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 ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
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...
13-05-2019
DoD Confirms They Released Navy F-18 FLIR UFO Videos
The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68), guided missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59), and fast combat support ship USS Bridge (AOE 10) participate in an underway replenishment (UNREP).
(Credit: US Navy)
DoD Confirms They Released Navy F-18 FLIR UFO Videos
A document leaked by KLAS and a letter from the DoD given to a government documents researcher proves the Department of Defense (DoD) did release Navy videos related to UFO incidents, despite an earlier denial.
In the December 16, 2017 article published by The New York Times that revealed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a secretive Pentagon project to investigate UFOs, there were two videos included. The videos were Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera videos captured by Navy jet fighters of unidentified objects. The New York Times claimed these videos were “released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.”
Much, not all, of the information The New York Times received about AATIP was from the former head of the program, Luis Elizondo. He retired from the DoD in October of 2017. The same month he joined Tom Delonge and other former high-level officials in a new venture called the To the Stars Academy (TTSA). This group also researches the UFO phenomenon.
Soon after The New York Times released the videos, TTSA also released them. According to TTSA, the videos were released “through the official declassification review process of the United States government and has been approved for public release.”
Questions first arose about the release of the videos soon after The New York Times published their article. The same day TheWashington Post also published an article, and regarding the videos, they wrote: “Elizondo, in an internal Pentagon memo requesting that the videos be cleared for public viewing, argued that the images could help educate pilots and improve aviation safety. But in interviews, he said his ultimate intention was to shed light on a little-known program Elizondo himself ran for seven years: a low-key Defense Department operation to collect and analyze reported UFO sightings.”
I was able to interview Leslie Kean, one of the authors of The New York Times article, in January of 2018. I asked about The Washington Post’s claims. Kean said The New York Times had received the videos from the DoD and had verified they were real. She references a document called a DD 1910: Clearance Request For Public Release of Defense Information. She says although they have not made the document public, it was a release approved by the DoD that authorized the release of the videos. She says the document was vetted by The New York Times and is confident it is real.
In February of 2018, during a Q and A for the International UFO Congress, Elizondo was asked to give further information about the release of the videos. This was a question I slipped in. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of that interview.
Q: How were the videos released? Was it under a false pretense or a trick as the Washington Post suggests?
A: No, there was no trick, and there was no false pretense. The videos were released in accordance with the strict manner that DOD prescribes to DOD manuals and regulations involving the release of information. It went through the official DOPSR process and then furthermore an additional step was taken to have the videos reviewed by foreign disclosure representatives. In fact, the most senior foreign disclosure representatives in the department, and ultimately required OCA or original classification authority approval and review to release the video. So in essence, I didn’t release anything; the department of defense released those videos. The documentation is held by the department of defense, and the justification for releasing those videos were exactly as stated, and that was to create an unclassified database that people could then access and help us identify the signatures we were seeing.
Although Kean and Elizondo shared what they knew about the videos, researchers, rightfully, were still seeking official confirmation. However, the DoD threw us another curve ball. Researcher John Greenewald received a letter from the DoD that claimed, among other things, the “DoD has not released videos related to this program.”
WTF? Were The New York Times and Elizondo wrong or lying, or did the DoD spokesperson get it wrong? My guess was the latter. Kean had stressed they thoroughly vetted the videos. Also, historically, the military press departments often get information wrong regarding UFOs. Case after case we have seen this. Greenwald has also often received erroneous information from military and government press offices.
We finally got more insight into this situation just this week. On May 1, George Knapp and Matt Adams of KLAS 8 News Now in Las Vegas released a copy of the DD 1910.
KLAS wrote:
“The request specifies the three videos: Go Fast, Gimbal and FLIR, which was the original name for the Tic Tac encounter. Some personal information has been redacted, but the document shows authorization for release was granted on August 24 2017. The I-Team also acquired the Department of Defense directive which spells out how the release procedure works. The form shows the videos were released by the book.”
Not everyone was satisfied with this leak of the DD 1910. They argued this was still not an official statement. Fortunately, the DoD responded to a request by Greenewald for a confirmation that the DD 1910 KLAS leaked was real.
The DoD responded:
“I can confirm that the form DD1910 you asked about is a valid DD1910. The standard procedure is for blocks 1-7 on the form to be filled out by the submitter before sending to DOPSR; however, occasional exceptions have occurred. The submitter is responsible for any disclaimers on the form as approved, and also abiding by any amendments that may be included in additional communications from DOPSR to the submitter as part of the approval process. Per block 3 of this form DD1910, the submitter requested release of the videos solely for research and analysis purposes by the US government agencies and industry partners, and not for general public release.”
So Elizondo and Kean were right, and the DoD press department’s initial response regarding the videos was wrong. The DoD spokesperson did not directly address why they made their initial claim of having not released the videos. However, they added at the end of their response the claim that the videos were not released “for general public release.” It is readily apparent this is not accurate.
The DD 1910 is a request for “public release.” This DD 1910 was approved, so the videos were indeed approved for public release. The DoD spokesperson may have been referencing a note in the form that says the videos are not being released for “publication” which is not the same thing as the general public. A publication is an article, book, journals, etc.
The request said the videos would be released for “research and analysis ONLY and info sharing with other USG and industry partners for the purpose of developing a database to help identify, analyze, and ultimately defeat UAS threats.” There is nothing that prohibits these databases from being publicly available. Further, again, this DD 1910 is a form to approve information for “public release,” and it was approved.
Nowhere does this form limit the release to not include the “general public.” My guess as to why they added this note to the end of their response to Greenewald is that they are trying to justify their original false statement that the “DoD has not released videos related to this program.” Even if for some reason you agree the videos were not released for the “general public,” it is still not accurate to say the “DoD has not released videos related to this program.”
In the end, the DoD has now admitted the DD 1910 proving the DoD released the videos is real. The DoD did release the videos, just as Kean and The New York Times had discovered, and Elizondo had claimed.
Open Minds UFO Radio: In this episode, we review the confusing and complicated timeline of how the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) UFO project got started, how we found out about, and the history of some of those involved. To really understand AATIP and all of the news coming at us about it, we have to understand this vital background. This includes why and how rockstar Tom DeLonge is involved, who Robert Bigelow is, the paranormal background of Dr. Hal Puthoff, what AAWSAP is and how it was taken down, AATIP’s relation to BAASS and TTSA, and much much more. We will not be interviewing Lue for a little while yet, but covering this background will make you all ready for it.
Krubera Cave - Journeying to the Depths of Georgia in One of the World’s Deepest Caves
Krubera Cave - Journeying to the Depths of Georgia in One of the World’s Deepest Caves
Krubera Cave was once thought to be the deepest cave on earth, although now it is generally regarded as the second deepest. This natural wonder, found in the Republic of Georgia , is renowned among cavers due to its arduous challenges and the subterranean depth.
The Geology and Layout of Krubera Cave
The cave is located in the Arabika Massif of the Gagra Range of the Western Caucasus and overlooks the Black Sea . It is not the only cave in the area, there are many others in the north-west of Georgia, and in fact Krubera is not far from the world’s deepest cave, the Voronya Cave system. It is a mere 80 feet (24 meters) or so deeper than the third deepest cave which is in the Austrian Alps .
The depth of the cave as measured from the entrance to the distance of the deepest explored point is approximately 7,200 feet (2,200 meters). The entrance is surprisingly narrow for such a large cavern and the bottom was only located in 2001.
The geology of the cave is of limestone that dates from the Cretaceous and Jurassic ages. There are several underground springs and pools within it, and according to those who explored the system, it consists of a number of deep pits connected by passageways. The best known of these is the Cascade pit which is over 500 feet (152 meters) deep and the bottom has a pool of water. Many freezing sumps (water-filled pits) and water cascades have also been discovered.
The cave was not explored until the 1960s. The local population was aware of the cave but did not have the means to explore it. The first experts to really study the Krubera Cave entrance were a group of Soviet speleologists who reported that they believed they had found an underground system that was unusually deep.
Soviet speleologists reported that they believed they had found an underground system that was unusually deep.
This team named the underground system after a great Russian geographer, Alexander Kruber, who is regarded as one of the founders of speleology. He was one of the first to survey of the area and published several papers on the caves and their geology. An alternate name for the site is Crow's Cave ( Vronja), in recognition of all the crows who nest in its vicinity.
There were no further expeditions until the 1980s, when a group of Ukrainian speleologists conducted the first large-scale expedition into the caverns. They were able to push down into the narrow connecting chambers and through tight choke points to a depth of 900 feet (274 meters).
Due to the instability brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union , the cave was not explored for the next two decades. In 2001 an American expedition revived interest in the cave and on a series of Krubera cave expeditions they gradually managed to discover more pits, meanders, tunnels, and passages. Underground divers explored the many bodies of water of the cave system.
Underground divers explored the many bodies of water of the cave system. ( Excitement N Net )
In 2012, a Ukrainian diver reached the deepest point of Krubera at a depth of over 2,000 feet (600 meters), which at the time was a world record. In 2017 a team proved that the Veryovkina Cave, also in Abkhazia, was the world’s deepest.
To explore this site is an ambition of many cavers and it is known as the Everest of Caves. Descending into the caves requires great planning and resources, including tents and breathing equipment. One recent expedition to Krubera took two weeks exploring the underground labyrinth. It is only now, after 20 years of near constant exploration, that we have a reliable map of Krubera Cave and some believe that more pits and passageways remain undiscovered.
Exploring Krubera Cave is Not for Everyone
Garga, Abkhazia, is a breakaway region and is currently under the control of the Russian Federation and its local allies. Because of this, the cave is difficult to access. It is not possible to enter the region via Georgia and permission is needed to enter Abkhazia from Russia. Only highly trained experts should enter Krubera Cave as it is incredibly dangerous. Amateurs and visitors with a yearning for adventure can explore the area around the entrance.
Only highly trained experts should enter Krubera Cave as it is incredibly dangerous.
Both spaceships will rely on parachutes to deliver a crew back to Earth, so the companies are extensively testing them with NASA.
Tests performed in April purposefully disabled one of the system’s parachutes to see if the others would still deploy and land the craft. According to NASA, some of those tests failed.
NASA is speeding toward a future in which private companies like SpaceX and Boeing ferry its astronauts to and from orbit.
But first, it has the earthly issue of parachutes to solve.
Over the past decade or so, the space agency has partnered with two companies – SpaceX and Boeing – as part of a roughly $8 billion initiative called the Commercial Crew Program. Its goal: create safe and reliable spacecraft to taxi NASA’s finest to the International Space Station.
SpaceX has developed its Crew Dragon capsule for that purpose, while Boeing built the CST-100 Starliner. Both spaceships are designed to hold up to seven people, but neither have flown with any human crew members yet.
Crewed flight tests were expected this year, but a recently discovered problem may cause new delays for those launches. This week, NASA officials told Congress that SpaceX’s spaceship parachute system did not pass a critical (though difficult) test in April.
“It failed,” William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon during a House subcommittee hearing. “The parachutes did not work as designed.”
Similar problems appear to have emerged during Boeing’s tests, according to Spaceflight Now. However, a Boeing spokesperson disputed this claim.
What went wrong with the parachute test
Foto: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
sourceSpaceX/Twitter
A spaceship riding a rocket into space is just the start of its mission. After it reaches orbit, the vessel has to safely return to Earth.
During those return trips, space capsules plow through Earth’s atmosphere at about 25 times the speed of sound, creating intense heat. They use a base of thermal protection on their bottoms to deflect that. Then once the spacecraft are falling through air that’s dense enough, they generally deploy parachutes to get safely to the ground.
So it’s vital to test these parachute systems before putting lives or even cargo at stake. The parachute test SpaceX conducted in April was not the first for Crew Dragon; many other tests have been conducted without issue. But in this case, Gerstenmaier said during the hearing, the parachute test simulated a partial failure.
One of four parachutes did not deploy – that was intentional – leaving only three to break the fall. The test was meant to examine what would happen if that problem were to arise during a real flight. Unfortunately, the other parachutes didn’t properly deploy either.
The test didn’t use an actual space capsule; the parachutes were tested on a metal sled, which was damaged.
Gerstenmaier told Spaceflight Now that Boeing’s “Starliner parachute drop tests have encountered anomalies similar to the one suffered by SpaceX last month.” (That test didn’t use a real space capsule, either.)
Foto: An illustration of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.
sourceBoeing
But Boeing’s spokesperson said the “anomalies” mentioned do not pertain to a failure – at least not in the four out of five qualification tests the company has completed since February 2017 (the fifth has yet to happen). Qualification tests are required by NASA before it will allow astronauts to fly inside the spaceship. “We have not seen anything that’s led to any total failure, or really anything that would prevent us from declaring every single qualification test a success. Those have gone fine,” the spokesperson said. “We’re also conducting a series of reliability tests with NASA on the system outside of the [qualification] program, and we have not seen anything unexpected there either.”
Gerstenmaier said, though, that it’s not yet clear whether SpaceX’s parachutes themselves are the problem. Because both companies have seen testing issues, there may be something wrong with the setup or the way parachutes are being packed.
“This is why we test,” he said, adding that SpaceX, Boeing, and NASA are all learning from the failures. “This is part of the learning process. By these failures, we’re going to learn from the data and information to end up with a safe design for our crews.”
SpaceX echoed that perspective in a statement.
“To date, SpaceX has completed 19 tests of the parachute system with a number of additional tests planned prior to flying crew. Data collected from this test provides industry leading insight, informs future testing, and allows us to develop an even safer system,” the company told Business Insider.
The vehicle had previously flown to the space station and landed in the ocean as part ofSpaceX’s Demo-1 mission.
“The vehicle was destroyed,” Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX’s vice president of mission assurance, said during a NASA press briefing on May 2.
NASA and SpaceX are participating in a joint and ongoing investigation.
“We don’t have, currently, something where we could say, ‘Oh, it was most likely this or that,'” Koenigsmann said.
Correction (May 10, 2019): NASA told Congress that a SpaceX parachute test failed, not a Boeing parachute test. Boeing says it hasn’t seen a parachute failure similar to SpaceX’s in recent qualification tests, as was reported by other outlets.
As far as we know, there’s no life that currently exists on Mars. Missions to the Red Planet have yielded tantalizing cluesthat life may have existed at some point in the past, but no living organisms have ever been spotted by any rover or other hardware humans have sent to Mars.
But Mars is a big place. Despite several rover missions and other trips to the planet we’ve still only barely scratched the surface of the secrets Mars may hold, and there’s still the possibility that life in some form persists there. At least that’s what Michael Finney, a researcher and co-found of The Genome Partnership, believes, and he said as much during a recent conference at UC Berkeley.
Mars, as imaged by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter in the 1970s.
As Space.com reports, Finney spoke about the possibility of Martian life still existing on the Red Planet today. Mars, which at one point in its history had huge bodies of water across its surface, could have been teeming with various forms of life that have since been wiped out as the planet lost much of its atmosphere and surface water. If that was indeed the case, Finney believes something likely stuck around for the long haul.
“If Mars had life 4 billion years ago, Mars still has life,” Finney explained. “Nothing has happened on Mars that would’ve wiped out life. So, if there were life on Mars, it may have moved around, it may have gone into hiding a bit, but it’s probably still there,”
It might sound like a stretch, but it’s actually not that hard to believe when you look at some of the more Earth-like regions of Mars. Researchers studying the planet know that it still has quite a bit of ice in its polar areas, and liquid water might not be hard to find during certain times of the Martian year.
On Earth, life can be found in some of the most hostile environments imaginable. Microorganisms, in particular, have a habit of withstanding extreme temperatures and lack of water for long periods of time, and it’s entirely possible that life in some form has adapted to exist beneath the surface of Mars.
Future missions to the planet would be our best chance of proving or disproving that notion, but unfortunately, that means we’ll have to wait a while before we know for sure.
It seems like play, but they’re serious. Every year, at the Planetary Defense Conference, asteroid experts from around the globe run days-long simulations of asteroids headed for major cities. In 2019, it was New York City’s turn.
Artist’s concept of a large asteroid hitting Earth. In a new simulation conducted during the Planetary Defense Conference in early May, New York City was wiped out by just such a cataclysmic event.
We’ve all seen movies about what might happen if an asteroid were to hit the Earth. While these thrilling, apocalyptic dramas are not real, asteroid experts do consider the question of what it might really be like if an asteroid used Earth for target practice. For example, what if a large asteroid were heading toward New York City specifically? If we knew far enough in advance that the asteroid were coming, could the Big Apple be saved?
That was the question posed in a new simulation, called the Planetary Defense Conference Exercise 2019, presented during the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) held April 29 to May 3, 2019 in Washington, D.C. The annual conference brings together asteroid experts from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and other organizations to try to understand and plan how humanity would respond if an asteroid threat were to occur. How could Earth be saved?
This article describes a simulation, an exercise, and there is no real asteroid posing a threat to Earth at this time.
Astronomers hold a new simulation every year, in which they practice using their expertise and knowledge to spare various cities from ensuing calamity. In last year’s simulation, Tokyo was successfully saved after a nuclear bomb was used to destroy the asteroid. In previous simulations, however, other places such as the French Riviera and Dhaka (largest city of Bangladesh) were not so lucky. This year’s simulation got more publicity, in part because it was highlighted on social media. Day by day on Twitter, for example, the public was able to follow along, as experts participating in the simulation were giving new parameters to consider. Rüdiger Jehn, ESA’s head of Planetary Defence, explained in a statement why experts run simulations like these. He said:
The first step in protecting our planet is knowing what’s out there. Only then, with enough warning, can we take the steps needed to prevent an asteroid strike altogether, or to minimize the damage it does on the ground.
The imaginary orbit of asteroid 2019 PDC – an imaginary asteroid used in the recent Planetary Defense Conference simulation – compared to Earth’s orbit, from March 26, 2019, until the time of the simulated impact on April 29, 2027.
Image via PDC/CNEOS/JPL.
So what about New York? Was the catastrophe averted?
Unfortunately, no.
The simulation began on Day 1 of the conference. In this scenario, a large imaginary asteroid that the conference named after itself as 2019 PDC – said to be between 330 and 1,000 feet (100 and 300 meters) in diameter – was imagined to be on a near-Earth collision course. At first, according to the simulation, the asteroid had only about a 1 percent chance of hitting the Earth, so there was not too much reason to worry. Yet. A fake press release was issued, even though the chance of impact was still very small:
College Park, Maryland, USA, April 29, 2019. The International Asteroid Warning Network has announced that a recently discovered near-Earth asteroid could pass very close to the Earth 8 years from now, on April 29, 2027, and there is a small chance – 1 in 100 – that it could impact our planet.
Day 2 of the conference was in the simulation year 2021. NASA had launched a probe to look at the asteroid more closely. At that point in the simulation, the space rock was on a collision course with Earth, and the impact site had been narrowed down to Denver, Colorado.
The risk corridor for imaginary asteroid 2019 PDC during the recent simulation. The simulated impact was pictured as happening directly over New York City.
Image via PDC/CNEOS/JPL.
On Day 3 – the year 2024 in the simulation – the world’s space power nations had decided to build a fleet of six “kinetic impactors,” spacecraft designed to ram into the asteroid, slowing it down and hopefully deflecting it off course. The impactors were launched in 2024, still three years from impact, and three of them were imagined to hit the asteroid successfully. This was enough to fragment the asteroid, but there was still a problem. Although the biggest piece of the asteroid would no longer hit the Earth, a smaller fragment was imagined to be still on a collision trajectory, headed for the eastern United States.
At this point in the simulation, there wasn’t too much else that could be done. It was too late to try to nuke the incoming asteroid fragment, due to politics (as usual).
Now, analysis of the asteroid’s imaginary trajectory showed it would hit New York City. The only thing that could be done at this point was mass evacuation.
Toward the end of the simulation, the asteroid was imagined as striking Earth’s atmosphere at 43,000 mph (69,000 kmh) and exploding right over New York in a blast that was 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. New York City, the largest city in North America, was no more.
All of this is, of course, just an exercise. But simulations like these help experts figure just what actions might be taken, if an asteroid were discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. At this point in Earth’s history, there are no large asteroids known to be headed our way. And the odds of a large asteroid hitting Earth at any given time are statistically exceedingly low. However, as astronomers have come to recognize more profoundly in recent decades, asteroid strikes do happen. They’ve happened before and could happen again.
A massive asteroid impact in what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Could it happen again?
The dinosaurs unfortunately experienced this firsthand, 65 million years ago. And if it happened before, it can happen again, at some point. We don’t know exactly when, though, so it is prudent to be ready at all times, even if the chance of the unthinkable happening is small.
About 20,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered so far, with another 150 or so new ones found every month, according to the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also released an 18-page document in June 2018 explaining what steps the agencies would take over the next 10 years to prevent actual potential asteroid strikes and to prepare the country for the worst if one did hit us. That plan is two-fold, increasing ground-based surveillance of near-Earth asteroids and having a protocol in place for mass evacuations. This would require other nations to work with the U.S., a worthy goal since we don’t know just when or where an asteroid will hit, the next time one does.
In all probability, another asteroid will strike Earth, eventually, even if it’s tens of thousands of years from now. Let’s hope a future human civilization will fare better than the dinosaurs did 65 million years ago.
Bottom line: In 2019’s Planetary Defense Conference simulation, New York City was obliterated by an asteroid fragment that hit Earth in 2027. Although not based on reality, simulations such as these are designed to help NASA, ESA, FEMA and other agencies prepare for a time if – or when – just such a catastrophe really doeshappen again.
Remember the Twilight Zone on television? Well, play that theme song in your head while you read this post…
The US Navy is drafting new guidelines for reporting Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) after a significant uptick in the number of sightings on (above?) American soil.
No, it doesn’t mean we’re being invaded by aliens (at least not yet). Nor does it mean that the US is about to live out the storyline from Colony, Netflix’s all-too-soon ended show about an Earth under alien control.
So what DOES it mean?
Key Points:
First, “UFO” does not equal alien. A UFO is anything in the sky that cannot be accurately identified — an animal, a device, an aircraft, or even some kind of natural phenomenon. UFOs are a significant concern, but not because they spell doom for humans due to an oncoming onslaught of alien warriors.
Instead, the risks are much more mundane. Flying devices can be used in attacks by foreign enemies, to import drugs across the border, and even to gather intel at America’s military bases.
Studying UFOs is extremely important. Regardless of what the object is, or what discoveries are made along the way, the information gathered is almost always useful. In some cases, that info is even critically important to national security, as it can reveal an impending threat, such as an aircraft flying in to attack.
UFOs may also indicate that a foreign entity or enemy has achieved a technological breakthrough, making them much more powerful, and thus, much more dangerous. In a world where tech is advancing more and more rapidly all across the world, this must be considered.
Even when the phenomenon turns out to be natural, studying it can be remarkably insightful. In 2009, researchers received reports of an “alien spaceship” that turned out to be a strange type of lighting filled with “blue jets,” later theorizing that the phenomenon may impact ozone and the weather.
The Navy’s statement announcing significant changes for reporting UFOs clarifies the issue further. “There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated airspace in recent years,” it reads. “For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.”
One such report includes a release from To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences that showcases a declassified video of two Navy pilots coming into close contact with a UFO. “GO FAST,” which has been certified authentic by the DoD, is a remarkable watch:
The UFO in the GoFast video was never identified, but that doesn’t mean studying it isn’t useful. The information within it can help our military better protect the country and improve tech equipment — far from a simple spooky alien story on television.
In fact, former Pentagon intelligence official Chris Mellon believes we should retire the term UFO altogether. Instead, he proposes “unexplained aerial phenomena,” which demystifies the subject and encourages a more scientific and analytical approach.
“Right now, we have a situation in which UFOs and UAPs are treated as anomalies to be ignored rather than anomalies to be explored,” he explains. “We have systems that exclude that information and dump it.”
Mellon also cautions against the assumptive mindset that most UFOs should be ignored. “…in a lot of cases [military personnel] don’t know what to do with that information, like satellite data or a radar that sees something going Mach 3. They will dump [the data] because that is not a traditional aircraft or missile.”
The new Navy guidelines will encourage and require sightings to be reported “to cognizant authorities” depending on the specifics of the incident. This could very well lead to technological advancement, improved national defense — and yes, maybe the discovery of new life, too.
You’d think at this point in humanity’s development, with our big ridiculous particle smashing machines, our spaceships, our plans to colonize other planets, we’d have a pretty solid understanding of something so basic as the sun. You’d be wrong. For starters, the sun is hardly basic, despite its constant presence, hanging in the sky every day since before there even were days. We often take the sun for granted and forget that it’s a giant ball of condensed nuclear fire, so heavy that it warps spacetime enough to keep a series of giant balls of rock spinning around it. Far from being basic, its mind-boggling. In fact, because of our advancements in knowledge and understanding of the cosmos, scientists have recently realized that the sun is muchmore mysterious and strange than they’ve ever imagined.
Compiling over a decade’s worth of data from telescopes pointed at the sun, NASA scientists found that their predictions of the glow from gamma rays —the highest frequency band of light—were wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, but completely, utterly, and inexplicably wrong in a way that disrupts the entire understanding of the sun, and perhaps even our understanding of physics. According to particle physicist Brian Fields:
“It’s amazing that we were so spectacularly wrong about something we should understand really well: the sun.”
Hubris: looking at this thing and thinking you’ve got it all figured out.
Scientists had previously theorized that although the sun’s core would produce gamma rays, none would escape due to degradation as they try to escape the burning ball of nuclear fire. Despite that, scientists believed that the sun would still emit a gamma ray glow because of something called cosmic rays: protons that have been blasted into our solar system by supernovas or other violent cosmic events. When these cosmic rays hit the sun, scientists postulated, they would be reflected back by the suns magnetic field and burn up into gamma radiation. Johnathan Beacom, one of the scientists who worked on the project explains it, in a way we can all understand, with cartoons:
“Remember the Road Runner cartoon? Imagine the proton runs straight toward that sphere, and at the last second it changes its direction and comes back at you.”
Except then the Road Runner burns up as a burst of radiation.
Scientists figured out that, based on the rate of cosmic rays hitting the sun and an expected one percent efficiency in bouncing them back, the sun would emit a faint glow of gamma rays. When they looked at the data they found that the gamma ray glow of the sun was seven times brighter than they had predicted. This suggests that if the cosmic ray theory is correct, the sun is bouncing cosmic rays back with 100% efficiency, which should be impossible. Even weirder, at the highest frequency of gamma rays the sun glows 20 times brighter than scientists had predicted. Weirder still, while most of the frequency bands of gamma rays are far brighter than scientists predicted, there is a conspicuous and unexplained dip in one band of frequencies that, according to astrophysicist Tim Linden, “defies all logic.” He says:
“It’s much easier to get bumps than dips. If I have something that comes out of the sun, OK, that’s an extra channel. How do I make a negative channel out of that?”
The explanations for this unexpected weirdness in the sun all fall short in some way. Scientists have hypothesized that the sun’s core might be partially composed of dark matter, which, trapped and compressed by gravity could be annihilated and turned into gamma radiation, but that leaves the problem of how that gamma radiation could escape the sun. The other explanation is that something we don’t understand is happening with the sun’s magnetic field. According to astrophysicist John Giacalone the gamma ray signal “is probably telling us something very fundamental about the magnetic structure of the sun.”
However, no explanation accounts for the mysterious dip in the gamma ray frequency band. In fact, such a dip is so outside expectations that some experts think it’s a mistake in the data. According to Tim Linden, it’s no mistake:
“I think there are 15 pages in the appendix of different tests we ran to see whether we were miscalculating. Statistically, the dip appears very prominent.”
So rather than explaining and putting to rest the unsolved mysteries of the cosmos, science has once again shown us that the more layers you peel back, the more mysteries present themselves like a cosmic game of whack-a-mole. It is exciting though, and such a mystery will inevitably lead to a deeper understanding of our little slice of the the universe, and perhaps a deeper understanding of the fundamental substrate of reality as well. John Beacom sums it up nicely:
“The worst that can happen here is that we find out that the sun is stranger and more beautiful than we ever imagined. And the best that could happen is we discover some kind of new physics.”
Einstein’s general theory of relativity shows that gravity is the result of a mass, such as a planet or star, warping the geometry of the merger of time and space known as spacetime.
(Credit: koya979/Shutterstock)
Rod Serling knew all about dimensions.
His Twilight Zone was a dimension of imagination, a dimension of sight and sound and mind, a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It was all very clear except for the space and time part, the dimensions of real life. Serling never explained them.
Of course, ever since Einstein, scientists have also been scratching their heads about how to make sense of space and time. Before then, almost everybody thought Isaac Newton had figured it all out. Time “flows equably without relation to anything external,” he declared. Absolute space is also its own thing, “always similar and immovable.” Nothing to see there. Events of physical reality performed independently on a neutral stage where actors strutted and fretted without influencing the rest of the theater.
But Einstein’s theories turned Newton’s absolute space and time into a relativistic mash-up — his equations suggested a merged spacetime, a new sort of arena in which the players altered the space of the playing field. It was a physics game changer. No longer did space and time provide a featureless backdrop for matter and energy. Formerly independent and uniform, space and time became inseparable and variable. And as Einstein showed in his general theory of relativity, matter and energy warped the spacetime surrounding them. That simple (hah!) truth explained gravity. Newton’s apparent force of attraction became an illusion perpetrated by spacetime geometry. It was the shape of spacetime that dictated the motion of massive bodies, a symmetric justice since massive bodies determined spacetime’s shape.
Verification of Einstein’s spacetime revolution came a century ago, when an eclipse expedition confirmed his general theory’s prime prediction (a precise amount of bending of light passing near the edge of a massive body, in this case the sun). But spacetime remained mysterious. Since it was something rather than nothing, it was natural to wonder where it came from.
Now a new revolution is on the verge of answering that question, based on insights from the other great physics surprise of the last century: quantum mechanics. Today’s revolution offers the potential for yet another rewrite of spacetime’s résumé, with the bonus of perhaps explaining why quantum mechanics seems so weird.
“Spacetime and gravity must ultimately emerge from something else,” writes physicist Brian Swingle in the 2018 Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics. Otherwise it’s hard to see how Einstein’s gravity and the math of quantum mechanics can reconcile their longstanding incompatibility. Einstein’s view of gravity as the manifestation of spacetime geometry has been enormously successful. But so also has been quantum mechanics, which describes the machinations of matter and energy on the atomic scale with unerring accuracy. Attempts to find coherent math that accommodates quantum weirdness with geometric gravity, though, have met formidable technical and conceptual roadblocks.
At least that has long been so for attempts to understand ordinary spacetime. But clues to a possible path to progress have emerged from the theoretical study of alternate spacetime geometries, thinkable in principle but with unusual properties. One such alternate, known as anti de Sitter space, is weirdly curved and tends to collapse on itself, rather than expanding as the universe we live in does. It wouldn’t be a nice place to live. But as a laboratory for studying theories of quantum gravity, it has a lot to offer. “Quantum gravity is sufficiently rich and confusing that even toy universes can shed enormous light on the physics,” writes Swingle, of the University of Maryland.
A strange type of spacetime with unusual curvature known as anti de Sitter space, illustrated here, is nothing like the universe we live in, but could nevertheless provide clues to the quantum processes that may be responsible for producing ordinary spacetime.
(Credit: U. Moschella/Seminaire Poincare 2005)
Studies of anti de Sitter space suggest, for instance, that the math describing gravity (that is, spacetime geometry) can be equivalent to the math of quantum physics in a space of one less dimension. Think of a hologram — a flat, two-dimensional surface that incorporates a three-dimensional image. In a similar way, perhaps the four-dimensional geometry of spacetime could be encoded in the math of quantum physics operating in three-dimensions. Or maybe you need more dimensions — how many dimensions are required is part of the problem to be solved.
In any case, investigations along these lines have revealed a surprising possibility: Spacetime itself may be generated by quantum physics, specifically by the baffling phenomenon known as quantum entanglement.
As popularly explained, entanglement is a spooky connection linking particles separated even by great distances. If emitted from a common source, such particles remain entangled no matter how far they fly away from each other. If you measure a property (such as spin or polarization) for one of them, you then know what the result of the same measurement would be for the other. But before the measurement, those properties are not already determined, a counterintuitive fact verified by many experiments. It seems like the measurement at one place determines what the measurement will be at another distant location.
That sounds like entangled particles must be able to communicate faster than light. Otherwise it’s impossible to imagine how one of them could know what was happening to the other across a vast spacetime expanse. But they actually don’t send any message at all. So how do entangled particles transcend the spacetime gulf separating them? Perhaps the answer is they don’t have to — because entanglement doesn’t happen in spacetime. Entanglement creates spacetime.
At least that’s the proposal that current research in toy universes has inspired. “The emergence of spacetime and gravity is a mysterious phenomenon of quantum many-body physics that we would like to understand,” Swingle suggests in his Annual Review paper. Vigorous effort by several top-flight physicists has produced theoretical evidence that networks of entangled quantum states weave the spacetime fabric. These quantum states are often described as “qubits” — bits of quantum information (like ordinary computer bits, but existing in a mix of 1 and 0, not simply either 1 or 0). Entangled qubits create networks with geometry in space with an extra dimension beyond the number of dimensions that the qubits live in. So the quantum physics of qubits can then be equated to the geometry of a space with an extra dimension. Best of all, the geometry created by the entangled qubits may very well obey the equations from Einstein’s general relativity that describe motion due to gravity — at least the latest research points in that direction. “Apparently, a geometry with the right properties built from entanglement has to obey the gravitational equations of motion,” Swingle writes. “This result further justifies the claim that spacetime arises from entanglement.”
Still, it remains to be shown that the clues found in toy universes with extra dimensions will lead to the true story for the ordinary spacetime in which real physicists strut and fret. Nobody really knows exactly what quantum processes in the real world would be responsible for weaving spacetime’s fabric. Maybe some of the assumptions made in calculations so far will turn out to be faulty. But it could be that physics is on the brink of peering more deeply into nature’s foundations than ever before, into an existence containing previously unknown dimensions of space and time (or sight and sound) that might end up making The Twilight Zone into Reality TV.
Tom Siegfried is a science writer and editor in the Washington, DC, area. He writes the Context blog for Science News and his book about the history of the multiverse will be published in September.
This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.
Before we send people to Mars, we need to understand more about how Martian dust could affect astronauts and their equipment. Here are 3 things we’ve learned from the planet’s 2018 global dust storm.
This animated image blinks two versions of a May 11, 2016, selfie of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at a drilled sample site called “Okoruso.” In one version, cameras atop the rover’s mast face the arm-mounted camera taking the portrait. In the other, they face away.
The global Martian dust storm of summer 2018 — the one that blotted out sunlight for weeks and put NASA’s belovedOpportunity rover out of business— offered an unprecedented learning opportunity. For the first time, humans had eight spacecraft orbiting Mars or roving its surface — the largest cadre of robotic explorers ever to watch a global dust storm unfold.
Scientists around the globe are still analyzing reams of data, but preliminary reports include insights on how massive dust storms could have affected ancient Martian water, winds, and climate, and how they could affect future weather and solar power.
Images showing the advancing, global dust storm, taken by Curiosity’s Mast Camera between Sol 2075 and Sol 2170 on Mars, which would’ve fallen between June 8, 2018, and September 13, 2018, on Earth.
Images via NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University.
Martian dust storms are common, especially during southern hemisphere spring and summer. They tend to last a couple of days and can cover regions of the planet the size of the United States. But planet-encircling ones are unpredictable, sometimes lingering for months. Why? Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is a lead researcher in NASA’s dust storm investigation. He said:
We still don’t know what drives the variability, but the 2018 storm gives another data point.
NASA first saw a global dust storm up close in 1971 when our Mariner 9 spacecraft — the first to orbit another planet — arrived at a dust-engulfed red planet. Since then, we’ve seen global storms in 1977 (twice), 1982, 1994, 2001, 2007 and 2018.
Here are three things we saw from space and from the ground during the recent global dust storm that helped address some open questions and exposed new ones:
Hydrogen atoms escape from Mars’ upper atmosphere, while water containing heavy hydrogen (deuterium) remains trapped on the planet. The escape of hydrogen helped to turn Mars from a wet planet 4.5 billion years ago into a dry world today.
Video via NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
1. Could global dust storms have blown away the planet’s water?
Scientists have found loads of evidence that Mars had rivers, lakes and maybe even oceans of water billions of years ago. Dry riverbeds, ancient shorelines, and salty surface chemistry are all clues. But why did much of the water disappear? And how? Geronimo Villanueva, a Martian water expert at NASA Goddard, said:
The global dust storm may give us an explanation.
Villanueva worked with colleagues at the ESA (European Space Agency) and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency to confirm that powerful, global dust storms appear to loft water vapor from its typical altitude of 12 miles (20 km) above the Martian surface to much higher elevations of at least 50 miles (80 km). NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed a similar phenomenon in 2007.
By thrusting water into the upper atmosphere, global dust storms may interfere with the planet’s water cycle, preventing H2O from condensing and falling back down to the surface. On Earth, H2O falls back down as rain or snow. The same process could have existed on Mars billions of years ago.
At higher altitudes, where the Martian atmosphere is especially tenuous, Villanueva and his colleagues speculate, solar radiation can easily penetrate to break up the water molecules and blow their component elements into space. Villanueva, who has spent his career piecing together the history of water on Mars, said:
When you bring water to higher parts of the atmosphere, it gets blown away so much easier.
Villanueva and his colleagues reported on April 10, 2019, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature that they found evidence of receding water vapor by using the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter at Mars, a spacecraft managed by ESA and Roscosmos. The orbiter measured water molecules at different altitudes before and after the 2018 storm. Scientists saw for the first time that all types of water molecules (there are lighter and heavier ones) reached the “escape region” of the upper atmosphere, which was an important insight into how water may be disappearing from Mars. Now, says Villanueva, scientists will have to take this new information into account in their predictions about how much water flowed on ancient Mars and how long it took for it to disappear.
The surface of Mars is covered by constantly shifting sand blown by the planet’s winds. This creates an ever-evolving desert landscape with diverse and striking dunes. Loose mounds of sand are found all over Mars, ranging in height from a few dozen feet to higher than some of Earth’s tallest skyscrapers. Images taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft have allowed scientists to study Mars’ dunes in unprecedented detail. The enhanced-color views captured from orbit reveal characteristics of their shape, composition, and movements over time, giving clues about the planet’s dynamic atmosphere and current climate.
2. Global dust storms don’t seem to significantly reshape Martian sand dunes
For scientists who track sand dunes shifting inches across the surface, the global dust storm offered critical evidence in their investigation of wind patterns on the red planet. Only the forceful winds during a global dust storm would be able to move the planet’s extensive dunes, scientists once thought, given that Mars’ super thin atmosphere makes 100-mile-per-hour (160 kph) wind feel like a breeze. Yet images from orbiters and landers throughout the decades have revealed that Martian sand moves all the time, implying that it doesn’t need strong gusts to do so. This was a surprise to researchers.
Now that scientists finally got to watch a global dust storm from the ground through the eyes of NASA’s Curiosity rover, they noticed another surprising characteristic of Martian wind: strong gusts don’t appear to move sand more than normal. Mariah Baker is a Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University who helps track changes in Martian sand ripples. She said:
This has added to the overall mystery of how wind behaves on Mars.
Ongoing analysis of the entire Martian globe will reveal whether Gale Crater, where Curiosity is roving, was unique. The heart of the storm was over Opportunity, after all, which was roving on the other side of the globe from Curiosity. Plus, wind may behave differently inside Gale Crater, scientists note. Guzewich said:
Were we being sheltered? That’s possible.
If it turns out sand dunes didn’t shift much anywhere on Mars during the storm, there could be a good reason, Baker said:
Winds swirling dust around in the atmosphere might not be the same thing as winds on the surface.
Some scientists think that when dust gets lifted into the atmosphere during a global storm, blocking sunlight from reaching the surface, it shuts down the wind-generating process close to the ground that, under normal conditions, is induced by temperature fluctuations between the air and surface.
Whatever the reason turns out to be, understanding the behavior of sand dunes today helps us reveal Mars’s ancient climate, says Baker.
We can look at wind-shaped sandstones on the surface and look at dunes that are moving now, and say, ‘OK, what does that say about the conditions that were here billions of years ago when these dunes were moving and now are cemented into the rock record?’
Navigation cameras aboard NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover observed several whirlwinds carrying Martian dust across Gale Crater in 2017. Dust devils result from sunshine warming the ground, prompting convective rising of air. All the dust devils were seen in a southward direction from the rover. Timing is accelerated and contrast has been modified to make frame-to-frame changes easier to see.
Video via NASA/JPL-Caltech/TAMU.
3. Dust storms make rover-cleansing dust devils disappear
Dust devils, which are rotating columns of air and dust, are common on Mars. They form when hot air from the surface rises, creating a current of air that forms a whirlwind. These devils are useful for cleaning off dust from the panels of solar-powered spacecraft, like InSight, as they pass over them. Thus, it’s important to understand how often they occur.
The Curiosity rover is powered by a nuclear battery, which allowed it to collect data while Opportunity hibernated, with minimal sunlight reaching its solar panels. Through Curiosity, we learned that dust devils disappear during a dust storm, right when we need them most, and for months afterwards. This happens because of an interruption in the same wind-generating process that might affect the movement of sand dunes.
Guzewich says that understanding a global storm’s impact on dust devils is important in planning how to power equipment during future Mars missions. He said:
You need to be prepared to go a while before your next dust devil passes over and cleans you off.
Bottom line: Three things scientists have learned from the 2018 global dust storm on Mars.
Arsenic is a deadly poison for most living things, but new research shows that microorganisms are breathing arsenic in a large area of the Pacific Ocean.
Researchers fix the line on an instrument that pumps large volumes of seawater in order to extract DNA. The instrument on the left measures properties such as temperature, salinity and depth and collects smaller samples of seawater.
Arsenic is a deadly poison for most living things, but new research has found microorganisms in a low-oxygen area of the Pacific Ocean that breathe arsenic.
University of Washington professor of oceanography Gabrielle Rocap is a co-author of the study, published April 29, 2019, in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rocap said in a statement:
We’ve known for a long time that there are very low levels of arsenic in the ocean. But the idea that organisms could be using arsenic to make a living – it’s a whole new metabolism for the open ocean.
The team analyzed samples collected during a 2012 research cruise to the tropical Pacific, off the coast of Mexico. The seawater samples came from a region below the surface, where oxygen is almost absent. Rocap said:
In some parts of the ocean there’s a sandwich of water where there’s no measurable oxygen. The microbes in these regions have to use other elements that act as an electron acceptor to extract energy from food.
A purple arsenic atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms is arsenate (left). An arsenic atom surrounded by three oxygen atoms is arsenite (right). The study found evidence of marine organisms that can convert one to the other to get energy in oxygen-deficient environments.
Image via Wikimedia.
Genetic analyses on DNA extracted from the seawater found two genetic pathways that are known to convert arsenic-based molecules as a way to gain energy.
According to the researchers, the microbes discovered in the water are probably distantly related to the arsenic-breathing microbes found in hot springs or contaminated sites on land.
California’s Mono Lake is naturally high in arsenic and is known to host microbes that survive by breathing arsenic. The organisms that live in the marine environment are likely related to the ones on land.
Biologists believe the strategy of using arsenic for respiration is a holdover from Earth’s early history. During the period when life arose on Earth, oxygen was scarce in both the air and in the ocean. Oxygen became abundant in Earth’s atmosphere only after photosynthesis became widespread and converted carbon dioxide gas into oxygen. Early lifeforms had to gain energy using other elements, such as arsenic, which was likely more common in the oceans at that time.
Jaclyn Saunders, a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is the study first author. She said:
We found the genetic signatures of pathways that are still there, remnants of the past ocean that have been maintained until today.
Arsenic-breathing populations may grow again under climate change. Low-oxygen regions are projected to expand, and dissolved oxygen is predicted to drop throughout the marine environment. Rocap said:
For me, it just shows how much is still out there in the ocean that we don’t know.
Bottom line: Researchers have discovered microorganisms that breathe arsenic.
Virgin Galactic's deal with New Mexico entails moving its commercial spaceflight activities toSpaceport Americawhen its vehicles and operations are ready for primetime. Looks like the company is nearly there, because, Sir Richard Branson and company have decided that it's time. Virgin Galactic has announced that its "program had advanced sufficiently to move the spaceline staff and space vehicles from Mojave, California to [its] commercial operations headquarters at Spaceport America, New Mexico."
The corporation conducted VSS Unity's first test flight with a passenger onboard back in February, two months after its first ever flight to space. It will now complete the vehicle's final tests from New Mexico after the company relocates it and its carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, over the summer. One of the flights could have Branson himself as a passenger, seeing as he intends to fly to the edge of space on July 16th, 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.
Virgin Galactic is also moving 100 staff members to its new HQ, since that's where it'll run things from now on. As the company said, the move "signals the final countdown" to the beginning of its commercial spaceflight service.
Sir Richard Branson said in a statement:
"Our Virgin Galactic adventure has been intertwined with New Mexico and Spaceport America right from the start and our stories have unfolded together. New Mexico delivered on its promise to build a world-first and world-class spaceport. Today, I could not be more excited to announce, that in return, we are now ready to bring New Mexico a world-first, world-class spaceline. Virgin Galactic is coming home to New Mexico where together we will open space to change the world for good."
It’s going to be special to see the world’s most beautiful spaceship fly from one of the world’s most wonderfully designed buildings, Spaceport America https://virg.in/UEw@virgingalactic
New Mexico will be one of the very few places on the planet which will be hosting human spaceflight launches. We are initiating the move of our spaceship and operations team to New Mexico’s @Spaceport_NM. https://virg.in/UEi
Are octopuses alien? New theory argues Earth was ‘seeded’ by interstellar genetic code
Are octopuses alien? New theory argues Earth was ‘seeded’ by interstellar genetic code
OCTOPUSES are weird. This is not just because they look odd. It’s not because they’re disturbingly smart. And that could mean they’re alien.
Jamie Seidel
OCTOPUSES are weird. This is not just because they look odd. It’s not because they’re disturbingly smart. It’s because they have a strange power.
The ability to edit their own bodies.
This has biologists scratching their heads.
Evolution doesn’t work that way. It’s supposed to be spurred by genetic mutations — a change in DNA — that proves to be beneficial to the host.
So how could a creature evolve in such a way as to allow them to rebuild themselves?
Now a new train of thought has emerged.
They didn’t.
At least, not here.
Instead — it’s an advanced biological ability that came from outer space.
An ethereal octopus emerges from the depths.
Picture: iStockSource:istock
THE KRAKEN WAKES
In April last year, researchers found octopuses — and some of their cuttlefish and squid cousins — regularly edit their RNA.
This sets them apart from the rest of the animal world.
RNA, like DNA, records genetic code. But where DNA is a double-stranded molecule, RNA consists of just one strand. Its role within our body is to transmit genetic information to trigger the production of proteins.
But some scientists feel RNA may have been the original DNA, acting as the permanent storehouse of genetic code among Earth’s earliest organisms.
When it comes to cephalopods like the common squid, researchers have found that up to 60 per cent of the RNA in its nervous system had been edited after it was programmed by DNA. These changes adapted its brain to shifting temperatures in it ocean habitat.
Last year, it was discovered two species of octopus and one of cuttlefish does the same thing — routinely.
“It could be something as simple as temperature changes or as complicated as experience, a form of memory,” Rosenthal says.
But the ability to reshape physiologies on the fly has come at a price.
Coleoids aren’t evolving much.
This could be because the drive isn’t there: They’ve found editing RNA is way to adapt to — and survive — change. So their DNA doesn’t need to change.
“The conclusion here is that in order to maintain this flexibility to edit RNA, the coleoids have had to give up the ability to evolve in the surrounding regions — a lot,” Rosenthal wrote.
Nasa astronaut Ron Garan took this photo of a meteor through a window in the International Space Station.
Picture: TwitterSource:Supplied
PANSPERMIA THEORY
The origin of life on Earth is one of the toughest nuts for science to crack. We know much of the chemistry involved. But not the circumstances that brings it all together into a living being.
There’s still a gap in our understanding large enough for gods and other extraordinary ideas to fit within.
Such as panspermia.
It’s the idea that life here began out there — with scatterings of organic molecules carrying their pre-programmed codes for life across the gulf of time and space.
Evidence is lacking.
But the idea is being examined.
Now a peer-reviewed article published in the science journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology is stirring the origins-of-life pot.
The recent Rosetta mission to Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko confirmed organic molecules that form the basis of sugars and amino acids were dusted among its mounds and valleys of frozen ice.
It’s not life.
But these materials are the building blocks of DNA.
Instead, it builds up the idea that our biochemistry has been contaminated by influences from beyond our own planet.
The authors argue that a cloud of organic material likely rained down upon the Earth about 500 million years ago. And that changed everything.
Could the code of life be carried across the cosmos in space dust? One group of researchers believes so.
Picture: HubbleSource:Supplied
ALIEN IMPACT
The Cambrian Explosion is certainly mysterious. It was a period of time where life on Earth diversified dramatically, and rapidly.
It’s an event which took place shortly after the emergence of retroviruses in our environment.
It was especially dramatic for a type of mollusc called a cephalopod. Tentacles reached out from their shells and wove their way into enormous variety of creatures which eventually became the octopus, cuttlefish and squid we know today.
“We believe this coincidence is not fortuitous but is consistent with a key prediction ... whereby major extinction-diversification evolutionary boundaries coincide with virus-bearing cometary-bolide bombardment events,” the study’s abstract reads.
This idea is that space-borne retroviruses eventually found their way to the Earth’s surface before attaching themselves to living organisms. Once there, they reprogrammed the creatures’ evolution.
“A second focus is the remarkable evolution of intelligent complexity (Cephalopods) culminating in the emergence of the Octopus,” the study reads.
“A third focus concerns the microorganism fossil evidence contained within meteorites as well as the detection in the upper atmosphere of apparent incoming life-bearing particles from space.”
The paper argues the space-based transfer of life was likely on a larger scale than just retroviruses. Whole sets of frozen genetic material were cast about on the stellar winds before splashing down in our oceans.
“Thus the possibility that cryopreserved squid and/or octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted,” the study reads.
Therefore, octopuses are aliens.
It’s interesting conjecture. It’s an idea that fits the circumstances. But concrete evidence is yet to be produced. The idea is yet to be tested.
But it’s tantalising.
“Life may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells, fertilised ova and seeds have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth so being one important driver of further terrestrial evolution which has resulted in considerable genetic diversity and which has led to the emergence of mankind.”
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Ligt diep in onze planeet nog een andere aarde verscholen? Dit zet je aan het denken
Ligt diep in onze planeet nog een andere aarde verscholen? Dit zet je aan het denken
Op 13 juni 2014 kondigden wetenschappers aan dat de aardmantel tot wel drie keer zoveel water bevat als alle oceanen op aarde.
De ontdekking liet zien dat we nog maar heel weinig weten over het binnenste van de aarde.
Het diepste gat ooit gemaakt door mensen is ongeveer 12 kilometer. “Dat is niets,” aldus natuurkundige John Brandenburg in het tv-programma Ancient Aliens.
Agartha
Tot dusver zijn er alleen theorieën over de samenstelling van de aarde. We hebben nog nooit diep genoeg geboord om ze te kunnen verifiëren.
Sommigen stellen dat er diep in onze planeet nog een andere aarde kan worden gevonden.
In boeddhistische geschriften wordt gesproken van een plek genaamd Agartha of Agharti, een wereld in de aarde die bewoond zou zijn.
Nog een zon
Gerespecteerde wetenschappers en wiskundigen hielden zich hiermee bezig.
Edmond Halley is vooral bekend geworden vanwege de komeet van Halley, maar hij stelde ook dat het binnenste van de aarde hol is en bestaat uit meerdere concentrische lagen.
Leonhard Euler, die algemeen wordt beschouwd als één van de belangrijkste wiskundigen aller tijden, was er ook van overtuigd dat de aarde hol is en dat er in onze planeet nog een zon kan worden gevonden.
Onbekend gebied
Euler zei verder dat zich rond de polen openingen bevinden die toegang verschaffen tot de holle aarde.
De beroemde wiskundige opperde dat er geavanceerde beschavingen leven diep in de aarde.
In 1947 maakte admiraal Richard Byrd verkenningsvluchten boven de Noordpool. Daar ontdekte hij naar verluidt een onbekend gebied, dat hij ‘het centrum van het onbekende’ noemde.
Mysterieuze vaartuigen
Hij deed een aantal opmerkelijke uitspraken. Zo werd hij naar eigen zeggen geconfronteerd met mysterieuze vaartuigen, die ‘van pool naar pool vlogen’.
Eenmaal terug in de Verenigde Staten zou de admiraal opdracht hebben gekregen om zijn mond te houden.
"I Had A Near Death Experience, and It Was Beautiful!" (True Story!)
"I Had A Near Death Experience, and It Was Beautiful!" (True Story!)
A near-death experience is a personal experience associated with death or impending death. Such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light. NDEs are a recognized part of some transcendental and religious beliefs in an afterlife.
These are a collection of 100% TRUE paranormal Stories. Here at “Strange But True Stories”, we vow to bring you 100% True cases of: Paranormal Stories, Bigfoot stories, Time Glitches & the Mandela Effect, and so much more! You can submit your TRUE story to us at: strangebuttruestories2@gmail.com
What do you think about this video? Let us know in the comments section and thanks for stopping by Beforeitsnews!
During excavations in Eastern Sudan, the scientists from the Wrocław University’s Institute of Archeology found remnants of the humanoids’ presence which tell the untold story of the different phases of human species migration from half a million years ago.
Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego/Facebook
A group of Polish archeologists have uncovered sensational proof that Homo Erectus, the ancestor of today’s humans, spread around the globe using previously undiscovered migration routes.
During excavations in Eastern Sudan, the scientists from the Wrocław University’s Institute of Archeology found remnants of the humanoids’ presence which tell the untold story of the different phases of human species migration from half a million years ago.
Discoveries in the Eastern Desert also confirm the long coexistence of Homo erectus with Homo sapiens in Africa: it is a period of at least 100,000 years, falling between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Both species lived there simultaneously.
Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego/Facebook
The Polish archeologists, together with colleagues from Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and the United States decided to conduct their research north of the area, which is usually perceived as the cradle of humanity (along the Great Rift Valley, from Mozambique to the Red Sea) – the Eastern Desert in Sudan.
Enticed by the news, that gold miners in the area were uncovering prehistoric tools, the scientist not only confirmed this information but came across a lot more.
Enticed by the news, that gold miners in the area were uncovering prehistoric tools, the scientist not only confirmed this information but came across a lot more.
Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego/Facebook
On March 6th, the archeologists summarized their project on the Institute of Archeology’s Facebook:
“We just finished the last season of excavations in Sudan, which are carried out by our Institute in collaboration with Museum of Archaeology in Gdansk and Neelian University in Khartoum.
“This international project entitled ‘Homo erectus on the path to Eurasia…’ is focused on remains of Pleistocene settlement in the Eastern Desert. During this season we excavated four sites which yielded many finds.
“The oldest artifacts, which we found at archaeological site EDAR 7, are dated to 0,5 Ma [500 thousand years ago] and related to early middle Pleistocene Acheulean culture. This is the oldest known archaeological site in NE Africa.”
Homo Erectus migrations from Africa.
PAP Infographics/PAP
What they found was that Homo Erectus traveled outside of Africa not only along the Nile river but also through what is now a desert which used to be a humid area with plants and rivers leading to the Red Sea.
Discoveries in the Eastern Desert also confirm the long coexistence of Homo erectus with Homo sapiens in Africa: it is a period of at least 100,000 years, falling between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Both species lived there simultaneously, although one gave birth to the other.
The archeologists, led by Wrocław University’s Prof. Mirosław Masojć (pictured), discovered “… an assemblage of artifacts containing, among others, choppers and chopping tools, bifacial tools (hand axes and cleavers) and big flake tools. ”
Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego
The archeologists, led by Wrocław University’s Prof. Mirosław Masojć reveal they discovered “… an assemblage of artifacts containing, among others, choppers and chopping tools, bifacial tools (hand axes and cleavers) and big flake tools.
“Younger finds from the Middle Stone Age, which were manufactured using the Levallois method, can be linked to the settlement of this region by anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens).
“Every day, we covered 90 kilometers in the desert from our base in Atbara to the sites. In the afternoons, after finishing field work, we devoted ourselves to analyses and recording of our artifacts. Some of the tools were chosen to be transported to Poland, which will allow us to conduct microscopic use-wear analyses.”
Secrets of the Solar System Documentary - Formation of Earth and Solar System
Secrets of the Solar System Documentary - Formation of Earth and Solar System
Our Solar System, and all other star systems, form from a collapsing nebula. Often called stellar nurseries, nebulae are the birthplace of stars.
They are made up of mostly hydrogen but also contain other matter like gases, dust, ice and rock. The gravity of the nebula pulls this matter into the centre, and the nebula experiences a gravitational collapse.
If the compression raises the core temperature enough to reach thermonuclear fusion, the centre mass generates a protostar. This process takes about 10 million years.
Ever forget where something was? The car keys, a hat, your parked car? Well, I saw this photo with something in the background in the news over ten years ago. Just the photo and I knew I had to find it no matter what it takes. I have been on the lookout for it for a long time and had almost forgotten about it until I accidentally came across it today in the Apollo 14 image index. Why was I searching for this boring photo of rocks on the moon with a hammer and cup on a rock near an astronaut shadow? It couldn't possibly be that important right? Maybe it could be. You see, there was a face on the edge of the rock and I think that astronaut shadow is of him taking photos of his hammer and the rock with the face in the background, so that there would be a size comparison in the photo of the face. Yes, I believe he saw the face too. Its so old and covered in lunar dust, he may have wondered if it was just coincidence or an actual alien artefact.
Parodolia you say?
Seeing faces where they don't exist? I have a masters in counselling, I know psychology. I have also learned about a lot of secret psychological studies that the CIA conducted for decades. For instance, during the cold war the CIA manual for training agents had a cover entitled, "CIA Manual of Trickery And Deception." (see photo above). Did you know that the CIA only started spreading the word of parodolia because of me reporting faces on alien planets in 2010-11 when I was getting noticed by news agencies...and the CIA response was to get one word (parodolia) on TV news and newspapers through their agents working in areas of NASA, US government, SETI, astronomy, oh and hired astronomers and astrophysicists like Phil Plait, Bill Nye and Degrasse Tyson. I have confronted Phil who attacked many UFO eyewitnesses on his blog about this on his own website. Just mention my name to him and he cringes in fear. Yes, they still do work to spread disinformation for the CIA...in turn, they get more public opportunities to speak provided by the CIA. So lets stop wasting our time being mentally programmed by the CIA, shall we? I have accomplished a goal I set out to do over ten years ago. I am proud that I stuck to my guns until I found this important alien evidence. You see, the faces of aliens in rocks or hills and on the ground are the most important astronomy, astrophysics and astrobiology discoveries in the entire history of humanity. The faces teach us something that the CIA dreads the public knowing. The faces teach us what the species of aliens out there look like. And if you know what they look like...you realise they don't look so scary after all. Look closely at this face in the photo. The face is that of a human like alien with pointy long ears. This species looks a little like us! We...are not alone in our solar system...and we never have been.
Victory is sweet! Scott C. Waring - Self-Proclaimed Astrobiologist
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Why This Martian Full Moon Looks Like Candy
Why This Martian Full Moon Looks Like Candy
These three views of the Martian moon Phobos were taken by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter using its infrared camera, THEMIS. Each color represents a different temperature range.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/SSI
For the first time, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has caught the Martian moon Phobos during a full moon phase. Each color in this new image represents a temperature range detected by Odyssey's infrared camera, which has been studying the Martian moon sinceSeptember of 2017. Looking like a rainbow-colored jawbreaker, these latest observations could help scientists understand what materials make up Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons.
Odyssey is NASA's longest-lived Mars mission. Its heat-vision camera, the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), can detect changes in surface temperature as Phobos circles Mars every seven hours. Different textures and minerals determine how much heat THEMIS detects
This movie shows three views of the Martian moon Phobos as viewed in visible light by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. The apparent motion is due to movement by Odyssey's infrared camera, Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), rather than movement by the moon.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/SSI
"This new image is a kind of temperature bullseye — warmest in the middle and gradually cooler moving out," said Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which leads the mission. "Each Phobos observation is done from a slightly different angle or time of day, providing a new kind of data."
On April 24, 2019, THEMIS looked at Phobos dead-on, with the Sun behind the spacecraft. This full moon view is better for studying material composition, whereas half-moon views are better for looking at surface textures.
"With the half-moon views, we could see how rough or smooth the surface is and how it's layered," said Joshua Bandfield, a THEMIS co-investigator and senior research scientist at the Space Sciences Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "Now we're gathering data on what minerals are in it, including metals."
Iron and nickel are two such metals. Depending on how abundant the metals are, and how they're mixed with other minerals, these data could help determine whether Phobos is a captured asteroid or a pile of Mars fragments, blasted into space by a giant impact long ago.
These recent observations won't definitively explain Phobos' origin, Bandfield added. But Odyssey is collecting vital data on a moon scientists still know little about — one that future missions might want to visit. Human exploration of Phobos has been discussed in the space community as a distant, future possibility, and a Japanese sample-return mission to the moon is scheduled for launch in the 2020s.
"By studying the surface features, we're learning where the rockiest spots on Phobos are and where the fine, fluffy dust is," Bandfield said. "Identifying landing hazards and understanding the space environment could help future missions to land on the surface."
Odyssey has been orbiting Mars since 2001. It takes thousands of images of the Martian surface each month, many of which help scientists select landing sites for future missions. The spacecraft also serves an important role relaying data for Mars' newest inhabitant, NASA's InSight lander. But studying Phobos is a new chapter for the orbiter.
"I think it's a great example of taking a spacecraft that's been around a very long time and finding new things you can do with it," Bandfield said. "It's great that you can still use this tool to collect groundbreaking science."
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. THEMIS was developed by Arizona State University in Tempe in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. The prime contractor for the Odyssey project, Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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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 73 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.