019 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

LIGHT LEVITATION

{ https://futurism.com/ }

19-03-2019 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

Sneaky Meteor Evades Earthling Detection, Explodes with Force of 10 Atomic Bombs

By Brandon Specktor

Here's how NASA knows.

(Image: © Shutterstock)

On Dec. 18, 2018, a school bus-size meteor exploded over Earth with an impact energy of roughly 10 atomic bombs. According to NASA, the blast was the second-largest meteor impact since the organization began tracking them 30 years ago, bested only by the infamous fireball that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in Feb. 2013.

Despite this, hardly anyone noticed it was happening — and nobody saw it coming.

As to why one of the largest meteor impacts in recent history may have totally passed you by, that's likely because the space rock in question shattered over the Bering Sea, a cold stretch of the Pacific Ocean between Russia and Alaska, miles from inhabited land. 

• Related: The 10 Biggest Impact Craters on Earth

NASA learned about the December impact thanks to the U.S. Air Force, whose missile-monitoring satellites were among the first to detect the blast. The rumble of the impact also registered on infrasound detectors — stations that measure low-frequency sound waves inaudible to human ears — around the world, giving scientists enough data to draw some basic conclusions about the sneaky meteor.

According to NASA, that meteor weighed about 1,500 tons (1,360 metric tons), had a diameter of about 32 feet (10 meters), and was traveling through the atmosphere at about 71,582 mph (115,200 kilometers per hour) when it exploded. The blast occurred about 15.5 miles (25 km) over the ocean and erupted with an energy equivalent to 173 kilotons of TNT — roughly 10 times the energy of the atomic bomb that the United States detonated over Hiroshimaduring World War II.

The world's asteroid-monitoring groups failed to see the rock headed our way likely due to its smallish size. Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, told New Scientist that most modern telescopes are best able to detect objects measuring several hundred meters or more in diameter, making smaller objects like this one easy to miss. NASA asteroid hunters are most concerned about identifying near-Earth objects measuring 460 feet (140 m) across, which have the potential to obliterate entire US states if allowed to pass through the atmosphere, Live Science previously reported.

The December 2018 impact only came to attention this week thanks, in part, to a presentation at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas that was delivered by Kelly Fast, NASA's near-Earth objects observations program manager. Fast told BBC News that the December event exploded with "40 percent the energy release of Chelyabinsk," but didn't show up in the news because of the impact's relatively remote location.

The Chelyabinsk meteor, which measured 62 feet (19 m) wide, passed over mainland Russia and was recorded by many motorists. The resulting shockwaves injured more than 1,200 people.

• Fallen Stars: A Gallery of Famous Meteorites
• Space-y Tales: The 5 Strangest Meteorites in History
• Danger! Falling Rocks: Asteroids and Meteorites Explained

 Originally published on Live Science. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

19-03-2019 om 23:42 geschreven door peter  

A Weird Powder Puzzle on the Martian Moon Phobos May Be Solved

By Charles Q. Choi 

Understanding the process could help reveal the moon's strange origins.

The Stickney Crater on Mars' moon Phobos. New research suggests that reddish and bluish areas on the moon's surface point the way to understanding its formation.

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

 The eccentric orbit of the Martian moon Phobos could drive the flow of powder across the moon's surface, a new study finds, shedding light on Phobos' mysterious origins.

Dark gray, potato-shaped Phobos is only about 14 miles (22.5 kilometers) wide, but it is by far the larger of Mars' two moons, at more than seven times the mass of its companion, Deimos. Phobos orbits at only about 3,700 miles (6,000 km) from the Martian ground, closer to its planet than any known moon; as a result of this tight orbit, Phobos zips around Mars three times per Earth day.

Previous work revealed an odd dichotomy on the surface of Phobos. Some areas are reddish, while others are bluish, Ron Ballouz, lead author of the new study and an astrophysicist at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), told Space.com.

• Related: European Probe Snaps Color Photos of Martian Moon Phobos

The origins of these red units and blue units, as these regions are called, was uncertain. Solving this puzzle could shed light on the origins of Phobos and the way it interacts with its environment, the researchers said.

To help solve this mystery Ballouz's group investigated the grains of dust and rock known as regolith, which drift around the surface of Phobos due to the moon's slightly oblong orbit. 

Although Phobos' orbit is nearly circular, it is very slightly eccentric, or oval-shaped. This eccentricity "is large enough to change the relative strength between Phobos' and Mars' gravity over each orbit. The closer you are to the Red Planet, the stronger its gravitational pull and vice versa," study co-author Nicola Baresi, an astrodynamicist at JAXA, told Space.com.

As such, Phobos wiggles a bit as it orbits Mars, causing slopes on the moon to vary by up to 2 degrees over the course of the natural satellite's 7-hour and 39-minute orbit around the Red Planet. This slight tilting back and forth is enough to draw grains of regolith downhill on Phobos.

Computer simulations revealed that the quantity of grains that flows "depends on where you are on Phobos," Ballouz said. When the scientists compared their data with photos of the surface of Phobos taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, they found that the sites where they expected the highest amount of surface motion appeared to match the blue regions of Phobos.

The motion on the surface of Phobos "is very gradual," Ballouz said. "There is not a landslide on Phobos every orbit. We call this a 'cold flow' process, as opposed to the fast motion of a landslide."

"This process is not really expected to create new 'sand' or regolith," study co-author Sarah Crites, a planetary scientist at JAXA, told Space.com. Instead, the cold flow just moves existing particles around, she explained. 

The researchers suggested that the blue units consist of relatively fresh, unweathered material from Phobos excavated by the rocking the moon experiences during its orbit. In contrast, the scientists suggested that the red units consist of regolith that, for the most, part stayed put over time and got weathered by being exposed to solar radiation.

These findings could shed light on the uncertain origin of Phobos. "One of the biggest mysteries surrounding Phobos is its origin — was it created from a giant impact onto Mars that created a debris disk around the planet that eventually coalesced into Phobos, or was it once an asteroid that was captured by Mars' gravity?" Ballouz said.

If Phobos originated from a giant impact on Mars, the blue units should resemble Martian rock, since the blue units represent pristine material from the Red Planet. However, the latest data suggest that the near-infrared signature of the blue units differs from that seen up to now from Martian rock, the researchers said.

The group is taking part in a future international mission led by JAXA called the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) probe, which is set to launch in 2024 and return samples from Phobos to Earth in 2029. These samples may finally help resolve the debate over Phobos' origin, Ballouz said.

The scientists detailed their findings online March 18 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

•  Phobos' Shadow: Experience an Eclipse on Mars with NASA's InSight Lander
•  'Stretch Marks' on Phobos Show Martian Moon Is Falling Apart
•  New Photos Show Potential Landing Sites on Mars Moon

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

19-03-2019 om 23:15 geschreven door peter  

Ice ages may be caused by tectonic activity in the tropics, new study proposes

 BY ALEXANDRU MICU 

New research says that the Earth’s past ice ages may have been caused by tectonic pile-ups in the tropics.

A crevasse in a glacier.
Image via Pixabay.

Our planet has braved three major ice ages in the past 540 million years, seeing global temperatures plummet and ice sheets stretching far beyond the poles. Needless to say, these were quite dramatic events for the planet, so researchers are keen to understand what set them off. A new study reports that plate tectonics might be the culprit.

Cold hard plates

“We think that arc-continent collisions at low latitudes are the trigger for global cooling,” says Oliver Jagoutz, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and a co-author of the new study.

“This could occur over 1-5 million square kilometers, which sounds like a lot. But in reality, it’s a very thin strip of Earth, sitting in the right location, that can change the global climate.”

“Arc-continent collisions” is a term that describes the slow, grinding head-butting that takes place when a piece of oceanic crust hits a continent (i.e. continental crust). Generally speaking, oceanic crust (OC) will slip beneath the continental crust (CC) during such collisions, as the former is denser than the latter. Arc-continent collisions are a mainstay of orogen (mountain range) formation, as they cause the edges of CC plates ‘wrinkle up’. But in geology, as is often the case in life, things don’t always go according to plan.

The study reports that the last three major ice ages were preceded by arc-continent collisions in the tropics which exposed tens of thousands of kilometers of oceanic, rather than continental, crust to the atmosphere. The heat and humidity of the tropics then likely triggered a chemical reaction between calcium and magnesium minerals in these rocks and carbon dioxide in the air. This would have scrubbed huge quantities of atmospheric CO2 to form carbonate rocks (such as limestone).

Over time, this led to a global cooling of the climate, setting off the ice ages, they add.

The team tracked the movements of two suture zones (the areas where plates collide) in today’s Himalayan mountains. Both sutures were formed during the same tectonic migrations, they report: one collision 80 million years ago, when the supercontinent Gondwana moved north creating part of Eurasia, and another 50 million years ago. Both collisions occurred near the equator and proceeded global atmospheric cooling events by several million years.

In geological terms, ‘several million years’ is basically the blink of an eye. So, curious to see whether one event caused the other, the team analyzed the rate at which oceanic rocks known as ophiolites can react to CO2 in the tropics. They conclude that, given the location and magnitude of the events that created them, both of the sutures they investigated could have absorbed enough CO2 to cool the atmosphere enough to trigger the subsequent ice ages.

Another interesting find is that the same processes likely led to the end of these ice ages. The fresh oceanic crust progressively lost its ability to scrub CO2 from the air (as the calcium and magnesium minerals transformed into carbonate rocks), allowing the atmosphere to stabilize.

“We showed that this process can start and end glaciation,” Jagoutz says. “Then we wondered, how often does that work? If our hypothesis is correct, we should find that for every time there’s a cooling event, there are a lot of sutures in the tropics.”

The team then expanded their analysis to older ice ages to see whether they were also associated with tropical arc-continent collisions. After compiling the location of major suture zones on Earth from pre-existing literature, they reconstruct their movement and that of the plates which generated them over time using computer simulations.

Animation showing suture zones developing as tectonic plates evolved over the last 540 million years. MIT researchers found sutures in the tropical rain belt, shown in green, were associated with Earth's major ice ages. 

Credit: Swanson-Hysell research group 

All in all, the team found three periods over the last 540 million years in which major suture zones (those about 10,000 kilometers in length) were formed in the tropics. Their formation coincided with three major ice ages, they add: one the Late Ordovician (455 to 440 million years ago), one in the Permo-Carboniferous (335 to 280 million years ago), and one in the Cenozoic (35 million years ago to present day). This wasn’t a happy coincidence, either. The team explains that no ice ages or glaciation events occurred during periods when major suture zones formed outside of the tropics.

“We found that every time there was a peak in the suture zone in the tropics, there was a glaciation event,” Jagoutz says. “So every time you get, say, 10,000 kilometers of sutures in the tropics, you get an ice age.”

Jagoutz notes that there is a major suture zone active today in Indonesia. It includes some of the largest bodies of ophiolite rocks in the world today, and Jagoutz says it may prove to be an important resource for absorbing carbon dioxide. The team says that the findings lend some weight to current proposals to grind up these ophiolites in massive quantities and spread them along the equatorial belt in an effort to counteract our CO2 emissions. However, they also point to how such efforts may, in fact, produce additional carbon emissions — and also suggest that such measures may simply take too long to produce results within our lifetimes.

“It’s a challenge to make this process work on human timescales,” Jagoutz says. “The Earth does this in a slow, geological process that has nothing to do with what we do to the Earth today. And it will neither harm us, nor save us.”

The paper “Arc-continent collisions in the tropics set Earth’s climate state” has been published in the journal Science.

{  https://www.zmescience.com/  }

19-03-2019 om 22:51 geschreven door peter  

NASA's New Horizons Reveals Geologic 'Frankenstein' That Formed Ultima Thule

19-03-2019 om 18:33 geschreven door peter  

Has the Enigmatic Voynich Manuscript Code Finally Been Cracked?

The Voynich Manuscript is a mysterious illustrated hand-written vellum codex in a currently unidentified written and visual code. However, according to a non-peer reviewed paper published in John's Hopkins University digital journal, a Canadian researcher has finally cracked the six century old Voynich Manuscript code. But has he really?

History of the Mysterious Manuscript

The manuscript’s documented history stretches back to 1639 (though it is said to be older than this), when a Prague citizen named Georgius Barschius wrote a letter to a Jesuit named Athanasius Kircher who was living in Rome. He told Kircher that he had a strange manuscriptfilled with illustrations of plants, stars, and “chemical secrets” accompanied by an “ unknown script .” Barschius wrote with hope that Kircher may help translate the work, but Kircher couldn’t apparently accomplish the task either.

The next time the manuscript appears is almost 300 years later, and that story explains how it became known as the Voynich Manuscript . The name comes from Wilfrid Voynich (1865 - 1930), a Polish revolutionary, antiquarian, and bibliophile who operated one of the largest rare book businesses in the world. Purchased by Voynich in 1912, the manuscript, which he simply called his “cipher MS,” has been Carbon-dated to between 1404 -1438 AD and it is thought to have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance.

• The Enigmatic and Undeciphered Voynich Manuscript Unlikely to be a Hoax
• Can Mexican plant unravel the enigma of the Voynich manuscript?

There is much secrecy around Voynich’s acquiring the mysterious manuscript, but he did say some, possibly untrue, things about it. For example, Voynich claimed to have found the document in a collection of illuminated manuscripts in some “ancient castle in Southern Europe.” He wrote:

“While examining the manuscripts, with a view to the acquisition of at least a part of the collection, my attention was especially drawn by one volume. It was such an ugly duckling compared with the other manuscripts, with their rich decorations in gold and colors that my interest was aroused at once. I found that it was written entirely in cipher. Even a necessarily brief examination of the vellum upon which it was written, the calligraphy, the drawings and the pigments suggested to me as the date of its origin the latter part of the thirteenth century. The drawings indicated it to be an encyclopedic work on natural philosophy.  [...] the fact that this was a thirteenth century manuscript in cipher convinced me that it must be a work of exceptional importance, and to my knowledge the existence of a manuscript of such an early date written entirely in cipher was unknown, so I included it among the manuscripts which I purchased from this collection.”

Famous Attempts to Decode the Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript traveled with its owner to London in 1912 and then to the United Sates in 1915. He sometimes provided people with photographic samples of the manuscript to see if they could decipher what it may mean. In 1920, a man named William Romaine Newbold famously suggested a possible solution to a part of the manuscript, but it was later disproved by John M. Manly in 1931.

In 1969, the Voynich Manuscript was donated by Hans P. Kraus to Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where it is currently catalogued under call number MS 408. Measuring 23.5 by 16.2 by 5 cm (9.3 by 6.4 by 2.0 inches) the text is written from left to right in a sophisticated script. With around 240 pages collected into 18 quires, and because many pages fold out, the artifact brings to adults all the same intrigue and interactivity as pop-up books offer children. 14 of the pages are missing and there is no author or title provided on the cover.

Some pages of the Voynich Manuscript fold out to show larger diagrams.

( Public Domain )

Hundreds of professional  cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and II, have attempted to decipher the text and interpret the images; but none of the hypotheses proposed thus far account for all, or even most, of its many parts. Literary specialists and historians have proposed a long list of possible authors including:  Roger Bacon , John Dee , Edward Kelley , Giovanni Fontana, or even Voynich himself.

Mr. Voynich among his books in Soho Square circa 1899.

( Public Domain )

The Text’s Content

The text of the Voynich Manuscript is written in short paragraphs and is still a mystery. It may be tempting to assume there is some link between the writing and illustrations, which appear to be connected to Medieval science or medicine, but this can’t be verified. The manuscript’s visual content is generally described as being: herbal, botanical, astronomical, biological, cosmological, and pharmaceutical in nature, and specialists have observed characters from Latin/Greek/Old Cyrillic / Croatian Glagolitic cursive, and Hebrew. Detailed studies of the parchment, cover, binding, ink, paint, and retouching methods are available online and we will waste no time on these elements in this article. Our clear purpose here is to look at the solution recently presented by Canadian researcher, Mr. Amet Ardic, who believes the manuscript contains “shapes meaning prefixes and suffixes in distinctive letters, resembling the Turkish language used in his home country.”

Detail of an unidentified plant on page 78r of Voynich Manuscript, in a part of the text which has become known as the “biological” section.

( Public Domain )

Is Turkish the Key to Cracking the Voynich Manuscript Code?

Mr. Ardic claims he and his son have discovered more than 300 words in the Voynich Manuscript Code. His research paper was published on the John's Hopkins University digital journal. In his online video presentation , which has been watched almost a million times, Mr. Ardic concluded that the manuscript was written in a poetic, rhythmic method called "Phonemic Orthography" which describes speech visually.

Mr. Ardic first noticed the Turkish character “Turqu" seven times in the Voynich manuscript” and he made another convincing observation in the illustration featured in FOLIO 67-R, known as the “astronomy” section. A circle divided into 12 sections suggested to Mr. Ardic that it might be a calendar and each piece may represent one of the 12 lunar months .

Top: Folio 67r displays a circular design with 12 inner sections which are believed to represent the 12 annual lunar months.

( Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University )

Bottom: Mr. Ardic and his son say common suffixes are used among different letters.

( Gigazine)

To advance his theory, the researcher then replaced the characters detailed within each of the 12 suspected months with modern Turku characters, for example; October is pronounced “Ogzaf" and in the old Turkish dictionary it is spelled “Yuzai.” The word essentially means the season “fall.” The word "Ai" means “two moons”. From these, Mr. Ardic translated the letters of ‘October’ to mean "autumn moon.” Extending this system of interpretation across the ‘moon’ circle,  further correspondences were noted, for example: November is written as “Sepel”, which when translated to modern Turkish “Seper Ayi” means "moon of rain.” Furthermore, July translates to "the month of harvest.”

• First words in mysterious Voynich Manuscript decoded
• Publisher Wins Rights to Publish Mysterious Ancient Manuscript that Has Never Been Deciphered

What you have read and seen of the Voynich Manuscript thus far might have already convinced you that it has been successfully deciphered, but this would be a hastily drawn conclusion before taking a closer look at Mr. Ardic’s claims from alternative points of view; an activity which makes it clear that not everybody is buying his ancient Turkish theory.

Screen shot from promotional video showing Mr. Ardic researching a copy of the Voynich Manuscript.

(Voynich Manuscript Research/ YouTube Screenshot )

Stand Back… Here Comes the Skeptical Opinion to Ruin Everything

Before we begin, I must make it clear that I am not a trained linguist, but I am an experienced investigator, and in this instance my case book is full of niggling inconsistencies which we will try to rationalize before drawing a conclusion.

Firstly, it is important to remember that Turkish is a very well documented language and the Voynich Manuscript has been studied by professional linguists from all over the world for over 500 years. Mr. Ardic, with all and absolute respect, is an electrical engineer. Any balanced juror would have to agree that the probability is much, much higher that, just like Egyptian hieroglyphics , cuneiform, Mayan, and Linear B , so too would the Voynich Manuscript most likely be decoded by a linguist.

Secondly, if you had just cracked the code of one of the world’s oldest cyphers, the video releasing your amazing findings to the world might begin with a simple table or chart translating the encoded characters into modern letters with a step by step decipherment; letter by letter, word by word, page by page. Contrary to this, one would need to watch the presentation on Ardic’s interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript code five times to really understand the theory. This suggests the researcher possibly found a seed, dug around it until he found a root, then a plant.

Detail of a page in Folio 33-V of the Voynich Manuscript.

( Gigazine)

I must now slow down a little on my unrelentingly skeptical attitude because Mr. Ardic and supporters of this hypothesis could firmly argue that Yale University made the manuscript public in the first place because not one of the world’s PhD linguists was able to decipher it for over five centuries. What is more, he might refer us to the quite brilliant book Wikinomics by author Don Tapscott, who provides many great examples of outsiders and amateur enthusiasts disrupting existing fields. And speaking personally, if we were to all underestimate the capacity of enthusiasts I wouldn’t even be writing this article! Not to mention, the world is full of highly advanced thinkers without PhDs applying themselves as software engineers, developers, and hackers – and they are running rings around the world’s national security and banking systems.

Mr. Ardic claims to have studied ancient Turkish languages with his son and they were able to pinpoint the Voynich writing style to an ancient phonetic variant. But his findings assume that there is only one language encoded into the manuscript. Why not 2, 5, or 12? That would go a long way to explaining why only a small part of the content can be related to Turkish.

• Beautiful, Decorative, and Sometimes Crude: Illuminated Manuscripts and Marginalia
• Cracking the Code to Discover Ancient Tarot Symbolism and Forgotten Universal Knowledge

Detail from Voynich Manuscript, page 50; Folio 25v “ dragon” as the detail is agreed to mostresemble a classic mythological dragon.

( Public Domain )

What I find really interesting in all this is that the online amateur research community attributes a selection of different languages to the Voynich manuscript. When these proposed countries of origin are looked at on a map they form an approximate geographical area which might suggest the manuscript was not actually written in northern Italy, as many scholars have argued.

What is more, many researchers see Serbo-Croatian, Ottoman, and Old Turkic - it might be prudent for linguists to take these observations and look closer at Croatian Glagolitic cursive and Angular Glagolitic, which might have in part evolved from Turkic language systems. And then, it must be considered that the Voynich manuscript might be an amalgamation of Glagolitic and Turkic cultures condensing shared botanical, pharmaceutical, astronomical traditions, and craft knowledge.

Whether Mr. Ardic’s findings will stand up to peer review or not will remain to be seen, but there is no part of me that is not inspired by the dedication both he and his son have committed to furthering our understanding of the code within the Voynich Manuscript.

• Top Image: Two pages from the Voynich Manuscript. Has the Voynich Manuscript code finally been cracked? Source: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University

By Ashley Cowie

{ "Ancient Origins"  }

19-03-2019 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers are closer to uncovering the distant space rock’s origin story

BY LISA GROSSMAN 

 

SLOW SMASH  The two lobes of Ultima Thule probably came together at the speed of a person walking briskly into a wall, researchers announced.

NASA, JHU APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY, SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE, ESA

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Ultima Thule’s history may be written in the sum of its parts.

New analyses suggest that the tiny space rock formed from a rotating cloud of even smaller rocks that collapsed into two individual objects. Those objects then gently collided in the early days of the solar system, creating the distant double-lobed world studied by the passing New Horizons spacecraft, researchers reported March 18 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

NASA’s New Horizons flew by Ultima Thule, officially known as MU69, on January 1 (SN Online: 12/30/18). The first images that the spacecraft sent back suggested a snowman-shaped world, with a larger lobe that the team dubbed “Ultima” and a slightly smaller bulb called “Thule” (SN: 2/2/19, p. 7). But subsequent images showed that the lobes look more like flat pancakes or hamburgers than jolly snowballs (SN: 3/16/19, p. 15).

The first map of the space rock’s geology may help explain that flatness. The map shows distinct mounds on both lobes whose borders are still visible today, planetary scientist Jeff Moore said at the meeting. Moore, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and his colleagues think that those mounds represent small or medium-sized rocks that organized themselves into a rotating disk before merging into two separate lobes that then collided. That rotation could have spread out material in a lobe, flattening it. “The disk was spinning … and that’s why we have the hamburger shape,” Moore said.

Planetary scientist William McKinnon of Washington University in St. Louis agrees, although he adds that “this has not been proven.” McKinnon also presented computer simulations of the final collision between Ultima and Thule that showed that the two must have been moving at about 2 meters per second when they collided. That’s about as fast as a person walking into a wall at a brisk pace, McKinnon said.

FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER This preliminary map of Ultima Thule’s geology shows how the space rock could have come together from many distinct objects. Each color represents a different possible section of the final body (a few examples highlighted with arrows), each of which could have been a separate smaller rock billions of years ago.

NASA, JHU APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY, SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE, ESA

That gentle crash, plus the Frankenstein body, suggests that planetesimals like Ultima Thule form from clouds of dust and rock clumping together under the force of their own gravity. Before New Horizons, it wasn’t clear if these proto-planets formed from cloud collapse or from small rocks slowly sticking together to form larger rocks over time.

“I think it's plausible” that clouds of rotating pebbles could have coalesced into Ultima Thule's two lobes, says planetary scientist David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. He and colleagues suggested in a 2010 study that collapsing clouds of small rocks in the Kuiper Belt — the distant zone of cold, primitive space rocks beyond Neptune’s orbit where Ultima Thule lives — could form close pairs of objects.

But the idea may not yet explain Ultima Thule’s flatness. “In my simulations back in 2010, I produced a lot of spheres,” Nesvorny says. Other researchers will now have to do new simulations that show that these rotating disks can lead to flat pancakes, he says.

Citations

• S.A. Stern et al. Overview of initial results from the reconnaissance flyby of a Kuiper Belt planetesimal:  2014 MU69. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 18, 2019.
• J.M. Moore et al. The geology of 2014 MU69 (“Ultima Thule”): Initial results from the New Horizons encounter. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 18, 2019.
• W.M. Grundy et al. 486958 2014 MU69 Ultima Thule surface composition overview. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 18, 2019.
• W.B. McKinnon et al. A pristine “contact binary” in the Kuiper Belt: Implications from the New Horizons encounter with 2014 MU69 (“Ultima Thule”). Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 18, 2019.
• D. Nesvorny, A. N. Youdin and D. C. Richardson. Formation of Kuiper Belt binaries by gravitational collapse. The Astronomical Journal. Published August 9, 2010. doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/140/3/785.

Further Reading

• E. Conover. Ultima Thule is shaped like two lumpy pancakes. Science News. Vol. 195, March 16, 2019, p. 15.
• L. Grossman. The latest picture of Ultima Thule reveals a remarkably smooth face. Science News Online, January 29, 2019.
• L. Grossman. New Horizons shows Ultima Thule looks like a snowman, or maybe BB-8. Science News. Vol. 195, February 2, 2019, p. 7.
• L. Grossman. Live updates: New Horizons’ flyby of a distant Kuiper Belt object. Science News Online, December 30, 2018.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

19-03-2019 om 17:45 geschreven door peter  

19-03-2019 om 17:21 geschreven door peter  

• Media via Wikipedia, Screenshot via biorXiv/Kirschvink et al., Flickr/NASA

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

19-03-2019 om 16:58 geschreven door peter  

Antarctica BOMBSHELL: How scientists made SHOCKING find after drilling 500ft below ice

SCIENTISTS drilled 466ft into an Antarctica ice sheet in a bid to learn more about the history of the South Pole – but what they uncovered left them shocked, a documentary revealed.

“Ice layers can read like the rings of trees and the climate record goes back 100,000 years.

{ https://www.express.co.uk/ }

19-03-2019 om 16:15 geschreven door peter  

Are octopuses ALIENS? 'There's something going on behind their eyes'

A MARINE biologist has had her say on an extraordinary claim that octopuses evolved from extraterrestrial “cryopreserved” eggs hundreds of millions of years ago, which if true might explain their extraordinary intelligence and complexity.

Dr Scales, whose new book, Octopuses: A Ladybird Expert Book, is published on Thursday, March 21, does not actually buy the idea herself, saying: “They claim they have evidence to support their theory that extra terrestrial viruses came to earth around 500 million years ago and kick starting the Cambrian explosion.

“But there really is no proof that this is where viruses came from, and this doesn’t explain how they formed in the first place.

“Genetic evidence tells us that octopuses evolved from squid ancestors around 135 million years ago.

{ https://www.express.co.uk/ }

19-03-2019 om 15:55 geschreven door peter  

UFO sightings: NASA expert urges to take alien claims SERIOUSLY - 'There must be life'

UFO claims and stories of extraterrestrial visitors to Earth need to be considered without blanket scepticism, a physicist and former NASA researcher has shockingly claimed.

19-03-2019 om 15:36 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX begonnen met bouw van prototype Starship-ruimtevaartuig - HLN.be

Bron: AD.nl

Elon Musk zegt op Twitter dat de tweede rakettrap, het gedeelte van de Starship-raket dat in de ruimte komt, momenteel al wordt gebouwd. Dit is de nieuwe, grote, geheel herbruikbare raket waarmee onder meer naar Mars moet worden gevlogen en die voorheen bekend stond onder de naam Big Falcon Rocket.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1107378575924035584

Elon Musk

✔@elonmusk

Testing Starship heatshield hex tiles

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9:30 PM - Mar 17, 2019

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Lees ook

Nieuwe stap voor SpaceX: Elon Musk toont foto van prototype van ruimteschip dat in 2024 mensen naar Mars moet brengen

Momenteel is SpaceX ook al bezig om de roestvaststalen hitteschilden van de Starship te testen. Deze hitteschilden, die worden gevormd door zeshoekige tegels, hebben een beperkte hittetest succesvol doorstaan. Daarbij zijn temperaturen van 1.375 graden Celsius gehaald, wat volgens Musk de temperatuur is waar het ruimteschip mee te maken krijgt bij de terugkeer in de dampkring.

Dit hitteschild is gemaakt met een technologie die transpirational cooling heet. Kleine gaatjes in het hitteschild waar water of methaan doorheen gaat, moeten de buitenkant koelen. Dit moet eventuele schade aan het hitteschild beperken en ervoor zorgen dat de raket weer snel herbruikbaar is. Transpirational cooling wordt toegevoegd zodra er erosie optreedt bij het hitteschild, legde Musk uit.

SpaceX_News@Space_NewsX

First #Starhopper test flight as early as this week with one rocket engine!#SpaceX #ElonMusk

Pics by: @SpacePadreIsle

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9:42 PM - Mar 18, 2019

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Musk liet ook weten dat SpaceX ‘hopelijk’ nog deze week begint met het testen van de kleine testversie van StarShip, genaamd Starhopper. Deze wordt uitgerust met een Raptor, de methaanraketmotor waarmee de grote Starship uiteindelijk wordt uitgerust. De Hopper zal tijdens tests hooguit ietwat van het platform komen en nog niet echt opstijgen. In januari viel deze kleine testversie nog om door een sterke wind.

Bekijk ook:

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

19-03-2019 om 15:12 geschreven door peter  

Clif High: UFOs, Alien Encounters, & Secret Space via Richard Dolan

Clif High and Predictive Linguistics. PL is the process of using computer software to aggregate vast amounts of written text from the internet by categories delineated by the emotional content of the words and using the result to make forecasts based on the emotional ‘tone’ changes within the larger population. A form of ‘collective sub-conscious expression’ is a good way to think of it.

Predictive linguistics can be used to forecast trends at many different levels, from the detail of sales to individuals, all the way up to forecasts about emerging global population trends. Richard Dolan is one of the world’s leading researchers and writers on the subject of UFOs and believes that they constitute the greatest mystery of our time. He is the author of two volumes of history, UFOs and the National Security State, both ground-breaking works which together provide the most factually complete and accessible narrative of the UFO subject available anywhere.

He also co-authored a speculative book about the future, A.D. After Disclosure, the first-ever analysis not only of how UFO secrecy might end, but of the all-important question: what happens next?

2019 : Richard Dolan & Clif High on UFOs, Alien Encounters, & Secret Space

2018 : Clif High - Aliens, Ufo's, Disclosure, Secret Space Program & More

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

19-03-2019 om 14:51 geschreven door peter  

NASA meteor: A giant fireball EXPLODED over Earth 10 times stronger than Hiroshima bomb

A METEOR explosion 10 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb was detected over the Bering Sea near Russia, NASA has revealed.

19-03-2019 om 14:44 geschreven door peter  

NASA meteor WARNING: (Russia emergency ) NASA detects fireball EXPLOSION bigger than Hiroshima bomb

{  https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

19-03-2019 om 14:33 geschreven door peter