Event Horizon Telescope data are giving scientists an image of the Milky Way’s behemoth

BY  LISA GROSSMAN 

 

FIRST LOOK  The first image from the Event Horizon Telescope may show that the black hole at the center of our galaxy looks something like this simulation.

BRONZWAER, DAVELAAR, MOSCIBRODZKA AND FALCKE/RADBOUD UNIVERSITY

We’re about to see the first close-up of a black hole.

The Event Horizon Telescope, a network of eight radio observatories spanning the globe, has set its sights on a pair of behemoths: Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center, and an even more massive black hole 53.5 million light-years away in galaxy M87 (SN Online: 4/5/17).

In April 2017, the observatories teamed up to observe the black holes’ event horizons, the boundary beyond which gravity is so extreme that even light can’t escape (SN: 5/31/14, p. 16). After almost two years of rendering the data, scientists are gearing up to release the first images in April.

Here’s what scientists hope those images can tell us.

What does a black hole really look like?

Black holes live up to their names: The great gravitational beasts emit no light in any part of the electromagnetic spectrum, so they themselves don’t look like much.

But astronomers know the objects are there because of a black hole’s entourage. As a black hole’s gravity pulls in gas and dust, matter settles into an orbiting disk, with atoms jostling one another at extreme speeds. All that activity heats the matter white-hot, so it emits X-rays and other high-energy radiation. The most voraciously feeding black holes in the universe have disks that outshine all the stars in their galaxies (SN Online: 3/16/18).

A CAMERA THE SIZE OF EARTH How did scientists take a picture of a black hole? Science News explains.

The EHT’s image of the Milky Way’s Sagittarius A*, also called SgrA*, is expected to capture the black hole’s shadow on its accompanying disk of bright material. Computer simulations and the laws of gravitational physics give astronomers a pretty good idea of what to expect. Because of the intense gravity near a black hole, the disk’s light will be warped around the event horizon in a ring, so even the material behind the black hole will be visible.

And the image will probably look asymmetrical: Gravity will bend light from the inner part of the disk toward Earth more strongly than the outer part, making one side appear brighter in a lopsided ring.

Does general relativity hold up close to a black hole?

The exact shape of the ring may help break one of the most frustrating stalemates in theoretical physics.

The twin pillars of physics are Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which governs massive and gravitationally rich things like black holes, and quantum mechanics, which governs the weird world of subatomic particles. Each works precisely in its own domain. But they can’t work together.

“General relativity as it is and quantum mechanics as it is are incompatible with each other,” says physicist Lia Medeiros of the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Rock, hard place. Something has to give.” If general relativity buckles at a black hole’s boundary, it may point the way forward for theorists.

Since black holes are the most extreme gravitational environments in the universe, they’re the best environment to crash test theories of gravity. It’s like throwing theories at a wall and seeing whether — or how — they break. If general relativity does hold up, scientists expect that the black hole will have a particular shadow and thus ring shape; if Einstein’s theory of gravity breaks down, a different shadow.

Medeiros and her colleagues ran computer simulations of 12,000 different black hole shadows that could differ from Einstein’s predictions. “If it’s anything different, [alternative theories of gravity] just got a Christmas present,” says Medeiros, who presented the simulation results in January in Seattle at the American Astronomical Society meeting. Even slight deviations from general relativity could create different enough shadows for EHT to probe, allowing astronomers to quantify how different what they see is from what they expect.

CONSIDERING ALL POSSIBILITIES Physicists expect black holes to follow Einstein’s rules of general relativity, but it might be more interesting if they don’t. This computer simulation shows one possibility for how a black hole would look if it behaved unexpectedly.

Do stellar corpses called pulsars surround the Milky Way’s black hole?

Another way to test general relativity around black holes is to watch how stars careen around them. As light flees the extreme gravity in a black hole’s vicinity, its waves get stretched out, making the light appear redder. This process, called gravitational redshift, is predicted by general relativity and was observed near SgrA* last year (SN: 8/18/18, p. 12). So far, so good for Einstein.

An even better way to do the same test would be with a pulsar, a rapidly spinning stellar corpse that sweeps the sky with a beam of radiation in a regular cadence that makes it appear to pulse (SN: 3/17/18, p. 4). Gravitational redshift would mess up the pulsars’ metronomic pacing, potentially giving a far more precise test of general relativity.

“The dream for most people who are trying to do SgrA* science, in general, is to try to find a pulsar or pulsars orbiting” the black hole, says astronomer Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va. “There are a lot of quite interesting and quite deep tests of [general relativity] that pulsars can provide, that EHT [alone] won’t.”

Despite careful searches, no pulsars have been found near enough to SgrA* yet, partly because gas and dust in the galactic center scatters their beams and makes them difficult to spot. But EHT is taking the best look yet at that center in radio wavelengths, so Ransom and colleagues hope it might be able to spot some.

“It’s a fishing expedition, and the chances of catching a whopper are really small,” Ransom says. “But if we do, it’s totally worth it.”

ONE OF MANY? The pulsar PSR J1745-2900 (left in this illustration) was discovered in 2013 orbiting roughly 150 light-years from the black hole at the center of the galaxy. That’s too far to use it to do precise tests of general relativity, but astronomers hope that the pulsar’s existence means the Event Horizon Telescope will find many more even closer to the black hole.

RALPH EATOUGH/MPIFR

How do some black holes make jets?

Some black holes are ravenous gluttons, pulling in massive amounts of gas and dust, while others are picky eaters. No one knows why. SgrA* seems to be one of the fussy ones, with a surprisingly dim accretion disk despite its 4 million solar mass heft. EHT’s other target, the black hole in galaxy M87, is a voracious eater, weighing in at about 2.4 trillion solar masses. And it doesn’t just amass a bright accretion disk. It also launches a bright, fast jet of charged subatomic particles that stretches for about 5,000 light-years.

“It’s a little bit counterintuitive to think a black hole spills out something,” says astrophysicist Thomas Krichbaum of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. “Usually people think it only swallows something.”

Many other black holes produce jets that are longer and wider than entire galaxies and can extend billions of light-years from the black hole. “The natural question arises: What is so powerful to launch these jets to such large distances?” Krichbaum says. “Now with the EHT, we can for the first time trace what is happening.”

EHT’s measurements of M87’s black hole will help estimate the strength of its magnetic field, which astronomers think is related to the jet-launching mechanism. And measurements of the jet’s properties when it’s close to the black hole will help determine where the jet originates —  in the innermost part of the accretion disk, farther out in the disk or from the black hole itself. Those observations might also reveal whether the jet is launched by something about the black hole itself or by the fast-flowing material in the accretion disk.

Since jets can carry material out of the galactic center and into the regions between galaxies, they can influence how galaxies grow and evolve, and even where stars and planets form (SN: 7/21/18, p. 16).

“It is important to understanding the evolution of galaxies, from the early formation of black holes to the formation of stars and later to the formation of life,” Krichbaum says. “This is a big, big story. We are just contributing with our studies of black hole jets a little bit to the bigger puzzle.”

Citations

• L. Medeiros. Modeling variability and non-Kerr spacetime effects in black hole images. American Astronomical Society meeting, January 2019, Seattle.

Further Reading

• E. Conover. A star orbiting a black hole shows Einstein got gravity right — again. Science News. Vol. 194, August 18, 2018, p. 12.
• L. Grossman. The ecosystem that controls a galaxy’s future is coming into focus. Science News. Vol. 194, July 21, 2018, p. 16.
• L. Grossman. Astronomers can’t figure out why some black holes got so big so fast. Science News Online, March 16, 2018.
• E. Conover. Event Horizon Telescope to try to capture images of elusive black hole edge. Science News Online, April 5, 2017.
• A. Grant. The mysterious boundary. Science News. Vol. 185, May 31, 2014, p. 16.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

31-03-2019 om 18:48 geschreven door peter  

Animated image via GIPHY.

The first close-up observations by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft of its target, asteroid Bennu, reveal new details that pose a bigger challenge than scientists expected to the mission’s objective of collecting a sample of the asteroid.

The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft reached Bennu on December 3, 2018, after traveling 1.4 million miles (2.2 million km). For the past three months, OSIRIS-REx has been investigating Bennu at close range, beginning to search for an ideal site to collect a sample, and getting to know the asteroid in much greater detail.

While the spacecraft’s observations have confirmed many of the measurements obtained by ground-based observations, recent findings have revealed that Bennu is a more challenging target than the mission was originally designed for.

Here are some key findings from mission team members, presented at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference in Houston on March 19, 2019.

Bennu’s surface is rockier than expected, creating challenges for the team whose mission is to scoop up a sample of pristine material and return it to Earth in 2023.

Image via NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.

Big boulders on Bennu’s surface

The OSIRIS-REx team developed its sampling strategy around what they knew about Bennu when they designed the mission. They anticipated plentiful patches of relatively smooth surface with gravel and pebbles less than 1 inch in size that extend over at least 55 yards (50 meters). Instead, the spacecraft observed only a small number of regions, each between 5.4 and 22 yards (5 and 20 m), that are devoid of large boulders that pose a hazard to the spacecraft when it touches down to collect its sample.

This trio of images was taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on February 25, 2019, in orbit around Bennu, about 1.1 miles (1.8 km) from the asteroid’s surface. The images show a wide shot and 2 close-ups of a region in Bennu’s northern hemisphere.

Image via NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.

… make for a terrible airfield

Instead of having the equivalent of half a football field to navigate in, the spacecraft will have to operate within the confines of sampling sites that are half the size of a basketball court or smaller.

High-resolution images made with the OSIRIS-REx cameras reveal a surface packed with more than 200 boulders larger than 33 feet (10 m) in diameter and many more that are 3 feet (1 m) or larger. The largest boulder measures 63 yards (58 m) across.

Bennu is very dark

OSIRIS-REx measurements also confirm that Bennu is one of the darkest objects in the solar system, reflecting only 4 percent of sunlight. One of the surprises turned out to be a larger-than-expected variability in surface albedo, the proportion of light reflected by a surface. In other words, Bennu’s surface features vary greatly from one another with respect to their brightness. The high variability in albedo presents a challenge for the laser of the spacecraft’s lidar system, designed to guide the sample acquisition approach.

These findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on March 19, 2019.

This view of asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on January 19, 2019, was created by combining 2 images taken on board the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

Image via NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin.

Another surprise … particle plumes!

In another strange discovery, OSIRIS-REx observed plumes of particles being energetically ejected from the surface of Bennu. It’s the first-ever close-up observations of particle plumes erupting from an asteroid’s surface.

The OSIRIS-REx team first spotted the particle plumes in images while the spacecraft was orbiting Bennu at a distance of about one mile (1.61 km). The mission team did a safety assessment and concluded the particles did not pose a risk to the spacecraft. The team continues to analyze the particle plumes and their possible causes. Read more about the discovery from NASA.

Dante Lauretta is OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Lauretta said in a statement:

The discovery of plumes is one of the biggest surprises of my scientific career. And the rugged terrain went against all of our predictions. Bennu is already surprising us, and our exciting journey there is just getting started.

The size of asteroid Bennu, which is 1,614 feet (492 meters) wide, compared with the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower in this NASA image.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was only 15 miles (24 km) from asteroid Bennu – on December 2, 2018 – when it captured the 12 high-resolution images that make up this mosaic. The mosaic shows features as small as 20 feet (6 meters)

Image via NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.

Bottom line: New findings about asteroid Bennu from the OSIRIS-REx mission.

• Via NASA

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

31-03-2019 om 18:09 geschreven door peter  

A Hubble Space Telescope view of asteroid 6478 Gault, showing 2 narrow, comet-like tails of debris. The bright streaks surrounding the asteroid are background stars.

Image via NASA, ESA, K. Meech and J. Kleyna (University of Hawaii), O. Hainaut (European Southern Observatory)/SpaceTelescope.org.

Asteroids are typically solid rocky or metallic bodies; comets are fragile, icy bodies that sometimes sprout tails when they come near the sun. But some asteroids have been found to appear comet-like, in that they also have tails. Scientists said on March 28, 2019, that they used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe such an asteroid, called 6478 Gault. Clear images from the telescope provided researchers with new insight into this asteroid’s unusual past, they said. They now believe that Gault is self-destructing slowly, which is the reason for its two narrow, comet-like tails of debris. Each tail is evidence of an active event that released material into space. Why is it self-destructing? The reason is thought to be its unusually fast spin on its axis.

The team’s results have been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal Letters (preprint here).

Astronomers have known about asteroid Gault for some time. It was discovered in 1988. The object is 2.5 to 5.5 miles (4 to 9 km) wide, and it’s located in the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers said in a statement:

… the recent observation of two debris tails is the first indication of the asteroid’s instability. This asteroid is one of only a handful to be caught disintegrating by a process known as a YORP torque. When sunlight heats an asteroid, the infrared radiation that escapes from its warmed surface carries off both heat and momentum. This creates a small force that can cause the asteroid to spin faster.

If this centrifugal force eventually overcomes gravity, the asteroid becomes unstable. Landslides on the object can release rubble and dust into space, leaving behind a tail of debris, as seen here with asteroid Gault.

Astronomers estimate that among the 800,000 known asteroids that occupy the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, YORP disruptions occur roughly once per year. From the Hubble observations, researchers inferred that the release of material from the asteroid took place in short episodes lasting from a few hours to a couple of days. They commented:

The direct observation of this activity by the Hubble Space Telescope has provided [us] with a special opportunity to study the composition of asteroids. By researching the material that this unstable asteroid releases into space, [we] can get a glimpse into the history of planet formation in the early ages of the solar system.

Follow-up observations have been made by various ground-based telescopes, and, these astronomers said:

These data were used to deduce a two-hour rotation period for Gault, which is very close to the critical speed at which material will begin to tumble and slide across the asteroid’s surface before drifting off into space.

Astronomer Jan Kleyna of the University of Hawaii – lead author of the new paper – commented:

Gault is the best ‘smoking-gun’ example of a fast rotator right at the two-hour limit. It could have been on the brink of instability for 10 million years. Even a tiny disturbance, like a small impact from a pebble, might have triggered the recent outbursts.

Astronomer Olivier Hainaut of the European Southern Observatory in Germany explained:

This self-destruction event is rare. Active and unstable asteroids such as Gault are only now being detected by means of new survey telescopes that scan the entire sky, which means asteroids such as Gault that are misbehaving cannot escape detection any more.

• Read more about asteroid Gault via SpaceTelescope.org

Bottom line: Hubble Space Telescope sharp imaging has provided valuable detail on activity from active asteroid Gault, which is now known to be spinning on its axis so fast – about every two hours – that material on its surface at times flies off into space.

• Source: The Sporadic Activity of (6478) Gault: A YORP-driven event?

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

31-03-2019 om 17:54 geschreven door peter  

Devon Island in the Arctic is one of Earth’s most Mars-like places. NASA is there, training scientists and testing technologies for future Mars exploration. Now Google has joined in, to bring Devon Island’s Mars-like wonders to you.

Here’s one of the Mars-like wonders of Devon Island in the High Arctic, featured in Google’s new documentary short on the NASA Haughton-Mars Project. This earthly canyon – called Astronaut Canyon by scientists – was carved by glaciers and resembles some of the tributary canyons to Ius Chasma on Mars.

Image via HMP/Pascal Lee/SETI Institute.

A crewed mission to Mars might be a long way off, but researchers are busy preparing, nonetheless. One of the best ways to prepare is by training scientists and testing new technologies in some of the most Mars-like locations on Earth, simulating the experience as much as possible.

On March 25, 2019, the Mars Institute and the SETI Institute jointly announced a new partnership between Google and NASA’s Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) to further the goal of human Mars exploration and the public’s understanding of it. Their focus is Devon Island in Nunavut, Canada, in the Arctic. Devon Island is one of the most Mars-like places that can be found on Earth and the single largest continuous area of barren rocky polar desert on Earth. The announcement was accompanied by the release of new public outreach products including Street View imagery; a Google Earth guided tour highlighting the Mars-like geology of Devon Island (Chrome browser needed); and a documentary short captured at NASA’s Haughton-Mars Project with a Google Pixel 3. Want an example? Highlights from Google Street View include:

Astronaut Canyon
Haughton Crater at View Hill
Haughton-Mars Project Base Camp
Von Braun Planitia: An Ancient Lake Bed
Haughton Crater at Breccia Cliffs

The new Google Earth guided tour of Devon Island and NASA’s facilities there is called Mars on Earth. It illustrates – via factual narrative – how Devon Island is similar to the “magnificent desolation” of Mars. Please note that Google Earth is optimized for Google’s Chrome browser and might not work with other browsers.

According to Pascal Lee, director of NASA HMP at Ames Research Center:

We are excited about this new partnership with Google on the Haughton-Mars Project and about the data products being released. They allow us to share with the world some of the Mars-like wonders of the site and the fieldwork that we do.

Devon Island (Inuit: Tatlurutit) is an island in Canada and the largest uninhabited island on Earth. It is located in Baffin Bay, Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada.

Map and caption via Wikipedia.

Aerial view of the Haughton-Mars Project Research Station and surrounding desolate terrain on Devon Island.

Image via Mars Institute.

Closer aerial view and map of Haughton-Mars Project Research Station.

Image via Mars Institute.

Google captured its images in August 2018, when it took part in HMP’s 2018 summer field campaign as a new Education and Public Outreach partner.

The team also produced a 10-minute documentary called “Mars On Earth: A Visit to Devon Island,” filmed in HD using a Google Pixel 3 smartphone. The film provides an overview of the activities at Haughton-Mars Project Research Station (HMPRS) over a 10-day period. Also included in the documentary are flight tests and science application studies of NASA’s Mars Electric Reusable Flyer (MERF), an experimental aircraft for Mars exploration being developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. As Katja Minitsenka, leader of the Google team, noted:

We were very humbled by the opportunity to get a glimpse into the work planetary scientists are doing on Devon Island. Now we are thrilled to share the results of our time on the world’s largest uninhabited island with Google users.

Watch the film here:

According to Bill Diamond, President and CEO of the SETI Institute:

This new partnership between Google and the NASA Haughton-Mars Project, one of many groundbreaking research projects at the SETI Institute, is a beautiful example of how private industry and nonprofits can come together to advance science, exploration, education and public outreach. Stay tuned for more in the near future.

The Haughton-Mars Project, by the way, is based at Devon Island’s Haughton Crater – a 12-mile-wide (20-km-wide) meteorite impact crater – and surrounding terrain. A leading international Mars analog field research project, HMP has conducted numerous field studies during its 22-year history.

Locations like Devon Island, or the Atacama Desert in Chile, are about the closest one can get to Mars-like extremely dry conditions on Earth, with little to no vegetation, rainfall or other moisture. As such, they are ideal places to conduct experiments and prepare for future human missions.

Map of Devon Island with location of Haughton Crater.

Image via NASA/HMP/Pascal Lee.

A K10 Black rover doing a site survey in Haughton Crater.

Image via Matt Deans/NASA.

Testing of analog pressurized rovers at Haughton-Mars Project Research Station on Devon Island. Left: field test with robotic arm. Right: test of rover equipped with two EVA suit ports for astronauts.

Image via Mars Institute.

Comparison of similar canyons on Devon Island and Mars. Left: Astronaut Canyon on Devon Island. Right: Ius Chasma on Mars.

Image via Mars Institute.

Bottom line: The partnership between NASA and Google provides new and innovative ways to not only advance testing for human exploration of Mars, but also to share that adventure with the public at large.

• Via SETI Institute

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

31-03-2019 om 17:47 geschreven door peter  

Scientists plead to stop creation of killer robots: We're at 'the brink of a new arms race'

By Chris Ciaccia | Fox News

Why some scientists are calling for an international ban of autonomous killer robots

A look at why some scientists are calling for an international ban of autonomous killer robots.

Dozens of scientists, health care professionals and academics have written a letter to the U.N. calling for an international ban of autonomous killer robots, saying recent advances in artificial intelligence "have brought us to the brink of a new arms race in lethal autonomous weapons."

The letter, which has been signed by more than 70 health care professionals and was put together by the Future of Life Institute, states that lethal autonomous weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and despots, lower the barrier to armed conflict and "become weapons of mass destruction enabling very few to kill very many."

"Furthermore, autonomous weapons are morally abhorrent, as we should never cede the decision to take a human life to algorithms," the letter continues. "As healthcare professionals, we believe that breakthroughs in science have tremendous potential to benefit society and should not be used to automate harm. We therefore call for an international ban on lethal autonomous weapons."

• USING 'KILLER ROBOTS' IN WAR WOULD BREACH INTERNATIONAL LAW, ADVOCATES SAY

In addition to the letter, a study written by Dr. Emilia Javorsky posits that recent advances by a number of countries working on lethal autonomous weapon systems "would represent a third revolution in warfare," following gunpowder and nuclear weapons.

The effort put forth by the Future of Life Institute follows a 2018 pledge from more than 2,400 individuals from companies and organizations around the world. Those from Google DeepMind, the European Association for AI and University College London and others said they would “neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons.”

Past concerns

Others have raised concerns to the U.N. as well about the benefits and costs of killers robots. Experts from several countries met in August 2018 at the Geneva offices of the U.N. to focus on lethal autonomous weapons systems and explore ways of possibly regulating them, among other issues.

In theory, fully autonomous, computer-controlled weapons don’t exist yet, UN officials said at the time. The debate is still in its infancy and the experts have at times grappled with basic definitions. The United States has argued that it’s premature to establish a definition of such systems, much less regulate them.

Some advocacy groups say governments and militaries should be prevented from developing such systems, which have sparked fears and led some critics to envisage harrowing scenarios about their use.

In 2017, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other leading artificial intelligence experts called on the United Nations to issue a global ban on the use of killer robots, which includes drones, tanks and machine guns. “Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close,” Musk and 115 other specialists from around the globe wrote in the letter.

• IS SKYNET A REALITY? AS TRUMP SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, TECH GIANTS WARN OF DANGER

'The biggest risk we face'

Musk has repeatedly worried about the rise of artificial intelligence, having previously stated it could be the "biggest risk we face as a civilization." The tech exec has even gone so far as to say it could cause World War III.

Research firm IDC expects that global spending on robotics and drones will reach $201.3 billion by 2022, up from an estimated $95.9 billion in 2018.

Over the years, several luminaries, including Musk, legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and a host of others have warned against the rise of artificial intelligence.

In September 2017, Musk tweeted that he thought AI could play a direct role in causing World War III. Musk's thoughts were in response to comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said that  "who becomes the leader in this sphere [artificial intelligence] will be the ruler of the world."

In November 2017, prior to his death, Hawking theorized that AI could eventually "destroy" humanity if we are not careful about it.

{ https://www.foxnews.com/ }

31-03-2019 om 17:31 geschreven door peter  

31-03-2019 om 16:57 geschreven door peter  

31-03-2019 om 16:52 geschreven door peter  

New Linda Moulton Howe Something Huge Has Been Discovered in Antarctica

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

31-03-2019 om 16:39 geschreven door peter  

Some discoveries change everything. Most just explain a lot. A few explain a LOT. The latter is the case of a new discovery in North Dakota – a killing field formed perhaps no more than hours after the event that caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago … the asteroid or comet that smashed into the Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula and created the Chicxulub crater. Fossils found in what was once an inland sea show that the dinosaurs and other creatures there died in a rain of glass crystals formed when molten particles tossed skyward cooled and fell to the ground. And if that didn’t kill them, the seismic waves did. Is this the best picture ever of the day the Cretaceous Period ended? The day the K-T boundary was formed? The day the dinosaurs stood still?

“This is the first mass death assemblage of large organisms anyone has found associated with the K-T boundary. At no other K-T boundary section on Earth can you find such a collection consisting of a large number of species representing different ages of organisms and different stages of life, all of which died at the same time, on the same day.”

In an interview published in the University of California Berkeley News, Robert DePalma, curator of paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida and a doctoral student at the University of Kansas, explained how his very first career dig in the summer of 2013 triggered the interest that kept bringing him back to North Dakota to slowly reveal that the Hell Creek Formation — a fossil cornucopia of preserved remains of fish, tree trunks, conifer branches, dead mammals, mosasaurs, insects, Triceratops, dinoflagellates, ammonites and more — was created within 24 hours of the impact that created Chicxulub and ended Cretaceous. That day is described in “Prelude to Extinction: a seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota,” to be published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It’s like a museum of the end of the Cretaceous in a layer a meter-and-a-half thick.”

Mark Richards, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus and provost and professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, and Walter Alvarez, the UC Berkeley Professor who is credited with coming up with the extinction-causing asteroid over 40 years ago, were brought in by DePalma to analyze this layer of history. (Photos and videos of the site and the researchers can be viewed here.) The key to linking it to the Chicxulub impact was perfectly-preserved beads of glass called tektites that blanketed the creatures to the point that they appeared in the gills of fossilized fish. These beads did more than fall – they were propelled from the sly at up to 200 miles-per-hour.

A meteor impact 66 million years ago generated a tsunami-like wave in an inland sea that killed and buried fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur, the first victims of Earth’s last mass extinction event. The death scene from within an hour of the impact has been excavated at an unprecedented fossil site in North Dakota. (Graphics and photos courtesy of Robert DePalma)

Fossilized fish piled one atop another, suggesting that they were flung ashore and died stranded together on a sand bar after the seiche withdrew.

Walter Alvarez and Robert DePalma at the Tanis outcrop in North Dakota.

Tektites, 1 millimeter spheres of glass, recovered from the Tanis fossil bed.

Robert DePalma excavating at the Tanis fossil site in North Dakota.

Fish carcasses and two logs tossed together by the seiche created by seismic waves from the meteor impact.

A perfectly preserved fish tail from Tanis deposit.

“You can imagine standing there being pelted by these glass spherules. They could have killed you.”

Run!

This is the most well-preserved example of death by tektites in the world and funnels of them in perfect shape were found buried in the ground. How did that happen? That was the second key discovery, according to DePalma.

“Tsunamis from the Chicxulub impact are certainly well-documented, but no one knew how far something like that would go into an inland sea. When Mark came aboard, he discovered a remarkable artifact — that the incoming seismic waves from the impact site would have arrived at just about the same time as the atmospheric travel time of the ejecta. That was our big breakthrough.”

Instead of a single tsunami, the area was hit with seismic waves called seiches that we now know were created far from the impact. Richards described the scene on that day 66 million years ago:

“The seismic waves start arising within nine to 10 minutes of the impact, so they had a chance to get the water sloshing before all the spherules (small spheres) had fallen out of the sky. These spherules coming in cratered the surface, making funnels — you can see the deformed layers in what used to be soft mud — and then rubble covered the spherules. No one has seen these funnels before.”

These layers of fossils, tektites and sediment are topped by a coating of iridium, a metal rarely found on Earth because it comes from … you guessed it … asteroids and comets. No matter where you dig around the world, when you hit the 66 million years ago mark, you find a layer of iridium that has come to be called the K-T or K-Pg boundary when Cretaceous ends and the Tertiary or Paleogene Period begins.

And now we know that the best place to see how the whole thing happened, including definitive proof that dinosaurs were still alive moments before the Chicxulub impact, is not in the Gulf of Mexico but in North Dakota.

The Peace Garden State is standing proud.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/  }

31-03-2019 om 16:24 geschreven door peter  

Members of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) gathered in Paris last week to talk about aliens and what they came up with is quite interesting to say the least. They mentioned that although researchers have been searching the skies for many decades, there is a lack of actual evidence proving that aliens exist.

Since there are billions of stars surrounding us, we’ve never heard any communication from extraterrestrials and this where the Fermi Paradox comes in, which is the contradiction between the lack of evidence that extraterrestrials exist and the high probability that they do in fact exist.

There are many theories as to why we haven’t had any contact with aliens, such as they’re sleeping, or they’re not around anymore. But one theory in particular was discussed in Paris last week by the METI researchers and it’s that maybe we have been quarantined by the extraterrestrials. They suggested that we may be in a type of cage like we’re in some kind of galactic zoo.

Florence Raulin Cerceau, who is the METI director as well as an astrobiologist, explained, “This puzzle of why we haven’t detected extraterrestrial life has been discussed often,” adding, “But in this workshop’s unique focus, many of the talks tackled a controversial explanation first suggested in the 1970s, called the ‘zoo hypothesis’.” METI president Douglas Vakoch weighed in by saying, “Perhaps extraterrestrials are watching humans on Earth, much like we watch animals in a zoo.”

The zoo hypothesis was first presented by MIT researcher John Ball in a 1973 paper. He wrote, “Extraterrestrial intelligent life may be almost ubiquitous,” adding, “The apparent failure of such life to interact with us may be understood in terms of the hypothesis that they have set us aside as part of a wilderness area or zoo.” He later wrote in another research paper, “ETI may be discreetly and inconspicuously watching us but not dabbling.”

In 2016, Josh Hrala told ScienceAlert that while the zoo hypothesis does assume that aliens exist, perhaps the reason why they’re not interacting with us is because they don’t want to have any influence on our society and they just want to keep observing us from far away.

The zoo hypothesis is one of many theories involving alien life, but it’s definitely an interesting hypothesis to consider. “It seems likely that extraterrestrials are imposing a ‘galactic quarantine’ because they realize it would be culturally disruptive for us to learn about them,” stated researcher Jean-Pierre Rospars from the Institut national de la recherche agronomique and who attended the METI workshop.

Whether we’re in some sort of galactic zoo or not, it would still be very exciting and life-changing if we could somehow receive any type of communication from extraterrestrials, or even solid proof that they do in fact exist.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/  }

31-03-2019 om 16:02 geschreven door peter  

Bizarre Secret Files Released on Lost Ancient Human Civilizations

{ https://beforeitsnews.com }

31-03-2019 om 15:47 geschreven door peter  

Welcoming our new overlords of any kind is becoming more than just a funny meme … it may be a warning that their arrival could be happening faster than we can perceive, comprehend … or stop. That seems to be the case if the overlords are artificially intelligent robots as the tech news media this week brings stories of AI robots reproducing, evolving and reciting bible verses to humans based on data collected to determine what their spiritual needs at the moment might be. Robots controlling what you pray for? Will they stop you from praying for less robots?

Wired reports this week on research in the field of evolutionary robotics being conducted at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam by computer scientist Gusz Eiben. Ebsen uses simple AI robots with simple “genomes” that define what their color will be. He then has them “mate” via connections and combine their genomes. Like in humans, he programmed the connection and combination to have flaws that can cause mutations in the “offspring.” The end result?

“One parent is fully green, and the other parent is fully blue. Then the child has some modules that are blue and some that are green, but the head is white. That’s not what we put in—it’s a mutation effect.”

Obviously, negative or flawed mutations would not be the goal. Programmers of evolutionary robots would design them to combine their strongest “genes” or characteristics to produce a baby bot with the best of both robot parents. With computers powering their intelligence and decision-making, this “evolution” could result in combinations not foreseen by human engineers. Additionally, what humans may see as genetic flaws may have uses that the AI determines to be valuable.

Everything will be OK as long as humans tightly control the algorithms … right? Research scientist David Howard, who recently published a framework for evolutionary robotics in Nature Machine Intelligence, proposes a scenario where scientists developing robots for exploring jungles do it by sending robots out into jungle to learn for themselves.

“What we’d do is get lots of small robots that are quite simple and cheap to make. We’d send them out, and some of them would do better than others.”

By “do better than others,” Howard means make it back to the lab in one piece. Those that do would be allowed to “mate” and create the next generation of bots to send out into the jungle again and repeat the process. What could possibly go wrong?

Where did every bot-ty go?

“From the Gospel according to Matthew. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Sage advice, you say? Would you feel the same way if you knew it was an AI robot’s response to your concern? In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Gabriele Trovato, a roboticist and assistant professor at Waseda University in Japan, introduces SanTO, a 17-inch-tall robot equipped with a microphone, sensors and a facial recognition-enabled camera. Trovato developed SanTO with a specific purpose in mind (view photos of SanTO here):

Roboticist Gabriele Trovato designed SanTO, a robot shaped like a figurine of a Catholic saint, to provide comfort and assistance to the elderly.

GABRIELE TROVATO

THE FUTURE OF EVERYTHING

A woman interacts with SanTO at a nursing home in Siegen, Germany.

PHOTO: GABRIELE TROVATO

Built from the body of an automated-teller machine, the BlessU-2 robot can communicate in seven languages and offers several different types of prayers, such as those focused on tradition or renewal. 

PHOTO: DIANA LOEFFLER

“Religion has evolved through history, from oral tradition to written tradition to press and mass media. So it’s very reasonable to think that AI and robotics will help religion to spread out more.”

Although Trovato was warned by religious officials that SanTO should not offer biblical interpretations, it comes close by making decisions which text to recite by interpreting the needs of the person it is working for based on the questions asked and cues picked up by the facial recognition system. Isn’t that counseling and teaching using biblical quotations?

Robots are reproducing, evolving and “spreading the word” of religious texts. Perhaps when we worry about our eventual takeover by the robot overlords, we should less concerned about the “over” and fret more about the “lord” part.

Or are we too late?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

31-03-2019 om 13:43 geschreven door peter  

Archaeologists have discovered over 100 ancient inscriptions that were carved into the rock at Wadi el-Hudi, which is where the Egyptians mined amethysts in ancient times. They also found 14 stele (which are inscriptions that are carved on a slab of stone or pillar) and 45 ostraca (which are inscriptions that are written on pottery pieces).

While tests are currently being conducted on the findings, archaeologists have already concluded that several of the inscriptions were from approximately 3,900 years ago (a time period known as the “Middle Kingdom”), and several of the ostraca were from around 2,000 years ago (approximately the same time that Egypt was taken over by Rome).

Egypt

During the Middle Kingdom time period in Egypt, the pharaohs discovered that Wadi el-Hudi was an excellent source for amethysts and started mining it. “They were bringing it back and making it into jewelry and doling it out to their elite and their princesses,” Kate Liszka, who is the director of the Wadi el-Hudi expedition, told Live Science.

Although other scholars previously surveyed Wadi el-Hudi, many of the inscriptions were overlooked. “The site is just so full of inscriptions behind every boulder and around every wall that they missed a lot of them,” Liszka stated. In order to find new inscriptions, the team is using 3D modeling, photogrammetry, and reflectance transformation imaging (RTI).

The team hopes that the inscriptions will answer many of the mysteries surrounding Wadi el-Hudi, such as whether or not the miners were being forced to work against their free will. “I don’t know if I’m excavating a legitimate settlement where people were treated well or if I’m excavating a prison camp,” explained Liszka.

Amethyst

Some of the inscriptions indicate that there were groups of soldiers who were staring down at the miners while they worked, which makes researchers wonder whether the soldiers were keeping a watchful eye on the miners to make sure they were working hard, or if they were just protecting them.

• Click here to see one of the many inscriptions discovered in Wadi el-Hudi.

Dating back around 3,900 years, this site at Wadi el-Hudi houses a settlement in a valley between two hills and an amethyst mine.

Credit: Photo courtesy Wadi el-Hudi Expedition

One of more than 100 inscriptions that were recently discovered by researchers at Wadi el-Hudi.

Credit: Photo courtesy Wadi el-Hudi Expedition

Another unanswered question is how the miners got access to water since the closest well was 1.9 miles away from them. And since it’s very possible that the well wasn’t even in use at that time, the Nile River was around 18.6 miles away.

Researchers also found a 3,400-year-old stela which had the name Usersatet written on it, who was viceroy of Kush in southern Egypt. What’s so mysterious about the finding is that no mining was being conducted at Wadi el-Hudi during that time, leaving it completely abandoned, so why did someone bring it 18.6 miles throughout the desert in order to leave it there? Hopefully with more research being done there, some of these questions may eventually be answered.

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

31-03-2019 om 13:28 geschreven door peter  

Deadly blizzard, UFO or...? Prosecutors travel to Dyatlov Pass to solve 60yo Mystery

Located in the Ural Mountains, the remote patch of wilderness became infamous in paranormal lore after a 1959 incident where a group of hikers were found dead in the Ural Mountains under unclear circumstances.

Despite a contemporaneous investigation by Russian officials and subsequent decades of study from independent researchers, the cause of the strange event has never been fully determined.

Back in 2008 an unnamed individual reportedly stumbled upon an intriguing piece of metal while visiting the area and was only recently confirmed after an expedition finally made their way out to the specific location to both see the object for themselves and to bring it back to civilization to be studied.

And now Russian prosecutors conducted a week-long expedition in March to re-open a probe in to the mysterious Dyatlov Pass case.

  

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

31-03-2019 om 12:19 geschreven door peter  

The 5 Most Credible Modern UFO Sightings

30-03-2019 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

Stargazers looking for Aurora Australis mystified by bright green flash

PHOTO: Residents in Tasmania's south captured the fast flash of light on camera. 

(Supplied: Leoni Williams)

 

• RELATED STORY: Aurora Australis 'picket fence' captured by photographer after five years of chasing
• RELATED STORY: What's an aurora and how do you spot one in Australia?

They were waiting for the Aurora Australis, but amateur photographers were left guessing after seeing a bright green flash light up the Tasmanian sky.

Key points:

• Residents in Tasmania's south saw a bright green flash in the starry sky
• Social media users suggested it was a meteor, glowing green because of the metals inside the rock
• An expert says it could also be space debris, but added it was a "spectacular" sight

Amateur photographer Leoni Williams captured a shot of the green streak about 9:30pm on Thursday by "accident".

Overlooking Pipe Clay Lagoon, toward Clifton Beach in southern Tasmania, Ms Williams had her camera facing south in anticipation of an Aurora.

"I was very lucky to capture this bright green object before it disappeared over the horizon," Ms Williams said.

"I'm still not sure what it was. I didn't actually see it with the naked eye as I wasn't watching. I had just set the camera on 30 seconds and pushed the shutter and turned back to my phone.

"I would imagine it was pretty quick. I nearly missed it because it was at the end of the exposure."

Photo sparked social media debate

Ms Williams took to social media to try and find out what she'd captured on camera.

Opinions varied, with some thinking it was a shooting star, a fallen satellite or even a UFO.

Spotted from the Huon Valley to Dodges Ferry, other photos began popping up on social media.

Eventually, it was shared on social media page Australian Meteor Reports.

"It's definitely a meteor," page administrator David Finlay said.

"That flash that's been captured is a very, very bright meteor — it's what we'd call a 'fireball'. It probably lit up the countryside."

PHOTO: The bright green flash puzzled onlookers in Tasmania. 

(Supplied: Daniel Lam)

Mr Finlay — a former industrial chemist who has been studying astronomy from an very early age — said the flash was created by a "small rock from space, blazing through the atmosphere, creating friction with the atmosphere".

"It glows and ionises gas — that's what you see as this fireball blazing through the sky.

"If it actually survives atmospheric entry and lands as a rock on land, that's what we call a meteorite — only if it makes it to the ground."

Why is it green?

As for the bright green glow, Mr Finlay said it had to do with the elemental components of the meteor.

"The green is produced by a combination of the nickel and iron in the meteor," he said.

"It's probably just a normal rocky meteor but it would contain flecks of metal in the rock, producing that colour. It's very cool.

"It's what we colloquially call a 'fish squisher' because it's over the ocean," he said.

Professor Simon Ellingsen, the head of physics at the University of Tasmania, said it was possible the object was manmade space debris rather than a meteor.

"[The colour] is almost certainly because of the specific elements and minerals in the object," he said.

"It probably wouldn't have looked that green to the naked eye [because] digital cameras are so good at picking up the light."

He said while it wasn't unusual to spot a meteor or space debris over Tasmania, this object would have been a special sight to see.

"The sort of rule of thumb is if you go outside to a clear, dark sight, you'll see a shooting star, so to speak, about every 10 minutes or so," he said.

"This one that's been caught is bigger than normal and more spectacular than you normally get.

"This photographer was obviously in the right place at the right time."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

VIDEO: Stargazers were hoping to glimpse the Aurora Australis, seen here over Tasmania late last year (ABC News)

30-03-2019 om 23:26 geschreven door peter  

SpaceX readies 'Starship Hopper' spacecraft prototype for first test

The uncrewed vehicle is a small version of a 100-passenger spaceship that will take humans to Mars.

SpaceX is planning to test a mini prototype of its 100-passenger Starship, which the company is developing to carry people to and from Mars.

SpaceX

{ https://www.nbcnews.com/mach }

30-03-2019 om 23:01 geschreven door peter  

NASA’s First Mars Rover Actually Explored An Ancient Sea

By Alison Klesman 

The Pathfinder mission landed in Mars’ Ares Vallis, where the Sojourner rover catalogued rocks that may have been eroded by floodwaters. 7

(Credit: NASA/JPL)

Mars may be a dry, cold planet today, but it was once a warmer, wetter one. NASA’s Opportunity rover was the first rover to find solid evidence of water on Mars — but years before Opportunity’s discoveries, NASA’s first Martian rover mission spent its time exploring an ancient spillway that once connected Mars’ northern ocean to an inland sea.

Mars Pathfinder landed 22 years ago, on July 4, 1997. The mission’s 23-pound (10.6 kilograms) rover, Sojourner, was the first rover to explore the surface of Mars, wheeling through Ares Vallis for 83 days. The mission investigated whether massive channels in the landscape, spotted by Mariner 9, were caused by floodwaters, as indicated from orbit. But the rover’s findings were inconclusive, leaving open the possibility that the shallow channels had been carved by lava instead of water. But that possibility is no longer viable, according to a paper published February 25 in Nature Scientific Reports, which states that the features Sojourner mapped are, in fact, the result of cataclysmic flooding on the Red Planet.

Formed by Martian Water

“Our paper shows a basin, with roughly the surface area of California, that separates most of the gigantic Martian channels from the Pathfinder landing site. Debris or lava flows would have filled the basin before reaching the Pathfinder landing site. The very existence of the basin requires cataclysmic floods as the channels’ primary formational mechanism,” said lead author Alexis Rodriguez of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) in a press release.

The basin, according to Rodriguez, contains sedimentary rock consistent with deposits that would have been left by groundwater flooding, which formed an inland sea. “This sea is approximately 155 miles (250 kilometers) upstream from the Pathfinder landing site, an observation that reframes its paleo-geographic setting as part of a marine spillway, which formed a land barrier separating the inland sea and a northern ocean,” she said. “Our simulation shows that the presence of the sea would have attenuated cataclysmic floods, leading to shallow spillovers that reached the Pathfinder landing site and produced the bedforms detected by the spacecraft.”

According to the researchers, the ancient inland sea resembles the disappearing Aral Sea on Earth. “Our numerical simulations indicate that the [Martian] sea rapidly became ice-covered and disappeared within a few thousand years due to its rapid evaporation and sublimation. During this time, however, it remained liquid below its ice cover,” said co-author Bryan Travis, also of PSI.

Though its presence was brief, Rodriguez said the sea could have hosted life — and the deposits it left at the Pathfinder landing site could contain evidence of that life. That evidence could even be within reach, she added, as its location is “easily accessible by future missions.”

Are you ready to take a closer look at Mars? Check out our free downloadable eBook: Mars: Exploring the Red Planet.

30-03-2019 om 22:51 geschreven door peter  

Did Curiosity snap an image of a mysterious “creature” on Mars?

Ultimate evidence of life on Mars: Did NASA’s Curiosity rover snap an image of a mysterious “creature” on the surface of Mars?

NASA’s Curiosity rover has snapped another incredible image of Mars that has led to a lot of debate whether there is life or not on the red planet. Many people believe that even though the surface conditions of Mars are far too harsh to sustain life, there is life beneath the Martian surface, and this new image of NASA’s curiosity rover has awakened the debate among researchers, ufologists, and media whether Mars is home to alien life.

For all of you who remain skeptical head over to NASA’s archives and see the RAW image file, to do so, click here.

The “peculiar” image seems to show “something” hanging onto the cliffs on the red planet, at least that’s how it looks, doesn’t it? Can’t see the object in question? Look carefully to the center-right part of the image, there, you will notice a strange object that clearly stands out from the rest of the surrounding landscape. There are rocks on Mars, there are rocks that might look a bit strange, and then you have objects like the one in this image. Something that is completely out of place and doesn’t seem to be a rock.

The object in question seems to have ten weirdly shaped “lines” or “tentacles” coming from the center of the oval-shaped “structure?”

If it is a rock, then it surely is the strangest rock ever seen on the red planet, wouldn’t you agree?

But, what is this thing? Is it just another rock? Or is it possible that this image is the ultimate proof of life on Mars, and that this isn’t just another rock, like many claim it to be? A Very strange-looking rock that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere in the surrounding landscape of the red planet.

You cannot deny seeing a curiously shaped object in the image, an object that doesn’t look like a rock and doesn’t seem to belong to the cliff, where the object is seen.

Interestingly, people who have seen the image believe that this mysterious objects is in fact guarding some sort of entrance to an underground tunnel on Mars. Too much science fiction? Well could be, but if you see the image closely, you will see that behind this mysterious “tentacle object,” there seems to be some sort of entrance, of course this could be just another shadow behind it, but you cannot help and wonder what the heck this object actually is?

Rock or not, this image has certainly awakened the interest in a lot of people for Mars, and everything that is going on at the surface of neighbour planet.

What if, there actually is life on Mars, life that somehow, managed to survive the harsh conditions on the red planet, and found a safe harbor beneath the Red Planet’s surface.

Let us know what you think this mysterious object might be!

• source

{ http://sciencevibe.com/ }

30-03-2019 om 22:25 geschreven door peter  

UFO sighting: Witness recounts 'fast moving UFO' over Glasgow - 'I felt threatened'

A BRITISH UFO eye witness felt “threatened” by the presence of an alien spaceship emitting lights over Glasgow, according to a shock UFO report.

30-03-2019 om 22:11 geschreven door peter