A declassified CIA document called The Adam and Eve Story has generated much controversy over predictions of an upcoming pole shift (aka crustal displacement) and catastrophic events that may sweep the planet in the not distant future. The 57-page document is based on a book authored by Chan Thomas in 1963. In it, Thomas proposed a pole shift scenario that differed in significant ways with what Charles Hapgood had earlier proposed in his pioneering 1958 book, The Earth’s Shifting Crust.

Hapgood’s theory, which was endorsed at the time by Albert Einstein, proposed that the geophysical poles periodically move by as much as up to 40 degrees through crustal displacements. This phenomenon was brought about by the increasing weight of the polar ice caps which accumulate more and more ice over the millennia until they eventually generate sufficient centrifugal force due to the planet’s rotation, to make the crust move over the mantle as Einstein explained in the book’s foreword.

In The Adam and Eve Story, Chan proposed that the pole shift was much greater, as much as 90 degrees with the poles shifting into the equatorial zone in less than a day. Chan has proposed the poles would flip back and forth in this way so that Antarctica would eventually return to the South Pole region, and the Arctic would do likewise.

Each time the geographical poles did one of these 90 degree flips, there would be catastrophic winds and tidal waves all over the planet, especially in the equatorial region where the Earth’s spin was  1000 mph. Water and wind would continue to move in the westerly direction through the law of inertia, sweeping over the landmasses that traveled over the equatorial region during the shift as Thomas explained:

In ¼ to ½ a day the poles move almost to the equator, and all hell lets loose. The atmosphere and oceans don’t shift with the shell – they just keep on rotating West to East – and at the equator that speed is 1000 miles per hour. It has to be, normally, to make one rotation per day. So, while the shell shifts with the poles going toward the equator, the winds and oceans go eastward, blowing across the face of the earth with supersonic speeds, inundating continents with water miles deep….

You can see, then,  that ice ages are not a matter of advancing and retreating ice; it’s simply that different areas of the Earth are in polar regions at different times, for different durations of time, with the changes between positions taking place in a fraction of a day. [The Adam and Eve Story, pp.13-14]

The following video illustrates what happens during one of these 90 degree shifts, and what Thomas was proposing for what’s to come. One can easily see how devastating such a 90 degree shift could be and why the CIA may have been motivated to suppress such information.

According to Ben Davidson, author of the popular Earth Catastrophe series, this flipping back and forth would address paleomagnetic studies that show that the magnetic poles have been in their present locations for millions of years. Davidson concluded that this made Thomas’ pole shift theory much more compelling than Hapgood’s. In fact, Davidson believed Hapgood was putting out his theory as a “limited hangout” by the CIA in order to put the truth out in a way that later could be easily discredited.

Unfortunately for Davidson, ice core samples from Antarctica clearly support Hapgood and not Thomas’ theory. Ice core samples from East Antarctica date back as much as 1.5 million years. The following diagram illustrates ice core samples taken from different Antarctic regions and show how far back in time the ice sheets date.

Figure 1. Antarctic ice core drill sites with depth and record duration. From the US ITASE project.

The results from the ice core drill sites show that East Antarctica has been covered by ice for hundreds of thousands years, with Lake Vostok having some of the oldest discovered ice (220,000 years). Older ice core samples than those recorded in the above map have subsequently been found both at Lake Vostok (400,000 years), and the Dome C area (800,000 years) as shown in NOAA records.

A subsequent 2013 study asserted that ice core samples of up to 1.5 million years are most likely to be found in the Dome C area of East Antarctica. Put simply, scientists agree that East Antarctica has been covered by ice sheets for at least 1.5 million years, and likely much longer than that.

In contrast, the ice core samples in West Antarctica are only a few centuries old, with only one so far matching the age of many of the East Antarctic sites. This site is in the drilling area designated Boyd whose ice was found to be 70,000 years old as the above map illustrates.

The ice core records show conclusively that much of the Antarctic continent has been located in the polar zone (latitudes greater than 66 degrees) for at least 1.5 million years, and not in the equatorial zone (O-23 degrees latitude) as proposed by Thomas. Hapgood’s theory offers a better explanation for why only part of Antarctica has been ice-free for significant periods. But how do we explain the 70,000 year old ice sample found in the Byrd region of West Antarctica?

To find a definitive answer to where the geographical poles have been located and then move via crustal displacements to new positions, preserving some but not all the ice accumulated before the displacement, we can turn to the work of Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, authors of When the Sky Fell.  

In their well-documented book, they used a range of archeological and fossil records to show where ice sheets have been found over the last 100,000 years, and how these positions had changed due to crustal displacements as first proposed by Hapgood. To date, I have found no other authors laying out such a compelling case for using available scientific data to track the respective positions of the geographic poles during the last 100,000 years.

Their findings provide a clear explanation for the varying ages found in the ice core samples extracted from different regions of Antarctica; and why Hapgood, rather than Thomas, provides a more accurate explanation for how the crustal displacement theory works.

First, I begin with Flem-Aths’ illustration of the positions of the North and South poles prior to 91,600 BC. It shows how the bulk of East Antarctica was inside the Antarctic circle, while West Antarctic lay in the temperate zone – similar to the present day location of New Zealand. Note the South Pole was located just off the coast of East Antarctica at the time, while the North Pole was located in Alaska.

Importantly, the Dome C area containing some of the oldest ice core samples found to date was located within the Antarctic circle, thereby preserving much of the ancient ice sheets acquired over the previous 1.5 million years or more.

Figure 2. p. 83 from Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell

 The next diagram shows the Antarctic continent in relation to the South Pole after a crustal displacement led to a pole shift around 91,600 BC. Consequently, during the period from 91,600 BC to 50,600 BC, much of lower region of West Antarctica, along with the Transantarctic mountains, lay within the Antarctic circle, while the Palmer peninsula and significant areas of East Antarctica lay within the temperate zone.

Once again the physical South Pole was located over the ocean, rather than the Antarctic continent – this time off the coast of West Antarctica – adjacent to the Ross Sea. The geophysical pole had moved approximately 40 degrees from off the coast of East Antarctica to just off the West Antarctic coast during the 91,600 BC pole shift.

This is very close to what Hapgood had proposed was the crustal displacement that would occur during a pole shift.  Significantly, it is far less than the 90 degree pole shift claimed by Thomas.

Importantly the Dome C area remained entirely within the Antarctic circle thereby preserving its ancient ice sheet. Furthermore, the Byrd area where the 70,000 year old ice sample was found, had been moved from its prior location in the temperate zone prior to the 91,600 BC pole shift, to deep inside the Antarctic circle. This allowed the accumulation of ice to begin, thereby accounting for its estimated age.

Figure 3. p. 84 from Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell

The next pole shift occurred around 50,600 BC, and an illustration provided by the Flem-Aths shows the approximate locations of the poles from 50,600 BC to 9,600 BC.

Around 50,600 BC, the South Pole has flipped back to the other side of the Antarctic continent, where it again lay just off the coast of East Antarctica. An approximate 30 degree pole shift had occurred, which is again consistent with Hapgood’s estimate for the cyclic crustal displacements that the Earth undergoes. It’s important to emphasize that the 50,600 BC pole shift was far less than the 90 degree shift predicted in Thomas’ theory.

Most of East Antarctica was again located inside the Antarctic circle, both preserving its ancient ice sheets and allowing them to expand. The Byrd region, containing the 70,000 year old ice core sample, was now located just outside the Antarctic Circle. Its marginal position marginally inside the temperate zone, which would allow the Byrd region to preserve the bulk of its ice sheets similar to the glaciers of southern New Zealand.

Figure 4. p. 85 from Rand and Rose Flem-Ath, When the Sky Fell

The period from 50,600 BC to 9600 BC is significant since it corresponds to the last time major portions of the Antarctic continent lay outside the polar circle. The bulk of West Antarctic lay in the temperate zone, and its coastal area would therefore have been ice free. Significantly, West Antarctica’s coastline and interior would have been navigable, just as the 1513 Piri Reis Map showed.

In the following diagram, the Piri Reis map is superimposed over a map of the globe showing how the Antarctic coastline from the tip of the Palmer Peninsula, all the way down its eastern flank to East Antarctica was known to ancient sea captains.

Fig 5. Piri Reis Map superimposed over map of the globe

Also vital to understand is that this period, 50,600 BC to 9600 BC corresponds to the Atlantean civilization that Plato wrote about in his famous dialogues, Critias and Timaeus. Plato explainedAtlantis’ extensive island system and waterways deep into its interior, and how it was the hub for a mighty empire that ruled over much of Africa, Europe, and Asia.

This finally takes us to the 9600 BC pole shift that led to the entire Antarctic continent, being moved to wholly inside the Antarctic circle. The magnitude of the Earth crustal displacement moving the South Pole from its previous location just off the East Antarctic coast to its present location was approximately 20 degrees. Again, significantly less than what Thomas was proposing in his crustal displacement theory.

The Flem-Aths contend that Atlantis was located in Antarctica and that the remnants of this legendary lost civilization today lie under the West Antarctic ice sheets. This is consistent with what several whistleblowers and insiders have been revealing concerning the discovery of a flash-frozen civilization under the ice sheets.

If the Flem-Aths and others are right that Plato’s Atlantis is buried under the Antarctic ice, this gives us a means of estimating the devastation that would be caused by a crustal displacement of approximately 20 degrees. It would be sufficient to wipe out the coastal regions all over the globe such as the low-lying archipelagos such as Atlantis, but allow those living in elevated or mountainous regions to survive the subsequent tsunamis, earthquakes, and hurricanes accompanying a pole shift.

When ice core samples are examined in relation to what we know about Earth crustal displacement theories proposed by Hapgood and Thomas, they lead to a clear conclusion. The examination of ice core samples from different parts of Antarctica support Hapgood’s theory that earth crustal displacements happen periodically, and involve Pole Shifts of up to 40 degrees.

The Flem Aths book, When the Sky Fell, gives us a means of tracking the most significant pole shifts over the last 100,000 thousand years, and illustrates how these have occurred in a manner that is consistent with what ice core samples tell us.

Thomas’ theory that the Earth regularly experiences 90 degree pole shifts that flip the poles back and forth from equatorial regions is not supported by Antarctic ice core records. While it is comforting to know that the Earth is unlikely to experience anything like the cataclysmic 90 degree pole shift predicted by Thomas, it is sobering to know that even a 20 degree pole shift devastated the worldwide Atlantean civilization 11,600 years ago.

The likelihood that we will soon experience a pole shift due to another crustal displacement caused by solar activity, cosmic rays, collapse of the Earth’s magnetic field, activity from the Earth’s core, and/or a rapid melt off of the West Antarctic, appears to be quite high as I have suggested in previous articles examining Davidson’s Earth Catastrophe series.

This calls for an unprecedented level of transparency by governments in sharing data about Antarctica’s history, what is known about prior pole shifts, and the disclosure of suppressed technologies that would enable the bulk to humanity to prepare and escape from impending cataclysmic events.

© Michael E. Salla, Ph.D. Copyright Notice

Further Reading

• Cosmic Rays as Triggers for Solar Flashes, Earth Core Eruptions & Pole Shifts
• Massive Pole Shifts are Cyclic according to Declassified CIA Document
• Impending Solar Flash Event Supported by Scientific Studies & Insider Testimony
• The Coming Solar Flash & the Galactic Federation – Q&A with Corey Goode
• More Scientists Confirm Volcanoes Rapidly Melting Antarctica’s Ice Sheets
• Global Elite Prepare for Massive Solar Eruptions claims Secret Space Program Whistleblower

{ https://www.exopolitics.org/ }

19-05-2019 om 00:41 geschreven door peter  

The X-Files Revealed: The Paranormal Roots of the Pentagon’s UFO Program

New revelations shed light on secret government investigations in History's Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

Alejandro Rojas

At the end of 2017, The New York Times broke the story of a secretive Pentagon program with a budget of $22 million to investigate UFOs called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The man who exposed the existence of the program, Luis Elizondo, was the former head of the project. Elizondo’s ongoing efforts to investigate the UFO mystery with his new employer, the To the Stars Academy (TTSA), will be featured in a History Channel series premiering May 31 called Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.

However, what The New York Times apparently did not know when they published their story is that the program went by a different name at its inception, and the scope of the program was much broader than just UFOs. In fact, according to a senior manager on the project, the investigations included “bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more.” 

It is unknown whether Unidentified will cover the paranormal aspects of the program. Although Elizondo did work with this paranormal project, he only worked in the UFO division. By the time he was the head of the entire program, the UFO division was all that was left. The rest of the program had been shut down, and you will never guess why. It wasn’t because people inside the Department of Defense (DoD) thought the program was too weird, although some did. It was shut down because of demonic forces. 

• read more: Former U.S. Intelligence Officials to Investigate UFOs In New History Channel Series

Don’t worry, demons didn't attack the Pentagon, but apparently, some people inside the government were afraid the potentially paranormal incidents being investigated could be demonic, especially scary occurrences taking place at a ranch in Utah, and they wanted no part of it. They didn’t want the government messing with demons either, so they lobbied for the program to be ended and it was.

This may sound extremely odd, but according to those involved, it's true.

The New York Times story that broke the Pentagon UFO program began when an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) approached Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow “to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.”

That sounds innocent enough, but what the article did not cover is what Bigelow researched at this ranch in Utah. Bigelow was known for his interest in the paranormal and UFOs, and by the time the DIA official had approached him, Bigelow had already spent decades and large sums of money researching the paranormal. Bigelow’s first significant foray into the unknown was an organization created in 1995 called the National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS). Its purpose was to conduct scientific investigations of the paranormal.

The ranch the DIA official wanted to visit is nicknamed “Skinwalker Ranch,” and is the subject of the 2005 book Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah. Las Vegas investigative journalist George Knapp co-wrote the book with biochemist Dr. Colm Kelleher, NIDS’ lead scientist.

After hearing rumors about paranormal phenomena occurring in the Uintah Basin in Utah, primarily focused on Skinwalker Ranch, Bigelow bought the ranch in 1996. It was the perfect place to conduct NIDS investigations. The ranchers who owned the property stayed for a while but left because they did not feel comfortable there. If their stories are to be believed, they had good reason to go.

• read more: Aliens in America: A History of UFO Storytelling

The family, using the pseudonym Gorman, said they had several terrifying experiences. Among them was the sighting of a giant wolf-like creature that attacked cattle, could withstand multiple point-blank gunshots and seemed to disappear into thin air. The incident that caused them to leave for good, however, was when their beloved dogs chased glowing orbs of light into the forest at night never to be seen again.

The NIDS investigators had their share of experiences as well. As detailed in Knapp and Kelleher’s book, the strangest occurred in the middle of the night while two researchers were observing the ranch from the edge of a bluff. As they were packing up to leave at around 2:30 am, one of them noticed a light in the forest below. At first, they thought it might be a reflection. However, as they watched, the light began to grow. Once it became a couple of feet wide, they say it looked like a tunnel opening up, and they saw a creature within. It was large and black with no face. It crawled out of the light and into the dark forest. The light then began to disappear until it was gone.

Kelleher said years ago he felt whatever was going on at the Skinwalker Ranch outsmarted them and anticipated their actions.

John Alexander, a retired Colonel in U.S. Army Intelligence who also spent time working at Los Alamos Laboratories and still does some work as a defense consultant, helped organize NIDS investigations. In a YouTube interview for OpenMinds.tv in 2013, he describes what they encountered at the ranch as a “precognitive sentient phenomena.”

“What we learned was that the events were real and tangible, and definitely occurring,” Alexander explained. “These weren’t figments of someone’s imagination, or folklore or any of these sorts of things.”

“But, as for the etiology, nope,” says Alexander. ”We remained mystified.”

According to a recent interview with Knapp, Investigations into the ranch petered as the paranormal phenomena occurring on the ranch also waned. By the early 2000s, not much was going on. It was during this lull that Bigelow allowed Knapp to begin working on the book. Once the book was published, it brought a lot of attention to the ranch, but paranormal experiences were still rare.

• read more: Best UFO and Supernatural Conferences

So when the DIA official approached Bigelow in 2007 to visit the ranch, no one thought there would be anything to worry about. However, precognitive sentient forces on the ranch had other plans. Soon after arriving at the ranch, the DIA official had a paranormal encounter that Knapp described as “remarkable, and it made a very big impression on this guy.”

The New York Times says shortly after this visit, DIA officials met with Senator Harry Reid because they wanted to start a research program. It turns out Reid, a friend of Bigelow’s, was kept in the loop regarding Bigelow’s work researching the paranormal because he shared Bigelow’s interest in the topic.

Reid then found bipartisan support from a couple of fellow members of Congress, secured the funding, and got the project launched - all within 2007. Soon after, a requisition for a contractor to conduct research for the program was posted, and Bigelow’s Bigelow Aerospace won it. Bigelow created Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), lead by Kelleher, to manage the contract.

However, the project was not called AATIP, as The New York Times reported. Per Knapp and documents he obtained, it was called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System (AAWSAP), and it was set up to investigate not just UFOs, but primarily all of the weird stuff going on at the Skinwalker Ranch, including that list of weirdness at the beginning of this story.

Due to the nature of the project, it was kept as quiet as possible. Few in Congress knew it existed. However, it didn’t take long for religious factions within the government to raise concerns.

“They’re basically high-level people in different intelligence agencies who are fundamentalist Christians; who think that anything involving UFOs and the paranormal is satanic,” says Knapp.

“Certain senior government officials thought our collection of facts on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) was dangerous to their philosophical beliefs,” Elizondo wrote in a post on Medium. “They decided the data was a threat to their belief system.”

• read more: Project Blue Book Exposes UFO Secrets at Comic-Con

Elizondo explained to Den of Geek that by 2008, the negative attention their paranormal investigations received caused them to create a sub-group inside of AAWSAP that only focused on military UFO cases. This was AATIP. When Elizondo joined AAWSAP (the paranormal program), it was to work with AATIP (the UFO division). Eventually, the DIA closed AAWSAP, and only AATIP remained. Elizondo took over leadership of AATIP in 2010. 

As for The New York Times, one of the authors of the article, Leslie Kean, told me via email "at the time, our focus was AATIP. This was the name on the documents that we had, and this is what Lue Elizondo had talked to us about in interviews with him, as did others associated with the program." Elizondo says that since his involvement was primarily with AATIP and the UFO side of things, he did not feel at liberty to share AAWSAP information with them.

Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell has recently completed a documentary titled Hunt for the Skinwalker. He worked with Knapp, who intended to make a film when the book came out in 2005. The footage Knapp obtained back then is a large part of the new documentary. 

“That $22 million that was created to study the phenomenon was really inspired wholly by Skinwalker Ranch and what Bigelow had been doing there privately with NIDS,” Corbell told this reporter in a recent podcast interview. “The public is going to see by watching this film that connection very clearly and yes, our Department of Defense, specifically the intelligence organization within the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), they took this very seriously...Secrets have been kept, big secrets about this ranch for more than, I would say, two decades, and everybody wondered what has been going on there,” says Corbell. “This has been embargoed, this information. All of that has changed, and this story can now be told.”

These stories, although they sound fictional, are accounts from credible sources, and according to Corbell, Knapp, and Elizondo, there are still more shocking revelations to come. Elizondo recently told Den of Geek, “You ain't seen nothing yet, baby!” 

Those of us following this story have been wondering when the time will come for us to find out more. Elizondo says much of what we have been waiting for will be included in the History Channel series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation premiering May 31.

{ https://www.denofgeek.com/ }

19-05-2019 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

An apparently unidentified object detected on a Navy plane’s infrared camera.

US Department of Defense/Navy Times

Why is the Pentagon interested in UFOs?

• The Pentagon recently passed a new guideline so US Navy pilots and sailors continue to report unidentified flying objects that they see.
• The new rules are meant to encourage them to keep track of what they see.
• This renewed interest in UFOs, says Iain Boyd, a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, is because the Pentagon needs to better understand flying objects that it can't now identify.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

U.S. Navy pilots and sailors won’t be considered crazy for reporting unidentified flying objects, under new rules meant to encourage them to keep track of what they see. Yet just a few years ago, the Pentagon reportedly shut down another official program that investigated UFO sightings. What has changed? Is the U.S. military finally coming around to the idea that alien spacecraft are visiting our planet?

The answer to that question is almost certainly no. Humans’ misinterpretation of observations of natural phenomena are as old as time and include examples such as manatees being seen as mermaidsand driftwood in a Scottish loch being interpreted as a monster. A more recent and relevant example is the strange luminescent structure in the sky caused by a SpaceX rocket launch. In these types of cases, incorrect interpretations occur because people have incomplete information or misunderstand what they’re seeing.

Based on my prior experience as a science advisor to the Air Force, I believe that the Pentagon wants to avoid this type of confusion, so it needs to better understand flying objects that it can’t now identify. During a military mission, whether in peace or in war, if a pilot or soldier can’t identify an object, they have a serious problem: How should they react, without knowing if it is neutral, friendly or threatening? Fortunately, the military can use advanced technologies to try to identify strange things in the sky.

Taking the ‘U’ out of ‘UFO’

“Situational awareness” is the military term for having complete understanding of the environment in which you are operating. A UFO represents a gap in situational awareness. At the moment, when a Navy pilot sees something strange during flight, just about the only thing he or she can do is ask other pilots and air traffic control what they saw in that place at that time. Globally, the number of UFO reportings in a year has peaked at more than 8,000. It’s not known how many the military experiences.

Even the most heavily documented incidents end up unresolved, despite interviewing dozens of witnesses and reviewing many written documents, as well as lots of audio and video recordings.

UFOs represent an opportunity for the military to improve its identification processes. At least some of that work could be done in the future by automated systems, and potentially in real time as an incident unfolds. Military vehicles – Humvees, battleships, airplanes and satellites alike – are covered in sensors. It’s not just passive devices like radio receivers, video cameras and infrared imagers, but active systems like radar, sonar and lidar. In addition, a military vehicle is rarely alone – vehicles travel in convoys, sail in fleets and fly in formations. Above them all are satellites watching from overhead.

Drawing a complete picture

Sensors can provide a wealth of information on UFOs including range, speed, heading, shape, size and temperature. With so many sensors and so much data, though, it is a challenge to merge the information into something useful. However, the military is stepping up its work on autonomy and artificial intelligence. One possible use of these new technologies could be to combine them to analyze all the many signals as they come in from sensors, separating any observations that it can’t identify. In those cases, the system could even assign sensors on nearby vehicles or orbiting satellites to collect additional information in real time. Then it could assemble an even more complete picture.

For the moment, though, people will need to weigh in on what all the data reveal. That’s because a key challenge for any successful use of artificial intelligence is building trust or confidence in the system. For example, in a famous experiment by Google scientists, an advanced image recognition algorithm based on artificial intelligence was fooled into wrongly identifying a photo of a panda as a gibbon simply by distorting a small number of the original pixels.

So, until humans understand UFOs better, we won’t be able to teach computers about them. In my view, the Navy’s new approach to reporting UFO encounters is a good first step. This may eventually lead to a comprehensive, fully integrated approach for object identification involving the fusion of data from many sensors through the application of artificial intelligence and autonomy. Only then will there be fewer and fewer UFOs in the sky – because they won’t be unidentified anymore.

In this photo provided by the US Navy, air traffic controllers aboard the USS Harry S. Truman monitor aircraft departures in the Carrier Control Approach suite in the Mediterranean Sea.

Andrea Decanini/US Navy/Getty Images

{ https://theconversation.com/uk/technology }

18-05-2019 om 23:27 geschreven door peter  

Oh the Places (on Mars) You'll Go! Here's Where NASA's Curiosity Rover Is Headed

18-05-2019 om 22:44 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.gaia.com/ }

18-05-2019 om 22:20 geschreven door peter  

THE NEMESIS STAR THEORY 

Binary star systems occur frequently and are actually more common than single stars. At least that’s what we thought, until a recent hypothesis proposed the possibility that every star starts out as a binary pair or multi-pair system. While the theory hasn’t been confirmed, there is significant evidence that our Sun likely has a twin, an evil twin.

The majority of stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs, which are a fifth of the size of the sun and up to 50 times fainter. These types of stars are pretty commonly paired with another star in a binary system, leading astronomers to believe that Nemesis would be the Sun’s red dwarf star companion. But due to the small size and faintness of these stars, they can be hard to find, making Nemesis all the more elusive.

binary stars courtesy wired.com

This star is thought to be responsible for 12 cyclical extinction events on Earth, including the one that killed the dinosaurs. The Nemesis Star Theory’s roots can be traced to two paleontologists, David Raup and Jack Sepkoski, who noticed that there was a periodicity to major die-outs throughout Earth’s history, occurring in 26 million year intervals. This led to a number of astrophysicists and astronomers, postulating their own Nemesis Star hypotheses.

So how would the sun’s twin be responsible for mass extinctions? The Nemesis Star Theory proposed the idea that the Earth’s binary twin must be in a large 1.5 light-year orbit, retaining just enough gravitational pull between it and the Sun so as not to drift off. But the issue with the orbit of Nemesis is the possibility that it occasionally passes through a cloud of icy debris on the fringe of our solar system, known as the Oort Cloud.

 

DON’T PERTURB THE OORT

The Oort Cloud is a theoretical sphere that is believed to orbit our solar system, consisting of planetesimals, the small icy building blocks of planets, comets, and asteroids. These planetesimals are sticky and collide with each other until they become large enough to have a significant gravitational pull, eventually becoming as large as a moon or a planet. They also create asteroids and comets which can be knocked out of orbit and sent hurtling toward the center of the solar system, crashing into planets.

There is a binary star system that once passed close enough to nearly perturb the Oort, and it was likely visible from Earth. Scholz’s Star made a flyby some 70,000 years ago, at a distance of 50,000 astronomical units (AU), with one AU being the distance from Earth to the Sun. The Oort is thought to extend from anywhere between 5,000 and 100,000 AUs and is believed to contain up to two trillion celestial objects. Astronomers are 95% certain that Shulz’s star passed within half of a light year of us, possibly perturbing the Oort, though apparently not enough to cause a mass extinction event.

Comets are believed to exist within the Oort and are the product of a thief model, a give-and-take of celestial bodies between stars when they’re formed. In this process comets get pulled back and forth between the gravitational field of stars. It was for this reason that the Oort was theorized, due to the number of comets coming from it, there had to have been a sibling star that pulled them out to the Oort.

The Oort courtesy of space-facts.com

Astronomers also found a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, a region just before the Oort that also contains icy, celestial bodies. This planet, named Sedna, orbits the Sun in a long, drawn-out elliptical path and is one of potentially hundreds. Sedna may help to explain the Nemesis star theory, in that its far-flung orbit was likely caused by our Sun’s twin, pulling it out as it drifted off into the depths of space. Imagine if instead of 9 planets in our solar system, there were a few hundred?

So where is this Nemesis star? Several years ago, the E.U. launched the wonderfully named, Gaia satellite, to map out the stars in the Milky Way and look specifically at stars that have had a close encounter with our solar system or that might come close in the future. But whether or not Nemesis will be found is unknown; it’s possible that it could make a return for the next mass extinction, or it is possible that it drifted off, perturbing the Oort of another star.

Sirius, the Binary Star

{ https://www.gaia.com/ }

18-05-2019 om 22:00 geschreven door peter  

When Top Gun Pilots Tangled with a Baffling Tic-Tac-Shaped UFO

18-05-2019 om 21:34 geschreven door peter  

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The search for extraterrestrial activity is getting some credibility.

Notable scientists are getting behind a push to make contact with whatever might be out there.

“It was between a half mile and a mile away… it was big and quiet… moving very slowly,” UFO witness Robert Strong said.

Did the Hudson Valley resident really see a UFO?

(Credit: CBS2)

“Military pilots, army personnel… the U.S. Navy now… all of them have reported different types of sightings,” Christopher Deperno of MUFON said.

Even NASA is conceding it’s possible the universe contains different life forms.

“We do know that the phenomenon is real,” Sam Falvo of MUFON added.

Experts say the race is heating up to find answers as to who they are, where they’re from, and what they may want from us.

Deperno and Falvo investigate unidentified flying objects for the New York chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, a global organization established in 1969.

“Most of them… 95 percent or so can be identified… it’s those five or six percent that really stir your interest,” Falvo said.

What they do has long been considered a fringe field of science, but today, this search for answers has gone mainstream. Prestigious universities including Harvardand Penn State are dedicating some of their brightest minds to this as a new field of study.

“We believe the search for extraterrestrial intelligence needs a permanent academic home,” Penn State’s Jason Wright said.

Then there’s the private sector, funding everything from digital, interstellar communication, to a dish that emits radio waves.

These attempts to communicate with the extraterrestrial worlds are a bit more high tech than the recording of unique sounds scientists played from two space probes in the 1970’s.

Author and researcher Linda Zimmermann has investigated some 500 eyewitness accounts of UFO’s in the Hudson Valley.

“There is the possibility that they are drawn to the water here… the rivers, the lakes, and reservoirs, but also this area has a very unique magnetic field and gravitational field,” Zimmermann said.

Zimmermann and Falvo’s organizations have now formed a joint venture called Project Aries – with the hope of collecting as much human intelligence and data as possible, with your help.

“We need you to come forward and tell us of your experiences,” Zimmermann added.

There will be a town hall meeting in early June for Hudson Valley residents to find out more about the sightings in their region.

{ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/ }

18-05-2019 om 21:03 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.nieuwsblad.be/ }

18-05-2019 om 20:33 geschreven door peter  

“I experienced a series of ‘eureka’ moments whilst deciphering the code, followed by a sense of disbelief and excitement when I realised the magnitude of the achievement, both in terms of its linguistic importance and the revelations about the origin and content of the manuscript.”

That was Dr. Gerard Cheshire announcing this week that it took him just two weeks to crack the code of the mysterious Voynich manuscript – a Medieval illustrated codex written in an indecipherable language that has baffled cryptographers (the legendary Alan Turing tried unsuccessfully to decode it) since its discovery, including Wilfrid Voynich, who obtained the codex in 1912 and popularized it enough to have it tagged with his name. in “The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained,” Cheshire claims it is written in proto-Romance, an extinct ancestor of the Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, etc.) and he was able to translate enough of the document to determine that it was “compiled by Dominican nuns as a source of reference for Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon.”

“Sorry, folks, “proto-Romance language” is not a thing. This is just more aspirational, circular, self-fulfilling nonsense.”

“Ooooh, tough crowd” as comedians like to say when the audience boos rather than laughs. In Cheshire’s case, that crowd includes Lisa Fagin Davis, executive director of the Medieval Academy of America (an organization promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies), who immediatelytweeted her analysis of the announcement. Davis comes by her expertship legitimately – she received her PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale University where the Voynich manuscript is held, and has handily debunked previous announcements of Voynich code-breaking.

“As with most would-be Voynich interpreters, the logic of this proposal is circular and aspirational: he starts with a theory about what a particular series of glyphs might mean, usually because of the word’s proximity to an image that he believes he can interpret. He then investigates any number of medieval Romance-language dictionaries until he finds a word that seems to suit his theory. Then he argues that because he has found a Romance-language word that fits his hypothesis, his hypothesis must be right. His “translations” from what is essentially gibberish, an amalgam of multiple languages, are themselves aspirational rather than being actual translations.”

Davis explains her doubts to Ars Technica and pointed out that the idea of a proto-Romance language “is completely unsubstantiated,” as are Cheshire links between certain glyphs and certain Latin letters.

“One of the reasons the Voynich manuscript is so appealing is because of languages like hieroglyphics and linear B, which were deciphered. But they didn’t come out of nowhere, they were decades in the making and drew on lots of different scholarly expertise. You can’t just have one person saying: ‘I’ve cracked it.’ You have got to have the field, on the whole, agreeing.”

Dr. Kate Wiles, a medievalist and linguist and senior editor at History Today, told The Guardian that such a discovery, if it were true, would need verification by a number of experts before being accepted.

“Regarding the decipherment of the individual symbols, a number of people have come up with a mapping to Latin letters, but those mappings rarely agree with each other, or with this proposal.”

Greg Kondrak, a computer science professor at the University of Alberta who as also tried to crack the Voynich code, also points out that the Romance origins of some of the words in the manuscript has been well known for some time.

Finally, J.K. Petersen, keeper of The Voynich Portal, summarizes his problems with the alleged code-cracking:

But I have trouble accepting the translation in its current form because:

there are a lot of nonsensical word combinations,there’s almost no grammar,
the letter distribution is quite different from Romance languages (it would take a whole blog to discuss this aspect of the text, but take 4 as an example, which almost exclusively is at the beginnings of tokens—Cheshire relates it to “d”, and “9” which is usually at the end and sometimes at the beginning, but almost never in the middle, which he designates as “a”),
the words still match the drawings if the drawings are interpreted differently (which means the relationship isn’t proven yet),
some of the transliterated “words” don’t show any relationship to Romance word-structures (and the author neglected to explain how specific non-Romance words were derived), and the same words (e.g., “na”) are sometimes interpreted differently.

A few things are certain at this point: there are a LOT of people interested in breaking the Voynich code, a large number working to verify the code-breakers and the attempts and debunkings are destined to continue.

It beats arguing about politics, doesn’t it?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

18-05-2019 om 19:16 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

18-05-2019 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Follow the route of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, as it moves to a new part of Mount Sharp, into an area scientists call the “clay-bearing unit”.

This NASA video, released Wednesday (May 15, 2019), shows what it would be like to soar over Mars’ Mount Sharp, following the route of the Curiosity rover, which has been climbing Mount Sharp since 2014, and has now moved to a new area that the science team calls the “clay-bearing unit”.

In the video, Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada gives a tour of the rover’s new home in the clay-bearing unit – or “clay unit” for short – where Curiosity has just started analyzing rock samples. The clay-bearing unit has been an important scientific destination since even before Curiosity launched. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter(MRO) spied a strong clay signal in this region, suggesting that water might have played a role in its formation. On its long trek since landing on Mars in 2012, Curiosity has discovered many examples of mudstones containing clay minerals.

Curiosity Project Manager Jim Erickson said:

Curiosity has been on the road for nearly seven years. Finally drilling at the clay-bearing unit is a major milestone in our journey up Mount Sharp.

This animation shows a proposed route for NASA’s Curiosity rover, which is climbing lower Mount Sharp on Mars. The annotated version of the map labels different regions that scientists working with the rover would like to explore in coming years.

Image via  

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/University of Arizona/JHUAPL/MSSS/USGS Astrogeology Science Center.

The aerial tour also shows the rover’s proposed path in the years ahead. Targets that are intriguing to scientists include the rocky cliffs of the “sulfate-bearing unit,” where sulfate minerals might indicate the area was drying up or becoming more acidic in ancient times, and an area called Gediz Vallis, where a river may have carved a path through the sulfate unit.

Each region represents a different period in the history of Mount Sharp, which rises about 3 miles (5 km) from the base of Gale Crater. Curiosity’s scientists want to visit these places to learn more about the history of water on the mountain, which slowly dried up as the climate changed.

• Bottom line: Video shows current route of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover.
• Via NASA

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

17-05-2019 om 23:17 geschreven door peter  

{ https://sciencetechworld.com/ }

17-05-2019 om 23:00 geschreven door peter  

The Most Credible Recent UFO Sightings

ARE WE BEING VISITED BY ALIENS?

Since the beginning of time, it seems, people have been spotting unidentified objects flying through the sky. These days, it is easy to laugh off UFO sightings or explain them away as planes, drones, or even delusions. However, you may be surprised to discover that there have been numerous recent UFO sightings that many believe to be highly credible. Here are the stories of 10 recent UFO sightings that could be the real deal.

10. UFO Sightings – Breckenridge, Colorado: October 3, 2014

In October of 2014, many residents of Colorado reported spotting three glowing dots hovering in the afternoon sky. Witnesses stated that the objects were round and appeared to be glowing white or silver, likely because of the sun reflecting off of them. The objects didn’t move; instead, they maintained a triangular formation throughout the time they were visible in the sky. As suddenly as they appeared, they vanished from sight.

What makes this report one of the more credible recent UFO sightings is that two local authorities, the Summit County Sheriff’s Office and the Breckenridge Police Department, confirmed that their employees also spotted the flying objects. Although the offices didn’t claim the objects to be extraterrestrial in origin, they admitted that they were at a loss to explain what they actually were. According to locals who witnessed the event, many believe that aliens were the culprit.

9. Midrand, South Africa: May 21, 2011

In May of 2011, numerous citizens of Midrand, South Africa began reporting seeing things in the sky. The reports were eerily similar, lending credence to this recent UFO sighting.

According to reports, witnesses claimed to have seen anywhere from one to seven orange lights floating high in the sky. The witnesses were alarmed by the lights and reported their sightings to authorities.

The official explanation for the lights was that the witnesses were actually spotting evidence of a small meteor shower. Officials claimed that with all of the end-of-days predictions that were circulating at the time, people were more likely to become aware of the residual light from meteors, though it is actually a fairly common occurrence.

Can these lights in South Africa be easily explained as meteors? The numerous people who saw them certainly don’t believe so.

8. Recent UFO Sightings – Houston, Texas: August 12, 2014

The witnesses to this next recent UFO sighting have extra cause to be startled by what they saw; the place where the UFO appeared is exactly 666 miles away from Roswell, New Mexico, the sight of history’s most famous alien facility.

In August of 2014, people living near Houston, Texas were startled to see what appeared to be rings of light in the night sky. Several pictures of the mysterious lights made their way to social media, and other residents began confirming that they, too, saw the lights. The highly suspect distance from Roswell made the sighting credible to many, who believe that it could have been extraterrestrials in search of their lost brethren.

So far, there has been no official explanation for the unidentified objects that shocked Houston.

7. Alborz, Iran: November 11, 2014

Part of the credibility of many recent UFO sightings comes thanks to modern technology. Most people are carrying phones with cameras everywhere they go, allowing them to capture proof of their extraterrestrial experiences.

This is certainly the case in the 2014 sighting in the air above Iran. A passenger in a commercial airplane captured a 34-second video of a large, saucer-shaped object flying rapidly through the clouds just below the plane.

The official explanation is that the object was most likely a government drone. However, the video shows that the object quickly passes the airliner, suggesting that it was moving at a high speed that a drone is not likely to be capable of. In addition, drones do not typically fly at the same altitude as commercial aircraft, leading many to believe that it was, in fact, an alien craft that was captured in this fascinating video.

6. Recent UFO Sightings – Kensington, Canada: June 4, 2014

A man named John Sheppard also caught an impressive UFO video while camping in Canada in 2014. In the video, viewers can see a diamond-shaped light moving over the water of the lake where John had set up camp. Then a second light appears. The lights continue flying over the lake for around 8 minutes before disappearing.

What makes this one of the more credible recent UFO sightings? After capturing the video, John sent it along to the Mutual UFO Network of Canada. Experts there took the video very seriously and made every effort to determine what could have caused the lights in the video. They considered stars, satellites, and drones, but quickly ruled out all of these explanations. The group eventually stated that it believes this to be one of the few confirmed UFO sightings that it has encountered.

5. Ireland: November 9, 2018

In November of 2018, several pilots flying over Ireland called air traffic control to report crafts flying at high speeds near their planes. One pilot claimed that the craft he saw appeared to be moving at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. Another believed that he was witnessing some sort of military exercise due to the high speed and tight formations of the crafts that he saw. Other pilots didn’t actually see aircraft, but reported strange lights in the clouds around them, inquiring if they could possibly be seeing meteors entering the earth’s atmosphere. Air traffic control could find no record or indication of either military exercises or meteors.

Because of the number of reports from pilots, the sightings were taken seriously. The Irish Aviation Authority believed the pilots were likely seeing dust or debris entering the atmosphere but stated that they would look into the sightings. There has been no official ruling, but many have a hard time believing that the objects the pilots described could have been mere debris

4. Kanpur, India: June 28, 2015

A fifth-grade student in Kanpur, India made headlines in 2015 when he captured a surprisingly clear photo of what appeared to be a flying saucer. He was out taking photos of the clouds, and when he zoomed in on one of his photos, he was shocked to see the saucer flying in the sky.

The photo is so clear, and clearly does not depict a cloud, that many have begun to doubt its authenticity. They believe that the photo was in some way doctored to make it look like there was a UFO in the sky. However, the boy and his family are adamant that the photo is real. They have stated that they will willingly subject the photo to testing, but so far, no tests of authenticity have been forthcoming.

3. Arizona, United States: January 13, 2018

Here is another case of professional pilots giving credibility to one of the most interesting recent UFO sightings. These sightings took place in the sky above Arizona. A pilot contacted air traffic control to ask if any other crafts were flying above them. They reported seeing reflective objects above their planes, which were flying at around 37,000 feet. This means that the objects they saw were flying at around 40,000 feet. Another pilot flying nearby shortly saw the same thing.

The Federal Aviation Administration initially believed that they were seeing balloons launched by Google, weather balloons, or military craft. However, they were unable to find indications that any such crafts would be in the area at that time. The FAA admits that they are stumped, but alien enthusiasts believe the answer is clear.

2. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming: October 23, 2010

Most recent UFO sightings are relatively harmless, but in this case, there were serious consequences. In October of 2010, the Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming experienced a massive power failure. The base houses 50 nuclear missiles, so those weapons were completely offline for almost an hour. The air force claimed that hardware failures were to blame, but others working at the base have another theory.

Several anonymous witnesses claim to have seen a cigar-shaped object in the sky above the base before the power outage. They also claim that the power outage was much longer than the official reports say: around 26 hours. The witnesses state that the object in the sky was unlike anything they have ever seen.

Was a UFO to blame for a major issue with United States missiles? If so, was this an intentional sabotage by alien visitors? The implications of this sighting are indeed disturbing.

1. Hangzhou, China: July 7, 2010

On July 7, 2010, China experienced another of the recent UFO sightings that had real fallout. A plane preparing to land at the Xiaoshan Airport reported an unusual object in the sky near the airport. Within minutes, air traffic controllers had grounded all outgoing flights and diverted incoming flights to other airports. Photos of the object that virtually shut down the airport show it reflecting a golden light and being followed by a comet-like tail.

Others near the airport later reported that they, too, saw a bright object streak across the sky. There were many theories about the object, including hidden US bombers and Russian satellites. The Beijing UFO Research Society and the Shanghai UFO Investigative Research Center have agreed to look into the incident. However, no one has been able to confirm what the object was that sent the entire airport into a panic.

{ https://slappedham.com/ }

17-05-2019 om 22:26 geschreven door peter  

A Gentle Kiss: How the Kuiper Belt Object Ultima Thule Was Born

By Mike Wall  

New Horizons' second flyby target is a primordial object.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by the distant Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule (2014 MU69) on Jan. 1, 2019. 

(Image: © NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory)

A surprisingly gentle merger between two small primordial bodies formed the distant object Ultima Thule, a new study suggests.

These two progenitors themselves likely coalesced from the same cloud of icy material at the dawn of the solar system, billions of miles from the newborn sun. They initially circled a common center of mass but spiraled closer and closer, eventually meeting up in decidedly leisurely fashion.

"These guys look like they came together at literally spacecraft-docking speed," said study lead author Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "This really is informative about the origin of planetesimalsout there."

Stern is principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission, which flew by Ultima Thule on Jan. 1 of this year. The new study, which was published online today (May 16) in the journal Science, describes the initial science returns from that flyby, the most-distant planetary encounter in the history of spaceflight.

• Related: New Horizons' Ultima Thule Flyby in Pictures

Distant target number 2

New Horizons launched in January 2006 to get the first-ever up-close look at Pluto, which had remained largely mysterious since its 1930 discovery. The spacecraft checked off this main mission goal in July 2015, zooming within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of the dwarf planet and capturing amazing images of its stunningly complex and diverse surface.

The New Horizons team then turned its attention to Ultima Thule (official name: 2014 MU69), a small object that currently lies about 4 billion miles (6.5 billion km) from Earth — 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) more distant than Pluto.

The Jan. 1 flyby, the centerpiece of New Horizons' extended mission, was an even more challenging spaceflight feat than the Pluto encounter. 

Ultima Thule is much smaller than the dwarf planet, spanning just 22 miles (35 km) in its longest dimension. And New Horizons gave Ultima Thule a much closer shave than it did Pluto, cruising a mere 2,200 miles (3,540 km) above the small object's frigid surface. The probe was barreling along at 32,280 mph (51,950 km/h) relative to its target at the time.

So far, New Horizons has beamed home just 25% of its flyby data, which should all be in hand by mid-2020. The new study is based on just 10% of the expected total haul — the amount available when the researchers submitted the paper in late February, Stern said. But even this limited first look at New Horizons' imagery and measurements has produced some very intriguing results, as the new paper shows.

• Related: Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Mission in Pictures

A flattened, reddish snowman

New Horizons found that 2014 MU69 is a "contact binary" composed of two lobes, which the team dubbed Ultima (the bigger one) and Thule. The object therefore looks like a snowman — a crushed and bloody one, anyway. 

Ultima Thule is the reddest object ever explored by a spacecraft, with the exception of Mars, Stern said. The Red Planet owes its hue to iron oxides (rust), but something else is going on with 2014 MU69. The New Horizons team thinks the color comes from complex organic molecules known as tholins, or something like them. 

This would not be unheard of; tholins are thought to be responsible for the reddish swaths that New Horizons spotted on Pluto and its biggest moon, Charon.

And then there's the crushed bit: Ultima Thule, especially the Ultima lobe, is notably flattened — "something that really no one expected or predicted with models, sending the theorists back to the drawing board," Stern told Space.com.

The team isn't sure how Ultima Thule got its pancake-esque shape. It's possible that rapid rotation played a role, Stern said. (The object currently completes one spin every 15.9 hours, but the two constituent lobes may have rotated much faster in their youth, before the merger.) 

"Or maybe there was a lot of aerodynamic erosion," Stern said, invoking the possibility that gas and grains of material that didn't get incorporated into Ultima or Thule could have scoured them down.

Many other mysteries remain as well. For example, Ultima sports a number of similar-sized abutting mounds, which may be the outlines of the smaller pieces that built up the lobe. No such mounds are visible on Thule, however. 

That may be because the two lobes formed in slightly different ways. But Thule has a 4.3-mile-wide (7 km) crater called Maryland. So, it's possible that the lobe had mounds as well, but these features were buried when the Maryland-gouging impact resurfaced Thule, Stern said. (New Horizons did not spy any big craters on the Ultima lobe.)

In addition, both lobes have numerous small pits, whose origin remains undetermined. And multiple formation processes are likely involved, study team members said.

"Our assessment is that the chains of similarly sized pits are more likely to be formed by internal processes than by cratering, but the isolated pits that show approximately circular planform outlines, bowl-shaped interior depressions, and, in some cases, raised rims, are more consistent with impact crater morphology," the researchers wrote in the new study.

The New Horizons team has not yet spotted any satellites or rings orbiting Ultima Thule, and the object has shown no signs of an atmosphere or any comet-like outgassing. But the researchers will keep looking as more and more data comes down to Earth.

A primordial object

Ultima Thule's two-lobed shape strongly suggests that the object is primordial, going all the way back to the solar system's birth. 

Impact speeds in 2014 MU69's neighborhood — the cold, dark depths beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt — are currently around 670 mph (1,080 km/h). A modern meetup of two objects out there would thus be too violent to produce the Ultima Thule we see today; its two lobes would have been destroyed or misshapen, Stern and his colleagues found.

Indeed, modeling work the team presented at a conference last month suggests the collision likely occurred at around 5.5 mph (8.9 km/h) — slower than most joggers go. Such a "gentle dynamical environment" was present long ago, shortly after the sun had formed. 

Other lines of evidence bolster the notion that Ultima Thule is an ancient and relatively unchanged object.  For example, its two lobes are similar in both brightness and color, suggesting that they formed from the same swirling cloud of gas and dust long ago.

"This is the first unquestionably primordial contact binary that we've seen up close with a spacecraft," Stern said.

• Related: The Kuiper Belt: Objects at the Edge of the Solar System

More work to do

New Horizons team members may end up cracking more Ultima Thule mysteries one day; most of the flyby data still hasn't come down to Earth, after all.

And even when that information has all been analyzed, there may be yet more work to do. The spacecraft is healthy and has enough fuel left to fly by yet another deep-space object, Stern said. 

NASA would have to grant another mission extension for this to happen, and the New Horizons team can't apply for such an extension until next year, Stern said. But the researchers definitely plan to do so.

"We came all the way out here to the Kuiper Belt, and we're going to try to squeeze every last thing we can [out of this mission]," Stern said. 

More spacecraft will explore the outer solar system in the future, "but they're not going to be here anytime soon," Stern said. "We're here, and we're going to milk it."

• New Horizons' Historic Flyby of Ultima Thule: Full Coverage
• Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Mission in Pictures
• New Horizons May Make Yet Another Flyby After Ultima Thule
• Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. 
• Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.
• Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

17-05-2019 om 21:47 geschreven door peter  

Bermuda might hold the key to a whole new type of volcano

BY MIHAI ANDREI 

Researchers studying a volcano in Bermuda report that it is unlike anything else we’ve seen on Earth — it formed through a mechanism we knew nothing about until now.

About 30 million years ago, a disturbance in the mantle’s transition zone supplied the magma to form the now-dormant volcanic foundation on which Bermuda sits.

Image credits: Wendy Kenigsberg/Clive Howard.

With its turquoise seas and pink beaches, Bermuda draws almost 1 million tourists every year. But far beneath the crystalline water, something draws a completely different crowd: scientists.

Cornell researchers had a hunch that there was something off about Bermuda’s volcanoes, so they analyzed a 2,600-foot (800-meter) core sample taken back in 1972. They were looking for isotopes, trace elements, evidence of water content, volatile materials — anything that would give some indication as to how the volcanoes were formed.

“I first suspected that Bermuda’s volcanic past was special as I sampled the core and noticed the diverse textures and mineralogy preserved in the different lava flows,” Mazza said. “We quickly confirmed extreme enrichments in trace element compositions. It was exciting going over our first results … the mysteries of Bermuda started to unfold.”

When the team analyzed the materials from the core, they found a clear signature of the “transition zone” — a layer rich in water, crystals and melted rock that lies beneath the outer and inner mantle. Before now, researchers didn’t know that volcanoes can form from the transition zone.

“We found a new way to make volcanoes. This is the first time we found a clear indication from the transition zone deep in the Earth’s mantle that volcanoes can form this way,” said senior author Esteban Gazel, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University.

Cross-polarized microscopic slice of a core sample. Blue-yellow mineral is augite.

Credits: Gazel lab.

Volcanoes were thought to form through one of two mechanisms: either when two tectonic plates subduct (one moves beneath the other), or when there is a deep mantle upwelling, as is the case in Hawaii. Surprisingly this wasn’t the case in Bermuda.

“We were expecting our data to show the volcano was a mantle plume formation — an upwelling from the deeper mantle — just like it is in Hawaii,” Gazel said. However, 30 million years ago, a disturbance in the transition zone caused the magma to flow towards the surface of what is now Bermuda.

Although geochemical studies of this type have been carried out in most volcanic parts of the world, Bermuda had escaped trialing until now. Now that they know what to look for, researchers say that there’s a good chance they might find these chemical signatures in other volcanic areas as well.

This suggests that the transition zone, which is located at a depth of 410-660 km (250 to 400 mi), is an important chemical reservoir for the Earth, bringing material from that depth and onto the surface.

• The study has been published in Nature. DOI:10.1038/s41586-019-1183-6.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

17-05-2019 om 21:14 geschreven door peter  

Do you see the light? Image of Christ-like figure is spotted in the sky as sun bursts through the clouds in Argentina

• Stunning smartphone image was captured in San Salvador de Jejuy, Argentina
• Monica Aramayo photographed the sun shining through the clouds over the city
• It appears to show a Christ-like figure in a white cassock and crown of thorns
• People have compared it to the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro 

By ROSS IBBETSON FOR MAILONLINE

A stunning image of a Christ-like figure has been captured bursting through the clouds over Argentina.

The photo was taken in the city of San Salvador de Jujuy and spread rapidly on social media.

Monica Aramayo used her smartphone to capture the white of the sun lighting up the sky and a figure appearing with his arms outstretched.

Monica Aramayo used her smartphone to capture the striking image in the clouds of San Salvador de Jejuy, Argentina

The fervently Catholic South American country's social media users compared it to the portrayal commonly seen in Renaissance artwork.

Others said it looked like the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Not only is the 'head' of the figure clear in the image but a cassock which the saviour was thought to wear appears to flow down to the ground below.  

Others said the 'head' even appeared to be adorned with a crown of thorns associated with the Crucifixion of Jesus.

The figure has been compared to the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Social media user Mariela Romano commented: 'The Lord will soon come for us all and we should be ready.'

Carlos Daniel Nieva remarked: 'Thanks for the image that allows us to keep on our path and have a better hope for tomorrow.'

While Romina Salinas wrote: 'If Jesus came back, he would make us all disappear because we are worth nothing. I personally only see the sun coming through the clouds, but people see what they want to see.'

Share or comment on this article: 

• Do you see the light? Image of Christ-like figure is spotted in the sky in Argentina

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

17-05-2019 om 20:47 geschreven door peter  

17-05-2019 om 20:19 geschreven door peter  

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17-05-2019 om 20:15 geschreven door peter  

Wikileaks Releases Unused Footage of Moon Landing

Wikileaks releases unused footage of moon landing showing it was REALLY filmed in Nevada desert…

THIS VIDEO FOOTAGE MAY NOT BE GENUINE

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

17-05-2019 om 19:53 geschreven door peter