‘Hidden’ ancient galaxies discovery may redefine our understanding of the Universe

 BY ROB LEA 

The discovery of 39 ‘hidden’ ancient galaxies urges scientists to rethink their theories of fundamental aspects of the Universe — including supermassive black holes, star formation rates, and the ever-elusive, dark matter.

In an unprecedented discovery of astronomers, researchers have utilised the combined power of a multitude of observatories across the globe to discover a vast array of 39 previously hidden galaxies.

The finding — described by the researchers from the University of Tokyo as a ‘treasure trove’ — is the first multiple discoveries of this kind. But the finding is significant for more than its size alone.

In addition to containing a wealth of newly discovered ancient galaxies, an abundance of this particular type of galaxy suggests that scientists may have to refine current models of the universe.

This is because our current understanding of the universe and how it formed is built upon observations of galaxies in ultraviolet light. But observations in these wavelengths under-represent the most massive galaxies — those with high dust content and crucially, the most ancient.

This means that a discovery of such galaxies — such as the one just made — must force us to reconsider the rates of star formation in the early universe. The study explains that the population of stars discovered may mean that star formation rates were actually ten times greater in early epochs than previous estimates held.

There are also particular ramifications for our understanding of both supermassive black holes and their distribution, and for the concept of dark matter — the elusive substance which makes up 80% of the matter in the universe.

Despite the wealth of astronomical data that has become available to scientists since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers at the Institute of Astronomy in Toyko were aware there were things that Hubble simply couldn’t show us. It was these things — fundamental pieces of the cosmic puzzle — that they wanted to investigate.

They achieved this by unifying different observatories, using them to look more deeply in the Universe than Hubble alone could do. This is what led them to this huge collection of galaxies.

Researcher Tao Wang describes the uniqueness and magnitude of the team’s discovery: “This is the first time that such a large population of massive galaxies was confirmed during the first two billion years of the 13.7-billion-year life of the universe.

“These were previously invisible to us.”

Wang continues: “This finding contravenes current models for that period of cosmic evolution and will help to add some details, which have been missing until now.”

A different view of the universe

Wang explains that if we could see these galaxies and the light they shed, our view from the Milky way would be significantly different: “For one thing, the night sky would appear far more majestic. The greater density of stars means there would be many more stars close by appearing larger and brighter.

“But conversely, the large amount of dust means farther-away stars would be far less visible, so the background to these bright close stars might be a vast dark void.”

The galaxies have been difficult to see from Earth due to how faint they are. Were we able to see these stars, their density would make the night sky majestic, Wang says.

The light from these galaxies also has to battle extinction — the absorption of light) by intervening interstellar dust clouds. The light from the galaxies also has to travel great distances meaning the wavelength is redshifted by the expansion of the universe making it even less visible.

Professor Kotaro Kohno explains that this phenomenon is how the galaxies escaped Hubble’s gaze: “The light from these galaxies is very faint with long wavelengths invisible to our eyes and undetectable by Hubble.

“So we turned to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), which is ideal for viewing these kinds of things. I have a long history with that facility and so knew it would deliver good results.”

This redshift due to cosmic expansion does have its advantages, however. It allows astronomers to estimate not just the distances to the galaxies in question, but it also allows them to calculate just how long ago the light was emitted.

The hidden implications of these hidden galaxies

The team’s finding is so controversial and poses such a radical rethink that they found their fellow astronomers were initially reluctant to believe they had found what they claimed.

Wang explains: “It was tough to convince our peers these galaxies were as old as we suspected them to be. Our initial suspicions about their existence came from the Spitzer Space Telescope’s infrared data.

“But ALMA has sharp eyes and revealed details at submillimeter wavelengths, the best wavelength to peer through dust present in the early universe. Even so, it took further data from the imaginatively named Very Large Telescope in Chile to really prove we were seeing ancient massive galaxies where none had been seen before.”

The discovery has the potential to reshape our ideas of the supermassive black holes that scientists currently believe nestle at the centre of most galaxies.

Kohno elaborates: “The more massive a galaxy, the more massive the supermassive black hole at its heart.

“So the study of these galaxies and their evolution will tell us more about the evolution of supermassive black holes, too.”

Kohno also explains that some ideas regarding dark matter may have to be revised, too: “Massive galaxies are also intimately connected with the distribution of invisible dark matter. This plays a role in shaping the structure and distribution of galaxies. Theoretical researchers will need to update their theories now.”

In addition to the potential shake up the team believes that their findings may already present, they expect more surprises to come.

Wang concludes: These gargantuan galaxies are invisible in optical wavelengths so it’s extremely hard to do spectroscopy, a way to investigate stellar populations and chemical composition of galaxies. ALMA is not good at this and we need something more.

“I’m eager for upcoming observatories like the space-based James Webb Space Telescope to show us what these primordial beasts are really made of.”

• Original research: T. Wang, C. Schreiber, D. Elbaz, Y. Yoshimura, K. Kohno, X. Shu, Y. Yamaguchi, M. Pannella, M. Franco, J. Huang, C.F. Lim & W.H. Wang. A dominant population of optically invisible massive galaxies in the early Universe. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586–019–1452–4

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

10-08-2019 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

Aliens Might Never Appreciate How Cool Voyager’s Golden Record Is

If they find it, they may just be confused.

BY CARA GIAIMO

IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 1977, NASA launched a pair of interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and 2. Like most spacecrafts, these two were built to gather information about unknown realms. More unusually, they also had something to give in return: Each held a copy of what’s known as the Golden Record, a set of images and sounds carefully chosen to give anyone who might find them a taste of Earthly life.

More than 40 years after its launch, the Golden Record hasn’t found any extraterrestrial listeners—that we know of. It does, however, enjoy serious hometown fandom. Here on Earth, it’s been the subject of poetry books, an as-yet unproduced screenplay, and at least one SXSW panel. Last year, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, it even got a vinyl re-release. In a way, the record has already found its intended audience. As consultant B.M. Oliver wrote in a history of the project, “its real function … is to appeal to and expand the human spirit.”

But at least two diehard fans think there’s something to be gained from considering alternative audiences a bit more rigorously. “Every time you try to communicate, you have an intention you are after,” says Sheri Wells-Jensen, a linguistics professor at Bowling Green University, and a board member of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), an organization dedicated to reaching out to aliens. “But you have no idea how you’re going to be received.”

Lately, Wells-Jensen, along with fiction writer Rebecca Orchard, have been examining the Golden Record with new eyes and ears. The result has been a confusing cacophony. “There are so many ways it could be misunderstood,” says Orchard, who presented on the topic at METI’s “Language in the Cosmos” conference this May. Like hapless teens making a mixtape, we’ve etched our soul onto this record and flung it at beings we don’t understand in the slightest. If they actually found it, what would they even think?

Getting to this scenario—in which someone Out There actually intercepts, and seriously tries to decode, the Golden Record—requires working through whorl after whorl of improbabilities. First of all, as its creators knew full well, “there’s an infinitesimally small chance that the Golden Record will be picked up,” says Wells-Jensen. “[The Voyager probes] are tip-toeing around out there in the interstellar void. They’re itty-bitty, and it’s dark … the odds are low.”

But suppose someone does tow the record out of nothingness, and bring it to some sort of extraterrestrial DJ station. In that case, “there are two things that could happen,” Wells-Jensen says. The first option is that the aliens already know what to do—that they’ve got a whole stack of interstellar missives, and a set of criteria for understanding them. She launches into an imitation: “They’re like, ‘Oh, it’s another artifact, from another planet that’s just creeping into a technological phase of civilization! A baby race. Isn’t it cute?’”

The second possibility, she continues, “is that instead, they look at it and go, ‘What the heck is that?’” It’s this particular what-if, she and Orchard agree, that is the most fun to think about.

The Golden Record is stuffed to the gills with information. It has 116 images, a mix of songs in different musical styles, and greetings recorded in 55 languages. There’s an audio collage, “The Sounds of Earth,” that starts with a sonic interpretation of planetary motion and ends with the zap of a pulsar, with stops in between for clanging rocks, barking dogs, and chugging tractors. There is also an hour’s worth of brain-and-heart data, transformed into sound. This came courtesy of the record’s creative director, Ann Druyan, who later wrote that she was thinking about “the history of ideas,” “the predicament our civilization finds itself in,” and “what it [is] like to fall in love”—specifically with project lead Carl Sagan, who she later married.

To an Earthly listener, this is all pretty understandable. Crickets and chimpanzees? We’ve heard those guys. “El Cascabel” followed by “Johnny B. Goode”? Let’s rock. Crushing on Carl Sagan? Hey, many of us get that, too. But begin to abstract yourself away, and the record looks and sounds increasingly curious. “It’s almost dizzying to think about all the different ways that these moments could be misinterpreted,” Orchard says.

Take, for example, that series of multilingual greetings. The messages say everything from “Hi, how are you?” to “We greet you, O great ones,” in languages that range from Akkadian to Zulu. Linda Salzman Sagan, who coordinated the recordings, described the overall effect as “an aural Gestalt, in which each culture is a contributing voice in the choir.” The structure of the recording—each snippet said by a different voice, one after another—might help to get this across, she wrote.

As Wells-Jensen points out, though, there are plenty of other interpretations available. “We can tell that those voices changing mean a different individual is speaking,” she says. “But that’s not necessarily clear [to an alien].” Is the whole recording one person, speaking in different ways? After all, many of the albums made on Earth are meant to showcase all the different things one person’s voice can do.

Or maybe it’s meant to be some kind of time-lapse—akin to Tony Schwartz’s “Nancy Grows Up,” in which the documentarian distilled recordings from 13 years of his niece’s life into a few minutes of sound. Another section of “Sounds of Earth” compilation does strive to be somewhat chronological: it moves from “timeless” sounds, like rainstorms and footsteps, through more recently developed ones, such as Morse code and rocket ships. If the aliens managed to figure this out, why wouldn’t they assume that “Greetings to the Universe in 55 Different Languages” was instead “Earthling Grows Up”?

Even if they do grok that it’s multiple people, Wells-Jensen adds, “Why are they talking to each other? Are they having an argument? Are they playing a game, like we play telephone? Is it a religious ritual?” When you start to think in this way, 55 disjointed greetings all in a row doesn’t seem like an obvious call at all.

Then there are all of the things that could be considered clues, but aren’t. Orchard is particularly fascinated by the record’s 116 images, a selection of which can be seen here. “If you look at the photos back to back, parts of them form a narrative,” she says. For example, a fertilized ovum is followed by a fetus, and then a baby being born. Other juxtapositions, though, are not narrative at all. “There’s a picture of a toad in a hand, followed by a picture of a dead, upside-down alligator.” We humans know that these are two different creatures. But aliens, in their attempts to understand, might draw other conclusions. “Does the toad grow into that alligator?”

It’s also easy to imagine the aliens playing the “Sounds of Earth” while flipping through the images, lining the two up slideshow-style. (It’s a worthwhile exercise.) Some convergences are lucky: a photo of the Red Sea, for example, lines up with the sound of dripping water. But with others, further confusion emerges. The photo of an eagle, for example, goes with the sound of a chittering monkey, or perhaps even a clucking chicken (it’s hard to say for sure). Later, “you get the sound of a chainsaw with a little daffodil,” says Wells-Jensen. “So that’s one way in which the thing could be interpreted wrong.”

Both Wells-Jensen and Orchard emphasize that they’re not trying to pull a gotcha on the record’s creators, who were well aware of its limitations. In Murmurs of Earth, Sagan, Ann Druyan, Jon Lomberg, and others wrote at length about the many decisions they made during the compilation process. Some were rhetorical: They didn’t include any overtly distressing images, like mushroom clouds or sick people, because what if aliens took them as intimidations? Others were bureaucratic: NASA insisted that they include a roll-call list of various members of the 1977 U.S. Senate.

This kind of thing is a large part of why, just 40 years on, certain aspects of the record look ridiculous to Earthlings, too. “But you have to remember, they had six weeks!” says Wells-Jensen. “They did a great job.”

Besides, start thinking about what you’d do differently, and confusion starts to seem inevitable. Perhaps, rather than including so many messages in so many different languages, you want to say the same thing over and over again, in a Rosetta Stone sort of way. Wells-Jensen says this might not be such a great idea either, as it violates a conversational maxim that, at least on Earth, seems to be fairly common.

“If I tell you something four times, is that me trying to be really careful and really clear, or is that me telling you that you’re stupid?” she explains. “Or does it mean that I’m really boring, because I’ve only got one thing to say?” As for the photo/sound problem, should you make sure all those things line up perfectly? And if so, as Wells-Jensen puts it, “what sound does a flower make anyway?”

It’s enough to make one throw up one’s hands (and then put them down again, for fear of being seen as threatening to aliens). Other attempts at interstellar communication come with their own pros and cons. We beamed some scientific information toward a star cluster way back in 1974. In 2008, we sent a Doritos commercial to a nearby solar system.

METI tried its own strategy in 2017: it sent out a radio wave transmission made up of arithmetic, trigonometry, and geometry, working under the theory that whoever has the technology to receive the message probably understands math. Wells-Jensen considers all of this, collectively, to be a decent strategy. “I don’t know if we can be less confusing,” she says. “But we can, and should, try different things.”

Before and after we’ve tried them, it can’t hurt to think about how they might be received—even if we spin completely around, record-style, and end up mostly learning about ourselves instead. After all, “we’re just babies,” reiterates Wells-Jensen. “We just started going to our own moon.” We’ve still got a lot of work to do.

{ https://www.atlasobscura.com/ }

10-08-2019 om 21:36 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious, Ancient Radio Signals Keep Pelting Earth. Astronomers Designed an AI to Hunt Them Down.

10-08-2019 om 21:08 geschreven door peter  

Tardigrades Have Landed on the Moon. Here's What Their Survival Could Mean for Humanity.

By William Herkewitz And Daisy Hernandez

SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/GETTY IMAGES

Tardigrades are one of the most fascinating creatures on Earth—and now, the moon, too. The mysterious microscopic critters have landed on the lunar surface in what sounds like the beginning of a sci-fi thriller. But they're not there as part of a hostile takeover. They're there completely by accident.

Back in April, the moon-bound Israeli spacecraft Beresheet crashed due to a computer error. Scientists loaded the tardigrades onto the Beresheet along with human DNA samples; when the lunar lander crashed, thousands of dehydrated tardigrades might have spilled onto the moon's surface, according to a WIREDreport.

The tardigrades were in "tun" form, a dormant state where they shrivel up into a ball, expel most of the water in their bodies, and lower their metabolism via cryptobiosis until they enter an environment better suited to sustain life. They can exist like this for decades. They're also pretty hardy and can endure the harshest environments, including subzero temperatures—and the recent crash landing.

"Tardigrades can survive pressures that are comparable to those created when asteroids strike Earth, so a small crash like this is nothing to them," Lukasz Kaczmarek, an expert on tardigrades, told The Guardian.

So what does this mean for humanity? That depends on what the research produces. If humans can replicate cryptobiosis in the way tardigrades do, we'd live far longer than the average life expectancy of 78.7 years for Americans.

According to Kaczmarek, when a tardigrade enters the tun state, it doesn't age. It becomes dormant at one month old and can wake up years later and still biologically be the same age.

“It may be that we can use this in the future if we plan missions to different planets, because we will need to be young when we get there," said Kaczmarek.

Until then, here's everything you need to know about these weird, wonderful creatures.

What's so special about tardigrades?

Tardigrades are a class of microscopic animals with eight limbs and a strange, alien-like behavior. William Miller, a leading tardigrade researcher at Baker University, says they are remarkably abundant. Hundreds of species "are found across the seven continents; everywhere from the highest mountain to the lowest sea," he says. "Many species of tardigrades live in water, but on land, you find them almost everywhere there's moss or lichen."

In 2007, scientists discovered that these microscopic critters can survive an extended stay in the cold, irradiated vacuum of outer space. A European team of researchers sent a group of living tardigrades to orbit the earth on the outside of a FOTON-M3 rocket for 10 days. When the water bears returned to Earth, the scientists discovered that 68 percent lived through the ordeal.

Wait, what? How is that possible?

Although (as far as we know) tardigrades are unique in their ability to survive in space, Miller insists that there is no reason to believe they evolved for this reason or—as a misleading VICE documentary has implied—that they are of extraterrestrial origin. Rather, the tardigrade's space-surviving ability is the result of a strange response they've evolved to overcome an earthly life-threatening problem: a water shortage.

Land-dwelling tardigrades can be found in some of the driest places on earth. "I've collected living tardigrades from under a rock in the Sinai desert, in a part of the desert that hadn't had any record of rain for the previous 25 years," Miller says. Yet these are technically aquatic creatures, and require a thin layer of water to do pretty much anything, including eating, having sex, or moving around. Without water, they're about as lively as a beached dolphin.

But land-dwelling tardigrades have evolved a bizarre solution to living through drought: When their environment dries up, so do they. Tardigrades will enter a state called desiccation, in which they shrivel up—losing all but around 3 percent of their body's water and slowing their metabolism down to an astonishing 0.01 percent of its normal speed. In this state, the tardigrade just persists, doing nothing, until it's inundated with water again. When that happens, the creature pops back to life like a re-wetted sponge and continues onward as if nothing had happened.

What's even more astonishing is that tardigrades can survive being in this strange state for more a decade. According to Miller, a few researchers believe some species of tardigrades might even be able to survive desiccation for up to a century. Yet the average lifespan of a (continuously hydrated) tardigrade is rarely longer than a few months.

"It sounds quite strange," says Miller, "that even though these tardigrades only live for a few weeks or months, that lifetime can be stretched over many, many years."

How does being dried out protect them from the vacuum of space?

In its desiccated state, the tardigrade is ridiculously, almost absurdly resilient. Laboratory tests have shown that tardigrades can endure both an utter vacuum and intense pressures more than five times as punishing as those in the deepest ocean. Even temperatures up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as -458 degrees F (just above absolute zero) won't spell the creature's doom.

But the exact source of its resilience is a mystery, says Emma Perry, a leading tardigrade researcher at Unity College in Maine. "In general, we know very little about how this species functions, especially when we're talking about the molecular level."

There are clues. Scientists have learned that when the tardigrade enters its desiccated state, "it replaces some of its cell contents with a sugar molecule called trehalose," Perry says. Researchers believe this trehalose molecule not only replaces water, but also in some cases can physically constrain the critter's remaining water molecules, keeping them from rapidly expanding when faced with hot and cold temperatures. This is important, because expanding water molecules (like what happens when you get frostbite) can mean instant cellular death for most animals.

What about space radiation?

Space is deadly, and not just because of the vacuum. Outside our protective atmosphere there is killer radiation caused by distant supernovae, our sun, and other sources. Space radiation comes in the form of harmful charged particles that can imbed in the body of animals, ripping apart molecules and damaging DNA faster than it can be repaired.

But here, too, the tardigrade seems oddly prepared for life in space. According to Peter Guida, the head of NASA's space radiation laboratory, one of the biggest radiation concerns for astronauts (and space-bound tardigrades) is a set of molecules called reactive oxygen species. Ionizing radiation enters the body and bores into wayward molecules that contain oxygen. In simple terms, those newly irradiated molecules then troll through the body causing all sorts of harm.

Tardigrades during their desiccated state produce an abnormal amount of anti-oxidants (yes, these actually exist outside the health-food world), which effectively neutralize those roaming, evil reactive oxygen species. Partly because of this talent, tardigrades have been found to withstand higher radiation doses with far greater success than researchers would otherwise believe they should.

The reason that tardigrades would have evolved to survive high radiation doses is a mystery, too. However, Miller points to a leading theory: Perhaps tardigrades evolved to be swept up by the wind and survive in the earth's atmosphere—which would explain not only their hardiness but also that they're found the world over.

However it happened, there's still much, much more to learn about these fascinating creatures.

{ https://www.popularmechanics.com/ }

10-08-2019 om 20:25 geschreven door peter  

Alien abduction HORROR: Aliens ‘cause human PARALYSIS while fully conscious’

ALIEN abductees share horrifying similarities of their abduction experience, according to a bizarre documentary.

Millions of people from around the world claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrials.

The typical testimony from abductees describes how they are taken from their beds, homes, cars, and other locations and transported to spaceships manned by small grey aliens with oversized black, slanted eyes.

Memories of the abduction include being unable to move, hearing buzzing sounds, electrical sensations and difficulty breathing due to pressure on the chest.

{ https://www.express.co.uk/ }

10-08-2019 om 18:14 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets – planets orbiting other stars – so far, with a lot more waiting for confirmation. Now, NASA has published a cool new video “summary” of the findings, a time-lapse map if you will, of the locations of these distant worlds in our galaxy. The video was produced by SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida), using the NASA Exoplanet Archive. It was posted to YouTube on July 7, 2019, by NASA’s APOD Videos and it ran as an Astronomy Picture of the Day on July 10.

Even though the video is short, just over a minute long, it takes the viewer on a time-lapse, condensed journey from 1991, when no exoplanets were known, to today, with more than 4,003 known exoplanets. More than? Yes. According to the NASA Exoplanet Archive the number is now at 4,031, so the map is already outdated! The map not only shows the planets’ locations, but also color-codes them based on what method they were discovered with, whether by radial velocity, transit, imaging or microlensing. What starts as an empty background becomes a galaxy filled with planets. And those are only the ones we know about so far.

It’s hard to think back to before the early 1990s, when astronomers believed exoplanets existed, but had not found a single one in outer space. Now we know of thousands, and scientists estimate that there are billions in our galaxy alone. When you combine that with the fact that there are at least 100 billion known galaxies, the total numbers of likely exoplanets becomes mind-boggling to contemplate.

The Kepler Space Telescope alone has confirmed 2,345 exoplanets, with another 2,420 awaiting confirmation. The Kepler mission has ended, but there are still tons of data to be analyzed, and many more worlds to be confirmed. Kepler revolutionized our knowledge of exoplanets, revealing a wide variety of worlds. Many are rocky planets like Earth, while others are like mini-Neptunes, and others are gas giants like Jupiter, extremely hot because they’re orbiting so close to their stars. Smaller rocky planets and planets that are gaseous but smaller than Neptune actually appear to be the most common exoplanets, at least from what we know so far, which is encouraging for the search for life elsewhere.

TESS – Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite – is the newest space telescope dedicated to planet-hunting, and already has confirmed an additional 24 planets plus 993 additional candidates so far, as listed on the NASA Exoplanet Archive. One advantage that TESS has is that is observing stars that are closer to us than the ones that Kepler looked at. That means those planets will be easier targets for follow-up observations, including by upcoming space telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) , which can better analyze those planets’ atmospheres. By studying the atmospheres, scientists can search for evidence of biosignatures, gases in the atmosphere that may be produced by living organisms. On Earth, that would include oxygen and methane, although there are ways those gases can be created without life as well. Certain combinations of such gases, though, would more likely have a biological origin.

Artist’s concept of Kepler-186f, the first Earth-sized exoplanet found orbiting in the habitable zone of its star. A growing number of such worlds have been found in recent years.

Image via NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle.

Artist’s concept of seven Earth-sized worlds in the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system. TRAPPIST-1e is one of the closest rocky planets orbiting a red dwarf star that may be able to support life.

Image via ESO.

Of course, beyond just finding out how many planets might be out there, people mostly want to know how many exoplanets might be habitable, or better yet, actually inhabited by some form of life. The search for biosignatures is one way to try to determine if a given planet has life. At the other end of the spectrum, a highly advanced alien civilization might make its presence known through megastructures such as Dyson spheres or other technosignatures.

We haven’t yet found any unambiguous evidence for alien life on any exoplanets, but we may be getting closer. Extrapolating from what has been discovered so far, rocky worlds like Earth are now thought to be some of the most common in our galaxy. That is an exciting development in itself. This includes some super-Earths, which are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. Some of those planets have been found in the habitable zones of their stars, like Earth is, where temperatures could allow liquid water on their surfaces (depending on other variable factors). Other super-Earths are thought to be true water-worlds, completely covered by oceans.

What seems certain is that this map will continue to grow in the years ahead, with thousands more exoplanets expected to be discovered by TESS and other upcoming planet-hunting missions.

Here’s the new map of known exoplanets, or planets orbiting distant suns. It’s all 4,003 known exoplanets discovered as of 2019. This image was an Astronomy Picture of the Day for July 10, 2019.

Image via NASA/APOD.

• Bottom line: This cool new time-lapse video map by SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida) – using the NASA Exoplanet Archive – shows all of the exoplanets discovered so far, from 1991 to the present.
• Via ZME Science
• Via APOD

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

10-08-2019 om 17:34 geschreven door peter  

What’s going on about 90 miles (150 km) below the Earth’s surface?

Image via Good Free Photos.

By Miles Bodmer, University of Oregon and Doug Toomey, University of Oregon

The Pacific Northwest is known for many things – its beer, its music, its mythical large-footed creatures. Most people don’t associate it with earthquakes, but they should. It’s home to the Cascadia megathrust fault that runs 600 miles (966 km) from Northern California up to Vancouver Island in Canada, spanning several major metropolitan areas including Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

This geologic fault has been relatively quiet in recent memory. There haven’t been many widely felt quakes along the Cascadia megathrust, certainly nothing that would rival a catastrophic event like the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake along the active San Andreas in California. That doesn’t mean it will stay quiet, though. Scientists know it has the potential for large earthquakes – as big as magnitude 9.

Geophysicists have known for over a decade that not all portions of the Cascadia megathrust fault behave the same. The northern and southern sections are much more seismically active than the central section – with frequent small earthquakes and ground deformations that residents don’t often notice. But why do these variations exist and what gives rise to them?

Our research tries to answer these questions by constructing images of what’s happening deep within the Earth, more than 90 miles (144 km) below the fault. We’ve identified regions that are rising up beneath these active sections which we think are leading to the observable differences along the Cascadia fault.

Cascadia and the ‘Really Big One’

The Cascadia subduction zone is a region where two tectonic plates are colliding. The Juan de Fuca, a small oceanic plate, is being driven under the North American plate, atop which the continental U.S. sits.

The Juan de Fuca plate meets the North American plate beneath the Cascadia fault.

Image via USGS.

Subduction systems – where one tectonic plate slides over another – are capable of producing the world’s largest known earthquakes. A prime example is the 2011 Tohoku earthquake that rocked Japan.

Cascadia is seismically very quiet compared to other subduction zones – but it’s not completely inactive. Research indicates the fault ruptured in a magnitude 9.0 event in 1700. That’s roughly 30 times more powerful than the largest predicted San Andreas earthquake. Researchers suggest that we are within the roughly 300- to 500-year window during which another large Cascadia event may occur.

Many smaller undamaging and unfelt events take place in northern and southern Cascadia every year. However, in central Cascadia, underlying most of Oregon, there is very little seismicity. Why would the same fault behave differently in different regions?

Over the last decade, scientists have made several additional observations that highlight variations along the fault.

One has to do with plate locking, which tells us where stress is accumulating along the fault. If the tectonic plates are locked – that is, really stuck together and unable to move past each other – stress builds. Eventually that stress can be released rapidly as an earthquake, with the magnitude depending on how large the patch of fault that ruptures is.

A GPS geosensor in Washington.

Image via Bdelisle.

Geologists have recently been able to deploy hundreds of GPS monitors across Cascadia to record the subtle ground deformations that result from the plates’ inability to slide past each other. Just like historic seismicity, plate locking is more common in the northern and southern parts of Cascadia.

Geologists are also now able to observe difficult-to-detect seismic rumblings known as tremor. These events occur over the time span of several minutes up to weeks, taking much longer than a typical earthquake. They don’t cause large ground motions even though they can release significant amounts of energy. Researchers have only discovered these signals in the last 15 years, but permanent seismic stations have helped build a robust catalog of events. Tremor, too, seems to be more concentrated along the northern and southern parts of the fault.

What would cause this situation, with the area beneath Oregon relatively less active by all these measures? To explain we had to look deep, over 100 kilometers (60 miles) below the surface, into the Earth’s mantle.

Green dots and blue triangles show locations of seismic monitoring stations.

Image via Bodmer et al., 2018, Geophysical Research Letters.

Imaging the Earth using distant quakes

Physicians use electromagnetic waves to “see” internal structures like bones without needing to open up a human patient to view them directly. Geologists image the Earth in much the same way. Instead of X-rays, we use seismic energy radiating out from distant magnitude 6.0-plus earthquakes to help us “see” features we physically just can’t get to. This energy travels like sound waves through the structures of the Earth. When rock is hotter or partially molten by even a tiny amount, seismic waves slow down. By measuring the arrival times of seismic waves, we create 3-D images showing how fast or slow the seismic waves travel through specific parts of the Earth.

Ocean bottom seismometers waiting to be deployed during the Cascadia Initiative.

Image via Emilie Hooft.

To see these signals, we need records from seismic monitoring stations. More sensors provide better resolution and a clearer image – but gathering more data can be problematic when half the area you’re interested in is underwater. To address this challenge, we were part of a team of scientists that deployed hundreds of seismometers on the ocean floor off the western U.S. over the span of four years, starting in 2011. This experiment, the Cascadia Initiative, was the first ever to cover an entire tectonic plate with instruments at a spacing of roughly 30 miles (50 km).

What we found are two anomalous regions beneath the fault where seismic waves travel slower than expected. These anomalies are large, about 90 miles (150 km) in diameter, and show up beneath the northern and southern sections of the fault. Remember, that’s where researchers have already observed increased activity: the seismicity. Interestingly, the anomalies are not present beneath the central part of the fault, under Oregon, where we see a decrease in activity.

Regions where seismic waves moved more slowly, on average, are redder, while the areas where they moved more quickly are bluer. The slower anomalous areas 90 miles (150 km) beneath the Earth’s surface corresponded to where the colliding plates are more locked and where tremor is more common.

Image via Bodmer et al., 2018, Geophysical Research Letters.

So what exactly are these anomalies?

The tectonic plates float on the Earth’s rocky mantle layer. Where the mantle is slowly rising over millions of years, the rock decompresses. Since it’s at such high temperatures, nearly 1500 degrees Celsius (2700 F) at 100 km (60 mi) depth, it can melt ever so slightly.

These physical changes cause the anomalous regions to be more buoyant – melted hot rock is less dense than solid cooler rock. It’s this buoyancy that we believe is affecting how the fault above behaves. The hot, partially molten region pushes upwards on what’s above, similar to how a helium balloon might rise up against a sheet draped over it. We believe this increases the forces between the two plates, causing them to be more strongly coupled and thus more fully locked.

A general prediction for where, but not when

Our results provide new insights into how this subduction zone, and possibly others, behaves over geologic timeframes of millions of years. Unfortunately our results can’t predict when the next large Cascadia megathrust earthquake will occur. This will require more research and dense active monitoring of the subduction zone, both onshore and offshore, using seismic and GPS-like stations to capture short-term phenomena.

Our work does suggest that a large event is more likely to start in either the northern or southern sections of the fault, where the plates are more fully locked, and gives a possible reason for why that may be the case.

It remains important for the public and policymakers to stay informed about the potential risk involved in cohabiting with a subduction zone fault and to support programs such as Earthquake Early Warning that seek to expand our monitoring capabilities and mitigate loss in the event of a large rupture.

• Miles Bodmer, Ph.D. Student in Earth Sciences, University of Oregon and Doug Toomey, Professor of Earth Sciences, University of Oregon
• This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
• Bottom line: Parts of the Pacific Northwest’s Cascadia fault are more seismically active than others. Imaging data suggests why.

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

10-08-2019 om 17:19 geschreven door peter  

Boven ‘topgeheim’ heb je nog meerdere niveaus. Waarom zelfs presidenten geen toegang hebben tot UFO-geheimen

10-08-2019 om 16:17 geschreven door peter  

Accidental FOIA Reveals Mind Control Documents; Here’s Further Evidence This Technology Exists

Accidental FOIA Reveals Mind Control Documents; Here’s Further Evidence This Technology Exists by Aaron Kesel – Activist Post

Journalist Curtis Waltman filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Washington State Fusion Center (which is partnered with Department of Homeland Security) to obtain information about Antifa and white supremacist groups; instead of getting information on how the agency targets the groups, he got way more than the information he was looking for – Curtis was accidentally sent a mysterious file with the label “EM effects on human body.zip.” The file included methods of “remote mind control,” MuckRock reported.

According to MuckRock, the mind control documents came from the Department of Homeland Security-linked agency in the form of a file called “EM effects on human body.zip.” The file reportedly contained various diagrams detailing the horrors of “psycho-electronic weapon effects.”

One document lists the various forms of torment made possible by using “remote mind control” methods, from “forced memory blanking” and “sudden violent itching inside eyelids” to “wild flailing” followed by “rigor mortis” and a remotely induced “forced orgasm.” It was not immediately clear how the documents wound up in the agency’s response to a standard FOIA request, but there was reportedly no indication the “remote mind control” files stemmed from any government program.

According to Popular Mechanics, the documents are not official documents but are rather documents captured by the Fusion Center.

The federal government has absolutely experimented with mind control in a variety of methods, but the documents here do not appear to be official.

Waltman had no idea why these documents were included in his request and isn’t sure why the government is holding them. The WSFC did not respond to requests for more information.

The documents themselves are quite bizarre and, honestly, despite reports dismissing them, it is worth remembering that this is exactly what the CIA was working on for years during MKULTRA. That program was supposed to have been shut down after the Church Hearings and other congressional hearings exposed all of the CIA’s clandestine activities at the time many that violated human rights including experimentation on patients and the American population without their knowledge.

Last year, it was revealed that mainstream science had caught up with the black project world (CIA) and had successfully weakened or strengthened particular memories from the brain or outright deleted inherited memories from mice, Activist Post reported.

There was a series of CIA mind control programs including BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MKSEARCH and MKNAOMI during the ’50s to ’90s. The CIA sought to blank-slate test subjects wiping memories through drugs, electric shock, high-pitched sound and other torture techniques.

The Project Bluebird/Artichoke document below was kept hidden and under wraps and distracted from other subprojects in MKULTRA through Operation Dormouse for a reason; just read the documents it’s literally the CIA suggesting to create mind-controlled slaves that can covertly commit murder in the 1950s-’60s.

Although, many suspect that this project involved the South American plant derivative, scopolamine, a dangerous substance known as the “zombie drug.” Documents released only a few weeks ago in the JFK files suggest that the CIA was using electromagnetic weaponry to accomplish this goal. How? Well, it started out with using electrodes on a subject’s brain, and I suspect it evolved into tapping into the brain’s own natural frequency over time as the Army documents details on Voice To Skull technology decades later.

In the mid-1950s, neurophysiologist Carl Wilhelm Sem-Jacobsen built his own EEG lab at Gaustad psychiatric hospital in Norway with copious funding from the Rockefeller, Ford, and other “charitable” foundations.  He soon took on multiple U.S. government contracts from the Air Force, Navy, and NASA for research using electrodes implanted in the brains of psych patients to carry out what many have said was unethical research.

These experiments melded over time and were continued under the auspices of a Project MKUltra branch and evolved to what was known as Project Artichoke.

Our government performed various unethical experiments on thousands of Americans for decades on the record exposed by the Church Committee. But before MKULTRA in 1947 the Navy and OSI conducted the first known post-war mind control program, Project Chatter, which continued the drug experiments of the Nazis.

Project Chatter was a highly classified Navy program to search for a truth drug that would get its victim to speak fast. They tested all types of drugs including barbiturates, amphetamines, and heroin. The studies involved “mind control” experiments by hypnosis and narco-hypnosis.

In 1953, Project Chatter was abandoned by the Navy for other projects like the Navy’s project “Perfect Concussion” which was Subproject 54 under MKULTRA. Scientists focused on testing ultrasound signals to create amnesia. In the documents, the Navy sought to create “Sub-aural frequency blasts” which means “below the ear.” Sub-aural frequency would indicate the potential usage of infrasound i.e. sonar.

Around the same time of Project Chatter, another compartmentalized group was running Project Moonstruck which sought to use electronic implants in brain and teeth for tracking, mind and behavior control, conditioning, programming, covert operations through Electronic Stimulation of the Brain, E.S.B. (Auspiciously the documents for Moonstruck are missing, only mere references can be found on sites archiving our history.)

The Army eventually founded Operations Third Chance and Derby Hat which both used LSD; other project names remain unknown though the existence of these programs is unquestionable.

The goals of MKULTRA were to break down human beings both physically and mentally, and modify and control their behavior as well as test chemicals on people for research purposes. These means included but were not limited to, hypnosis, chemical, biological and radioactive exposure. President Bill Clinton was forced to apologize after parts of these programs were revealed to have been continuing after the Church Committee Hearings and they were caught running experiments on Africans under the Tuskegee experiment.

Dr. Ewen Cameron was partially backed by the CIA during project MKULTRA and used electrodes to zap the memories from his unwitting patients’ brains during the 1950s. This method of torture was called “psychic driving.”

After horrendous electric shocks, drugs were given to the test subjects to put them into days of prolonged delirious sleep. Cameron would then subject them to audio tapes he made in which he repeated certain phrases thousands of times with the hope of producing new personalities within them.

A 2012 lawsuit filed by veterans’ groups, against the CIA and the DOD, refers to Cameron’s methods. The suit also states that two researchers, Dr. Louis West and Dr. Jose Delgado, working together under the early CIA MKULTRA subproject 95, utilized two protocols: brain implants (“stimoceivers”) and RHIC-EDOM (Radio Hypnotic Intracerebral Control-Electronic Dissolution of Memory) to program the minds of victims.

Translation: they sought to bury memories, and implant false memories that never happened.

The CIA ultimately found that stress and sleep deprivation can make people more susceptible to false memories as have other researchers.

Although, the new documents are presumed to not be government documents, there are other documents released in 2006 from the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command entitled, “Bioeffects of Selected Nonlethal Weapons.”

The document is dated in 1998, over 15 years ago. One of the main topics regards the effects of “radio frequency directed energy.” The document discusses the “incapacitating effect” of “microwave hearing,” exactly like the new document describes.

There is no sound propagated through the air like normal  sound. This technology in its crudest form could be used to distract  individuals; if refined, it could also be used to communicate with  hostages or hostage takers directly by Morse code or other message  systems, possibly even by voice communication.

From that document, the technology is able to be tuned into a single person like a radio station.

The phenomenon is tunable in that the characteristic sounds and  intensities of those sounds depend on the characteristics of the RF  energy as delivered. Because the frequency of the sound heard is  dependent on the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it  seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point  where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word,  except that it could only be heard within a person’s head. In one experiment, communication of the words from one to ten using ‘speech modulated’ microwave energy was successfully demonstrated. Microphones next to the person experiencing the voice could not pick up the sound. Additional development of this would open up a wide range of possibilities.

Further, the paper discusses using this technology to disrupt neural control, which “activates specific forms of behavior such as sexual, aggressive, ingestive activities.”

Besides implanting memories, the military later attempted to create what it deemed Voice To Skull technology.

Voice To Skull is described in the patent as a “hearing system” where “Sound is induced in the head of a person by radiating the head with microwaves in the range of 100 megahertz to  10,000 megahertz that are modulated with a particular waveform.”

Similar psychotronic technology to Voice To Skull that wasn’t directly beaming frequencies into people but rather using radio stations to broadcast a signal outside of the human hearing range was used by the Pentagon, known as Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS) or S-quad. U.S. Psychological Operations officers tested this technology on Iraqi troops in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

A news briefing detailed how American troops would take over the Iraqis’ FM stations and broadcast a silent signal underneath the audible programming:

The clandestine station programming consisted of  patriotic and religious music and intentionally vague, confusing and  contradictory military orders and information to the Iraqi soldiers in  the Kuwaiti Theater of Command (KTO). The size and power of enemy forces  was always intentionally exaggerated. Surrender was encouraged. According to statements made by captured and deserting Iraqi  soldiers, however, the most devastating and demoralizing programming was  the first known military use of the new, high tech, type of subliminal  messages referred to as Ultra-High-Frequency ‘Silent Sounds’ or ‘Silent  Subliminals’. (Newsweek, July 30, 1990, Page 61) Although completely silent to the human ear, the negative  voice messages placed on the tapes alongside the audible programming by  psyops psychologists were clearly perceived by the subconscious minds of  the Iraqi soldiers and the silent messages completely demoralized and  instilled a perpetual feeling of fear and hopelessness in their minds.

Then there is the suggestion of using Voice To Skull technology in Afghanistan under the moniker “Voice Of Allah” a few years back under the George Bush administration. That plan also included the broadcasting of a hologram image of what Allah was depicted to have looked like. Further, there was a plan years prior to do the same thing to other Arab nations.

The Gulf War hologram story might be dismissed were it not the case that washingtonpost.com learned that a super secret program was established in 1994 to pursue the very technology for application to PSYOPS.  The “Holographic Projector” is described in a classified Air Force document as a system to “project information power from space … for special operations deception missions. (Source: Washington Post)

Steven Corman, writing at the COMOPS journal, described his own encounter with this technology:

At  a government workshop some time ago I head someone describe a new tool that was described as the “voice of Allah.” This was said to be a device  that would operate at a distance and would deliver a message that only a  single person could hear. The story was that it was tested in a conflict situation in Iraq and pointed at one insurgent in a group, who whipped around looking in all directions, and began a heated  conversation with his compatriots, who did not hear the message. At the time I greeted this story with some skepticism.

Holosonic Research Labs and American Technology Corporation both have versions of directed sound, which can allow a single person to hear a message that others around don’t hear. Holosonic sells a technology called “Audio Spot Light” while ATC sells the Long Range Acoustic Device. DARPA also has its own sonic projector. Intriguingly, Strategy Page reported that troops used LRAD as a modified Voice of God weapon:

It appears  that some of the troops in Iraq are using “spoken” (as opposed to  “screeching”) LRAD to mess with enemy fighters. Islamic terrorists tend  to be superstitious and, of course, very religious. LRAD can put the  “word of God” into their heads. If God, in the form of a voice that only  you can hear, tells you to surrender, or run away, what are you gonna  do?

CNET once reported on the technology, noting that users don’t hear sound through their ears but instead the sound resonates and reverberates inside the person’s head – except in that case it was used for advertising.

The folks who heard the ad for A & E’s TV show “Paranormal State”  emitted from a billboard in New York City’s Greenwich Village must have  thought it was pretty weird. As they walked into the targeted area they  were exposed to highly focused sound, picked up not by their ears, but  by their skulls. The otherwise inaudible sound waves are experienced via  bone conduction–the sound resonates inside the passerby’s head.

The use of mind control technologies was predicted as well in the military publication of Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, published in 1994.

There are also other patents –  (here, here , here , here and here.)

And, finally, the most important patent entitled: “Thought transmission unit sends modulated  electromagnetic wave beams to human receiver to influence thoughts and  actions without electronic receiver.”

This is not science fiction. This is, to put it bluntly, mad science driven by insanity. These are declassified black projects or SAPs (special access programs.) Much of what the clear world or civilian population knows about military technology is severely underestimated despite the public nature of certain technologies like the heat ray and sound cannon. If you dig even deeper there is an old reference on the Army’s website for a technology called “Voice To Skull.” (ARMY SITE YANKED WIRED REPORTED) [ARCHIVED COPY OF ARMY PAGE]

Dr. Joseph C. Sharp completed the first successful test of auditory microwave technology which could bypass the ears and beam sound directly into a person’s head at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1973.

Sharp, strapped inside an isolation chamber, heard “words” beamed at him in a pulsed-microwave audiogram. (An audiogram is a  computerized analog of the spoken voice.) ARPA, now DARPA, researcher Robert O. Becker at the time foresaw “obvious applications in covert operations.”

Becker imagined barrages of “voices” driving an enemy insane, and post-hypnotic suggestion radioed to programmed assassin directing the test subject to kill its target. According  to Naval Captain Paul Tyler in a 1976 essay, “The Electromagnetic  Spectrum in Low-Intensity Conflict,” a “speed-of-light weapons effect”  could be achieved with “the passage of approximately 100 milliamperes  of directed frequency through the myocardium, leading to cardiac standstill and death.”

In 1975, a neuropsychologist Don R. Justesen, the director of  Laboratories of Experimental Neuropsychology at Veterans Administration Hospital in Kansas City, unwittingly leaked National Security Information when he published an article in American Psychologist on the influence of microwaves on living creatures’  behavior. In the article, he quoted the results of  an experiment described to him by his colleague, Joseph C. Sharp, who was working on Pandora, a secret project of the American Navy.

By radiating themselves with these ‘voice modulated’  microwaves, Sharp and Grove were readily able to hear, identify, and  distinguish among the 9 words. The sounds heard were not unlike those  emitted by persons with artificial larynxes (pg. 396).

Dr.  Milton Zaret, a leading microwave scientist was later recruited by  “Pandora,” a CIA project code-named for the study of radio-frequency-directed brain response he stated,

The CIA inquired whether I  thought electromagnetic radiation beamed at the brain from a distance could affect the way a person might act, and if microwaves could be used  to facilitate brainwashing or to break down prisoners under investigation.

It’s long been known that microwaves at certain frequencies can produce an auditory effect that sounds like it’s coming from within someone’s head. Then there’s the question of classified microwave work at Brooks Air Force Base which officials have refused to talk about.

In January 2007, Washington Post wrote on the same subject:

In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented  precisely such a technology: using microwaves to send words into  someone’s head… Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the research laboratory’s  directed energy directorate, declined to discuss that patent or current  or related research in the field, citing the lab’s policy not to comment  on its microwave work. In response to a Freedom of Information Act  request filed for this article, the Air Force released unclassified  documents surrounding that 2002 patent — records that note that the  patent was based on human experimentation in October 1994 at the Air  Force lab, where scientists were able to transmit phrases into the heads  of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility. Research  appeared to continue at least through 2002. Where this work has gone  since is unclear — the research laboratory, citing classification,  refused to discuss it or release other materials.

Previous research in electromagnetic weapons has shown that low-frequency waves or beams can affect brain cells, alter psychological states and make it possible to transmit commands directly into someone’s thought process making them think it’s their own thoughts. In fact there is even a patent which suggests doing just that.

In the 1940s George Estabrooks, a Harvard University graduate, Rhodes Scholar and chairman of psychology at Colgate University, Canada, acknowledged conducting extensive  hypnosis work on behalf of the CIA, FBI and military intelligence creating Manchurian candidates. He boasted to Science Digest in 1971: “I can hypnotize a man — without his knowledge or  consent — into committing treason against the United States.” Estabrook (Bowhart. Operation Mind Control.)

Eight years later,  it was reported that a “Man Hallucinates, Says Microwaves Are Murdering Him,” in the March 21, 1979, edition of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and later New Scientist.  That man was electronics engineer Leonard Kille, who founded the Scientific Engineering Institute (SEI) on behalf of the CIA. In  July 1968 at South Vietnam’s Bien Hoa Hospital, SEI teams had implanted electrodes in the skulls of Vietcong prisoners of war in experimental attempts to direct the behavior of brain-wired subjects by remote control.

Kille himself was a test subject of the electrodes implanted in his brain.  In 1971, a hospital attendant found Kille holding a metal wastebasket over his head in an attempt to “stop the microwaves.” A sympathetic doctor at Boston’s VA hospital, where Kille was transferred, ordered him “a large sheet of aluminum foil so he may fashion a protective helmet for himself.” Not informed that Kille had electrodes implanted his head, the VA doctors diagnosed him as a delusional paranoid individual.

In 1965 The New York Times reported obscure EMR experiments secretly funded by the government under the front-page headline: “Mind Control Coming, Scientist Warns.”  University of California psychology professor Dr.  David Krech is quoted warning, “EMR research may carry with it even more  serious implications than the achievements of the atomic physicists.”

Earlier, a 1963 CIA-issued manual on the study of Radio-Hypnotic Intra-Cerebral Control (RHIC) explained:

When a part of your brain  receives a tiny electrical impulse from outside sources, such as vision,  hearing, etc., an emotion is produced—anger at the sight of a gang of  boys beating an old woman, for example. The same emotions of anger can be created by artificial radio signals sent to your brain by a  controller. You could instantly feel the same white-hot anger without  any apparent reason.

Richard Helms oversaw military-oriented EMR research into the transmission of strategic subliminal messages into the aggregate minds of enemy populations. In a 1964 memo to the Warren Commission regarding the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald had been a mind-controlled assassin, Helms outlined the existence  of “biological radio communication.” “Cybernetics science of communication and control theory that is concerned with  the study of automatic control systems, such as the brain and  mechanical-electrical communications,” Helms admitted, “can be used in  molding of a child’s character, the inculcation of knowledge and  techniques, the amassing of experience, the establishment of social  behavior patterns … all functions which can be summarized as control  of the growth processes of the individual.”

A subsequent CIA directive, summarized in a brochure on “cybernetic  technique” distributed by Mankind Research Unlimited, an EMR study facility in Washington, D.C., detailed the deep state’s development of a “means by which information of modest rate can be fed to humans utilizing  other senses than sight or hearing.” According to the brochure, the CIA’s cybernetic technique, “based on Eastern European research,” involved beaming information via radio frequencies to individual human nerve cells. The purpose, the directive stated, was for “the enhancement of a subject’s mental and physical performance.”

“Recently researchers from the University of Washington showed that they could send one person’s thoughts through a computer to control the hand motion of a person sitting half a mile away. The team first demonstrated this brain-to-brain connection was possible back in August 2013. But now the researchers have put the technology through more rigorous testing and are close to making it usable in real-world scenarios,” Live Science reported.

Neuroscientists in France implanted false memories into the brains of sleeping mice in 2015. Using electrodes to directly stimulate and record the activity of nerve cells, they created artificial associative memories that persisted while the animals snoozed and then influenced their behavior when they finally woke up. MIT scientist also achieved the same result using mice in a similar experiment prior in 2013.

Meanwhile, Japanese researchers have developed a trick to implant false visions into people’s brains, altering the way they experience the world and potentially even the way they think.

In 2016, Dailymail reported that scientists had discovered a disturbing trick to plant false experiences into people’s brains.

As Huffington Post reported in 2014, “Mind control is becoming a reality,” in the clear science world, while black project scientists are far ahead of these advances as this article illustrates. Knowing all this information and seeing all the cited times in history that a shooter has heard voices in their head, one has to question if all the shootings were legitimate or if some of them were deep state CIA operations. (See my article: “I HEAR VOICES: MKUltra? A Worrying Trend Of Mass Shooting Suspects Throughout History Before Committing Horrific Murders.“)

With the inadvertent release of suspicious files talking about mind control it seemed like no better time to put this article out. Will the disclosure of this technology allow for the acceptance that it exists rather than constant ridicule with tinfoil hats? This entire article is cited to its teeth — your move CIA.

Electromagnetic Weapons are Being Used to Torture and Subjugate Countless American Citizens…: http://www.biggerthansnowden.com/

• Top image credit: Truthstream Media
• Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post where this article first appeared.  }us at Patreon. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Steemit, and BitChute. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.

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{ https://thedailycoin.org/

10-08-2019 om 16:03 geschreven door peter  

Jupiter Just Got Slammed by Something so Big We Saw it From Earth (Video)

Something Enormous Just Smashed Into Jupiter *Above Normal Hurricane Season Likely*Landslide*

Jupiter just got slammed by something so big we saw it from Earth

It’s bright, it’s white and fortunately it’s very far away from here.

The apparent moment of impact on the solar system’s largest world.

Ethan Chappel

An amateur astronomer caught something spectacular with a backyard telescope Wednesday when he recorded a bright flash on the surface of Jupiter. The biggest planet in the solar system routinely delivers stunning pictures, like those snapped by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, but the unexpected flash has astronomers excited at the possibility of a meteor impact.

Ethan Chappel pointed his telescope at the gas giant planet at just the right time, capturing the white spot seen on the lower left side of the planet in the above images on Aug. 7.

While it has yet to be confirmed by a second observer, it looks like a large asteroid crashing into the gas giant planet. The flash is brief and quickly fades away, boosting the idea that it was likely caused by an impact.

“Another impact on Jupiter today!” astronomer Dr. Heidi B. Hammel wrote on Twitter. “A bolide (meteor) and not likely to leave dark debris like SL9 did 25 years ago.”

SL9 is Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which famously impacted Jupiter in 1994. Hammel led the team that used the Hubble Space Telescope to study the impact and how the planet’s gassy atmosphere responded.

Something remarkable to consider is that the apparent size of the flash is almost the size of Earth, which is tiny next to the giant gas planet. For reference, about three Earths could fit inside Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which is also visible.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that whatever hit Jupiter was the size of a planet, just that the collision looks to have released a lot of explosive energy. Sky and Telescope’s Bob King says, if confirmed, this would be the seventh recorded impact of Jupiter since Shoemaker-Levy and the first in over two years.

Better to keep all that asteroid traffic directed in the outer solar system, we’ve had enough space rock scares here in the past month.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

10-08-2019 om 12:27 geschreven door peter  

Alien Buildings Found In Crater On Moon In NASA Index! Can We Take It Over? UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Aug 9, 2019
Location of discovery: Earths moon, Dionysius crater
NASA Source: 

• http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/443
  

I found a lot of alien structures, some are buildings and others appear to be landed ships. The structures are all silver metallic objects with shiny white reflective windows. These buildings are very old, but out in the vacuum of space structures can remain intact for millions of years. 

I imagine that one of these structures would easily be taken over by a group of human traveling to the moon and would make a great starting point for someone like Jeff Bezos space exploration program Blue Origins. The structure are right there, ripe for the taking, and waiting for new occupants and with the alien tech inside they should have power for hundreds of years. Can you see it? Blue Origins Space City at Dionysius crater becoming the next vacation resort. 
Scott C. Waring

10-08-2019 om 12:15 geschreven door peter  

Asteroid 2019 MO exploded in our atmosphere with an energy of about 3 to 5 kilotons of TNT. Such events happen once or twice yearly, astronomers say. Most are unexpected, but this space rock was detected hours before it struck.

The small, harmless, 4-meter near-Earth asteroid – now designated 2019 MO – created this bright flash when it struck Earth’s atmosphere on June 22, 2019, over the Caribbean.

Images via RAMMB/CIRA/Colorado State University.

Scientists have confirmed a meteor impact with Earth’s atmosphere over the Caribbean last weekend. The bright flash was detected by by NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite and other meteorological satellites, showing the event occurred on Saturday, June 22, 2019, at around 5:25 p.m. EDT (21:25 UTC) some 170 miles (274 km) south of Puerto Rico. Astronomer Peter Brown, a meteor expert from University of Western Ontario in Ontario, Canada, said that an infrasound station located in Bermuda did detect airwaves produced by the space rock’s impact in the atmosphere. The object is believed to have been a small asteroid, and it was unusual in that it was detected prior to its impact – in the hours before – by the Atlas (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) in Hawaii. Brown said the impact was:

… consistent with 3 to 5 kilotons (of energy).

By contrast, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, exploded with an energy of about 15 kilotons of TNT. Both the energy released, as well as the observations made from the Atlas Observatory, suggest the June 22 space rock was about 13 feet (4 meters) in diameter. Originally designated A10eoM1, the rock has now been designated as asteroid 2019 MO.

Ernesto Guido@comets77

Just released MPEC with official designation (2019 MO) for A10eoM1 (that impacted earth's atmosphere around
June 22 21:30 UTC) http://bit.ly/2X71XkN  & http://bit.ly/2X7Os48  #asteroids #astronomy cc @pgbrown @Yeqzids @fallingstarIfA @frankie57pr

• 9

5:48 PM - Jun 25, 2019

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Although small space rocks and fragments rain down on Earth’s atmosphere continuously, experts at NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies say that large events such as the one on June 22 occur about once or twice a year. Earth’s atmosphere does its job in protecting us in these cases, causing drag or friction that disintegrates most of these small objects before they strike the ground (although a few do strike, and more fall into the ocean). Read more: Whoa! 26 atom-bomb-scale asteroid impacts since 2000

Tony Dunn@tony873004

Earth got hit a few days ago by newly-discovered asteroid 2019 MO.@pgbrown has more graphics.

Here is a simulation of this event.

http://orbitsimulator.com/gravitySimulatorCloud/simulations/1561486999460_2019%20MO_collision.html …
An article by Brian Skiffhttps://remanzacco.blogspot.com/2019/06/small-asteroid-neocp-a10eom1-impacted.html …

• 41

8:49 PM - Jun 25, 2019

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After analyzing the satellite images, expert meteor photographer Frankie Lucena commented:

Looks to be a mighty impressive event, for sure.

Some satellite images show the bright flash produced by the meteor, and seconds later, a line of its dissipating smoke trail.

Asteroid 2019 MO is believed to have had an orbit outside that of Earth and extending almost to Jupiter’s orbit.

Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.

According to Italian amateur astronomer Ernesto Guido, this is only the fourth time in history that an impacting object was observed prior to atmospheric entry.

• Bottom line: Asteroid 2019 MO exploded in Earth’s atmosphere on June 22, 2019, with an energy equivalent to about 3 to 5 kilotons of TNT. Such events happen unexpectedly, once or twice yearly, astronomers say. This one was unusual in that the asteroid was detected in the hours before it struck.

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

10-08-2019 om 01:34 geschreven door peter  

10-08-2019 om 01:19 geschreven door peter  

A UFO The Size Of Planet Earth Seen Hovering Near Saturn

By Arjun Walia

The pictures NASA got back from the Voyager mission to Saturn in 1980 were apparently so mind-altering that they locked them up–at least that’s what retired U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Bob Dean said in this lecture. He also showed numerous photographs from the Apollo missions that were never released to the public. You can view some of those photographs here. Multiple governments, like Russia, have been calling for an international investigation as to where photographs, footage and Moon rocks disappeared to.

The picture above does not come from Dean, it comes from one of his good friends Norman Bergrun, a scientist and engineer who was part of NASA’s voyager program. He worked at NASA for decades at the Ames Research Centre. He also worked at Lockheed Martin where he managed the Polaris missile tests. Unfortunately, he recently passed. You can view his obituary here.

He is a legend for going public.

Luminous Source

What is the picture of? It’s a “luminous source,” that comes from Bergrun’s Book, “The Ringmakers of Saturn.” He had to go through a lot of trouble to publish it, and had to leave the country in order to do so, as Dean explained in the lecture linked above.

According to Bergrun, there are several large craft “proliferating” out around Saturn and its moons. His book goes into much greater detail, and although it’s hard to find and costs thousands of dollars, it is linked online, here.

Frustrated By Non-Disclosure

According to Dean, Bergrun got frustrated later in life that the decision was made not to tell the public what they had photographed at Saturn. My previous article Long-Time Nasa Scientist Blows The Whistle On Tall Black Extraterrestrial Beings describes Bergrun exposing the existence of what he calls extraterrestrial ‘vehicles’ that were responsible for making the rings around Saturn.

In a rare interview he gave with Kerry Cassidy of Project Camelot (below), he expressed his great concern of the UFO cover-up and stated with enthusiasm that “people have got to be made aware that those things are real.” I’ve presented this video in multiple articles, but anytime you mention him, you must  present this interview !

The Takeaway

In his book, Norman makes it a clear point to emphasize that these objects have probably been around much longer than we have. He also states that if there was any ill intent towards our planet, something probably would have happened by now and there is a reason that these objects (which he stated are intelligently controlled, not by us) have not come in close proximity to our planet. By coming closer than they already are they may, and already probably do have some effects on our own weather. This is something Norman also mentions in his book.

A lot of ridicule and fear exists behind this topic, and today it’s no longer taboo as mainstream disclosure has begun. We are becoming more aware, and despite mainstream media and the global elite having a lot to lose from the disclosure of this type of information (propulsion systems, oil, etc..), the truth is leaking out. It’s a field filled with information and disinformation, so one has to be cautious and remain skeptical. At the end of the day, we know that we are not alone, and it has huge implications for all areas of humanity–not the least of which is that it will ultimately force humanity to look within.

More awareness of this presence is coinciding with a massive ‘spiritual’ awakening that’s happening on the planet, and this is not by coincidence. It seems that a growing awareness of what’s out there will serve to help humanity better understand itself.

{ https://www.collective-evolution.com/ }

09-08-2019 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

We Could Be Witnessing the Death of a Tectonic Plate, Says Earth Scientist

By Laura Geggel

The Juan de Fuca tectonic plate runs along the western coast of the United States.

(Image: © Shutterstock)

A gaping hole in a dying tectonic plate beneath the ocean along the West Coast of the United States may be wreaking havoc at Earth's surface, but not in a way most people might expect.

This gash is so big it may trigger earthquakes off the coast of Northern California and could explain why central Oregon has volcanoes, a new study found.

The researchers in the new study aren't the first to suggest that the Michigan-size Juan de Fuca (pronounced "wahn de fyoo-kuh") plate has a tear. But thanks to a new, detailed dataset, they're the first to say so with certainty. [The Science of Plate Tectonics and Continental Drift (Infographic)]

"Where other people had debated whether or not it [the tear] was there, we can pretty confidently say that it's real," study lead researcher William Hawley, a doctoral student in the Earth and Planetary Science Department at the University of California, Berkeley, told Live Science.

The Juan de Fuca plate is long, stretching about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) along the Pacific Northwest coast, from Vancouver Island, Canada, to Cape Mendocino, California. "No part of it is above the water. It's a total oceanic plate" that's subducting, or diving beneath another plate, in this case the North American plate (a continental plate), Hawley said.

From 2011 to 2015, scientists boated out over different parts of the Juan de Fuca plate, dropped ocean-bottom seismometers underwater and let these sensors collect seismic data from earthquakes all over the world for a year.

(Image credit: William Hawley)

When the year was up, the researchers returned, fished up the seismometers and uploaded the data, which allowed them to create a tomography, or layout, of the plate. Then, they deployed the devices to other spots on the plate. "It was an enormous community effort," Hawley said.

The data from these seismometers showed how seismic waves traveled through the plate, which, in turn, revealed information about the plate's composition and varying temperatures. One region under central Oregon showed a gap in high-velocity seismic waves, which Hawley interpreted to be the hole.

But why does this hole exist? Hawley and study co-researcher Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, hypothesized that there is a weak zone in the Juan de Fuca plate that exists because the plate formed at two overlapping ridge segments. As this weakened zone of the oceanic plate goes under the continental plate, it unzips from the bottom up (from the underside upward), creating a gash.

"This tearing may eventually cause the plate to fragment, and what is left of the small pieces of the plate will attach to other plates nearby," the researchers wrote in the study. In other words, "we're witnessing the death of a plate," but it will take at least a few million years to die, Hawley said.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Hawley and Allen estimated that the hole is located at a depth of between 155 and 60 miles (250 and 100 km). The tear itself, which is narrower on top and widens with depth, is about 120 miles (200 km) wide. [Hidden Undersea Mountains Uncovered with Satellites (Photos)]

Moreover, it appears that material is getting pushed up through the tear, which may have led to the formation of the volcanoes in central Oregon's High Lava Plains about 17 million years ago, Hawley noted. In fact, it's incredible how many geographical and seismic features in the Pacific Northwest fit into the researchers' hypothesis, he said.

"The story links the hole in the tomography with this known weak zone in a plate and with a series of volcanic centers in Oregon and with a series of earthquakes and faults off the coast of Northern California," Hawley said.

The research is a "thought-provoking idea paper," said Ray Wells, a research geologist emeritus with the U.S. Geological Survey in Portland, Oregon, who was not involved with the study.

"I'm happy to see more data indicating a hole in the Juan de Fuca plate," Wells told Live Science in an email. "The coincidence of the hole with the location of a subducted zone of weakness in the Juan de Fuca plate is interesting and could help to produce a tear."

The study was published online July 11 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

• In Photos: The UK's Geologic Wonders
• Photos: Fiery Lava from Kilauea Volcano Erupts on Hawaii's Big Island
• Mount Etna: Photos of the Largest Active Volcano in Europe

Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

09-08-2019 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

OVER a million alien enthusiasts recently signed up to a Facebook event to storm Area 51 — the secretive US military base believed by some to hold the wreckage of crashed UFOs.

But if Brits want to don tin foil hats and look for evidence of extraterrestrials in the UK, where should they go?

The Facebook plan to storm the American base to “see them aliens” began as a joke which is now being taken seriously — deadly seriously.

Not only did Facebook pull down the page, the Air Force issued a chilling warning to potential raiders that: “The US Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets.”

It’s not known exactly what secrets the shadowy base has that authorities are desperate to defend.

Ufologists — who study unidentified flying objects — believe the site holds alien spacecraft being studied for their technology, a claim famously repeated by a former engineer at the site, Bob Lazar.

But conspiracy theorists in the UK don’t need to look as far afield as the States for mysterious government facilities linked with UFOs.

Nick Pope ran the Ministry of Defence’s UFO project in the 1990s, looking into reports of flying saucers, crop circles, and even abductions. 

Here he reveals the secret spots that might be “Britain’s Area 51”. 

UFO investigation centre

RAF Rudloe Manor, Wiltshire

• Theory: Alien technology being kept in secret underground lab

For years, conspiracy theorists believed the government was hiding something at RAF Rudloe Manor in Corsham, Wiltshire.

And to some extent, they were right — documents made public in 2010 admitted that the base WAS used in UFO investigations.

That’s because Rudloe Manor was home to the Flying Complaints Flight, a unit of the RAF Police which gathered reports of UFO sightings from RAF bases and passed them to the MoD HQ.

And the secret site came under even more scrutiny when it was revealed there was a vast network of underground tunnels beneath the base.

Ufologists had suspected this for years but instead of the tunnels being used to hide alien technology they were nuclear bomb shelters.

The vast subterranean bunkers would be where government ministers and royals would’ve been evacuated to if there was a nuclear strike on Britain.

Even though Rudloe Manor was closed in 2000, it still attracts conspiracy theorists — some have been arrested by MoD Police for breaking in.

Nick himself had a brush with the authorities when he was filming a documentary there with presenter Giorgio Tsoukalos a few years ago.

He said: “As a former MoD employee I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to approach the site, so Giorgio went alone.

“Within moments, military police turned up and halted filming, further fuelling the conspiracy theories.”

CONTAINS PUBLIC SECTOR INFORMATION LICENSED UNDER THE OPEN GOVERNMENT LICENCE V3.0.

RAF Rudloe Manor, which closed in 2000, was the UK’s centre for UFO investigations

CONTAINS PUBLIC SECTOR INFORMATION LICENSED UNDER THE OPEN GOVERNMENT LICENCE V3.0.
The subterranean facilities are connected to a labyrinth of secret bunkers

GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
The Operations Room at Rudloe Manor in 1943

UFO project HQ

Ministry of Defence Main Building, London

• Theory: UFO investigations team officially shutdown but still running in secret

Inside Room 8245 in the MoD Main Building in Whitehall, the government’s main UFO project looked into the strange reports of flying saucers around the UK.

In the 50 years the project ran until 2009, around 12,000 cases were looked into by the team.

Although most were debunked, around five per cent of the cases couldn’t be explained.

And although the project was officially closed down a decade ago, Nick believes it still operating but now in secret.

He claims a source in the MoD told him Americans were now running the project.

And another told him investigations have just moved to a new part of the building where the investigators are jokingly referred to as Mulder and Scully.

Nick even says protesters have already turned up at the site to demand answers in October 1995.

He said: “It wasn’t quite on the scale of what’s threatened for Area 51.

“Around 20 people assembled outside Parliament and then marched over to Main Building, waving signs that said ‘UFOs are real’, before handing in a letter demanding an end to UFO secrecy.

“I’d left the UFO project by then, but they somehow got hold of my new phone number and I had to meet them and formally take possession of their letter.”

Britain’s X-Files

The National Archives, Kew

• Theory: Sensitive documents about aliens kept secret after sham public release

The UK’s National Archives in Kew are the final repository of the MoD’s real-life X-Files.

Last year, declassified files there showed the government had spent 50 years looking into UFOs in the hope we could steal alien technology to develop super weapons during the Cold War.

The once-secret files showed UFOs were real and being taken seriously.

They also detailed near misses between RAF aircraft and UFOs which posed a dangerous threat to the crew’s safety.

The first load of these files was made public in the National Archives in 2008 — and Nick was enlisted to help with their publicity.

And over the next 11 years, more and more information came out, but some files were still redacted.

This made some people think the government was holding information back.

But Nick says: “The blacked-out material is often just names and addresses of UFO witnesses, withheld to protect people’s privacy.

“If people could see the uncensored files, all people will find out is that Mr Smith of 22 Acacia Avenue saw a UFO while out walking his dog sometime back in 1985!”

The National Archives near Kew, where all the UFO files are kept

ALAMY
It took 11 years to make all the files public – with the most recent only released in April this year

Secret weapons research centre

RAE Farnborough, Hampshire

• Theory: Site of ‘alien abductions’ is primary location where alien tech would be kept

The Royal Aerospace Establishment at Farnborough, Hampshire has previously been called Britain’s Area 51.

RAE Farnborough was originally set up as an aircraft and weapons research facility at the turn of the twentieth century and closed in the late 1980s.

In 2015, a lengthy report by conspiracy theorists claimed the site was well-connected to UFO sightings — and even alien abductions.

Rumours persist, and Farnborough is currently home to QinetiQ, a defence technology company that researches and develops cutting-edge equipment including weapons, robotics and space-related tech.

And Nick says if the UK ever did get hold of extraterrestrial tech, it probably would’ve been sent to Farnborough for study.

But he also wants to pour cold water on the claims that the site ever did have alien tech — as he had a close relationship with someone who knew for a fact there were no UFO weapons there.

Nick said: “I’m sceptical about this, for a very good reason — one that’s generated a few conspiracy theories.

“My late father, Dr. Geoffrey Pope, was the Director of RAE Farnborough, before ending his MoD career as the Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser.”

“As he once joked: ‘If there was spaceship in a hangar somewhere in the UK, it would have been my hangar!'”

The sci-fi aircraft factory

BAE Warton, Lancashire

• Theory: Next-generation aircraft developed from UFOs

BAE Systems is one of the world’s biggest defence companies and Warton is its manufacturing and testing facility.

It’s the birthplace of some of the most innovative fighter jets ever made, including the Typhoon and the Tornado.

But multiple conspiracy theorists say they’ve seen UFOs flying over the airfield, sparking rumours of alien technology at the site.

In fact, the MoD even had to officially deny that it had been testing its new unmanned aircraft, Taranis, after a UFO was blamed for the destruction of a wind turbine.

And Nick says you only have to look at the development of cutting-edge aircraft to be confident BAE Warton has technology the public don’t know about.

He said: “People would be staggered if they knew how long ago stealth technology was being developed, many years before anything was officially acknowledged.

“The RAF’s proposed Tempest aircraft – BAE Systems is one of the partners – will be armed with lasers and hypersonic weapons, and accompanied by a drone swarm.

“If this is the stuff they’re telling you about, what aren’t they telling you?”

BAE Systems’ testing facilities in Warton has been the source of many supposed UFO sightings

{ https://www.thesun.co.uk/ }

09-08-2019 om 23:20 geschreven door peter  

Life May Be Common in the Milky Way, Thanks to Comet Swapping

By Mike Wall 

And Earth may be one of the primary donor worlds.

An artist's illustration of a massive impact on earth. Some single-celled organisms may be able to survive extreme impacts such as these, scientists say.

(Image: © Don Davis/NASA)

Life has had plenty of opportunities to spread throughout the Milky Way galaxy over the eons, a recent study suggests — and our own Earth may be one of the key dispersal points.

The sun's random motion through space has brought it close to many other stars over the past 4.6 billion years. These close encounters likely jostle far-flung comets free from both systems, sending them careening toward the passing star, said study author Robert Zubrin, president of the Colorado-based company Pioneer Astronautics.

This "comet swapping" is probably responsible for many of Earth's past mass extinctions, Zubrin found. But the phenomenon has also likely aided life in the bigger picture, helping it hop from island to island across the vast ocean of space, he said.

• Related: 7 Theories on the Origin of Life

"It's a mechanism whereby life could have been delivered to us, and whereby we have probably delivered life to lots of other places over the past 3.5 billion years," Zubrin told Space.com. "And if you simply extrapolate off of that and say, 'Everybody's doing this,' you've got the galaxy as a supercritical reactor, saturating itself with life."

This conclusion is based on some straightforward calculations, which take into account the average stellar density in the sun's neighborhood (0.003 stars per cubic light-year), the sun's velocity relative to this star field (about 22,370 mph, or 36,000 km/h) and the makeup of the Milky Way's stellar population (about 75% small, dim red dwarfs, for example).

Zubrin also assumed that other stars harbor huge comet repositories on their outskirts, like our own sun's Oort Cloud. The extent of the Oort Cloud is unknown; its outer edge is estimated to lie anywhere between 30,000 and 100,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (1 AU is the average Earth-sun distance — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)

Zubrin employed a relatively conservative size estimate, setting our Oort Cloud's radius at 40,000 AU. He then used that figure to estimate the average radii of other star types' Oort Clouds. Red dwarfs, for example, should be able to hold onto comets out to about 20,000 AU, he determined.

It's unclear how many comets lie in the Oort Cloud. Zubrin assumed a population of 1 trillion — an estimate that's thrown around frequently — and therefore arrived at a density of four comets per 1,000 cubic AU.

The sun can gravitationally capture another star's Oort Cloud object if it gets within 10 AU of that object, Zubrin determined. So, there could be a lot of captures per stellar encounter. For example, say the sun gets within 20,000 AU of another star. The sun would carve a roughly 20,000-AU path through that alien Oort Cloud, potentially capturing 25,000 objects (assuming alien Oort Clouds also harbor about four objects per 1,000 cubic AU.)

These captured bodies would come barreling toward the inner solar system, drawn by the sun's powerful gravitational tug. And some of our Oort Cloud objects would do the same, in the other direction.

• Related: 10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life

"The great majority of impacts caused by disrupted objects would no doubt be delivered to gas-giants type planets," Zubrin wrote in the study, which was published in June in the International Journal of Astrobiology. "However, with such a large number of objects released per pass, Earth-sized worlds would likely be impacted as well."

The numbers are different for stars of different sizes, because they have stronger or weaker gravitational pulls depending on their masses. A red dwarf with 30% the mass of the sun, for example, would have to get within 3 AU of another star's Oort Cloud object to snag it, Zubrin found.

He used all of this information (and more) to calculate the frequency of close stellar encounters, and to get a handle on their consequences. And the results were striking, if you'll pardon the pun.

He found that our sun has had about 47 close stellar encounters per billion years over the course of its 4.6-billion-year life, with about half of those flybys involving red dwarfs. That works out to about one encounter every 21 million years. 

This latter figure is intriguingly close to the inferred periodicity of mass extinctions here on Earth, which seem to occur every 20 million to 40 million years. Scientists have proposed that comet impacts are dealing these death blows, and have therefore come up with possible mechanisms that could send these icy wanderers screaming toward Earth at regular intervals.

For example, some researchers have posited that the sun has an undiscovered companion, dubbed Nemesis, which jostles our Oort Cloud every 26 million years or so. Others think this destabilization comes courtesy of a disk of galactic dark matter, which our solar system travels through on a similar timescale.

But Zubrin's work fingers alien comets, not those native to our own solar system, as the primary agents of destruction. 

His calculations also suggest that solar systems frequently trade material via such comet bombardments. For example, dust blasted off Earth by impacts can be pushed outward by sunlight pressure at 67,000 mph (108,000 km/h), Zubrin wrote — considerably faster than two stars are moving relative to each other in a typical close encounter. 

That means microbes could make the jump from our system to a temporary neighbor. And they could do so relatively quickly, avoiding extensive exposure to damaging deep-space radiation. (The idea that life has hopped from world to world, and perhaps even from solar system to solar system, is known as panspermia. There are multiple variants. For example, some scientists think Earth life was seeded intentionally by intelligent aliens — a concept known as directed panspermia.)

"Furthermore, even if ejected material fails to hit the passing solar system, it could become captured in the home solar system’s Oort Cloud," Zubrin wrote. "Such material, as well as dust particles containing microbes previously driven outward by the pressure of sunlight, could be stored for long periods in Oort Cloud objects in deep freeze under effective ice shielding until a subsequent encounter with a different passing stellar system causes it to be released and transferred at that time."

Our sun is more massive than 90% of the stars in the Milky Way, so our Oort Cloud is more extensive than most. This means that we've been the dominant donor in most stellar encounters, delivering about three times more cometary bombardments on other solar systems than we ourselves receive, Zubrin said. 

The overall implication of these results is exciting for astrobiologists, and anyone else who hopes Earth life isn't alone in the universe.

"The galaxy has been seeded with life, if from no other source than the Earth," Zubrin said.

• Could Life on Earth Have Come from Another Star System?
• Wipeout: History's Most Mysterious Extinctions
• For Close-Knit Planets, Sharing Life Could Be Easy
• 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/ }

09-08-2019 om 22:47 geschreven door peter  

Dark matter could predate Big Bang, says new study

BY JORDAN STRICKLER 

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

09-08-2019 om 21:51 geschreven door peter  

Physicists are a step closer to a theory of quantum gravity

BY ROB LEA 

New research centering around the Unruh effect has created a set of necessary conditions that theories of quantum gravity must meet.

Quantum physics has, since its development in the early years of the 20th century, become one of the most successful and well-evidenced areas of science. But, despite all of its successes and experimental triumphs, there is a shadow that hangs over it. 

Despite successfully integrating electromagnetic, the weak and strong nuclear forces — three of the four fundamental forces — quantum physics is yet to find a place for gravity. 

As such, it cannot link with one of physics other great triumphs, that of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Thus, physicists are currently working hard to develop a quantum theory of gravity. 

Now researchers led by the SISSA (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati), the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Waterloo — have identified the sufficient and necessary conditions that the low-energy limit of quantum gravity theories must satisfy to preserve the main features of the Unruh effect.

Any new theory of physics must factor in this effect — this means quantum gravity theories too, must have a place for the Unruh effect and its predictions (which are detailed below). 

The new study — published in the journal Physical Review Letters — provides a solid theoretical framework to discuss modifications to the Unruh effect caused by the microstructure of space-time.

Eduardo Martin-Martinez, an assistant professor in Waterloo’s Department of Applied Mathematics, elaborates on the team’s work: “What we’ve done is analyzed the conditions to have Unruh effect and found that contrary to an extended belief in a big part of the community thermal response for particle detectors can happen without a thermal state.”

The team’s findings of importance because the Unruh effect exists in the boundary between quantum field theory and general relativity, and quantum gravity, which we are yet to understand.

“So, if someone wants to develop a theory of what’s going on beyond what we know of quantum field theory and relativity, they need to guarantee they satisfy the conditions we identify in their low energy limits.”

What is the Unruh effect?

The Unruh effect was first described by Stephen Fulling in 1973, followed by Paul Davies in 1975 and William G Unruh — after whom it was named — in 1976.

 It predicts that an observer in a non-inertial reference frame — one that is accelerating — would observe photons and other particles in a seemingly empty space while another person who is inertial would see a vacuum in that same area.

In other words; a consequence of the Unruh effect is that the nature of a vacuum in the universe is dependant on the path taken through it.

As an analogy, consider a universe with a constant temperature of zero and in which, no heat arises from the effects of friction or kinetic energy contributions. A still thermometer would have its mercury-level sat permanently at zero.

But the Unruh effect posits that if that thermometer was waved from side-to-side, the temperature measured would no longer be zero. The temperature measured would be proportional to the acceleration that the thermometer undergoes.

Raúl Carballo-Rubio, a postdoctoral researcher at SISSA, Italy, explains further: “Inertial and accelerated observers do not agree on the meaning of ‘empty space.

 “What an inertial observer carrying a particle detector identifies as a vacuum is not experienced as such by an observer accelerating through that same vacuum. The accelerated detector will find particles in thermal equilibrium, like a hot gas.”

He further explains that as a result of this, it is reasonable to expect that any new physics that modifies the structure of quantum field theory at short distances, would induce deviations from this law. 

Carballo-Rubio continues: “While probably anyone would agree that these deviations must be present, there is no consensus on whether these deviations would be large or small in a given theoretical framework. 

“This is precisely the issue that we wanted to understand.”

Defining the conditions theories of quantum gravity must satisfy

The researchers analyzed the mathematical structure of the correlations of a quantum field in frameworks beyond standard quantum field theory. 

The result of this analysis was then used to identify the three necessary conditions that are sufficient to preserve the Unruh effect. 

Low-energy predictions of quantum gravity theories can be constructed from the results. The findings of this research provide the tools necessary to make these predictions in a broad spectrum of situations.

Having been able to determine how the Unruh effect is modified by alterations of the structure of quantum field theory, as well as the relative importance of these modifications, the researchers believe the study provides a solid theoretical framework to discuss and perhaps test this particular aspect as one of the possible phenomenological manifestations of quantum gravity. 

This is particularly important and appropriates even if the effect has not yet been measured experimentally, as it is expected to be verified in the not so distant future.

Original research: 

• https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.041601

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

09-08-2019 om 21:47 geschreven door peter  

Grootste surveytelescoop ter wereld schiet indrukwekkende beelden van ‘kosmische zeemeeuw’  - HLN.be

Bron: ESO

De VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is momenteel de grootste surveytelescoop ter wereld, en in staat om alles wat zich in de hemel afspeelt, in zichtbaar licht waar te nemen. Dat demonstreert de telescoop met deze indrukwekkende foto. De ‘hemelse vogel’ die daarop straalt, bestaat uit een mengsel van gloeiende gaswolken, donkere stofbanen en heldere sterren.

Nieuwe sterren worden geboren uit samentrekkende gas- en stofwolken en de straling van de jonge sterren geeft de wolken prachtige kleuren. Het licht dat niet wordt uitgestraald door het geïoniseerde gas rondom de sterren, wordt weerkaatst door sterren in de omgeving.

Kan jij de zeemeeuw spotten?

•  Ahoy maatjes! Ruimtepiraat teistert de sterrenhemel

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

09-08-2019 om 20:57 geschreven door peter