Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
19-08-2019
Dozens of UFOs Caught on Video Over Wyoming
Dozens of UFOs Caught on Video Over Wyoming
The video description states the witness of the strange event saw UFOs that looked like some craft moving across the sky without any sound.
It seems that going into Area 51 might not be necessary to see creatures altogether from another planet as one Facebook event suggests. A mass UFO sighting was recently reported in Wyoming, US.
In a description of the YouTube video showing the UFOs, the phenomenon took place on July 26 over Casper City.
It presented the testimony, quoted by the owner of the YouTube channel Hidden Underbelly 2.0 from the eyewitness, saying the objects in the video were not orbs but rather appeared like crafts moving in complete silence.
The witness said they were not drones as they did not hear the propellers, but they had no idea what were those mysterious aerial things.
Boven ‘topgeheim’ heb je nog meerdere niveaus. Waarom zelfs presidenten geen toegang hebben tot UFO-geheimen
Boven ‘topgeheim’ heb je nog meerdere niveaus. Waarom zelfs presidenten geen toegang hebben tot UFO-geheimen
Presidentskandidaat Bernie Sanders zei onlangs in de podcast van Joe Rogan dat hij informatie over aliens zal vrijgeven als hij de verkiezingen wint.
De Amerikaanse media-analist Lionel gelooft niet dat de senator daadwerkelijk UFO-geheimen gaat onthullen.
“De Amerikaanse president heeft hier niets mee te maken,” zei hij tegen RT America. “Boven ‘topgeheim’ heb je nog meerdere niveaus waar geen president ooit toegang tot heeft gehad.”
Kletskoek
Dit is dus kletskoek, aldus Lionel.
Over aliens, vliegende schotels en UFO’s zei hij: “Dit is het belangrijkste onderwerp dat verborgen wordt gehouden.”
Er is geen enkele nieuwsredactie die het onderwerp bespreekt zonder het in het belachelijke te trekken of weg te wuiven, voegde hij toe.
Veel mensen vragen zich af waarom de overheid informatie over UFO’s achterhoudt.
Antizwaartekracht
“Je hebt het hier over aandrijving op basis van antizwaartekracht,” reageerde Lionel. “Heb je enig idee wat dit zou betekenen voor onze wereld, die draait om olie?”
Als tweede reden noemde hij dat de machthebbers niet willen dat wij ons als ras – de aardlingen – verenigen.
“Dit is het belangrijkste onderwerp dat er is,” besloot hij.
Usually once you speak about UFO sightings, most people today believe that I mistook it for something else or they may think that it is merely a crap. UFO sightings are now able to easily be captured on video, while it’s through a telephone or video camera. They have become an ever-popular subject. In any event, UFO sightings aren’t something which’s new to society. During February in Minnesota, for instance, only 69 UFO sightings are reported since the start of the 21st century. On weekdays it appears that UFO sightings are driven by men and women that are routinely outside daily, rain or shine.
The Basics of Ufo Sightings That You Can Benefit From Starting Today
Most UFO sightings were reported in the usa, with 26 sightings happening during November. In the Washington Post Dan Drezner implies that the simple fact that the Department of Defense is starting to engage with the notion of UFOs weakens their thesis, but I am not certain that’s right. Before you make a decision as to what you believe, we implore you to comprehend the evidence. For starters, so many folks say reflexively that there’s no evidence of an ET presence engaging our planet, when they don’t really know the evidence. Many still seek out proof of aliens. The evidence might have been much more compelling, in the event the very first recorded incident was not revealed as a hoax. If you’re still not convinced or want to read more evidence an Arizona UFO might not be a laughing matter, you might delight in seeing for yourself, more UFO Evidence.
There are not many fantastic explanations for the majority of the Hudson Valley sightings. Among the arguments that scientists use to debunk UFO sightings is that our planet has existed for at least four billion decades, hence the odds are really small that the aliens would just chance to arrive here during the few decades that we’ve got technology. Despite the fact that there are a lot of questions regarding the JFK assassination, it is a prime example of folks attempting to earn sense about something which you can’t make sense of. Each and every calendar year, this issue of UFOs grows in popularity, and that’s primarily because of the simple fact they’re actually real.
The Foolproof Ufo Sightings Strategy
The most well-known story was about a five year-old community girl who entered the forest simply to return five decades later wearing the very same clothes. Evidently, fake stories appear to find the most positive attention should they promise something spectacular. Which made the story of what it is that they witnessed that night even more curious. There are various haunting stories and unexplained events which are the makings of a multitude of cinematic pleasures.
The video has become the fodder for numerous arguments and debates about the authenticity of the same. It shows three different sightings of suspected UFOs in three different parts of the world. In the proper hands an actual video can be made to look as a hoax but only to a different expert” when examining it. Real videos of any type, on any subject can be placed through a filter to make it resemble a fake. Pictures in magazines are touched up for decades, and video does not need to be much different. Meditative images are also consciously utilised in yoga, for instance, to focus the mind as a way to yield a particular spiritual outcome.
There’s a complete fleet of them, among the pilot said. A number of other pilots have witnessed that same specific thing. Besides that simple fact, it may even be possible to blind a UFO pilot.
Life After Ufo Sightings
Skepticism doesn’t mean doubting everything. Skepticism isn’t cynicism. Skepticism is a means of thinking.
On December 15th, 2005, A friend and I had the following UFO sighting. At 3:30 am, on this morning, with me at the wheel, my friend and I went on a little drive to see the UFO activity in Utah Valley. We focused our attention mainly on two areas.
1-The night sky above Spanish Fork City, Utah.
2-The Spanish Fork City Airport.
Both of us were absolutely astounded, to say the least as we approached Spanish Fork City from the north when we observed one of the biggest UFOs that I’ve ever seen. The diamond-shaped UFO was floating slowly, about 300 feet above this city, moving northbound.
We were fascinated with the camouflaging measures, used by this sinister looking spaceship. Reproduced into this massive UFO’s outer shell, were the lights (yes they were HIGH INTENSITY DISCHARGE LAMPS) of the city of “Woodland Hills” which is a few miles south of Sp.Fk.
Looking directly at this UFO, one may very well be inclined to believe that they are merely looking at some boring city lights, which we are all so familiar with. This, I believe, is exactly what the Aliens are counting on. In my opinion, it is an absolutely ingenious camouflaging measure.
As I gazed wide-eyed and open-mouthed at this colossal craft which I estimated to be about three city-blocks wide and two blocks tall (please excuse my inarticulate and unscientific terminology), I had an inexplicable and conclusive feeling that I was looking at an “airborne Alien nursery!”
Both of us were also very intrigued by the appearance of two “EYES,” human looking in every way about six-feet in diameter which were placed into the sides of the UFO’s outer shell. The technology which the spaceship exhibited in placing so many lights of various sizes which matched all of the lights of Woodland Hills, revealed a high degree of intelligence, in my opinion, of those who possessed and piloted it!
At the Spanish Fork Airport at 5:30 am, as we sat parked, we observed a strange sight. Rolling slowly down the runway, escorted by a low-flying, egg-shaped UFO, was some type of wheeled unit which appeared to be some type of “star projector.” It was close in size to a typical “potato chip” truck. An astounding number of glistening lights, all of which had the appearance of “stars,” covered this mysterious contraption.
The “projector” looked to be rolling down the runway of the airport. I knew, however, that it could be somewhere else, perhaps far beyond our locale. I have been aware now, for some time, that the Aliens have the technology to mask the precise locations of their hardware and activities, by making their appearance seem always to be “distant” as one approaches those areas.
Our presence did not go unnoticed by the “Aliens” as we quickly perceived that six UFOs of various sizes were gradually moving towards us using the HIDLs around us as “cover.” After aligning the lights of their ships, to the HIDLs, I believe, they can then sneak up on their targets.
Perched menacingly atop a nearby building behind the airport parking lot where we sat in our car, we observed an egg-shaped UFO, about 20 feet-wide and 10 feet-tall creeping up on us. Suddenly (I suspect in an effort to distract us from viewing the “star projector”), its right light got brighter and bigger and split into four quarters; two blue and two red, in color. The red quarters then shifted places with the two blue quarters.
A white light then appeared in the midst of the two red quarters of light, about the size of a silver dollar, which continued to gradually grow in size.
Anticipating that something big was about to happen, I sarcastically said to my friend beside me “I’ll bet a helicopter comes out of it; I was wrong! The white light continued growing in size as it slowly moved towards us.
We watched in absolute awe and suspense as it was quickly transformed into a small, white airplane with two red ipinstripes on it!(something like a small cessna).
Traveling at a speed of what appeared to be only ten m.p.h., it swooped slowly down to land… shining a bright spotlight momentarily at us, as it proceeded to taxi down the runway to a hangar behind the airports offices.
The planes appearance took us back a bit. I felt unhesitatingly obliged to turn the car’s ignition key and punch my foot to the accelerator! At that moment my greatest priority was to rush immediately away from the strangeness of what we had just witnessed!
For the next two hours, we drove around the area – dazed and somewhat confused – wondering to ourselves what might happen next. When we began to feel our bodies experiencing a sudden, extremely uncomfortable fever, I began to be suspicious, that perhaps a small Alien probe was traveling with us, either above or beneath the car which was perhaps emitting some type of radiation.
Stopping the car, I got out and knelt down to look under it. Finding nothing, I walked around the car for a full inspection, as I did, I noticed that one of the “high pressure sodium vapor lights” which was directly behind the local “solid waste transfer station” about 100 yards away, was emitting, or shooting a great many, large, bright orange sparks directly towards us!
We quickly fled the area, placing ourselves well out of range of what I perceived to be some type of weapon intended to dissuade those unwelcome and pesky humans who were in the area, from hanging around and making further observations of the Aliens ongoing activities!
At 7:30 am, as we made our way home, I casually looked back towards Spanish Fork, and was amazed to see two “black helicopters” attending to a slow moving cloud, shaped precisely like the massive UFO which we had been observing with interest throughout the night! It crept slowly away, at the same speed as all of the clouds around it, until it rose up gracefully above the nearby mountains and disappeared.
Flying Saucer in the clouds above Jaksonville, Florida
Flying Saucer in the clouds above Jaksonville, Florida
The photographer was driving home from work when he noticed a disc-shaped object in the clouds above Jaksonville, Floirda.
He was able to take a picture before the UFO vanished and said: "The flying-saucer-shaped object looks nothing like I have ever seen before in my time in the military and outside."
Mufon case 102650 - Date of sighting: 2017-10-03 - Image submitted to Mufon: 2019-08-10.
Mysterious Flash on Jupiter captured in rare footage
Mysterious Flash on Jupiter captured in rare footage
A stargazer landed the shot of a lifetime on Wednesday after he captured extremely rare footage of a mysterious flash of light on Jupiter, which may have been an elusive meteor explosion.
Texas astrophotographer Ethan Chappel captured the incredible sight while he was filming the planet, and said the event on Jupiter's southern equatorial belt "looks awfully like an impact flash." A bright spot can be seen appearing out of nowhere before it quickly fades away, reports RT.
"After I checked the video and saw the flash, my mind started racing! I urgently felt the need to share it with people who would find the results useful," Chappel told ScienceAlert.
Astronomer Jonti Horner said he had "never seen anything like that before," and described the flash as "just totally breathtaking."
"A lot of the time these things will go unnoticed and unobserved," he explained. "Half of them will happen on the far side of the planet. So there's a lot of things working against seeing these events."
A 1998 study found the rate of large impacts on Jupiter are between 2,000 and 8,000 times the rate of impacts on Earth. Capturing the impacts are rare, however. One was captured in 2009 and again in 2010.
The service module fired its propulsion system continuously for 12 minutes.
The Aug. 5 test was conducted using a qualification version of the propulsion system at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility near Las Cruces, New Mexico. While the system never left the ground, it simulated one of the most taxing situations the spacecraft’s engines could encounter after launch.
Photo: NASA
The main rocket engine for NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which will be used during the space agency’s Artemis Program, has passed a critical test.
NASA plans to return to the moon by 2024 under direction from the White House. The Artemis Program intends to land more men on the moon as well as the first women.
The propulsion system for Orion’s service module fired continuously for 12 minutes during a test this week, simulating engine activity during an abort-to-orbit scenario. The propulsion system showed it was capable of getting the craft into orbit around the moon if the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) had not put the craft on the correct path.
The tests form part of the formulation of a contingency plan that would allow the mission to be completed, in part or entirely, should the launch procedure not go according to plan. Engineers fired Orion’s main engine and all eight of the module’s auxiliary engines at the same time and conducted a battery of tests during the 12-minute simulation.
“The tests at White Sands have been very helpful to better understand and operate our service module propulsion system,” said Jim Withrow, project manager for the test article. “This firing was one of a series of tests performed to date and in the coming months to simulate contingency modes and other stressful flight conditions.”
NASA building on success
NASA has made good progress on the Orion Spacecraft with this week’s test coming just a month after the craft’s crew capsule successfully completed a launch-abort test.
“This was our most demanding test for the pressurization system, including our propellant tanks, valves and other components,”Josh Freeh, deputy manager of the Orion Service Module at NASA’s Glenn Research Center said in a statement issued to the press.
“Inserting Orion into lunar orbit and returning the crew on a trajectory back home to Earth requires extreme precision in both plotting the course and firing the engines to execute that plan … With each testing campaign we conduct like this one, we’re getting closer to accomplishing our missions to the Moon and beyond,” Mark Kirasich, program manager for Orion at NASA’s Johnson Space Center added.
Crew safety and mission integrity are a big priority for NASA who want to ensure the expensive mission is a success while also ensuring the safety of the astronauts.
“Well, we’re looking at really anything that can threaten their lives,” Jason Hutt, Orion Crew Systems Integrations Lead said during the In Case of Emergency podcast.
“So we’re looking at fires — see, you know, we had the Apollo 1 Fire early on in our history, and that’s something that we use — we’ve studied that event to make sure that we don’t repeat something like that. We’ve looked at a leak in the spacecraft, we know there’s been history with the collision with the Mir Program that caused the depress on that, we look at that type of situation, and then there are other medical emergencies and things like that that we need to prepare for, while astronauts are typically the healthiest people on to planet, we still need to prepare for things that are unexpected in those events.”
This alien statue is 100% evidence that intelligent aliens once lived and thrived on Mars. I can easily make out the feet, legs, upper legs and thinner waist, shoulders, neck and extraordinary detailed head with extended cranium.
This is a fantastic discovery by Youtube Art Alien who finds some really incredible alien artefacts on Mars. This find is one that allows us to see what the aliens that lived here once looked like, how tall they were and how they had a larger cranium. Undeniable evidence that is proof that NASA true purpose is to hide the truth from the public.
Space Station Found At Orion Constellation! Video, UFO Sighting News.
Space Station Found At Orion Constellation! Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery:Aug 2019 Location of discovery: Orion Constellation I have been using this map program a few years now and have kept loads of things I have found in a file, this object being one of them. This giant blue crystal-like space station is out there near the Orion Constellation near the back foot. In the video I thought it was the head are, my bad. Clearly aliens can build a space station any way they want and this one seems to have a very artistic appearance to it. If your species is so advanced that their technology is millions of years ahead of our own, then they wont need planets any longer. They literally can chose to create their own planet size space stations and move from place to place in the universe. I would love to meet this species. It looks like a very creative species. If you can help me out by liking my video and subscribing, I sure would appreciate it. Thanks, Scott C. Waring-Taiwan
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Dozens of UFOs Caught on Video Over Wyoming
Dozens of UFOs Caught on Video Over Wyoming
The video description states the witness of the strange event saw UFOs that looked like some craft moving across the sky without any sound.
It seems that going into Area 51 might not be necessary to see creatures altogether from another planet as one Facebook event suggests. A mass UFO sighting was recently reported in Wyoming, US.
In a description of the YouTube video showing the UFOs, the phenomenon took place on July 26 over Casper City.
It presented the testimony, quoted by the owner of the YouTube channel Hidden Underbelly 2.0 from the eyewitness, saying the objects in the video were not orbs but rather appeared like crafts moving in complete silence.
The witness said they were not drones as they did not hear the propellers, but they had no idea what were those mysterious aerial things.
Astronomers discovered a car-size asteroid hours before it slammed into Earth and burned up in the atmosphere this past weekend, news sources report.
Meteorologists noticed an unusually bright flash signature over the Caribbean waters 170 miles south of Puerto Rico
Scientists in Hawaii initially spotted the asteroid, named 2019 MO, on Saturday (June 22). Soon after, the heavenly traveler broke apart in large fireball as it hit the atmosphere about 240 miles (380 kilometers) south of San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to the University of Hawaii.
This is only the fourth time in history that scientists have spotted an asteroid so close to impact. The other three detections all occurred within the past 11 years, including 2008 TC3, 2014 AA and 2018 LA, which landed as a meteorite in southern Africa just 7 hours after it was noticed by scientists. [Doomsday: 9 Real Ways Earth Could End]
Unlike 2018 LA, Earth's latest visitor was harmless and didn't make it to the ground. But the asteroid, 13 feet (4 meters) long, still made a spectacular fireball that was equivalent to about 6,000 tons of exploding TNT, according to the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which is run by the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.
The asteroid's impact was so powerful, even satellites in orbit spotted it. Satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recorded its impact and destruction at 5:25 p.m. EDT (21:25 UTC), as you can see on this tweet below.
Ernesto Guido@comets77
Small Asteroid (NEOCP A10eoM1) impacted Earth on 2019 June 22
At the time of impact, 2019 MO was traveling about 33,300 mph (14.9 km/s), CNEOS reported. NOAA's Geostationary Lightning Mapper onboard the satellite GOES-East also mapped the asteroid, according to The Weather Channel.
Using these telescopes, astronomers observed 2019 MO four times in just 30 minutes, when the asteroid was just 310,600 miles (500,000 km) from Earth, or 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the moon.
At first, scientists gave it a two out of four rating, meaning it appeared unlikely to hit Earth. But as more data came in, they upgraded 2019 MO to a four. The Nexrad (Next-Generation Radar) weather network in Puerto Rico, which is operated by NOAA's National Weather Service, also spotted the asteroid, pinpointing its entry location, according to Cnet.
2019 MO was much smaller than the 66-foot-long (20 m) meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013. The energy released by that meteor was equivalent to about 440,000 tons of TNT.
Now that ATLAS is up and running (it began operating in 2015), it will detect all kinds of asteroids, big and small. The system's two telescopes, situated 100 miles (160 km) apart, scan the night sky for asteroids every two nights. Since then, hey have discovered about 100 asteroids larger than about 100 feet (30 m) in diameter every year.
In theory, ATLAS should be able to find smaller asteroids, such as 2019 MO, about half a day before they arrive and larger objects, like the Chelyabinsk meteor, a few days before they hit, the university said.
That's good news, as we could all use a warning before asteroids cause enormous fireballs in the sky or send chunks of space rock hurtling toward Earth.
Strange Meteorite Discovered In Siberia Contains An 'Unnatural' Crystal
Strange Meteorite Discovered In Siberia Contains An 'Unnatural' Crystal
Despite the level of understanding and knowledge the world has about so many things, everyone is still getting excited about new discoveries and this one is no exception. A rare meteorite, which was found in Siberia, contains a crystal, or at least what appears to be a crystal. The mineral itself is quite rare as well and is also a mystery. While crystal is the term used to describe it, no one's sure what it actually is but here's what they know so far:
The Discovery
A fair few years ago now, scientists discovered a small piece of a mineral that was created shortly after the solar system, some four and half billion years ago. The mineral was brought to Earth by the Khatyrka meteorite, which landed in Eastern Siberia. Obviously, a 4 billion-year-old mineral would be incredibly interesting to almost anyone, but not so much in this case. It was still quite intriguing but not for its sheer age, as many would expect, but for its atomic structure instead.
(A) Grain 126A; red dashed box indicates the region to be enlarged in (B).
(B) The area where there are the three metal assemblages containing the two different icosahedral phases; red dashed boxes (indicated as 1, 2 and 3) indicate the regions to be enlarged in panels on right. Panels 1, 2 and 3 show the different associations of minerals in the three metal assemblages.
The structure that this mineral possesses is one that has never before been found in nature, although it has been created in laboratory environments. It was referred to as a quasicrystal because from the exterior it resembles a crystal, but on the inside, it's a whole other kettle of fish.
Crystal or No Crystal?
Many people are probably wondering - what constitutes a crystal? A mineral needs to have set properties, specifically with the atomic structure, to be considered a crystal. Namely, it needs lattices. A crystals atoms are arranged in lattice structures, are very predictable, and will just keep repeating themselves. However, while this new mineral may look like a crystal on the outside, it isn't a crystal on the inside. The quasicrystal did have lattices, however, they were ordered and not consistent and identical. Therefore, it can't be a crystal, can it?
A lab-made quasicrystal made of Ho-Mg-Zn with a dodecahedral shape AMES lab, US Department of Energy
The atoms were arranged in a variety of different configurations, which, based on human understanding of science and chemical composition, was simply not possible in nature. Yet here it is. Despite quasicrystals being created in labs since the 1960s, many scientists still doubt the fact that they can exist in nature. It is with this in mind that the teams studying the crystal have concluded that it was formed off the planet and traveled here. Even so, if it was formed under astrophysical conditions over 4 billion years ago, it's still proof that this phase of matter can remain stable over huge periods of time, perhaps even indefinitely.
The discovery of these quasicrystals really puts into perspective how much we think we know as an intelligent species, but also reminds us that we don't know nearly as much as we think we do. The universe is a huge place with diversity around every corner and there's still so much more to find out. Researching these quasicrystals would be a good place to start but there's still so much more still to discover.
NASA Figured Out How To Make Food Out Of CO2 - It Could Feed Billions
NASA Figured Out How To Make Food Out Of CO2 - It Could Feed Billions
A company from Finland, Solar Foods, are planning to sell food created from carbon dioxide (CO2). They are, quite literally, creating food out of thin air! The company has plans to bring a new protein powder, Solein, to market. It's made out three simple, cheap, and readily available ingredients - CO2, water, and electricity. While this may not sound appealing at first, it's actually incredibly nutritious. Essentially, its a high-protein, ingredient, resembling flour, that contains 50 percent protein content, 5–10 percent fat, and 20–25 percent carbohydrates.
There are a massive number of potential uses for an ingredient such as Solein and it is expected to be the main component of a lot of foods when it hits the shelves in 2021. It's most likely to first appear in protein shakes and yogurt, both of which are simple foods to add it to. This may be a very exciting development as the creation of Solein is carbon neutral but it also helps remove CO2 from the atmosphere, being beneficial in two respects!
Beginning in 2018, Solein has come so far since it was created. NASA actually came up with the idea first and Solar Foods has since taken it to a commercial level. With plans to release the product as soon as 2021 and produce 2 million meals every year, it won't be long before Solein is in everything. By 2050, the company has high hopes to be providing sustenance for up to 9 billion people as part of a $500 billion protein market. At the rate things have taken place so far, there's no doubt that Solar Foods will achieve their targets.
To create Solein, Solar Foods extracts CO2 from the air using carbon-capture technology. Then, they combine the carbon dioxide with water, nutrients, and vitamins, using 100 percent renewable solar energy from their partner, Fortum, to promote a naturalfermentation process similar to the one that produces yeast and lactic acid bacteria. This is such a natural process, needing no man-made products, that it could single-handedly solve the world's food crisis.
Furthermore, Solar Foods has claimed that their product is completely free from agricultural limitations, and they aren't lying! Solein can be grown indoors so there's no need for arable land, and it's not dependent on favorable weather either. In fact, this seems so promising that the European Space Agency has already started working with the company in an attempt to develop foods for off-planet production and consumption. This could be the answer that they have been looking for.
Earth narrowly avoided a catastrophic collapse of the magnetic field that protects our planet 565 million years ago, it has been revealed.
Researchers say that it is had collapsed, life on Earth would have faced severe challenges as the solar wind would have stripped the planet of its atmosphere and bombarded the surface with harmful radiation.
Researchers found that, luckily, our planet's core solidified 'right in the nick of time', recharging Earth's magnetic field when it was at its weakest point.
Scroll down for video
Rochester researchers say earth was saved by the planet's core solidifying, recharging Earth's magnetic field when it was at its weakest point.
The discovery provides a new insight into the formation of Earth's core, and backs the theory the Earth's core is relatively young.
Scientists led by Richard Bono, a palaeomagnetism researcher at the University of Rochester, studied single crystals of plagioclase and clinopyroxene formed 565 million years ago in what is now Canada's eastern Quebec.
Our planet's magnetic field is believed to be generated deep down in the Earth's core.
This data allowed them to reconstruct this timeline of Earth's inner core 'nucleation,' or solidification for the paper published online this week in Nature Geoscience.
They found unprecedentedly low geomagnetic field intensities, revealing there was a high frequency of magnetic reversals at that time, suggesting that the geodynamo was on the point of collapsing.
'An enduring mystery about Earth has been the age of its solid inner core,' the researchers wrote.
Estimates of when the inner core solidified vary widely, ranging between 2.5 billion and 500 million years ago.
In an accompanying News & Views article, Peter Driscoll writes that 'the nucleation of the inner core may have occurred right in the nick of time to recharge the geodynamo and save Earth's magnetic shield.'
Driscoll said scientists had previously interpreted the weak magnetic field 565 million years ago as being the result of 'rapid tectonic motion, hyper-frequent polarity reversals, and even an equatorial dipole.
'A young inner core is consistent with thermal history models of the Earth9–12 that predict a large transfer of heat from the core to the mantle due, indirectly, to upward revisions to the thermal conductivity of the core,' he wrote.
The new study could also improve the search for alien life, giving astronomers a new glimpse into how planets that can sustain life form.
Earth is made up of several different layers, each with unique properties.
HOW DOES A LIQUID IRON CORE CREATE EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD?
Our planet's magnetic field is believed to be generated deep down in the Earth's core.
Nobody has ever journeyed to the centre of the Earth, but by studying shockwaves from earthquakes, physicists have been able to work out its likely structure.
At the heart of the Earth is a solid inner core, two thirds of the size of the moon, made mainly of iron.
At 5,700°C, this iron is as hot as the Sun's surface, but the crushing pressure caused by gravity prevents it from becoming liquid.
Surrounding this is the outer core there is a 1,242 mile (2,000 km) thick layer of iron, nickel, and small quantities of other metals.
The metal here is fluid, because of the lower pressure than the inner core.
Differences in temperature, pressure and composition in the outer core cause convection currents in the molten metal as cool, dense matter sinks and warm matter rises.
The 'Coriolis' force, caused by the Earth's spin, also causes swirling whirlpools.
This flow of liquid iron generates electric currents, which in turn create magnetic fields.
Charged metals passing through these fields go on to create electric currents of their own, and so the cycle continues.
This self-sustaining loop is known as the geodynamo.
The spiralling caused by the Coriolis force means the separate magnetic fields are roughly aligned in the same direction, their combined effect adding up to produce one vast magnetic field engulfing the planet.
At the deepest level is the inner core which is believed to be solid. This produces Earth's magnetic field and protects us from cosmic radiation.
The next layer is Earth's liquid core which is a fluid layer about 2,200 km (1,400 miles) thick and composed of mostly iron and nickel.
The mantle is the largest region of subterranean Earth and makes up around 84 percent of the planet's volume.
It sits between the crust and the outer core and is broken down into two sections - upper and lower.
The asthenosphere is a part of the upper mantle that sits below the lithosphere and is believed to be involved in plate tectonic movement.
Earth is made up of several different layers, each with unique properties. These are: lithosphere, asthenosphere, mantle and core (pictured)
The lithosphere is the region of the planet that is known as the crust and some pats of the uppermost mantle. it features everything we think of as the ground.
It is made up predominantly of silica and is broken up into the tectonic plates.
The Lithosphere-Asthenosphere boundary (LAB) is defined by a difference in response to stress.
The plates and the lithosphere often remain rigid but the weaker and more viscous asthenosphere can move and is know to move.
This movement causes plates to move into, underneath and below others and the LAB is the fundamental cause behind tsunamis and earthquakes as well as mountain range formation.
The last reversal of Earth's magnetic poles happened long before humans could record it, but research on the flow of ancient lava has helped scientists estimate the duration of this strange phenomenon.
A team of researchers used volcanic records to study Earth's last magnetic-field reversal, which occurred about 780,000 years ago. They found that this flip may have taken much longer than researchers previously thought, the scientists reported in a new study.
Earth's magnetic field has flipped dozens of times in the past 2.5 million years, with north becoming south and vice versa. Scientists know the last reversal took place during the Stone Age, but they have little information about the duration of this phenomenon and when the next "flip" might occur.
In the new study, the researchers relied on flow sequences of lava that erupted close to or during the last reversal, to measure its duration. Using this method, they estimated that the reversal lasted 22,000 years — much longer than the previous estimates of 1,000 to 10,000 years.
"We found that the last reversal was more complex, and initiated within the Earth's outer core earlier, than previously thought," lead study author Bradley Singer, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Space.com.
While conducting studies on a volcano in Chile in 1993, Singer stumbled upon one of the lava-flow sequences that recorded part of the reversal process. While trying to date the lava, Singer noticed odd, transitional magnetic-field directions in the lava-flow sequences.
"Such records are indeed extremely rare, and I am one of very few people who date them," Singer said.
Since then, he's made it his career-long goal to better explain the timing of magnetic-field reversals.
The reversals take place when iron molecules in Earth's spinning outer core start going in the opposite direction as other iron molecules around them. As their numbers grow, these molecules offset the magnetic field in Earth's core. (If this were to happen today, it would render compasses useless as the needle would swing from pointing towards the north pole to pointing to the south.)
During this process, Earth's magnetic field, which protects the planet from hot sun particles and solar radiation, becomes weaker.
"This kind of duration would mean the shielding of the Earth from solar radiationwould be very complex and, on average, less effective over a longer time period," John Tarduno, a professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester who was not involved in the study, told Space.com. "The actual effects of that are still debatable, and they're not as tragic or as extreme as someone might suggest, but there still can be important effects."
Some of these effects, Singer suggested, could include genetic mutations or additional stress on certain animal or plant species, or possible extinctions, due to increased exposure to harmful ultraviolet light from the sun. An increase in particles from the sun entering Earth's atmosphere could also cause disruption to satellites and other communication systems, like radio and GPS, he added.
Recent reports of the magnetic field jolting from the Canadian Arctic toward Siberia have sparked debate over whether the next magnetic-field reversal is imminent and what kind of impact that would have on life on Earth.
However, Singer dismissed these claims. "There is little evidence that this current decrease in field strength, or the rapid shift in position of the north pole, reflect behavior that portends a polarity reversal is imminent during the next 2,000 years," he said.
Using the data gathered from lava flows, geologists can learn a lot more about magnetic-field reversals. "Even though volcanic records are not complete records, they're still the best kind of records we have of recording a given time and place," Tarduno said. "Higher accuracy in the age dating, and being able to get more detailed records [of the reversals]...will give the community a lot to think about," he added.
Invading Area 51? Life & Death, Were Bodies Actually Recovered at Roswell? Bernie Sanders for Disclosure? (End of Days)
Invading Area 51? Life & Death, Were Bodies Actually Recovered at Roswell? Bernie Sanders for Disclosure? (End of Days)
Kevin Randle has, for more than forty-five years, studied the UFO phenomena in all its various incarnations. His training by the Army and the Air Force provides Randle with a keen insight into the operations and protocols of the military, their investigations into UFOs, and into a phenomenon that has puzzled people for more than a century.
During his investigations, Randle has traveled the United States to interview hundreds of witnesses who were involved in everything from the Roswell, New Mexico crash of 1947, to the repeated radar sightings of UFOs over Washington, D.C. in 1952, to the latest of the abduction cases.
Peter Robbins is one of the most respected investigative writers and public speakers on the subject of UFOs. He has more than thirty years of experience as a researcher, investigator, writer, lecturer, activist, and author. A regular guest on radio shows around the country, he has appeared on or been a consultant to numerous television shows and documentaries. He is also co-author of the British best-seller, Left at East Gate: A First-Hand Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident, Its Cover-Up, and Investigation.
One of the best-known UFO abduction stories is that of Travis Walton. He claims that on Nov. 5, 1975, as he and six others were returning from a day’s work cutting logs in Arizona’s Sitgreaves National Forest, he was zapped by a beam of light from the UFO, and taken aboard the craft for five days. His story won $5,000 as the Best UFO Case for 1975 from the National Enquirer, has been the subject of several books, as well as the Hollywood movie Fire in the Sky (1993).
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
The cover of the Voyager Golden Record. Two of these are currently hurtling through space aboard probes, ready to be found by aliens. NASA/JPL/PUBLIC DOMAIN
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.
The cover of the “Sounds of Earth” side of the Voyager Golden Record. NASA/JPL/PUBLIC DOMAIN
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?”
An artist’s impression of Voyager 1’s “view” of the solar system, as it hurtles away from it. NASA/ESA/G.BACON/CC BY-SA 4.0
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.
An animation shows the random appearance of fast radio bursts (FRBs) across the sky. Astronomers have discovered about 85 since 2007, and pinpointed two of them.
Sudden shrieks of radio waves from deep space keep slamming into radio telescopes on Earth, spattering those instruments' detectors with confusing data. And now, astronomers are using artificial intelligence to pinpoint the source of the shrieks, in the hope of explaining what's sending them to Earth from — researchers suspect — billions of light-years across space.
Usually, these weird, unexplained signals are detected only after the fact, when astronomers notice out-of-place spikes in their data — sometimes years after the incident. The signals have complex, mysterious structures, patterns of peaks and valleys in radio waves that play out in just milliseconds. That's not the sort of signal astronomers expect to come from a simple explosion, or any other one of the standard events known to scatter spikes of electromagnetic energy across space. Astronomers call these strange signals fast radio bursts (FRBs). Ever since the first one was uncovered in 2007, using data recorded in 2001, there's been an ongoing effort to pin down their source. But FRBs arrive at random times and places, and existing human technology and observation methods aren't well-primed to spot these signals.
Now, in a paper published July 4 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of astronomers wrote that they managed to detect five FRBs in real time using a single radio telescope.
Wael Farah, a doctoral student at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, developed a machine-learning system that recognized the signatures of FRBs as they arrived at the University of Sydney's Molonglo Radio Observatory, near Canberra. As Live Science has previously reported, many scientific instruments, including radio telescopes, produce more data per second than they can reasonably store. So they don't record anything in the finest detail except their most interesting observations.
Farah's system trained the Molonglo telescope to spot FRBs and switch over to its most detailed recording mode, producing the finest records of FRBs yet.
Based on their data, the researchers predicted that between 59 and 157 theoretically detectable FRBs splash across our skies every day. The scientists also used the immediate detections to hunt for related flares in data from X-ray, optical and other radio telescopes — in hopes of finding some visible event linked to the FRBs — but had no luck.
Their research showed, however, that one of the most peculiar (and frustrating, for research purposes) traits of FRBs appears to be real: The signals, once arriving, never repeat themselves. Each one appears to be a singular event in space that will never happen again.
Tardigrades Have Landed on the Moon. Here's What Their Survival Could Mean for Humanity.
Tardigrades Have Landed on the Moon. Here's What Their Survival Could Mean for Humanity.
The microscopic tardigrade—also known as the water bear—is the only animal that can survive the cold, irradiated vacuum of outer space. Here's what makes these little guys so amazing.
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.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
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