Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
30-04-2019
Noorse vissers aangevallen door witte dolfijn met harnas: “Mogelijk getraind door Russische marine” -- HLN.be
Noorse vissers aangevallen door witte dolfijn met harnas: “Mogelijk getraind door Russische marine” -- HLN.be
DIERENNoorse vissers hebben aan de grens met Rusland een wel heel bijzondere vondst gedaan. Ze stootten er op een witte dolfijn die een soort van harnas aan had. Het dier benaderde de vissersboot zonder schroom en begon aan touwen en kabels te trekken. Onderzoekers en marinebiologen konden het harnas uiteindelijk van het dier verwijderen, en lazen tot hun verbazing de inscriptie ‘Eigendom van Sint-Petersburg’. Mogelijk is het dier dan ook ontsnapt uit de Russische militaire basis van Moermansk.
De vissers merkten de witte dolfijn of beloega voor het eerst op in de buurt van het dorp Inga in het uiterste noorden van Noorwegen, niet ver van de Russische grens. “We wilden onze netten uitgooien toen we de dolfijn tussen onze boten zagen zwemmen”, vertelt visser Joar Hesten aan de Noorse zender NRK. “Hij kwam op ons af, en het was pas toen dat we zagen dat hij een soort harnas aan had.”
Het dier bleef de hele tijd de boot volgen en toonde duidelijk weinig angst voor de marinebiologen die ter plaatse kwamen om poolshoogte te nemen. De dolfijn bleef de boten benaderen en hapte naar touwen en kabels om er aan te trekken.
Noorse experts denken nu dat het harnas bedoeld was om er een camera of mogelijk zelfs wapens op te bevestigen en vermoeden dat het dier militair getraind is. De Russische marinebasis van Moermansk ligt niet ver van de andere kant van de grens. De inscriptie ‘Eigendom van Sint-Petersburg’ lijkt de Noorse theorie alleen maar te bevestigen. “Als de dolfijn uit Rusland komt - en we hebben alle redenen om dat aan te nemen - is hij wellicht niet voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek getraind, maar voor het leger”, zei ook Martin Biuw van het Noorse Instituut voor Marineonderzoek aan NRK.
Samuli Haapala@SamuHaa
Tromsø läheltä norjalaiset kalastajat vapauttivat maitovalaan valjaista joissa teksti: "Equipment of St. Petersburg". Epäily että karannut Murmanskin laivastotukikohdasta #sotavalas#turpo
Dolfijnen en zeehonden worden al langer militair ingezet, onderzoek daarnaar startte al tijdens de Koude Oorlog. De Verenigde Staten gebruiken bijvoorbeeld dolfijnen bij zoekacties op zee of bij het lokaliseren van onderwatermijnen. De dieren hebben een bijzonder goed zicht, zijn snel en wendbaar en hebben een goed geheugen. Rusland zou zijn onderzoeksprogramma in de jaren 90 stopgezet hebben, maar zette er de laatste jaren opnieuw op in.
In een reportage uit 2017 legde het Russische ministerie van Defensie zelf uit dat het opnieuw testen aan het doen was met beloega’s, dolfijnen en zeehonden. Tegelijkertijd liet president Poetin drie oude Sovjet-bases aan de Arctische kust heropenen. Volgens de documentaire werden de dieren getraind om de toegangen tot de marinebases te bewaken, maar konden ze ook mijnen zoeken, objecten optillen van de zeebodem en voorwerpen vervoeren.
De testen wezen overigens uit dat de witte dolfijnen niet bijster geschikt waren voor alle trainingsopdrachten. “Velen van hen werden ziek na de lange opdrachten in de koude polaire wateren”, aldus de Russische documentaire. Zeehonden bleken uiteindelijk effectiever te zijn, en de dieren waren ook beter in het uitvoeren van mondelinge commando’s. “Zeehonden kunnen actief samenwerken met duikers: ze kunnen voorwerpen aangeven of wegbrengen en ze herkennen ‘hun’ duiker in een groep anderen. Met een speciaal commando kunnen ze de toegang blokkeren voor andere duikers en hen zelfs proberen te doden.”
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Vergeet elektrisch rijden. Deze auto rijdt op zout water (ja, dat lees je goed)
Vergeet elektrisch rijden. Deze auto rijdt op zout water (ja, dat lees je goed)
De Quant e-Sportlimousine, die zijn debuut beleefde op de Autosalon van Genève, loopt op zout water. Hij mag gewoon de weg op.
De wagen beschikt over 920 pk, gaat in 2,8 seconden van 0 naar 100 en heeft een topsnelheid van 350 kilometer per uur.
“We zijn verheugd als pioniers een auto te presenteren die op de openbare weg mag rijden en geen uitstoot heeft,” zei bedenker van de sportwagen Nunzio La Vecchia.
Goedgekeurd
Na een uitgebreide inspectie werd de auto goedgekeurd door de bevoegde instanties. De auto is uitgebreid getest op de openbare weg in Duitsland en andere delen van Europa.
De auto wordt aangedreven door vier elektrische motoren die stroom opwekken door de elektrochemische reactie van twee elektrolietoplossingen.
De elektriciteit wordt opgeslagen en verdeeld door twee supergeleiders.
Vijf keer verder
De auto kan met dit zogeheten NanoFlowcell-systeem vijf keer verder rijden dan de huidige systemen, waaronder zelfs de meest geavanceerde lithium-ion-accu’s.
Het systeem is volgens La Vecchia extreem veilig en milieuvriendelijk. Het bevat nagenoeg geen bewegende delen en produceert vrijwel geen overtollige warmte.
Prijs
Het enige minpunt is de prijs: ruim 1,3 miljoen euro.
De fabrikant wil de NanoFlowcell-technologie ook gaan toepassen in meer betaalbare auto’s. “We hebben grote plannen en richten ons niet alleen op de auto-industrie,” klonk het.
Harde klap voor olie-industrie: auto met zout water als brandstof uitgevonden.
“The time has come to clear the roads for the Saltwater powered Quant e sports sedan. With salt water, yes. And not just any small, foolish concept car for one person, no, a full-fledged, fast, sporty-elegant and efficient sports car.
The principle is this: the flow cell battery, or more beautifully sounding, the Flowcell assimilated to the same extent as it works as a fuel cell. Two separate 200L cells contain liquid electrolytes that make “cold burning” possible. Electrolytes appear in the form of liquid metallic salts, in this case those present in salt water. They have mobile ions that are directed towards electric fields. The cold combustion (between 60 to 160 degrees), which originates in the cells, means the oxidation and reduction take place at the same time – who remembers chemistry knows that thereby a lot of energy is released (here: 600 V and 50 A) – and so electricity is generated.”
Residents of several small U.S. cities throughout America’s west and Midwest were stunned this week when a state-of-the-art Russian spy plane appeared overhead. “Did you spot the Russian ‘spy’ plane yesterday?” asked the Sandhills Expressbefore answering its own question with “don’t worry, because it wasn’t really spying at all!” It turns out it was spying, though – just the legal, agreed-upon kind.
In March 2019, another Russian spy plane flew over some of America’s most secretive and mysterious research installations including the infamous Area 51. While foreign surveillance missions flying through the nation’s most sensitive airspace may sound suspicious, it turns out the flights are part of what’s known as the Open Skies Treaty, an international agreement which allows nations to routinely observe one another’s military activities and facilities from directly overhead.
A Russian Tu-154M
This latest aircraft was a new, specially outfitted Tupolev Tu-214 designed specifically for these types of Open Skies flights. The Russian reconnaissance craft flew over West Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, flying over Fort Bliss, Fort Riley, McConnell Air Force Base, Vance Air Force Base, Sheppard Air Force Base, and Dyess Air Force Base. Fort Bliss, in particular, is home to the U.S. Army’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense batteries.
Aside from military bases, the aircraft’s flight took it over White Sands Missile Range, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, and the Pueblo Chemical Depot in the process. These sites are home of some of the U.S. military industrial complex’s most secretive and advanced research into fields such as directed energy weapons, aircraft countermeasures, and radar signature research. What were they looking for up there?
While these types of flights are sure to raise alarms, we can all be sure of one thing: the really good stuff isn’t being kept out in the open in hangars marked with the insignia of the U.S. armed Forces. That stuff is kept in salt mines, deep subterranean bunkers, or Las Vegas hangars owned by private aerospace firms. Furthermore, according to a press release issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense, American observers were aboard these Open Skies flight to ensure the Russians saw only what we wanted them to.
Which makes you wonder: with how advanced and ubiquitous surveillance satellites are these days, what not just spy from space? What is the real need for these Open Skies Treaty flights in the space age?
Everyone’s favorite 60-sided balls have been found in the interstellar space between stars. While the finding may not be Nobel Prize-worthy like the discovery of the original 60-atom molecules also known as Buckminsterfullerene, it’s significant in helping to identify what’s in the mysterious medium between stars and what else it might hold. Does this mean extraterrestrials play soccer (OK, football)?
“Combined with prior, ground-based observations … our Hubble Space Telescope spectra place the detection of interstellar [buckminsterfullerene] beyond reasonable doubt.”
It wasn’t as easy as it sounds in that simple explanation from the article announcing the discovery in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Physicist Martin Cordiner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center led the research, which began with using the Hubble Telescope’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) to examine the interstellar medium (ISM) between them. ISM is made of diverse absorption bands of extremely diffuse and relatively unknown matter (also called diffuse interstellar bands or DIB) that are visible in spectra ranging from visible light to near infra-red. Scientists have previously been able to determine they’re not made of stellar matter but they’ve only been able to detect molecule composed of three atoms. However, a two-year observation (2016 to 2018) of the ionization of light as it passed through the ISM led to an unexpected HUGE discovery.
A buckyball or Buckminsterfullerene is a fullerene (a form or carbon) composed of 60 carbon atoms in a round structure made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons (causing it to resemble a soccer ball) with a carbon atom at each vertex of each polygon. That shape also resembles a geodesic dome, which is why its discovers in 1985 named it after architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller, who popularized it in many of his architectural designs. In case you missed it, a buckyball is composed of 60 atoms – that’s 57 more than the biggest atoms found in interstellar matter to date.
“Currently, the leading theory is that they form as a result of carbon chemistry in the warm envelopes of dying stars, such as Red giants.”
When asked by Forbes how the buckyballs got there, Cordiner waxed poetic about the “warm envelopes of dying stars” – the residue left after a Red giant star exhausts its supply of hydrogen and carbon atoms are pushed to its surface in a process called a dredge-up, allowing them to appear in its spectrum. It seems natural rather than accidental that at least some of these carbon molecules would be the complex Buckminsterfullerenes – and now there’s proof.
“The confirmation of interstellar [buckminsterfullerene] represents a breakthrough in our understanding of chemical complexity in the diffuse interstellar medium [..] bringing a new understanding of the types of molecules that may be responsible for the remaining (unidentified) diffuse interstellar bands.”
What does all of this mean? For now, it confirms that what looks like a void between stars is actually teeming with large molecules in diffuse interstellar bands. While not as entertaining as diffuse heavy metal bands, finding buckyballs in-between stars is still a big deal.
Since the dawn of warfare as we know it today, humans have been using animals as tools of war. Elephants, horses, and other pack animals have been used to carry loads for thousands of years, while fiercer predators like dogs and lions have at times been used to inflict damage on enemies. Later, as human communication media shrank in the early 20th century, we began using animals like pigeons or dogs to carry messages for us through areas where human soldiers could not travel. Given that animals have always been an integral part of human existence, it’s natural they would be a part of warfare, too
More recently, there have been allegations that some nations have previously used or are still using animals as spies. Dolphins, in particular, have indeed been used for bomb detection and marine reconnaissance thanks to their high degree of intelligence and cooperation with humans.
Soviet Navy training a dolphin in the port of Sevastopol.
While this particular use of dolphins has stayed relatively obscure, a new report published by The Guardian this week highlights the military use of aquatic mammals – this time whales – and may suggest that some of them may have gotten loose of their training grounds or were turned loose into the ocean years ago. What would happen if these highly-trained animals did indeed escape back into the wild? Isn’t this how the Planet of the Apes reboot started?
According to The Guardian, fisherman in the small Norwegian fishing village of Inga have in recent weeks been harassed by a mysterious white beluga whale wearing an unidentified harness or apparatus of some kind. The whale reportedly attacks the fishermen’s boats, rubbing itself against their boats in an attempt to remove the strange harness attached to it. The fishermen claim the whale appears to deliberately seek out their boats before engaging in the anomalous behavior.
Beluga whale
The harness the whale wears appears to have been made to carry a camera or some other type of equipment – or maybe a weapon. Pictures posted by Norwegian news site NRK show a strange metal object recovered with the harness, which was eventually cut off by fishermen. To make things stranger, some fishermen have even gotten close enough to inspect the harness device the whale is wearing and say it bears the words “Equipment” and “St. Petersburg.” Norwegian biologists have contacted marine biology laboratories in Russia for answers, but all of them seem to want to point the finger at the Russian Navy and deny all knowledge.
As it turns out, Russia’s Navy along with the Murmansk Sea Biology Research Institute carried out a research program during the height of the Cold War which attempted to train beluga whales to guard entrances to ports or underwater bases and attack any intruders who came close. Could this be one of those long-lost whales?
David Bowie may have inspired many dreams and plans to search for life on Mars, but it appears Russia has been listening to a Lady Gaga songs and are preparing to build a Rocket #9 to take off to the planet Venus where a cosmonaut or robotic equivalent will ask the Goddess of love or some other life form to please take me to your leader. Lady Gaga can do that? Well, yes, plus a new look at old television photos from Russia’s past Venus missions which have convinced scientists that they’re looking at evidence of life on the cloudy planet. Is it wearing a seashell bikini?
“This conclusion follows from the results of the processing of archival data of a television (TV) experiment performed on the surface of Venus during the Soviet missions “Venus” in 1975-1982. One of the main was a TV experiment to study the surface of the planet. In situ tv study the surface of Venus remains an experiment, still not repeated. Unique archival data were processed using new methods, which significantly improved their detail. As a result of a new analysis of TV images obtained in the Venus missions, up to 18 hypothetically living objects were discovered.”
Model of a Venera lander
The Soviet Union’s Venera (Venus) space program sent eight missions to its namesake, each orbiting the planet and dropping a lander, most of which made it to the surface intact and sent back data and black-and-white “television” pictures before the intense heat destroyed them. Analysis of those pictures was limited to the technology and knowledge of the time, which seems to be why they were set aside for decades until researchers from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences like Leonid Ksanfomaliti picked them up again and took a more modern look. What they saw in those photos, according to their study published in the journal “Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk,” has them excited about new missions.
“The contours of these objects resemble those of earthly creatures, such as those of a lizard, a scorpion and a mushroom. The supposed life forms changed their location in the different images, had remarkable sizes and differed from the surrounding geological formations.”
“Pareidolia!”, not “Aliens!”, is the obvious response to this from those who have seen images from the Moon, Mars and other planets that look like animals and vegetables but turn out to be minerals. However, the study’s authors propose an alternative hypothesis based on the drastic differences between these objects and their immediate surroundings.
“Objects have a noticeable size and may indicate the existence of life on Venus in physical conditions that are radically different from those on earth. Earth life is based on the aquatic environment. At temperatures of 460 degrees C water cannot exist in liquid form at the landing sites of the landing vehicles.”
Depiction of a Venera lander on Venus
In other words, Venus is one of those places where life won’t look like life on Earth because of its chemical mix and lack of water. Despite the fact that the objects in the photos resemble Earth creatures and plants, they say the next missions should throw out all preconceived notions (and pareidolian assumptions) and look for something completely different (perhaps they can get Monty Python to consult).
So, it’s not the shape so much as the movements which have these scientists excited about the possibility of life on Venus. Future missions (Russia is planning one as soon as 2025) should look for a large plain to drop the lander in, test for non-carbon (nitrogen perhaps) forms of life and watch for movement.
Sounds exciting, although giant mushroom-eating scorpions would make a better song or movie.
Someday a giant meteor will slam into the Atlantic Ocean, and the colossal tsunami that is produced will wipe out most of the people that are living along the east coast. In 1998, a big Hollywood movie entitled “Deep Impact” imagined what such an event would look like, and scientists assure us that it is just a matter of time before it takes place. And since 39 percentof all Americans live in a county that directly borders a shoreline, we are in an extremely vulnerable position. Let’s just hope that what I am talking about in this article does not happen any time soon.
If you know me well, then you probably know that this is a hot button issue for me, and so it definitely got my attention.
And it must be a hot button issue for a lot of other people as well, because it has already been viewed more than 3.5 million times.
I did some digging around, and I found an accompanying article for the video. According to that article, someday a wall of water 3000 feet high could come racing toward us at 620 miles per hour…
In six hours, you, your government, and 124 million other people across 14 states will be tested by the greatest disaster to ever hit the U.S. East Coast. A great wave, 1000 meters tall (3280 ft.), moving towards you at 1000 km/h (620 mph), and that’s only the beginning.
Boston, New York, Philly, D.C., Miami. All underwater. And you?
Of course the size of the tsunami would all depend upon the size of the event that caused it.
According to scientists at the University of California at Santa Cruz, if a giant meteor suddenly slammed into the Atlantic Ocean it could potentially create a tsunami with a wall of water as high as 400 feet…
If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States.
Either way, we are talking about death and destruction on a scale that is hard to imagine.
Once a meteor hit, there would be a race against time to get away from the massive wall of water rapidly approaching the east coast. The creators of the Facebook video that I just mentioned envision that everyone would have “6 hours of advance notice”…
The death toll would be staggering; the economic impact, easily costing billions, if not trillions of dollars. It will take decades to rebuild, and yet, is it wrong to suggest that we might’ve gotten off easy?
How much worse would it have been without the 6 hours of advance notice? That’s right, you owe a big thank you to these supersmart buoys monitoring the coast, keeping you safe and dry, so that you can rest easy, and keep watching ‘What If.’
Sadly, the truth is that we would probably get very little warning. For example, if a giant meteor were to splash down near Puerto Rico, the amount of time before impact would be extremely limited. You could try to get in your car and outrace the wall of water coming at you at 620 miles per hour, but of course the highways would be jammed with other people trying to get out as well.
In a worst case scenario, tens of millions of people would die, and all of our east coast cities would essentially be destroyed.
NASA is going to be using a simulation of an “asteroid apocalypse” in order to help the space agency prepare for the cataclysmic event. And they are taking it seriously, as disaster planners from FEMA will join NASA for a dress rehearsal of doomsday.
International partners, including the European Space Agency (ESA), will also be a part of the simulation. The drill is said to be a “tabletop exercise” that will simulate just how a planetary asteroid emergency would play out in real time.
We truly do live in very strange times, and they are going to get a whole lot stranger.
A single moment in time can change everything. Most people assume that NASA knows about all of the big rocks that could potentially slam into our planet, but that is not true at all. According to one estimate, approximately 17,000 large near-Earth objects remain undetected. But since they are “undetected”, the truth is that nobody knows the real number.
Meteors go whizzing by us all the time, and NASA doesn’t discover a lot of them until they are already past us.
In reality, we are sitting ducks, and someday our luck will finally run out.
High Level Security Officers Overheard Discussing Alien Presence, They're Here
High Level Security Officers Overheard Discussing Alien Presence, They're Here
COAST TO COAST AM. Further proof of the reality of the UFO phenomenon came when Levenda was discussing topic with a room full of people who either had or currently maintain high-level security clearances.
“[They were] discussing this like it’s normal to discuss it… and they’re not talking about proof… they’re now trying to understand it,” he reported.
According to Levenda, the UFO phenomenon is real, humankind has been contacted, and we must now move on to the bigger issues of figuring out what this contact means and where we go from there.
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Star Made from a Disrupted Dwarf Galaxy
Star Made from a Disrupted Dwarf Galaxy
Stars retain the materials of their birthplace. Some stars are made of the residue of material from dwarf galaxies passing larger galaxies.
Small stellar systems like dwarf galaxies are suggested to be the main building blocks of our Galaxy. However, it is unclear how many and what kind of stars in our Galaxy are originated from satellite dwarf galaxies.
This is a star accreted from a disrupted dwarf galaxy.
Credit: Chinese National Astronomy
An international team led by ZHAO Gang, a professor from the National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) discovered a chemically peculiar star accreted from a disrupted dwarf galaxy. According to results obtained through the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) and Subaru telescope, the star has an unusually low amount of magnesium which is the eighth most abundant element in the universe.
Meanwhile it contains an excessive amount of heavy elements, such as europium, gold, and uranium. The team reported their findings online in Nature Astronomy on April 29th, 2019.
“Stars preserve chemical information of its birth site. We can distinguish stars formed in the Milky Way from stars formed in dwarf galaxies based on their chemical abundances,” says ZHAO who is also the corresponding author of the paper.
The chemical composition of this star that the authors discovered suggests it is originated from a dwarf galaxy which was disrupted by interaction with the Milky Way.
The data was obtained by LAMOST, a spectroscopic survey telescope that is capable to take 4,000 spectra in a single exposure. So far LAMOST has obtained more than 8 million stellar spectra for studies of the formation of the Milky Way. “The massive spectra provided by the LAMOST survey give us a great opportunity to find chemically peculiar stars,” says XING Qianfan, Ph.D., first author of this paper. This type of stars can be used to explore the chemical evolution of different stellar systems.
XING continues, “This newly discovered star with large excesses of heavy elements provides a window for exploring the chemical evolution of disrupted dwarf galaxies. The star formation in dwarf galaxies is relatively slow comparing to larger galaxies, leading to chemical differences among their stellar populations. For instance, the magnesium to iron (Mg/Fe) abundance ratios in stars of dwarf galaxies currently found around the Milky Way are much smaller than those in the majority of stars in the Milky Way.”
“This is the first discovery of a star having a very low amount of magnesium and an excessive amount of heavy elements,” says co-author LI Haining, Ph.D.
The extreme enhancement of heavy elements of this star suggests this dwarf galaxy was affected by high-yield rapid neutron-capture process (r-process), the dominant process through which elements heavier than iron are formed. Such process may happen during mergers of binary neutron stars in the dwarf galaxy.
“The discovery of this chemically peculiar star is a good start of chemical identification of stars accreted from dwarf galaxies. Such stars will be good tracers for exploring the assemble history of the Milky Way,” says ZHAO.
This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Contacts and sources:
Xu Ang The National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC)
Video:Two Mysterious Skulls Discovered in the mountains of the Caucasus region of Adygea
Video:Two Mysterious Skulls Discovered in the mountains of the Caucasus region of Adygea
In the mountains of the Caucasus region of Adygeya they were found two skulls belonging to an unknown creature for science with the emblem of the Ahnenerbe, probably the most secret society within the dedicated to the study of the occult and the supernatural forces In the summer of 2015 in Elbrus hunters warehouse found another suitcase “Ahnenerbe” from the country of origin of the skull, presumably belonging to the huntsman of the German division “Edelweiss”, a ring and a set of Nazi uniforms. On the ring depicts a profile of a soldier in a mountain caps to which are attached oak leaves. At the bottom of the flower edelweiss. And last year, in the same places the locals reported that excavated the burial of hundreds of bodies of two German Jaegers, which probably covered the avalanche of many years ago.
Video:The Russians conducted an experiment similar to that of Philadelphia??
Video:The Russians conducted an experiment similar to that of Philadelphia??
The Philadelphian experiment is a designation for a classified military experiment that was supposed to take place at the naval base in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1943. It is one of the most famous military experiments, but many speculations are still underway here, and there are plenty of ambiguities.
That is why he is interested in so many mystery hunters and there are many conspiracy theories in circulation.
The experiment has never been officially confirmed by the US government, and is still surrounded by a series of secrets. So I warn beforehand that it is not necessarily the truth and that the whole event should be taken with reserve and distance.
The aim of the experiment was to hide or “invade” the USS Eldridge destroyer so that it was hidden not only from the enemy radars but also from the sight of a regular observer.
This would give the US a tremendous military advantage in the war.
The experiment should include world-renowned scientists such as Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein. The first unsuccessful experiments of this kind were to take place between 1933 and 1940. The project was based on Einstein’s theory of relativity and the use of a combination of gravitational and magnetic fields. The field would merge into one unitary field, which would then change the geometric properties of the space. Even according to official records, Einstein was employed as an adviser in the navy in 1943-1944. According to scientists, huge electric generators bend the light around the object, making it invisible.
These images from Mars will take your breath away: alien picture taken? Alien head or vulgar rock ..
People always argue about the existence of aliens. NASA in the near or distant past, has published an interesting series of photographs, which definitely worth a look!
Scientists, explorers and various researchers are constantly trying to find out if life is found elsewhere in the universe. Many times we can observe different objects that resembled a UFO or other cosmic object.
The existence of life is currently investigating most of the planet Mars, where scientists continually probe and examine the surface. Over the last year managed to take a number of photographs from which we bring you the most interesting in the gallery.
This is on the rocks, stones or cameras really picture taken lizard, creature resembling a woman or alien? See this for more than an interesting collection of photos from Mars and make your own opinion ….
Filming Jupiter at 3:05am Irish time April 8th 2017 from north of Dublin. A wave like this has been observed many times passing the moon by other astronomers, like Crrow777.
Crrow777 states: "We see in the jet wash what we see in boat wakes. Two wakes tied together with no independent wave period or offset.
Both waves remain locked and identical and lack the sharp edge we see in what is called lunar wave - which are not locked and all have different periods and speed - even within the same capture."
An interesting and mysterious phenomenon in space and till now nobody knows what these waves are.
Small meteorite impacts are releasing water from the Moon’s subsurface, a new study finds. Researchers now believe that a small amount of water can be found beneath the lunar surface, dating from the early days of the satellite’s evolution.
This oblique view of the Moon’s surface was photographed by the Apollo 10 astronauts in May of 1969.
When the Apollo missions brought back samples from the moon, researchers analyzed them and found that the moon was formed without any native water. However, a decade ago, trace amounts of water were discovered in the lunar non-polar areas, and recent observations by Cassini, Deep Impact, Lunar Prospector, and Chandrayaan-1 indicate the existence of an active water cycle on the Moon. In addition, an enhanced concentration of hydrogen, which seems to indicate larger water ice deposits in the permanently shadowed craters of the poles was detected by the Lunar Prospector Neutron Spectrometer (LPNS).
Researchers have attributed the origin of the water to solar wind and meteorites, but even so, it’s unclear why the water appears on the lunar surface in some places. In a new study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers propose a new cause for this: meteorites.
The lunar water cycle as proposed in the study. The cycle relies on a desiccated layer overlaying hydrated soils. Hydrogen from solar wind is the main source of water production. Synthesized water diffuses vertically, and can be sequestered in the hydrated layer or lost at the surface.
Image credits: Benna et al / Nature Geoscience.
Researchers led by NASA’ Mehdi Benna found that the timing of 29 water releases is associated with the Moon encountering known meteorite impacts. The study also suggests that a very small amount of water is pervasive in the lunar subsoil, where it was preserved from early in the Moon’s history. When meteorites whack the lunar surface, the impact brings out some of this water.
“We show that water release from meteoroid impacts is indicative of a lunar surface that has a desiccated soil layer of several centimetres on top of uniformly hydrated soil. We infer that the Moon is currently in the process of losing water that was either delivered long ago or present at its formation.”
According to their calculations, the uniformly present at concentrations up to about 0.05%. However, the water pushed outside is lost and never recovered by the moon. Researchers estimate that a total of 200 tonnes of water are lost every year.
These findings may lay the groundwork for future investigation into the origin and fate of water on the Moon, and might also be useful in the potential establishment of a human colony on the moon.
The study “Lunar soil hydration constrained by exospheric water liberated by meteoroid impacts” by Benna et al. has been published in Nature Geoscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0345-3
We Want to Know’: US Navy Working Up Procedures for Reporting UFOs
We Want to Know’: US Navy Working Up Procedures for Reporting UFOs
The US Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots to officially report “unidentified aircraft” or “unidentified flying objects” (UFOs), which may help destigmatize the process of informing the service about such encounters.
"There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated airspace in recent years," the Navy said in a recent statement to Politico.
Thus, it said, "the Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft."
According to the US Navy, highly trained military personnel and pilots have had enough encounters with UFOs to warrant officially reporting them in a systematic and formal way.
Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFOs for the British government, told Sputnik Wednesday that he "welcomes these new guidelines," which should "make it easier for US Navy pilots and other military personnel to report UFOs."
Nick Pope
@nickpopemod
US Navy drafting new guidelines for reporting UFOs. I support this bold and long-overdue move, which should address the current under-reporting problem. Whatever one believes about the phenomenon, it raises defense, national security and air safety issues.
U.S. Navy drafting new guidelines for reporting UFOs
The service says it has also "provided a series of briefings by senior Naval Intelligence officials as well as aviators who reported hazards to aviation safety."
"Many years ago, the United States Air Force had the policy lead for this subject and ran a program called Project Blue Book," Pope explained, referring to a series of studies of UFOs conducted by the US Air Force starting in 1952. The project was eventually terminated in 1969, because the US government decided that UFOs were "no longer of any interest." However, the sightings continued, and pilots had nowhere to report them, Pope noted.
"Over the years, a culture developed where pilots — military and civilian alike — would see UFOs, but where many of these sightings went unreported, because of the perception that the government wasn't interested, and because pilots feared they wouldn't be believed, that they might be ridiculed, and that their state of mind might be questioned, leading to them being grounded or losing their jobs," Pope explained.
Despite the fact that Project Blue Book was terminated, the Defense Intelligence Agency continued to investigate UFOs between 2007 and 2012, unbeknownst to the public. The research, which cost around $25 million, was funded by the Department of Defense under its Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and was made public in 2017 after a Freedom of Information Act request by Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy.
"We now know that despite the termination of Project Blue Book, the US government was still interested and that investigations were continuing, but without the media and the public being told. The Pentagon's AATIP initiative, for example, investigated several such cases. Three declassified videos of US Navy F-18 jets chasing UFOs were made public in December 2017, when the existence of AATIP was first revealed," Pope told Sputnik.
The video footage released in 2017 showed a 2004 encounter between two US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets and an unknown object. In the recording, the fighter pilots attempt to intercept the unidentified object, described as having "no obvious wings or tails." The pilots were unable to intercept the mysterious aircraft Sputnik previously reported.
In 2017, the New York Times also reported that even though the Pentagon shut down its hush-hush program to study UFOs in 2012, it continues to investigate UFOs brought to its attention by servicemembers.
"We still don't know if these objects are foreign military aircraft or drones, or something else. But pilots see them, radar operators track them, and now the US Navy wants to make sure it acquires as much data on this phenomenon as possible. I strongly support this new initiative. Any nation wants to ensure the territorial integrity of its airspace. If there's something in our skies, we want to know what it is. Whatever people believe about UFOs, there are defense, national security and air safety issues here," Pope added.
US Navy admits that UFOs have been spotted near top secret military facilities
US Navy admits that UFOs have been spotted near top secret military facilities
Jasper Hamill
Footage of a ‘Tic Tac’ UFO recorded by US Navy pilots in 2004
The US Navy has sensationally admitted that UFOs have been spotted near military facilities.
It has received ‘a number of reports’ of unidentified aircraft travelling into protected airspace over military ranges, which means land owned by the American armed forces.
Defence chiefs are so concerned that they have ordered the development of a new process to report and record mysterious sightings of ‘unauthorised’ and ‘unidentified aircraft’.
The announcement comes after details of a secret research drive called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) have slowly leaked into the public domain over the past two years.
One of the most famous incidents revealed during the exposure of AATIP took place in 2004 when pilots on the USS Nimitz Carrier Group were outmanoeuvred by ‘Tic Tac’ crafts moving so quickly they did not appear to obey the laws of physics.
In a statement given to Politico, the Navy said: ‘There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years.
‘For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.
‘As part of this effort, the Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft.’
The UFOs which are likely to have been investigated by the Navy are not necessarily sent by aliens.
Luis Elizondo, the ex-Pentagon staffer who headed up AATIP, told Politico the aircraft ‘don’t have a tail number or a flag — in some cases not even a tail’.
‘What happens in five years if it turns out these are extremely advanced Russian aircraft?’ he asked.
These drawings of what appears to be a space plane were produced by Boeing as long ago as the 1980s
Nick Pope, former UFO investigator for the Ministry of Defence, told Metro that the move was ‘bold and long overdue’.
‘As I know only too well from my experience having investigated UFOs for the Ministry of Defence, there’s chronic under-reporting of UFOs in the military pilot community, as well as in the commercial airline pilot community,’ he continued.
‘That’s because people fear they won’t be believed, they worry about ridicule, and – above all – they’re scared that some psychologist might question their state of mind, resulting in them being grounded.
Whatever one believes about the true nature of the UFO phenomenon, they’re being seen by pilots, tracked on radar systems and sometimes captured on film.
‘Whether you’re a sceptic or a believer, whether you think these things are Russian or Martian, it’s time to lose the pop culture baggage associated with UFOs.
‘It’s time to have a mature, informed debate about the phenomenon and acknowledge what those of us who’ve looked at this from within government already know, namely that there are important defence, national security and air safety issues at stake here.’
We asked Pope why the US Navy is involved rather than the Airforce.
He replied: ‘The UFO issue can be toxic and the US Navy may well face criticism for this move. There may be political fallout, and this new initiative is likely to spark all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories. Interestingly, this might just be one of those rare instances where the conspiracy theories turn out to be true.
‘For years, there have been rumours that it’s the Navy and not the Air Force that has the policy lead on UFOs. It sounds counter-intuitive. The US government’s old UFO program, Project Blue Book, was run by the United States Air Force. In the UK, the MoD’s UFO project had lots of cases involving the Royal Air Force, but very little from the Royal Navy.
‘But the rumours persist, and when the story broke about the Pentagon’s AATIP program, it was three videos of US Navy jets chasing UFOs that made headlines all around the world. So it doesn’t surprise me to see the US Navy leading the way here. There’s always been inter-service rivalry, and President Trump’s Space Force aspirations have added a new dimension to this.
‘A new space race is underway, and the US Navy clearly wants to be at the heart of it.’
US Navy admits to ‘multiple’ UFO sightings over top secret military bases
US Navy admits to ‘multiple’ UFO sightings over top secret military bases
The US Navy is changing how pilots report UFOs after recent sightings
By Charlotte Edwards, Digital Technology and Science Reporter
UFOs have been spotted hovering over top-secret military bases and flying near aircraft, according to the US Navy.
The institution is now drafting new guidelines for pilots and other naval employees so it's easier for them to report any mysterious objects they spot in the sky.
Footage of a ‘Tic Tac’ UFO recorded by US Navy pilots in 2004
This UFO was briefly caught on camera flying next to a military plane by US pilots
The decision to make these new guidelines for UFO sightings has been made in response to recent reports of unidentified flying objects.
In a statement given to US news outlet Politico, the US Navy said: "There have been a number of reports of unauthorised and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years.
"For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.
"As part of this effort, the Navy is updating and formalising the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognisant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft."
A few years ago, a leaked report from the Pentagon revealed that a supersonic UFO shaped like a Tic Tac sweet had stalked a US Aircraft carrier for days before vanishing into thin air.
Some of the pilots said that the aircraft could make itself invisible as it travelled next to them.
The craft was described by one of the pilots mentioned in the report as "solid white, smooth, with no edges... uniformly coloured with no nacelles, pylons or wings", and looked like "an elongated egg or Tic Tac".
The incident happened over a couple of days in November 2004 but the video footage of the flying object was not revealed to the public until December 2017.
Pilots who witnessed the incident reported that they picked up the presence of 8 to 10 objects in their radar equipment on November 10, 2004.
Sceptics think that the sighting could be explained by equipment malfunction or human error.
Retired Pentagon official Luis Elizondo once ran a secret Pentagon program for investigating UFOs until it was reportedly shut down in 2012.
He told Politico that government personnel were often encouraged not to report sightings, making this new admission from the US Navy even more groundbreaking.
Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs for the Ministry of Defence, told us: "This bold new initiative on the part of the US Navy is clearly aimed at de-stigmatising the UFO issue.
"I know from my own experience of having run the MoD's UFO project that fear of being ridiculed or disbelieved, and worries about adverse career consequences means many pilots - military and civil alike - simply don't report these things.
"This new move gives official sanction for pilots, radar operators and other military witnesses to come forward and report what they see. I strongly support this policy change and hope we can do the same thing in the UK."
A drawing of a strange experimental aircraft released in a patent document filed by the US Navy
Life may have arisen in our solar system before Earth even finished forming.
Planetesimals, the rocky building blocks of planets, likely had all the ingredients necessary for life as we know it way back at thedawn of the solar system, said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University (ASU).
And clement conditions may have persisted inside some planetesimals for tens of millions of years — perhaps long enough for life to emerge, said Elkins-Tanton, the director of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration and the principal investigator of NASA's upcoming mission to the odd metallic asteroid Psyche.
Some planetesimals survived into and beyond the planet-forming period, raising the possibility that one of these primitive bodies may have seeded Earth with life, she added.
"Not all planetesimals are going to be involved in the kinds of catastrophic collisions that would cause them to go into a plasma or otherwise completely denature anything that was created," Elkins-Tanton said April 11 at the Breakthrough Discuss conference at the University of California, Berkeley.
"Some things are going to fall — like Chelyabinsk, for example — back onto the surface of a temperate planet," she added, referring to the 65-foot-wide (20 meters) object that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013. "So, there is that possibility in the end."
Elkins-Tanton said this basic idea grew out of a course she taught at ASU in the fall of 2016. At the beginning of the semester, she asked the students to consider whether life could have arisen on small bodies. Over the next few months, the students, Elkins-Tanton and her co-author on the newly presented work, Stephen West, explored this possibility, as well as a number of other questions that stemmed from that core question.
Life as we know it requires three main ingredients: liquid water, organic molecules and an energy source. Planetesimals, which formed within 1.5 million years of the solar system's birth, likely featured all three, Elkins-Tanton said.
For example, more than 35 different amino acids have been identified in the Murchison meteorite, an ancient space rock that fell to Earth in southern Australia in 1969.
Murchison is so full of organics that it "smells like an oil well," Elkins-Tanton said. "What could be a better place for the advent of life than a nice, warm, wet piece of Murchison? So, that's the idea that we're starting with."
The energy source on early planetesimals, such as Murchison's parent body, came from the radioactive decay of aluminum-26, she explained. The heat flowing through some planetesimals' interiors was intense enough to melt the objects completely, which is certainly not conducive to the emergence of life.
But other bodies would have melted only partially, from the inside out, so they would eventually sport a metallic core, a magma-ocean mantle and a rocky, primitive crust. Such planetesimals would have had extremely hot interiors but frigid surfaces, Elkins-Tanton said. Waves of heat radiating from the depths would have spurred the release of fluids such as liquid water, driving that material up toward the surface.
Such processes may have created habitable environments beneath the planetesimals' rocky surfaces. And these environments likely lasted for relatively long stretches.
For example, modeling work performed by Elkins-Tanton and West, who's now at the California-based company Metis Technology Solutions, suggests that small planetesimals — those up to 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide — could have supported liquid water underground for about 15 million years.
And an earlier study Elkins-Tanton conducted with Ben Weiss and Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that larger bodies could have remained wet for even longer — perhaps 50 million years or so.
It's unclear if this window is long enough for life to get going, Elkins-Tanton stressed. That's because we don't know how long that window has to be. "I'm going to bravely assert that we really have no idea," she said.
For example, the earliest unambiguous signs of life on our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth date to about 3.8 billion years ago. But some scientists have presented evidence that microbes already had a foothold here by 4.1 billion years ago. And at this same Breakthrough Discuss meeting, biochemist Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Florida argued that life actually emerged 4.36 billion years ago. (Only at that time was Earth's atmospheric chemistry right for the first organisms, RNA-based microbes, to evolve, Benner said in his talk.)
To be clear, Elkins-Tanton and West aren't arguing that Earth life actually did originate on planetary building blocks — just that this idea is worthy of consideration. And the new work is preliminary; the Breakthrough Discuss talk marked the first time Elkins-Tanton formally presented the idea to her planetary-science colleagues.
She said she hopes the work spurs further discussion and research about the origin of life and its possible dispersal throughout the solar system.
"This is meant to be just a kind of a thought problem for us all to consider," Elkins-Tanton said. "Could life actually have arisen on planetesimals? Could there be evidence for life in meteorites that we have not known to look for? And if this is so, how could they have been spread through the solar system — and many, many unanswerable implications of that possibility."
The idea that life has spread from body to body throughout the solar system is not a new one, of course. For example, Benner and others have suggested that Earth life may actually have originated on Mars and traveled here aboard a rock liberated from the Red Planet by an asteroid or comet strike.
And some researchers have even posited that life may have come to Earth from another star system, perhaps aboard a wandering comet.
Mundane challenges won't stop for what could be the end of the world.
NASA selected an asteroid called 2012 TC4 before its close approach in October 2017 to serve as a practice test of the agency's detection and response systems.
A very strange series of memos arrived at the White House during the fall of 2017, detailing a would-be nightmare scenario: an asteroid apparently on track to hit Earth. But those memos were covered in bright red warnings noting that they were just part of a drill; humanity didn't have any more reasons than normal to fear civilization's end.
The memos were part of a surreal, sophisticated drill that let NASA and the scientific community practice for the existential threat of an asteroid that seems to be on track to hit Earth — all based on a real asteroid. And now, the team involved in the drill has published a final set of findings about how the project went and what humans can do to be better prepared for this potential apocalypse scenario.
"The most important thing was [that] it was the first time we actually tested the whole system, including notification to the White House," Vishnu Reddy, a planetary defense expert at the University of Arizona and a co-author on the new paper, told Space.com last month at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in The Woodlands, Texas. "It was a really fantastic experience for us to test with a real asteroid."
Early in 2017, scientists decided they wanted to conduct such a drill. So they went looking for an asteroid, one that wasn't really a risk but that would come close enough to produce realistic data about how an actual risk could play out. That would allow planetary defense specialists, who exclusively study the threat of asteroid impacts, to test their observation, evaluation and response procedures.
A space rock known as 2012 TC4 fit the bill. During this object's initial detection in 2012, observations of its path through the solar system suggested that it would make a close — but not dangerously close — approach to Earth in October 2017, although researchers weren't positive exactly what track it would take.
That's how the asteroid earned its role as guinea pig for the end of the world as we know it.
"We knew it wasn't a threat … we wanted it to be an exercise, but TC4 was a good candidate," Michael Kelley, a NASA scientist in the planetary defense program and co-author on the overview paper, said during a presentation at the same conference. "It was an asteroid with a slightly uncertain orbit that was in the time frame we were looking for to conduct this exercise. We knew it was out there. We knew roughly where to look in the sky, but we didn't know exactly where to point the telescopes, so we would have to search a little bit to try to find it."
That search began in July 2017, when a team using the Very Large Telescope in Chile began trying to spot TC4. They latched on for good in August, when they had expected they would be able to. A different telescope, Pan-STARRS in Hawaii, also proved separately that, had scientists not possessed the 2012 data, they still would have spotted the asteroid about two weeks before the 2017 closest approach.
As TC4 hurtled closer, scientists turned telescopes around the globe toward the object. First, they looked to track its path. Observers and orbital-trajectory specialists worked together to update their expectations of where precisely the rock would travel, one of the key responsibilities of planetary defense. As that picture developed, the team brought the data to government officials to talk through how the situation would be handled in real life.
The good news is you never heard about a large asteroid hitting Earth in the fall of 2017. The more complicated finding is that there was a time when the team's calculations suggested that this was a real possibility, Kelley said. Briefly, on Sept. 24 of that year, the calculations gave TC4 a 1 in 180 chance of hitting Earth. "This is well below the threshold to trip all the triggers for an emergency situation," Kelley said.
Fortunately, within just a few days, that sliver of a chance had evaporated. The uncertainty makes for a risky situation nevertheless, he added, since the team never wants to act rashly and cause a panic. But someone not following the entire process could have taken that one day's data out of context, intentionally or not.
"You have to be very, very careful when you have a lot of measurements coming in and you're waiting to see what fits the pattern and what does not fit the pattern," Kelley said. "You can get to a point where you are drawing the wrong conclusion if you stop at a certain point or if you just take a snapshot image."
By the end of the exercise, the team had completely eliminated any probability of impact from TC4 in the foreseeable future.
But scientists weren't content with simply predicting the asteroid's path; they also wanted to gather as much data as possible about the rock itself. In particular, they investigated how it dimmed and brightened as it spun in space. In the context of a potential impactor, this information is not just scientifically interesting. More than that, details about an asteroid's rotation and composition can shape the potential disaster, affecting how much of the initial mass makes it through Earth's destructive atmosphere.
Here, too, things got a little dicey. The team had lined up a range of facilities they wanted to use in advance, but fate intervened. Scientists had wanted to use the massive radio dish at Arecibo in Puerto Rico to bounce light waves off the asteroid's surface and see how they bounced back. But Hurricane Maria devastated the island just a couple weeks before the asteroid's closest approach, and the telescope wasn't ready to help. Scientists had to scramble to rope in two other radio telescopes, Goldstone and Green Bank, to make up for Arecibo's absence.
And the team had wanted to use NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii to better understand the object's composition. The telescope had a three-night window to catch TC4. It observed the asteroid on the first night and was put to another task on the second. On the third night, the power went out.
"It turns out that somebody cut a tree down and the tree fell on the power line," Reddy said. "And so the fate of the world will end up in [the hands of] some person with an ax in the hand trying to chop a tree in the evening."
There's no reason to suspect that the same sorts of mundane issues would patiently wait for a real threat to pass. "There are real-world problems that can crop up even in an emergency situation," Kelley said. "Bad timing is always there."
Despite the challenges during observations, scientists are pretty satisfied with what they were able to learn about TC4. It seems to be very bright, about 33 feet (10 meters) across, with a jagged, uneven surface. "This may be a fragment of a very bright, white rock in space," Kelley said. It seems to resemble an unusual type of meteorite — a kind that makes up just 1% of the space rocks we have here on Earth — called aubrites.
Now that the results of the TC4 drill are published, the team is ready to apply the lessons learned during the exercise to a new drill. That team has selected a different asteroid, again based on the object's orbital convenience. "We can't schedule the asteroid[s]. We kind of have to wait for them to cooperate," Kelley said.
This drill will be of a smaller scale than the TC4 one was, aiming only to learn as much as possible about the space rock itself — even though scientists already have a good sense of what it is.
"We know a lot, but we're pretending as if we don't know," Reddy said. "Imagine if this asteroid is going to hit us, say, 15, 20 years from now and this is the last, best flyby when we can characterize it to know what to do in the next 15, 20 years before impact. What can we learn?"
This kind of preparation is not just about learning about distant space rocks sailing through the solar system. It also means learning about deeply terrestrial, deeply human factors, like how to be ready if someone cuts the wrong tree down on the wrong day.
"This exercise was actually a good lesson in the reality of trying to do this as well, in a practical sense," Kelley said. "Real-world events affected the campaign, but we dealt with them and worked through it." And as a result, humans should be better prepared for the next close approach.
"Fortunately, the fate of the Earth wasn't riding on this one, so we're OK," he said.
The project is described in a paper published in March in the journal Icarus.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.