How would you feel if you looked out your window and saw a giant ball of fire doing loops across the sky? That’s got to be one of the more unnerving types of UFOs to see. An alien spaceship might be a little reality-shattering but at least there would be a little bit of context—it’s a real weird vehicle, but at least you know what a vehicle is. A big ball of fire apocalyptically pirouetting over a small English town, though? That’s just plain odd.

The 'fireball' seen over Brixworth.

Photo: Lauren Tester

The latest mysterious fireball was seen in the skies over Northhampton, England. Luke Pawsey, 20, spoke to the Northhampton Chronicle and Echo about the video of the bizarre event, filmed by his friend Lauren Tester at her home. You can watch the video for yourself here. The footage is short, only a few seconds long, but it shows a large flaming object doing loops in the sky. You can even see the smoke from previous loops faintly to the right of the fireball, indicating that it is in fact a literal great ball of fire.

It literally looks like this.

Luke Pawsey says he doesn’t believe that the fireball was man made or a weird type of lightning. He believes that it is in some way alien. Pawsey says:

“I think it’s an unidentified flying object (UFO) but when people imagine that they think of a spaceship which I don’t think it was. But how do we know what’s out there, especially if it doesn’t exist to us? It could be aliens but I don’t want to say for certain as I don’t know.”

Strangely, it seems that Pawsey and Tester are the only witnesses to the bizarre event. Pawsey says it’s hard to believe that no one else saw a giant dancing fireball in the sky:

“It’s baffling and it really is a mystery that’s why I’m so interested in it. No one knows what it is and by the time you get someone to look at it, it’s gone.

Yet this isn’t the first time a big, ridiculous, and unexplained fireball has appeared. It’s not even the first time it’s happened in Northhampton. In 2014 a video was posted online of what can only be described as “probably the same thing.” 11-year-old Katie Real filmed a looping fireball UFO over Northampton as her parents watched. Fiona Fearon, Katie’s mom, said in 2014:

“Initially we thought it could be a plane on fire but it appeared to be dancing across the sky. It was an amazing sight. It’s very weird. [Our children] were very excited by it. It looked like a ball of fire moving around in the sky.”

Could be a wizard did it. It is England, after all.

Often, mysterious fireballs and dancing lights are explained away with two words: “ball lightning.” The problem with that is although it’s a term composed of two words we know—”ball” and “lightning”—science still considers ball lightning to be an unexplained phenomenon. It’s called a type of lightning because it’s associated with thunderstorms (sometimes) and because it looks like it’s probably electric in nature. But the list of proposed explanations for ball lightning is long and ridiculous, and due to its extreme rarity science has never been able to study it under controlled conditions. No one knows what it is, and using an unexplained phenomenon to explain away an unexplained phenomenon seems like the definition of madness.

But it’s understandable that folks would be looking for something to make a giant dancing fireball seem a bit more mundane. But at the end of the day, no matter what name you give it, it’s still a giant dancing fireball in the sky.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-08-2019 om 20:04 geschreven door peter  

David Jacobs on CoastToCoast AM warned that the marginalization of abductions has served to obscure an ongoing agenda centered around overtaking the planet via ET-human hybrids.

According to his research, this plan involves gradually populating the Earth with these entities, which he calls 'hubrids,' that look and act like normal humans, but are actually hybrids that possess mind abilities.

Since the hubrids were created and raised off planet, Jacobs claimed, human abductees are being used by the ETs to educate and train the entities for easier assimilation into our society and culture.

While Jacobs conceded that he has yet to decipher the reason behind this surreptitious infestation of the planet, he expressed certainty that humans are poised to ultimately become a second class species to the hybrids which are usurping our world.

And not only David Jacobs believes that Alien-Hybrids are being assimilated into our society and culture, Oxford professor Dr. Young-hae Chi also believes alien-human hybrid species are among us.

Dr. Young-hae Chi at the austere British institution claims bug-like aliens walk among us, and says they’re having very close encounters with humans - interbreeding to create a new hybrid species that could one day save Earth from climate change and other disasters.

The visitors are hardly altruists — they are meddling in our affairs because they share a “comprehensive biosphere” with humans, according to Dr. Young-hae Chi instructor in Korean at Oxford’s Oriental Institute.

“They come not for the sake of us, but for the sake of them, their survival, but their survival is actually our survival as well — the survival of the entire biosphere,” explained Chi, Read more here.

  

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

07-08-2019 om 18:20 geschreven door peter  

Is er dan toch leven op de maan? Mogelijk hebben we daar zelf met mislukte maanlanding voor gezorgd - HLN.be

Bron: The Guardian

Eind februari lanceerde Israël de eerste private maanlander Beresheet, tot in april plots alle contact werd verbroken. De maanlander zou nu toch voor een primeur hebben gezorgd. En wat voor één. De Beresheet had namelijk zogenaamde beerdiertjes mee, minuscule meercellige organismen die erom bekend staan te overleven bij extreme omstandigheden. 

Volgens de Arch Mission Foundation, de organisatie achter de mislukte maanlanding, zouden deze ‘sterkste dieren op aarde’ wel eens “de enige overlevenden” kunnen zijn van de missie.

Lees ook

Dit 1 millimeter grote diertje zou zelfs de ergste Apocalyps op aarde overleven

“Sterkste dieren op aarde”

Op aarde leven beerdiertjes op hoge bergtoppen, in verzengende woestijnen en in het ijs op Antarctica. Dr. Karl Shuker schreef in zijn boek The Hidden Powers of Animals dat de diertjes zelfs overleven in vloeibaar helium en wanneer ze worden gekookt aan 149 graden Celsius. 

De verborgen kracht van het beestje zit hem in de mogelijkheid om zichzelf als het ware te verschrompelen tot een ‘zaadachtige’, waarbij al het water afgestoten wordt en het metabolisme tot stilstand komt. Het is in deze toestand dat het diertje dergelijke extreme omstandigheden kan overleven.

Reëel

In 2007 ontdekten wetenschappers dat deze diertjes ook wel eens de zware condities van ruimtereizen zouden kunnen overleven. En dat zou bij deze dus gebeurd zijn.

Volgens Lukasz Kaczmarek, een astrobioloog aan de Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, is de kans reëel dat de diertjes de crash hebben overleefd. “Beerdiertjes kunnen een druk die ontstaat wanneer asteroïden crashen op aarde overleven, dus een dergelijke kleine crash betekent niets voor hen.” Hij voegde eraan toe dat de diertjes het waarschijnlijk nog enkele jaren kunnen uithouden.

Geen kolonisatie

Een kolonisatie van de maan is echter onbestaande. “Ze kunnen de maan niet koloniseren, omdat er geen atmosfeer en vloeibaar water voorhanden is,” aldus Kaczmarek. “Maar het zou mogelijk zijn om ze terug naar de aarde te brengen en opnieuw tot leven te wekken.” Gedehydrateerde beerdiertjes zijn namelijk in het verleden al opnieuw tot leven gewekt door hen in water te stoppen, waarna ze hun leven van voordien gewoon verderzetten.

Philippe Reekie, een collega-astrobioloog aan de Universiteit van Edinburgh, bevestigt de stelling van Kaczmarek. Maar, zo voegt hij er aan toe, als de beerdiertjes zich in hun normale toestand bevonden, is de kans groot dat ze de impact toch niet hebben overleefd. “In hun normale staat kun je de beestjes namelijk makkelijk doden.”

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

07-08-2019 om 01:50 geschreven door peter  

07-08-2019 om 01:14 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

07-08-2019 om 01:09 geschreven door peter  

07-08-2019 om 00:55 geschreven door peter  

07-08-2019 om 00:27 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious 'ghost city' appears over Chinese lake due to a natural phenomenon

• Ancient buildings, trees and a giant wind turbine were among the eerie images
• The apparition appeared over the Hongze Lake in Jiangsu Province yesterday
• The sight was said to be a mirage, a form of illusion common in humid weather 
• Web users have been baffled by the old-fashion structures in the optical illusion

By TRACY YOU FOR MAILONLINE

Residents in the Chinese city of Huai'an were stunned yesterday after a giant mirage of a 'ghost city' emerged over the horizon.

The rition appeared in the afternoon over the Hongze Lake in the province of Jiangsu in eastern China, according to local media.

Ancient Chinese buildings with curved roofs, trees and a giant wind turbine were among the eerie images rising up through the mist that had descended over the lake. There is usually nothing but sky across the horizon.appa

Residents of the Chinese city of Huai'an were yesterday stunned to see the ghostly apparition of an ancient city over a freshwater lake. The unusual sight appeared on a humid afternoon

Amazed residents rushed to see the unusual spectacle, which lasted about half an hour on the south-western part of the lake, reported Jiangsu News Broadcast.  

Occupying 2,069 square kilometres (798 square miles), Hongze is the fourth largest freshwater lake in China. 

One of the eyewitnesses, a photographer named Chen Kai, told newspaper Modern Express that he spotted the sight after a rainfall.

Mr Chen said he saw a cluster of ancient Chinese buildings which stood about a dozen stories, including octagonal gate towers, city wall and residential buildings. 

The mirage was spotted by a photographer named Chen Kai who was taking pictures by the lake yesterday afternoon. It was believed to be one of the clearest mirage recorded in the area

It is believed that the sight was a mirage - a form of illusion that is common in humid weather.

The phenomenon is caused when moisture in the air becomes warmer than the temperature of water below.

As the rays of sunlight cross from the colder air into the warmer air it is 'bent' or refracted - creating a reflection in the air.

The patterns in the mirage are typically blurred and shimmering with a resemblance to human structures. They are similar to a reflection seen in water. 

Occupying 2,069 square kilometres, Hongze is the fourth largest freshwater lake in China

The director of the Hongze Lake Museum, Mr Pei, told reporters mirages had appeared in the region in the 1950s and 1960s, according to the city's archives.

The mirage yesterday was believed to be one of the clearest ever recorded in the area. 

Footage of the 'ghost city' has caused a sensation on the Chinese social media, with web users flocking to identify the structures in the optical illusion. 

Mr Chen said he was yet to find out the original site of the reflection captured on his footage. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

07-08-2019 om 00:20 geschreven door peter  

Mass UFO sightings reported over Cincinnati as mystery lights filmed vanishing from sight

SOCIAL media has been flooded with reports of UFOs appearing over Cincinnati, as baffling footage appears to show lights vanishing and reappearing.

Shocked witnesses Laina and Angie captured the bizarre sighting in the skies above the city in Ohio, US, on August 3

The clip begins with for bright objects moving in a line across the grey clouds.

But, one-by-one, they start to vanish from sight.

"They're gone, I just don't know," one of the camerawomen says as the objects then re-appear.

A fifth light then emerges on the left-hand side of the screen.

YouTube conspiracist MrMBB333 who uploaded the clip and said: “They didn’t go behind the clouds, they were in front of the clouds.

“Something comes in from the left, they appear to be in a straight row and at a slight angle.”

When the conspiracist switches the light formats, he claims the footage shows the planes turning “invisible”.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

07-08-2019 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Ancient Drop of Water Rewrites Earth's History

The remains of a microscopic drop of ancient seawater was used to re-establish the date that plate tectonics started on Earth.

The remains of a microscopic drop of ancient seawater has assisted in rewriting the history of Earth’s evolution when it was used to re-establish the time that plate tectonics started on the planet. 

Credit:  Wits University

Plate tectonics is Earth’s vital – and unique – continuous recycling process that directly or indirectly controls almost every function of the planet, including atmospheric conditions, mountain building (forming of continents), natural hazards such as volcanoes and earthquakes, formation of mineral deposits and the maintenance of our oceans. It is the process where the large continental plates of the planet continuously move, and the top layers of the Earth (crust) are recycled into the mantle and replaced by new layers through processes such as volcanic activity.

Where it was previously thought that plate tectonics started about 2.7 billion years ago, a team of international scientists used the microscopic leftovers of a drop of water that was transported into the Earth’s deep mantle – through plate tectonics – to show that this process started 600 million years before that. An article on their research that proves plate tectonics started on Earth 3.3 billion years ago was published in the high impact academic journal, Nature, on 16 July.

Credit:  Wits University

“Plate tectonics constantly recycles the planet’s matter, and without it the planet would look like Mars,” says Professor Allan Wilson from the Wits School of Geosciences, who was part of the research team.

“Our research showing that plate tectonics started 3.3 billion years ago now coincides with the period that life started on Earth. It tells us where the planet came from and how it evolved.”

Earth is the only planet in our solar system that is shaped by plate tectonics and without it the planet would be uninhabitable.

For their research, the team analysed a piece of rock melt, called komatiite – named after the type occurrence in the Komati river near Barberton in Mpumalanga – that are the leftovers from the hottest magma ever produced in the first quarter of Earth’s existence (the Archaean). While most of the komatiites were obscured by later alteration and exposure to the atmosphere, small droplets of the molten rock were preserved in a mineral called olivine. This allowed the team to study a perfectly preserved piece of ancient lava.

“We examined a piece of melt that was 10 microns (0.01mm) in diameter, and analysed its chemical indicators such as H2O content, chlorine and deuterium/hydrogen ratio, and found that Earth’s recycling process started about 600 million years earlier than originally thought,” says Wilson. “We found that seawater was transported deep into the mantle and then re-emerged through volcanic plumes from the core-mantle boundary.”

The research allows insight into the first stages of plate tectonics and the start of stable continental crust.

“What is exciting is that this discovery comes at the 50th anniversary of the discovery of komatiites in the Barberton Mountain Land by Wits Professors, the brothers Morris and Richard Viljoen,” says Wilson.

• Contacts and sources:
  University of the Witwatersrand
• Citation: Deep hydrous mantle reservoir provides evidence for crustal recycling before 3.3 billion years ago.
  Alexander V. Sobolev, Evgeny V. Asafov, Andrey A. Gurenko, Nicholas T. Arndt, Valentina G. Batanova, Maxim V. Portnyagin, Dieter Garbe-Schönberg, Allan H. Wilson, Gary R. Byerly. Nature, 2019; 571 (7766): 555 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1399-5

Source: 

• http://www.ineffableisland.com/2019/08/ancient-drop-of-water-rewrites-earths.html

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

06-08-2019 om 23:52 geschreven door peter  

Linda Moulton Howe: MO41, the Incredible UFO Case Before Roswell

COAST TO COAST AM. Earthfiles investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe presented a report on the new book, “MO41, The Bombshell Before Roswell,” interviewing its author Paul Blake Smith, a longtime Missouri resident who decided to dig deeply into the 1941 crash of a UFO near Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

The incident began on the night of April 12, 1941, when local resident, Pastor William G. Huffman, was called by police authorities to travel immediately to a crash site to give ministerial rites to three passengers, two dead and one still alive, Smith recounted.

According to Huffman, when he was escorted to the site, he saw a crashed metal spaceship, and nearby were three identical Grey aliens, “almost as if they were released from a cookie cutter.” The recovered aliens were “incinerated from within” as though they could not breathe our atmosphere, Rev. Huffman recalled.

{https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

06-08-2019 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

Are you ready for human-monkey hybrids? How about human-rat or human-mouse combinations? Can you accept the justification being given by scientists and government officials giving their approval that it’s for a ‘noble cause’ – creating much-needed human transplant organs – and that no actual hybrid creature will be brought to full development? That they will be interrupted or destroyed or ‘terminated’ before they reach that point? Well, get ready for some hybrids because the news out of China and Japan recently says they‘re either approved, just around the corner or already here. Can there be any scarier development in the world today?

Let’s start with the human-monkey hybrid. Announced by the Spanish news source El Pais, a team led by Juan Carlos Izpisúa genetically modified monkey embryos to deactivate the genes that create organs, then injected them with human stem cells that generated human organs instead. If his name sounds familiar, it could be because in 2017 Juan Carlos Izpisúa announced that he had created human-pig hybrids. Izpisúa works for the Salk Institute of the U.S. in conjunction with (ironically) the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM) in Spain. The research is done in China where regulations against such experiments are lax at best. They also prefer to call the human-monkey combinations ‘chimeras’ because they’re not half-human and half monkey but merely monkeys developing human organs. Less creepy but still unethical enough that they destroy the embryos after 14 weeks to avoid more controversy. While his human-pig chimeras were ultimately unsuccessful, Izpisúa is confident it will eventually work and be accepted by the general public.

“History shows us again and again that, over time, our ethical and moral scales change and mutate, like our DNA, and what yesterday was ethically unacceptable, if that really means a breakthrough for the progress of humanity, today it is now an essential part of our lives.”

Is this the future?

This takes us to Japan, where that country’s education and science ministry issued new guidelines saying human-animal hybrids or chimeras can now be gestated to term and recently gave approval to renowned geneticist Hiromitsu Nakauchi at the University of Tokyo to create the first ones using rats and mice. In The Asahi Shimbun, Nakauchi described his plans to genetically modify fertilized eggs of rats and mice to deactivate the genes for making a pancreas, then inject them with humaniPS (induced stem) cells in the eggs, place them in rats and mice and allow them to be born, where their development will be monitored. As a precautionary measure, they will examine the brains of the rodent embryos after they reach a certain stage of development and end the experiment if the number of human cells in occupies more than 30 percent of the rat’s brain. That would signal that the human cells are taking over – a situation that is considered unethical … but still legal.

“We don’t expect to create human organs immediately, but this allows us to advance our research based upon the know-how we have gained up to this point.”

While the researchers say they plan to create human livers and kidneys as well as pancreas, Nakauchi tries to assail fears by saying the chances for living hybrids are nill.

“At that level, an animal with a human face will never be born.”

However, monkeys with human organs are already being recreated in China, where Nakauchi’s Japanese restrictions, minimal as they might be, are non-existent. You don’t have to have seen “Island of Lost Souls” (the 1932 pre-censorship horror film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel “Island of Dr. Moreau”) to come to the conclusions of Jiro Nudeshima, a life science specialist who co-heads a civic group focusing on the ethical concerns raised by life science research. He tells Asahi Shimbun:

“It is problematic, both ethically and from a safety aspect, to place human iPS cells, which are still capable of transforming into all types of cells, into the fertilized eggs of rats and mice. There is also a risk that a certain body part unexpectedly becomes chimera, a condition in which heterologous cells exist in one body, by mixing human cells into the brains or reproductive cells of rats and mice.”

Kathleen Burke as the Panther Woman in “Island of Lost Souls”

Dr. Moreau had no restrictions and an isolated island filled with apes and big cats to experiment with. Could it happen in real life?

Has it happened already?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

06-08-2019 om 22:55 geschreven door peter  

On July 31, 2019 the photographer spotted two cigar-shaped UFOs in the sky above Mougins in France.

UFO 1 - Mougins, France

UFO 2 - Mougins, France

Both UFOs move at high speed, with the first UFO flying through a cloud and the second UFO coming into view above the cloud.

Besides, there is a strange triangle structure is visible in the cloud.

Coincidence or not but nine days earlier, on July 22, 2019 a similar cigar-shaped UFO has been filmed while flying over the same location in Mougins, France.

UFO 3 - Mougins, France

Could it be the same UFO?

  

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

06-08-2019 om 17:40 geschreven door peter  

UFOs Seen Over California Beach On Aug 4, 2019, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Aug 4, 2019
Location of sighting: Huntington Beach, California, USA
Source: MUFON #102536

Witnesses caught a fleet of bright objects over Huntington Beach two days ago. The objects were glowing orbs, but there was a single orb that seems to have been metallic and not glowing. The eyewitness said they noticed the objects as they began to rise higher and higher into the atmosphere and out of sight. Its very possible that these UFOs were exploring under the ocean off California and then decided to end their mission and return to its own planet or space station. There is a well known alien base off Malibu, California, these UFOs may have come from there. 
Scott C. Waring

ttps://www.etdatabase.com/ }

06-08-2019 om 17:26 geschreven door peter  

Alien Orb Recorded Following Deer On Hunter Cam, July 17, 2019, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: July 17, 2019

Location of sighting: Alma Center, Wisconsin, USA

Source: MUFON #102537

 

A hunter caught a glowing orb on his animal camera two weeks ago. The orb is actually watching and following a deer! The deer is caught in only the last photo, but its obvious that the alien probe is following it. Also I notice the date on the camera seems to be different than the date on his MUFON report. I think he may have never set the date on the camera correctly. I've been guilty of such things myself many times. Don't like wasting time trying to figure some of those things out. He says the photos were taken July 17 last month. This camera is using infrared which sees well at night and also will see any cloaked object. Awesome catch, and proof that aliens are interested in literally every form of life on Earth. 

Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

 

Eyewitness states: 

I have a series of 4 photos caught on my deer cam. I am a avid bow hunter and got these pictures when I checked my camera.

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

06-08-2019 om 17:20 geschreven door peter  

US Congressman Warns UFOs Could Pose a Serious Threat on National Security

A US Congressman warns that UFOs could pose a severe security risk in a letter written to the Navy. North Carolina Republican Representative Mark Walker also asked if investigators had recovered physical evidence of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).

These pictures show ‘tic-tac’ UFOs caught on camera by US Navy pilots

After hearing dozens of reports of strange encounters between highly advanced UFOs and naval aviators, the former pastor wrote to US Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.

In the past two years, information of unexplained sightings has been leaking out after details of Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was a secret government programme, leaked into the public domain.

This is the letter Mark Walker wrote to Richard Spencer, Secretary of the US Navy

A declassified document which gives details of some of the research papers produced by AATIP investigators

This project was involved in investigating and exploring UFO encounters and exotic technologies such as antigravity, wormholes, cloaking, high energy laser weapons, and warp drives.

In his letter, Walker wrote: ‘Based on pilot accounts, encounters with UAPs often involved complex flight patterns and advanced manoeuvring, which demand extreme advances in quantum mechanics, nuclear science, electromagnetics and thermodynamics.

‘If the accounts are true, the unidentified crafts could pose a serious security risk to our military personnel and defence apparatus.

‘They could also represent a tremendous opportunity for advancements in science and technology that can contribute to the public good.

’ The letter also noted ‘reports of significant investments in advanced aerospace technologies’ by China and asked: ‘Does the department have any information regarding private companies or foreign nations who have made significant advancements in aerophysics?

In his letter, Walker believes too that details on encounters with UAPs are vital to the national security and scientific research as well as to public interest.

A number of US Navy pilots have reported encounters with mysterious UFOs which had no visible engine and produced no exhaust plumes but were capable of travelling at hypersonic speeds and soaring to incredible heights.

Nick Pope greets fans and supporters at an AlienCon event

Nick Pope, a former investigator at the British Ministry of Defence, said the letter from Congressman Mark Walker is a sign of the growing political pressure for answers about UFOs and is consistent to the reports that many US Senators have received a classified briefing from Pentagon on the situation. Nick Pope also believes that Walker’s letter comes on the heels of the revelation from President Donald Trump that he had a meeting on the issue.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ 

- https://metro.co.uk/ }

06-08-2019 om 17:10 geschreven door peter  

Millions of Black Holes Are Hiding in Our Galaxy. Here's How Astronomers Plan to Find Them.

(Image: © Shutterstock)

Why is that? As black holes suck the matter from space, that matter at its fringes accelerates and forms what’s known as an accretion disk. The matter in that disk rubs against itself as it spins toward the event horizon— a black hole's point of no return — spitting out X-rays in the process. But isolated black holes, which are small compared to supermassive black holes, don't emit a great deal of X-rays this way. There simply isn't enough matter or energy in their accretion disks to create large X-ray signatures. And past searches for IBHs using X-rays have failed to produce conclusive results.

"These outflows can possibly make the IBHs detectable in other wavelengths," the researchers, Daichi Tsuna of the University of Tokyo and Norita Kawanaka of Kyoto University, wrote in their paper. "The outflows can interact with the surrounding matter and create strong collisionless shocks at the interface. These shocks can amplify magnetic fields and accelerate electrons, and these electrons emit synchrotron radiation in the radio wavelength." 

Related: 9 Weird Facts About Black Holes

In other words, the outflow sliding through the interstellar medium should get electrons moving at speeds that produce radio waves.

"Interesting paper," said Simon Portegies Zwart, an astrophysicist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who was not involved in Tsuna and Kawanaka's research. Portegies Zwart has also studied the question of IBHs, also known as intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs).

"It would be a great way to find IMBHs," Portegies Zwart told Live Science. "I think that with LOFAR [the Low-Frequency Array in the Netherlands], such research should already be possible, but the sensitivity may pose a problem."

IBHs, Portegies Zwart explained, are thought of as a "missing link" between the two types of black holes astronomers can detect: stellar-mass black holes that can be two to possibly 100 times the size of our sun, and supermassive black holes, the gargantuan beasts that live at the cores of galaxies and are hundreds of thousands of times the size of our sun.

Stellar-mass black holes are occasionally detectable in binary systems with regular stars, because the binary systems can produce gravitational waves and companion stars can provide fuel for large X-ray bursts. And supermassive black holes have accretion disks that emit so much energy that astronomers can detect and even photograph them.

But IBHs, in the midrange between those two other types, are far more difficult to detect. There are a handful of objects in space that astronomers suspect might be IBHs, but those results are uncertain. But past research, including a 2017 paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, which Portegies Zwart co-authored, suggests millions of them could be hiding out there.

Tsuna and Kawanaka wrote that the best prospect for a radio survey of IBHs probably involves using the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a multi-part radio telescope due to be built with sections in South Africa and Australia. It's slated to have a total radio-wave collecting area of 1 square kilometer (0.39 square miles). The researchers estimate that at least 30 IBHs emit radio waves that the SKA will be able to detect during its first, proof-of-concept phase, which is scheduled for 2020. Down the road, they wrote, the complete SKA (scheduled for the mid-2020s) should be able to detect up to 700.

Not only should SKA be able to spot radio waves from these IBHs, they wrote, it should also be able to precisely estimate the distance to many of them. When that time comes, finally, all these missing black holes should start to come out of hiding.

• 11 Fascinating Facts About Our Milky Way Galaxy
• Big Bang to Civilization: 10 Amazing Origin Events
• Spaced Out! 101 Astronomy Photos That Will Blow Your Mind

• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

06-08-2019 om 01:49 geschreven door peter  

This Impact Crater Was Likely Ground Zero for an Ancient Mega-Tsunami on Mars

By Mike Wall 

Lomonosov Crater may be ground zero.

Mars' 75-mile-wide (120 kilometers) Lomonosov Crater, as seen by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter.

(Image: © NASA/JPL/MSSS)

Ground zero for the impact that caused a Mars mega-tsunami more than 3 billion years ago may have been found.

The meteor that spawned that ancient flood probably blasted out Lomonosov Crater, a 75-mile-wide (120 kilometers) hole in the ground in the icy plains of the Martian Arctic, a new study reports. 

Lomonosov's large size suggests that the impactor itself was big — similar in scale to the 6-mile-wide (10 km) asteroid that hit Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, sparking a mass extinction that killed off 75% of Earth's species, including the dinosaurs.

• Related: The Search for Water on Mars in Pictures

Such big space rocks don't hit the Red Planet (or Earth) very often. So, the new study provides some important clues about Mars' ancient northern ocean, and the planet's past potential to host life as we know it, team members said.

"The implication is that the ocean would have retained a liquid component for a very long time," study co-author Alexis Rodriguez, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, told Space.com. He offered 4 million to 5 million years as a representative figure, but stressed that the number is just an estimate.

A cold and mysterious ocean

Mars' big, salty northern ocean likely formed about 3.4 billion years ago. The ocean's existence is widely accepted by Mars researchers, Rodriguez said, but there is considerable debate about its nature. 

For example, some scientists believe the ocean was relatively long-lived, if quite cold. But others don't think the ancient Martian climate could have supported stable bodies of surface water for long, and therefore argue that the ocean froze over very quickly — perhaps in a few thousand years or less.

The new study, which was published in late June in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, bolsters the former viewpoint.

Rodriguez and his colleagues, led by François Costard of the French National Center for Scientific Research, built upon several years of previous research into the ocean and its imprints on the landscape of ancient Mars.

For example, Rodriguez led a 2016 study that identified huge lobes in the northern plains — features that strongly resemble marks left by tsunamis here on Earth. The team determined that the lobes were carved out by two different mega-tsunamis, which flooded the region more than 3 billion years ago.

Mars does not have significant plate-tectonic activity, so the big waves were probably unleashed by impacts. So, Costard, Rodriguez and their colleagues hunted for craters left behind by the cosmic culprits, narrowing the search over the next few years.

That search may now be over, at least for one of the two impactors. Multiple lines of evidence point to Lomonosov, the scientists report in the new study. For example, Lomonosov is in the right place, it's the right age (as determined by crater counts), and it looks a lot like marine craters here on Earth.

Lomonosov fits the bill in other ways as well. For instance, the crater is about as deep as scientists think the shallow northern ocean was at the time of impact. And part of Lomonosov's rim is missing, which is consistent with a mega-tsunami; the displaced water may have knocked this big chunk free as it raged.

While this evidence is suggestive, however, it does not yet rise to the level of a smoking gun, Rodriguez said.

"This crater is a candidate," he said. "I would not go so far as to say this is definitely the crater that produced the tsunami."

That tsunami, by the way, is probably the first of the two big floods that Rodriguez and his colleagues identified back in 2016. That earlier mega-tsunami featured both runoff and backwash flows, the latter of which are caused by water returning to the sea. Lomonosov seems to have been carved by both types of flows.

The second mega-tsunami caused runoff but not backwash, suggesting that Mars, and the ocean, may have been colder at the time. It's possible the northern ocean had a significant amount of ice cover when this other impactor came crashing down, he added.

• Related: The Life on Mars Search: A Photo Timeline

Boosting the case for Mars life?

Lomonosov is interesting enough on solely geological grounds.

"This is possibly the first time that a potential marine crater associated with a tsunami has been investigated outside Earth," Rodriguez said.

And then there are the astrobiological implications. As noted above, Lomonosov's size suggests the northern ocean — a potentially habitable environment — persisted for a relatively long time. It's statistically unlikely, after all, that the Lomonosov impact occurred right after this liquid ocean formed.

And even if the ocean were largely frozen at the time, the impact would have created an environment favorable to life as we know it: The tremendous energy unleashed would have melted lots of ice and created a hydrothermal system at Lomonosov, Rodriguez said.

The crater is therefore a tantalizing target for future life-hunting missions. Robotic explorers probably aren't up to the task, however, because the Lomonosov area is covered by an ice layer about 33 feet (10 meters) thick, Rodriguez said. 

But human explorers could probably drill down through the ice and access sediments on the crater floor. And these pioneers could use the abundant water ice for life support, providing an exploration twofer.

"That would be very interesting," Rodriguez said.

• How Tsunamis Work
• Water on Mars: Exploration & Evidence
• Photos: Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life
• 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/ }

06-08-2019 om 01:34 geschreven door peter  

VIDEO. UFO-meldpunt onderzoekt waarneming in Bevingen - HLN.be

Dirk Selis 

“Ik heb geen idee wat het was”, zegt Mathieu Helleputte. “Maandagavond omstreeks  22.10 uur zagen we plots drie zeer felle lichtpunten boven een graanveld in Bevingen tijdens het dassenspotten. Heel ongewoon, ze bewogen razendsnel. Ik heb net op tijd mijn gsm op ‘filmen’ kunnen zetten. Vier seconden later waren ze weg. We hebben nog dertig minuten staan wachten, maar er kwam niets meer. Vrienden van mij raadden mij aan het te melden bij het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt, wat ik ook gedaan heb.”

Lichtkogels

Frederick Delaere, coördinator van het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt, vertelt wat er mogelijk te zien is op de beelden: “Na het ontvangen van deze waarneming en het bekijken van het bijhorende foto- en videomateriaal, konden de onderzoekers van het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt voorlopig twee mogelijke verklaringen naar voren schuiven. Het uiterlijk en gedrag van het fenomeen doet in verschillende opzichten denken aan lichtkogels. Dergelijke kogels worden wel vaker ingezet in de omgeving van luchthavens om bijvoorbeeld vogels af te schrikken en zo het luchtverkeer veilig te laten verlopen.” 

De regionale luchthaven (Limburg Regional Airport bvba) liet echter weten dat er op dat moment geen lichtkogels werden afgevuurd. Delaere: “Dit sluit evenwel niet uit dat iemand anders buiten de luchthaven dergelijke kogels heeft afgeschoten. Wel werd door de luchthaven bevestigd dat er op het moment van de waarneming verschillende drones met ledverlichting in het luchtruim aanwezig waren.”

Getuige ondervragen

Dergelijke toestellen worden volgens Delaere regelmatig vanaf de desbetreffende luchthaven opgelaten. Bovendien strookt de kijkrichting van de waarneming met de richting waarin de drones op dat moment vlogen. Maar voorlopig kan niet met zekerheid worden meegedeeld of hier lichtkogels of drones te zien zijn. “Verder onderzoek en eventuele ondervraging van de getuige zullen hier binnenkort misschien uitsluitsel over geven. Momenteel is het nog te vroeg om een definitieve uitspraak over de herkomst van het verschijnsel te doen”, aldus Delaere.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

06-08-2019 om 01:03 geschreven door peter  

06-08-2019 om 00:55 geschreven door peter