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 NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
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...
30-08-2019
NASA astronaut Michael Collins drops major alien confession: 'Yes' to life outside Earth
NASA astronaut Michael Collins drops major alien confession: 'Yes' to life outside Earth
NASA astronaut Michael Collins who flew the Command Module on Apollo 11 in 1969, has just confirmed his belief in alien life outside of Earth.
The NASA veteran played a critical role in the first manned Moon landing alongside colleagues Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. After retiring from NASA in 1970, the astronaut has been a vocal supporter of establishing a human presence on Mars. Now, astronaut Michael Collins, 88, has opened up about the ultimate question of are we alone in the universe. In an online question and answer session on Twitter, Mr Collins’ 56,600 Twitter followers were given a chance to submit any burning queries they have.
In other cosmic queries, regarding his time in space, Mr Collins was asked about eating bacon in space, his favourite moments from Apollo 11 and why he grew a moustache during the Moon landing.
In regards to enjoying the bacon, the astronaut said: “No. Bacon should not be cubed!”
Mr Collins is a former American test pilot who served in the United States Air Force before joining NASA.
As a test pilot, Mr Collins has logged more than 4,200 hours in flight.
Through is work in the US Air Force, Mr Collins retired with the rank of major general.
Many of Mr Collins' followers also believe life in some form exists outside of Earth (Image: TWITTER)
Michael Collins flew the Command Module during the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969
(Image: NASA)
In July 1969, the astronaut flew the Command Module spacecraft around the Moon while astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the surface for the first time in history.
NASA said: “After he graduated from the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, in 1952, he chose to become an Air Force test pilot.
“Selected by NASA as an astronaut in 1963, he served as the pilot for Gemini X and as the command module pilot for the Apollo 11 mission, the first time humans set foot on another celestial body.
“Collins retired from the Air Force as a major general and left NASA in 1970.”
Are White Holes Real And Can They Connect To Parallel Universes?
Are White Holes Real And Can They Connect To Parallel Universes?
By: Michael Chary
What Are White Holes?
When Stephen Hawking proposed the idea that a black hole will eventually evaporate by leaking radiation from its event horizon, there was a problem. If it evaporates, what happens to all of the information it sucked in?If quantum theory is correct, this would defy a fundamental law that information cannot be lost – it’s called the no-hiding theorem.
With the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system, then it must simply be residing somewhere else in the universe – a cosmic game of hide-and-seek. So theoretically, if information is getting sucked in, it must be getting spat back out somewhere, and likely that’s through a white hole. But is it really possible that white holes exist?
One way to conceptualize this in a very basic mathematical sense is to think about the square root of 9. The answer is both 3 and -3. This is fundamentally part of what’s known as Schwarzchild geometry, the formulae used in general relativity to describe the gravitational field outside a spherical mass.
Just like the color black is the opposite of white, the white hole is the opposite of a black hole in every way. Light cannot escape a black hole, so light cannot enter a white hole. This would obviously make a white hole incredibly bright, and some quantum physicists believe that maybe some of the light in the universe we thought was coming from supernovae, may actually be from white holes.
Physicists also believe this concept could be germane when talking about the big bang and how our universe came into existence. They believe it’s possible that at the moment of creation, everything was expelled from a massive white hole on an incredibly large scale.
The premise of white holes is based on a theory positing that space-time is made of granular building blocks that can be quantified. This quantification comes in the form of loops, almost like little threads that are of a finite size – so finite they cannot be subdivided any further. To a viewer these loops would be make space-time appear to be smooth and continuous, but their granular nature would prevent highly dense bodies like neutron stars from collapsing into a point of infinite density.
So, in the case of black holes, these incredibly finite loops would prevent a collapse into infinity, but eventually the loops would only be able to compress to a certain point, until they exert an outward pressure, almost like a spring. This is referred to as quantum bounce, a rebound from a black hole ingesting everything into a white hole expelling everything.
Many argue, however, that white holes are theoretically impossible because they violate the second law of thermodynamics, stating that entropy cannot decrease in a system. But it depends on how one looks at entropy, with some physicists saying it refers to disorder, while others say it refers to information used to describe a system, and an argument over semantics ensues.
The aforementioned Schwarzchild geometry implies that a wormhole would connect a black hole and white hole with two distinct universes connected at their horizons, also known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge.
Unforunately, these wormholes would be highly unstable if they were even possible. It would also be impossible, with physics as we know it, for one to pass through a wormhole into another universe (also theoretical) due to a number of pesky things like being spaghettified when passing through a black hole’s event horizon before being compressed at the singularity. Though you might at least get to see some distorted light from the parallel universe on the other side.
But since this is mostly theoretical, there are always theoretical solutions, like using exotic matter to stabilize a wormhole. Exotic matter has negative mass and positive surface pressure. This would keep the throat of the wormhole stable, while also preventing it from collapsing. This could hypothetically allow for travelers to pass through.
Will we ever figure out if wormholes exist and whether they can be used for time travel or inter-dimensional travel? Or have we already?
Five Things You Didn’t Know About White Holes
Scientists believe they may have witnessed a white hole when a sudden burst of white light appeared out of nowhere and then vanished. Unfortunately, there haven’t really been any other similar events recorded to study.
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the people from the planet Magrathea create luxury planets for the galaxy’s richest people from the matter retrieved from white holes.
White holes are essentially time-reversed black holes containing a singularity existing in the past.
In the ‘70s, Stephen Hawking said black and white holes absorb and emit the same amount of radiation when they are in thermal equilibrium, making them indistinguishable. According to physicist Stephen Hsu, when a white hole is in isolation surrounded by empty vacuum space, it’s not in equilibrium, meaning it has nothing to absorb. This forces it to explode and release a large amount of thermal energy – what Hsu calls ‘quasithermal energy.’
SPOTTED: A BLACK HOLE THAT SHOULDN’T BE PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE
SPOTTED: A BLACK HOLE THAT SHOULDN’T BE PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE
IMAGE VIA NEEDPIX/VICTOR TANGERMANN
DAN ROBITZSKI
Chonk
Equipment designed to detect gravitational waves have picked up on some bizarre signals — possibly originating from a black hole twice as massive as physicists previously believed was possible.
The potential black hole would have to be 100 times as massive as our Sun to give off the signals that the facilities recorded, according to Quanta Magazine. Physicists now find themselves in a whirlwind as they try to sort out how the absolute unit of a black hole came to be.
Dead Zone
Normally, a black hole is formed when a star runs out of fuel and collapses. But that only works if the star’s core is less than 50 times the mass of our Sun, according to Quanta.
Otherwise, the core becomes unstable, either shedding matter until it’s small enough or obliterating itself in a spectacular supernova. Black holes larger than 130 solar masses can still form because the core’s collapse is like a runaway train too strong to stop — M87*, for instance, a black hole that scientists imaged back in April, is 6.5 billion times as massive as the Sun.
Reconciliation
To reconcile the new findings with existing theory, Quanta reports that astronomers suspect the bizarre black hole is the result of two smaller ones colliding and merging.
They suspect that in a dense pocket of the universe, 30 and 50-solar mass black holes could have merged together, and then once more collided with another small one to give off the signals that were just detected.
In a remarkable evolutionary windfall, fossil hunters have discovered neatly fitting halves of a nearly complete, 3.8-million-year-old hominid skull. This unexpected specimen shines some light on poorly understood, early members of the human evolutionary family.
The East African skull, which turned up at Ethiopia’s Woranso-Mille site, has been classified as Australopithecus anamensis. It is the oldest known species in a hominid genus that includes Australopithecus afarensis, known best for Lucy’s 3.2-million-year-old partial skeleton (SN: 10/28/14).
The research team, led by paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, describes its analysis of the skull in two papers published online August 28 in Nature.
“This specimen provides the first glimpse of the face of Australopithecus anamensis,” Haile-Selassie said during an Aug. 27 news conference. The skull, which is slightly larger than a modern adult human’s fist, also includes the first good example of an A. anamensisbraincase.
For early-hominid investigators, “this is the specimen we have been waiting for,” says paleoanthropologist Carol Ward of the University of Missouri in Columbia. Ward was not part of the Woranso-Mille team.
Until now, A. anamensis fossils consisted only of partial upper and lower jaws, isolated teeth, a braincase fragment and some lower-body bones (SN: 2/18/15). Those specimens, previously unearthed in Kenya and Ethiopia, date to between 4.2 million and 3.9 million years ago.
Then, on February 10, 2016, a member of the Woranso-Mille team noticed the lower part of a hominid skull protruding from eroding sediment. Later that day, Haile-Selassie found the braincase lying on the ground about three meters from the initial find. Soil sieving produced additional skull fragments.
Geoscientist Beverly Saylor of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland led an effort to date the fossil by estimating the ages of nearby volcanic rock layers. Known reversals of Earth’s magnetic field in Woranso-Mille sediment also aided dating.
Geologic evidence indicated that the fossil A. anamensis individual had been covered in sandy deposits where a river entered a lake. The surrounding region was largely dry, but included some forested areas. Volcanic eruptions occasionally blanketed the lake and its surroundings.
A digital reconstruction of the Woranso-Mille skull helped to establish its species. The braincase displays features, such as a long, narrow shape and a roughly chimpanzee-sized brain, similar to those of even older proposed hominids such as Sahelanthropus tchadensisand Ardipithecus ramidus (SN: 2/16/11). In contrast, forward-projecting cheek bones recall those of later hominids, such as 2.5-million-year-old Paranthropus aethiopicus. That species belonged to an African line of big-jawed, small-brained creatures that died out around 1 million years ago. It’s hard to know whether these shared traits evolved independently, or if the traits signal an evolutionary relationship.
Further comparisons connected the Woranso-Mille skull to earlier A. anamensis finds. Many of the skull’s features differ from those of Lucy’s kind, Haile-Selassie says. For instance, A. anamensis possessed a sloping face, unlike the flat faces of A. afarensis.
Crucially, the Woranso-Mille skull differs enough from an approximately 3.9 million-year-old hominid forehead bone discovered in East Africa in 1981 to assign that older find, known as the Belohdelie frontal, to A. afarensis, Haile-Selassie contends. If so, A. anamensis— now placed at between 4.2 million and 3.8 years ago — and Lucy’s kind — dating to between 3.9 million and 3 million years ago — overlapped for at least 100,000 years. That scenario contradicts an earlier hypothesis that A. anamensis evolved directly into Lucy’s kind, with the earlier species disappearing as it morphed into its descendant species (SN: 4/12/06).
A large A. anamensis group might have become isolated from its species-mates and then evolved into an early version of A. afarensis, Haile-Selassie speculates. In that case, other A. anamensis groups would have coexisted for a while with Lucy’s species.
While the newly discovered skull “fills a critical gap in Australopithecus evolution,” the evolutionary status of the Belohdelie frontal remains unknown, says paleoanthropologist William Kimbel of Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins in Tempe. More A. anamensis skulls are needed to assess whether the Belohdelie frontal displays traits more typical of that species or of Lucy’s kind, Kimbel says.
Paleoanthropologist Berhane Asfaw of Rift Valley Research Service in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, agrees. Asfaw described the Belohdelie frontal in a 1987 paper. Frontal bone shapes vary considerably in Lucy’s species, which includes four partial skulls, he says. “And we don’t know what kind of face the Belohdelie frontal had.”
In all its largely intact glory, the Woranso-Mille skull highlights how little is known about the relationship between A. anamensis and Lucy’s kind, Ward says.
Meet the new moons of Jupiter. After a public contest, five newly discovered Jovian satellites now have official astronomical names, the International Astronomical Union announced August 26.
Planetary scientist Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., reported the discovery of the moons in July 2018 (SN: 7/17/18), along with seven others. He and his colleagues spotted the moons while searching for a theoretical Planet Nine orbiting beyond Neptune (SN: 7/5/16).
The team solicited name suggestions for the moons on Twitter. There were some rules, most notably that Jupiter’s 79 known moons must all be named for descendants or consorts of the god Jupiter from Roman mythology, or Zeus in Greek myths. But that didn’t stop people from suggesting the names of beloved pets or, perhaps inevitably, Moony McMoonface.
Here are the winners:
Pandia:A daughter of Zeus and the moon goddess Selene, Pandia is the goddess of the full moon. One of the groups to enter this name in the contest was the astronomy club of the Lanivet Community Primary School in Bodmin, England, whose mascot is a panda.
Ersa: Sister of Pandia, Ersa is the goddess of dew. Several people suggested this name, including 4-year-old moon expert Walter, who got the judges’ attention with a song listing the largest moons of the solar system in size order.
Eirene:The goddess of peace, Eirene is the daughter of Zeus and Themis, a Greek Titaness who personifies divine order, justice and law.
Philophrosyne:A granddaughter of Zeus, Philophrosyne is the spirit of welcome and kindness.
Eupheme:Sister of Philophrosyne, Eupheme is the spirit of praise and good omen.
Pourquoi l’agence militaire américaine cherche-t-elle d’urgence une grande installation souterraine ?
Pourquoi l’agence militaire américaine cherche-t-elle d’urgence une grande installation souterraine ?
La DARPA a publié cette nuit un drôle de tweet qui intrigue… et inquiète.
C’est un tweet qui pose question, et qui n’a pas manqué de soulever inquiétudes et probablement d’imaginer les hypothèses les plus farfelues. D’autant qu’il n’émane pas de n’importe-qui, ni de Donald Trump (qui a dit c’est pareil ?) mais de la DARPA, (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), la très sérieuse – et parfois controversée – agence du département de la Défense des États-Unis chargée de la recherche et développement des nouvelles technologies destinées à un usage militaire. Pour mémoire, on attribue l’invention d’internet à cette agence dans les années 60.
Dans ce Tweet, la DARPA indique qu’elle est à la recherche d’installations souterraines urbaines capables d’accueillir des travaux de recherche et d’expérimentation. Jusque-là, rien de très affolant. Mais ce qui est plus étonnant, et a ouvert la voie à toutes les spéculations et tous les fantasmes, est le délai indiqué par le tweet. Il semblerait en effet que ce soit urgent, très urgent, puisque la date limite est celle du 30 août à 17h, heure de la côte est américaine.
Des installations souterraines pour autopsier des aliens ?
Pourquoi une telle urgence ? Que va-t-il se passer d’ici-là ? Mystère et boule de gomme. Probablement rien, comme vous pouvez très bien l’imaginer. Mais il n’en faut pas plus pour laisser nos esprits vagabonder et élaborer toutes sortes d’hypothèses, d’autant que la Darpa n’a pas voulu expliquer pourquoi elle avait besoin d’une installation souterraine aussi vite, alors que tous les détails de sa requête figurent dans une note officielle.
« Les infrastructures souterraines urbaines complexes peuvent présenter des défis importants pour la connaissance de la situation dans des scénarios sensibles au facteur temps, tels que le combat actif ou d’intervention en cas de catastrophe. La DARPA est intéressée à explorer ce domaine pour que les chercheurs puissent analyser et améliorer les approches visant à améliorer la connaissance de la situation et les délais d’intervention dans les scénarios d’urgence. Les sites soumis pourraient aider le milieu de la recherche à identifier des sites pertinents pour d’autres expériences sur le terrain afin d’accélérer la mise au point de ces technologies. », a déclaré à nos confrères de Gizmodo par courriel un porte-parole de Darpa qui a demandé à rester anonyme.
Alors, que va-t-il se passer d’ici demain soir ? Les paris sont ouverts (et les complotistes vont passer une bonne journée).
The little chopper will be the first rotorcraft ever to ply alien skies.
An engineer works on attaching NASA's Mars Helicopter to the belly of the Mars 2020 rover — which has been flipped over for that purpose — on Aug. 27, 2019, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The first-ever off-Earth helicopter just hooked up with its traveling companion.
Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, attached the tiny Mars Helicopterto the agency's car-size Mars 2020 rover today (Aug. 28), agency officials announced.
The duo will launch together in July 2020 and touch down inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater in February 2021. Once on Mars, the solar-powered, 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) helicopter will detach and begin flying test sorties.
"Our job is to prove that autonomous, controlled flight can be executed in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere," Mars Helicopter project manager, of JPL, said in a statement. (Mars' air is just 1% as dense as that of Earth at sea level.)
"Since our helicopter is designed as a flight test of experimental technology, it carries no science instruments," she added. "But if we prove powered flight on Mars can work, we look forward to the day when Mars helicopters can play an important role in future explorations of the Red Planet."
For example, helicopters could serve as scouts for robots or human pioneers on Mars. Red Planet rotorcraft could also carry instruments and conduct a variety of science work of their own, NASA officials have said.
Mas 2020, which will soon get a catchier moniker via a student naming competition, will hunt for signs of long-dead Red Planet life in Jezero Crater, which hosted a river delta in the ancient past. The rover will also characterize the site's geology, collect and cache samples for future return to Earth and demonstrate gear that will generate oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-dominated Martian air, among other tasks.
"With this joining of two great spacecraft, I can say definitively that all the pieces are in place for a historic mission of exploration," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C, said in the same statement. "Together, Mars 2020 and the Mars Helicopter will help define the future of science and exploration of the Red Planet for decades to come."
NASA plans to launch another rotorcraft soon as well — Dragonfly, which will soar through the thick atmosphere of Saturn's huge moon Titan. The life-hunting Dragonfly is scheduled to lift off in 2026 and land on Titan's frigid surface in 2034.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom orFacebook.
In a bid to Expand Military Outreach, US to Launch Space Command Today
In a bid to Expand Military Outreach, US to Launch Space Command Today
In a bid to Expand Military Outreach, US to Launch Space Command Today :- The United States will officially launch the Space Command, also known as SPACECOM, on Thursday with a White House ceremony hosted by President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
US to Launch Space Command Today
The SPACECOM is a key step for the US military to establish a proposed sixth branch of the military known as the Space Force. U.S. Air Force Gen. John Raymond will serve as the first head of Space Command (SPACECOM). At launch, Raymond will lead 87 active units handling operations such as missile warning, satellite surveillance, space control, and space support, Gen. Joseph Dunford said at a meeting of the National Space Council earlier this month.
In a press conference on August 20, Vice President Mike Pence said, “The United States Space Force will ensure that our nation is prepared to defend our people, defend our interests, and to defend our values in the vast expanse of space and here on Earth with the technologies that will support our common defence for the vast reaches of outer space.”
He further added, “The United States Space Force will ensure that our nation is prepared to defend our people, defend our interests, and to defend our values in the vast expanse of space and here on Earth with the technologies that will support our common defense for the vast reaches of outer space.”
Trump had directed the Pentagon to create a sixth military branch in June 2018. He said that the establishment of the SPACECOM was crucial in protecting the country’s interests amid pressure from international rivals Russia and China.
Meanwhile, as per the former Deputy Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan, the SPACECOM will be different from the Space Force but they will work together.
He tweeted, “The Space Force will serve as a force provider for personnel, assets, and capabilities supporting space operations, while Space Command will serve as the operational command that will employ space capabilities and lead space operations. The differences between Space Force and US Space Command will largely parallel those of the other five military services and four functional combatant commands.”
WETENSCHAPTot voor kort was Lucy wellicht het beroemdste lid van het geslacht Australopithecus, een directe voorouder van de mens. Daar brengt het fossiel van MRD waarschijnlijk verandering in. Tenslotte kunnen we dankzij MRD, een mannelijke Australopithecus anamensis, eindelijk een gezicht plakken op een van onze oudste voorouders. Bovendien schudt MRD de evolutionaire tijdlijn door elkaar.
Lucy behoorde tot de Australopithecus afarensis, een soort die volgens de evolutionaire tijdlijn na de Australopithecus anamensis (rechtop) op aarde rondliep. Dat betekent dat Lucy en MRD elkaar nooit ontmoet zouden hebben. Maar nu blijkt uit een analyse van de schedel van MRD dat hij ongeveer 3,8 miljoen jaar oud is. Dat betekent dat de anamensis nog leefde toen zijn opvolger afarensis al bestond. Meer zelfs, de twee soorten zouden maar liefst 100.000 jaar samengeleefd hebben. De familie van MRD van 4,2 tot 3,8 miljoen jaar geleden en de familie van Lucy van 3,9 tot 3 miljoen jaar terug. De overlapping van de twee soorten schudt de evolutionaire tijdlijn - alsook het idee van een simpele, lineaire evolutie - grondig door elkaar.
Dat beschrijven de onderzoekers van het Cleveland Museum of Natural History in niet één maar wel twee papers in het vaktijdschrift Nature. In een eerste artikel omschrijven ze hun vondst, terwijl ze in een tweede artikel uit de doeken doen hoe ze de leeftijd van MRD bepaalden.
De verantwoordelijke voor de evolutionaire ‘chaos’ is Ali Bereino, een Ethiopische boer die in 2016 per ongeluk een schedel opgroef. Hij was eigenlijk een hol aan het graven om zijn pasgeboren geitjes te beschermen tegen hyena’s toen hij opmerkte dat er enkele tanden in het zand begraven waren. Al snel haalde hij er een volledig kaakbeen uit dat hij naar het team van antropoloog Yohannes Haile-Selassi van het Cleveland Museum of Natural History, bracht. Dat team groef uiteindelijk een vrijwel volledige schedel op.
MRD
MRD - genoemd naar de vindplaats Miro Dora, zo’n 50 kilometer ten noorden van Hadar waar Lucy gevonden werd - was een man met een hersengrootte van zo’n 370 kubieke centimeter, vergelijkbaar met die van een chimpansee. Hij had uitstekende jukbeenderen, langwerpige hoektanden en ovale oorschelpen. Op die manier kon er een gezicht gereconstrueerd worden van MRD. Zijn leeftijd werd bepaald door de bodemlaag waarin zijn schedel gevonden werd, te analyseren.
Het grote verschil tutssen MRD en Lucy? Lucy had een rond hoofd terwijl de schedel van MRD smaller en langwerpig is. MRD leek volgens paleontologen nog iets meer op een aap dan zijn opvolger. Toch behoorde hij wel degelijk tot de mensachtigen. “De ruggenwervel van MRD komt niet aan de achterkant van de schedel binnen, zoals bij viervoeters, maar aan de onderkant. Dat bewijst dat de soort op twee benen liep, en dus een mensachtige is”, aldus Fred Spoor, paleontoloog aan het Natural History Museum in Londen.
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YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT’S BURIED UNDER THE SAHARA…HIDDEN LOST ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS BY BRIGHT INSIGHT
YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT’S BURIED UNDER THE SAHARA… HIDDEN LOST ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS BY BRIGHT INSIGHT
I love the Bright Insight’s channel and I’m always happy to share Jimmy’s latest videos, like this one, which dropped last night. Are the sands of the Sahara Desert covering up ancient civilizations..?
Ancient Greek historian, Herodotus (484 – 425 BC) described the Nile River as moving from west to east, not from South to North, as it does today.
Jimmy from the Bright Insight YouTube channel is an Iraq War veteran who got to see some of these ancient wonders of the Middle East with his own eyes but he’s not content to merely point out how incredible they are. He has this to say about Ancient Egypt and the Sahara Desert: “The experts have always claimed that the Sphinxmust be around 4,500 years old, yet recent geological analysis implies that this cannot be the case, as the last time the Nile Delta region had significant rainfall was more than seven thousand years ago…Right in the timeframe of when the Sahara was Green and had ten times the rainfall that it does today…
“The scientific data overwhelmingly suggests that the Sphinx is at least double the age of what we were taught in school, which of course only further adds to the mystery of ancient Egypt, itself but think about what all of this means.
“The ancient ruins and relics that have been found from the Egyptians are concentrated largely around the Nile River and this makes total sense, as civilizations exist where there’s water. “So, combine that with the timeframe estimates of when the Sahara went from a lush green tropical paradise to a massive barren desert, several thousand years ago, well there’s obviously a connection here and going back to what I just pointed out, regarding the ancient Egyptians developing their civilization along the Nile River.
“While taking into account that the Sahara Desert was actually a hospitable environment, made up of rivers and lakes at that same period of time, we should ask ourselves if the old legends, stating that the Nile River once ran from west to east have merits… “Ancient rivers in the Sahara would have likely supported human migration routes. It seems to me that these areas around the rivers [in Northwest Africa] need to be excavated now.”
Je gelooft nooit wat er onder de Sahara begraven ligt. Kijk deze video over verloren beschavingen
Je gelooft nooit wat er onder de Sahara begraven ligt. Kijk deze video over verloren beschavingen+
De grootste woestijn op aarde blijkt een enorme begraafplaats te zijn waar talloze mysterieuze ruïnes en resten van onbekende beschavingen worden gevonden.
Ze zijn in de vergetelheid geraakt en duizenden jaren geleden verzwolgen door het zand. Vanaf hier wordt het vreemd.
In de afgelopen jaren verschenen er allerlei berichten waaruit blijkt dat de Sahara ooit groen en bewoond was.
Oogwenk
Met behulp van satellieten werden er oude riviernetwerken, megameren en sporen van verloren beschavingen ontdekt in en onder de woestijn.
Verder is gebleken dat de Sahara in een oogwenk is veranderd van een grasrijk landschap in dorre woestijn. Wat is er gebeurd?
We learn from our personal interaction with the world, and our memories of those experiences help guide our behaviors. Experience and memory are inexorably linked, or at least they seemed to be before a recent reporton the formation of completely artificial memories. Using laboratory animals, investigators reverse engineered a specific natural memory by mapped the brain circuits underlying its formation. They then “trained” another animal by stimulating brain cells in the pattern of the natural memory. Doing so created an artificial memory that was retained and recalled in a manner indistinguishable from a natural one.
Memories are essential to the sense of identity that emerges from the narrative of personal experience. This study is remarkable because it demonstrates that by manipulating specific circuits in the brain, memories can be separated from that narrative and formed in the complete absence of real experience. The work shows that brain circuits that normally respond to specific experiences can be artificially stimulated and linked together in an artificial memory. That memory can be elicited by the appropriate sensory cues in the real environment. The research provides some fundamental understanding of how memories are formed in the brain and is part of a burgeoning science of memory manipulation that includes the transfer, prosthetic enhancement and erasure of memory. These efforts could have a tremendous impact on a wide range of individuals, from those struggling with memory impairments to those enduring traumatic memories, and they also have broad social and ethical implications.
In the recent study, the natural memory was formed by training mice to associate a specific odor (cherry blossoms) with a foot shock, which they learned to avoid by passing down a rectangular test chamber to another end that was infused with a different odor (caraway).The caraway scent came from a chemical called carvone, while the cherry blossom scent came from another chemical, acetophenone.The researchers found that acetophenone activates a specific type of receptor on a discrete type of olfactory sensory nerve cell.
They then turned to a sophisticated technique, optogenetics, to activate those olfactory nerve cells. With optogenetics, light-sensitive proteins are used to stimulate specific neurons in response to light delivered to the brain through surgically implanted optic fibers. In their first experiments, the researchers used transgenic animals that only made the protein in acetophenone-sensitive olfactory nerves. By pairing the electrical foot shock with optogenetic light stimulation of the acetophenone-sensitive olfactory nerves, the researchers taught the animals to associate the shock with activity of these specific acetophenone-sensitive sensory nerves. By pairing the electrical foot shock with optogenetic light stimulation of the acetophenone-sensitive olfactory nerves, the researchers taught the animals to associate the two. When theylater tested the mice, they avoided the cherry blossom odor.
These first steps showed that the animals did not need to actually experience the odor to remember a connection between that smell and a noxious foot shock. But this was not a completely artificial memory, because the shock was still quite real. In order to construct an entirely artificial memory, the scientists needed to stimulate the brain in such a way as to mimic the nerve activity caused by the foot shock as well.
Earlier studies had shown that specific nerve pathways leading to a structure known as the ventral tegmental area (VTA) were important for the aversive nature of the foot shock. To create a truly artificial memory, the researchers needed to stimulate the VTA in the same way as they stimulated the olfactory sensory nerves, but the transgenic animals only made the light-sensitive proteins in those nerves. In order to use optogenetic stimulation, they stimulated the olfactory nerves in the same genetically engineered mice , and they employed a virus to place light-sensitive proteins in the VTA as well. They stimulated the olfactory receptors with light to simulate the odor of cherry blossoms, then stimulated the VTA to mimic the aversive foot shock. The animals recalled the artificial memory, responding to an odor they had never encountered by avoiding a shock they had never received.
For a long time, it has been a mystery how memories are formed in the brain—and what physical changes in the brain accompany their formation. In this study, the electrical stimulation of specific brain regions that led to a new memory also activated other brain regions known to be involved in memory formation, including an area called the basolateral amygdala. Because nerve cells communicate with one another through junctions called synapses, it has been assumed that changes in synaptic activity account for the formation of memories. In simple animals, such as the sea slugAplysia, memories can be transferred from one individual to another using RNA extracted from the one who experienced them. The RNA contains the codes for proteins made in the nerves of the animal associated with the memory. Memories have been partially transferred in rodents by using recordings of electrical activity of a trained animal’s memory center (the hippocampus) to stimulate similar patterns of nerve activity in a recipient animal. This process is similar to the new report described here, in that stimulating the electrical activity of specific neural circuits is used to elicit a memory. In the case of memory transfer, that pattern came from trained animals, whereas in the optogenetics study, the pattern of electrical activity associated with the memory was built de novo within brain of the mouse. This is the first report of a completely artificial memory, and it helps establish some fundamental understanding of how memories may be manipulated.
Research into memory and efforts to manipulate it have progressed at a rapid pace. A “memory prosthetic” designed to enhance its formation and recall by electrical stimulation of the memory center in the human brain has been developed with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In contrast, memory erasure using what has been nicknamed the Eternal Sunshine drug (zeta inhibitory peptide, or ZIP)—after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a Hollywood movie with a mnemonic theme—is being developed to treat recollections of chronic pain.
There are legitimate motives underlying these efforts. Memory has been called “the scribe of the soul,” and it is the source of one’s personal history. Some people may seek to recover lost or partially lost memories. Others, such as those afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder or chronic pain, might seek relief from traumatic memories by trying to erase them.
The methods used here to create artificial memories will not be employed in humans anytime soon: none of us are transgenic like the animals used in the experiment, nor are we likely to accept multiple implanted fiber-optic cables and viral injections. Nevertheless, as technologies and strategies evolve, the possibility of manipulating human memories becomes all the more real. And the involvement of military agencies such as DARPA invariably renders the motivations behind these efforts suspect. Are there things we all need to be afraid of or that we must or must not do? The dystopian possibilities are obvious.
Creating artificial memories brings us closer to learning how memories form and could ultimately help us understand and treat dreadful diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Memories, however, cut to the core of our humanity, and we need to be vigilant that any manipulations are approached ethically.
Well, pack it in kids, we’ve finally gone and done it. We reached grade A, genuine sci-fi dystopia. Scientists have now successfully created and implanted an artificial memory. That is, a memory of an event that never happened created from the ground up and implanted into an animal. They’ve only done it to a mouse so far, so we’ve still got a bit of time before this whole thing starts feeling like a David Lynch movie. But boy, oh boy, this definitely feels like one of those “so focused on if we could, we never stopped to think if we should” type of deals.
According to a recent article in the journal Naturetitled Memory formation in the absence of experience, scientists reverse engineered a memory to map the brain circuits involved in creating it—in this case the association of the smell of cherry blossoms with an electrical shock to the foot—then artificially implanted that memory in a mouse. Tests showed that the mouse behaved as if it actually remembered being shocked in the foot whenever it smelled cherry blossoms, despite the mouse never having been shocked nor been exposed to the scent of cherry blossoms.
Even ones that never happened!
Previous research had shown that it was possible to partially transfer memories from one rodent to another via reproducing the electrical activity associated with a specific memory in one mouse and jolting it into the brain of another mouse. This new experiment is different. This time the memory was created completely artificially from the ground up. This consisted of a few parts.
First, they used a technique called optogenetics. This involves fiber optic cables surgically implanted into the olfactory region of the mice’s brain so that light can be used to turn on proteins associated with specific smells. To do that, the mice had to be genetically engineered to only produce the light-sensitive protein in the region associated with acetophenone—AKA the scent of cherry blossoms. Now they could artificially create the scent of cherry blossoms in the brain of a mouse.
So we’re already into some wacky stuff, but don’t worry. It gets wackier.
The scientists identified the region of the brain responsible for creating an aversion to being shocked in the foot, an area called the ventral tegmental area (VTA). To link the two regions together, scientists then used a virus (yes, that’s correct) to implant those same light-sensitive proteins into the VTA. This way, they could use light to stimulate both regions at once. Fake memories at the speed of light.
And it worked. The mice were then placed in a rectangular chamber, one end of which smelled like cherry blossoms, while the other smelled like caraway. The mice avoided the end that smelled like cherry blossoms, because they remembered being shocked by it. In an article for Scientific American, Robert Marcone puts it this way:
The animals recalled the artificial memory, responding to an odor they had never encountered by avoiding a shock they had never received.
A little poke here, a little twist there, and you’ll remember that time you were the king of France.
Now, this is still a long ways off from being used in humans. But it is an active area of research. Of course it is important to study memory. Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are nothing but tragedies, and the memory of trauma can take hold over a person’s life and never let go. It’s a very important area of study, but we must be careful. If there was a way to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind away painful events, would you do it? Maybe not, but someone would. Would you implant a fake memory of a trip around the world, or how about a fake memory of hitting a walk-off home run, just to boost your confidence and self image? How many companies— companies that already specialize in creating false narratives and self images built like houses of cards—are already working to sell you that walk-off home run?
Research like this is like playing with fire. That’s a neutral statement; playing with fire brought us down from the trees and allowed us to build a civilization, overcome the bounds of gravity, and put people on the moon. But it can also burn your house to the ground.
While most of Brazil is focused on the out-of-control fires in the Amazon (and rightly so), a few people are excited about new information and a possible new release of previously classified documents which revealed unbelievable details about an “invasion of UFOs” in 2008 that brought with them “luminous beings.” Why are they calling it an “invasion,” what were these luminous beings and what else might the Brazilian Air Force and government be hiding?
“It all started around 10 pm on a Wednesday night, November 19, 2008, just before Brazil’s match against Portugal, when from her apartment, Mrs. Renata Veloso Guerck Austriaco spotted a hexagonal light object accompanied of two other spherical flying objects that rotated under its orbit. As the UFO approached the Nossa Senhora Aparecida church, the streetlights of the Bela Vista neighborhood had a blackout, extinguishing block by block. From that moment, several claudienses began to observe the strange lights flying over the city and arriving to land in the countryside, along the MG 260 highway.”
That Google translation of Portuguese comes from a recent investigative report in the Brazilian media source saudedomeio.com, which brings readers up-to-date on the original 2008 sighting in Cláudio, a city in the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. Police officers called to the scene said “We saw an oval-shaped, rectangular-shaped perched object, the size and appearance of a wheelless minibus, emitting white light, like a xenon headlight. This light came out of an opening that cut through the middle of that object. Then he went up until we lost sight of him.” Multiple witnesses reported seeing the lights over the next few days. (Photograph here.)
In 2015, investigators from Ovni Pesquia (UFO Search) magazine requested and received police documents which revealed much more. On November 20, two officers reported seeing aliens.
“We saw two luminous beings, about three feet tall, gliding through the reeds. We were in the Mitsubishi pickup truck on a back road when Sergeant William saw something in the woods. He turned the car 13533 towards the ‘luminous beings’, as we approached (15 or 20 meters), they began to slide through the reeds. We were about 20 km / h and these continued forward and to the right, it was noticeable that those things ‘walked’ without touching the ground. We saw no feet, no toes, but we saw arms, legs, and oval heads, and though they were bright, they did not illuminate.”
Illustration of another luminous being with oval head
The witnesses believed the aliens controlled their thoughts because they later had headaches, confusion, anxiety and a period of unaccountable time. The report states that other non-military witnesses had similar alien contacts and also reported electrical problems with their cars.
That brings us to new information uncovered in February of 2019 by investigators from Ovni Pesquia. They interviewed the witness who took the photographs (Corporal Rabelo) who revealed he was visited by “military personnel from Lagoa Santa Air Base” who took away his digital photo cards (luckily, he had a backup) and told him what he saw was “artificial gas burning.” Rabelo told the magazine investigators that the “artificial gas” looked more like a “two-story wheelless minibus UFO” that was also seen by another witness they interviewed as well, who told them this:
“It was the size of a truck, a minibus! It made no noise, just floated. I saw the reeds shine, because it was a very bright light. It looked like it had fire inside, very strange color.”
Were the aliens just making a pit stop?
Based on that, UFO Search investigators made yet another request through the Citizen Information Service for the official report, a reported sketch and the photos. That was in late February and, as of this writing of the new report in saudedomeio.com this week, they have received nothing and are crying cover-up:
“Will we have news of this “invasion” or will our Brazilian Air Force continue to cover the facts in that mining city? This is the question that doesn’t want to shut up!” }Will they ever get the secret report? Will they get a visit from mysterious men asking questions and taking their photo cards?
Uranus is one of the solar system’s most mysterious planets.
Scientists had long believed that the “ice giant” world has clouds of hydrogen sulfide, a compound that smells bad to people, but they couldn’t be certain.
New telescope observations confirm the planet is clouded by the chemical.
The discovery may help astronomers further unravel the twisted history of the solar system‘s formation.
Foto: NASA/JPL-Caltech A photo of Uranus taken by Voyager 2 in 1986 (edited to show its moon and rings).
Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, has held a vital (and smelly) secret of the solar system for decades.
An international team of researchers reported on Monday that they’ve discovered evidence that Uranus holds one of the most unpleasant-smelling chemicals known to humankind.
“They found hydrogen sulfide, the odiferous gas that most people avoid, in Uranus’s cloud tops,” according to a press release from Gemini Observatory, a high-power telescope atop a Hawaiian volcano.
Voyager 2was the only spacecraft ever to visit the chilly, blue-green “ice giant.” The probe tried to see which chemicals were in Uranus’ clouds during its 1986 flyby, but it couldn’t tell scientists for certain.
Now, however, astronomers have used an instrument at the Gemini Observatory to “sniff” the planet’s gases from Earth. Their discovery could help write the book on when and where the planets of the solar system formed – and if they ever switched places.
“This is evidence of a big shakeup early on in the solar system’s formation,” Glenn Orton, a co-author of the new study and a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Business Insider. “There was definitely a migration taking place.”
The journal Nature Astronomy published the findings on Monday.
Why it took so long to detect Uranus’s stinky clouds
Foto: The Gemini North telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, which is part of the Gemini Observatory project.sourceDave Mosher
The reason most people avoid hydrogen sulfide is because the compound is a signature ingredient in the scent of rotten eggs – and farts.
Humans can smell hydrogen sulfide when it makes up as little as three out of every billion molecules in the air, the EPA says. At higher concentrations, such as near volcanic areas, it can be poisonous. Breathing a concentration of a few hundred parts per million can kill a person in about half an hour, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
“If an unfortunate human were ever to descend through Uranus’s clouds, they would be met with very unpleasant and odiferous conditions,” Patrick Irwin, a physicist at the University of Oxford who led the new study, said in the press release. But he added that “suffocation and exposure” to Uranus’ -200 degree Celsius temperatures “would take its toll long before the smell.”
Researchers had long suspected that Uranus’s atmosphere was laced with hydrogen sulfide, and in concentrations dozens of times higher than at Saturn or Jupiter.
They couldn’t be certain, though, since Uranus orbits the sun from 1.85 billion miles away.
The vast distance, aside from making the planet distant and difficult to study, leads to blisteringly cold temperatures that freezes hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen-sulfide ice can form clouds, but the solid crystals are hard for chemical-analyzing instruments called spectrometers to study. (The method works far better with liquids and gases.)
Irwin and others suspected there were at least whiffs of hydrogen sulfide gas drifting above the clouds. And now, thanks to an extremely sensitive Gemini instrument that can see light invisible to humans, Irwin said scientists “have the fingerprint which caught the culprit.”
Why the discovery might ‘shake up’ ideas about the solar system’s evolution
Foto: An artist’s conception of the dust and gas surrounding a newly formed planetary system. source NASA
Astronomers like Irwin have an interest in hydrogen sulfide on Uranus that goes far beyond the gas’ smell.
The discovery of hydrogen sulfide may help piece together the story of how the solar system formed and arranged itself some 4.6 billion years ago. Figuring out the exact makeup of distant planets could help determine where in the solar system they first formed – and how far they migrated away from the sun afterward.
Like all planets, Uranus and Neptune formed from a giant disk of gas and dust that shrouded the sun some 4.6 billion years ago. The planets are mostly made of heavier elements, and didn’t balloon with lightweight hydrogen and helium gases.
“Uranus and Neptune never had the time to grow into gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn,” Imke de Pater, an astronomer at the University of California Berkeley who wasn’t involved in the study, wrote in an accompanying article in Nature Astronomy. “The composition of a celestial body is a fundamental parameter in determining its formation and evolutionary history.”
The two planets failed to become gas giants (and instead became “ice giants”) for two main reasons.
First, the solar system’s early disk of dust and gas grew more diffuse farther out from the sun. With less material available, it took Uranus and Neptune longer to form.
Second, this slower formation gave the sun more time to blow hydrogen and helium out of the solar system with its stellar winds – before Uranus and Neptune could grow massive enough to capture it with their gravity.
“Giant planets form really fast, in a few million years,” Kevin Walsh, who studies planet formation at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, told Space.com in March. “That creates a time limit because the gas disk around the sun only lasts 4 to 5 million years.”
Scientists agree on this much, but Orton said they have “too many theories” about the migration of Uranus and Neptune, which came next.
Foto: A true-color photo of Uranus (left) and a false color image (right) taken at the turn of 1986 by NASA’s Voyager 2 probe. source NASA/JPL-Caltech
One leading idea says the planets coalesced millions of miles closer to the sun, then quickly migrated outward.
But Orton said the newly detected hydrogen sulfide – and a strange lack of ammonia in the Gemini Observatory readings – suggest the planets actually formed farther out, then moved inward. (The ratio of the two molecules suggests the worlds were once even colder than they are today.)
To solve the question once and for all, Orton says researchers need to send spacecraft to plunge through the clouds of Uranus, not unlike how the Cassini probe dove into Saturn. The goal: figure out the exact abundances of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, among other gases, and use the readings to pin the exact birth locations of Uranus and Neptune.
“We’re working on that now,” Orton said, referring to a proposal for a new Uranus probe.
A massive planetary embryo may have hit Jupiter 4.5 billion years ago.
This Hubble Space Telescope view of Jupiter, taken on June 27, 2019, reveals the giant planet's trademark Great Red Spot, and a more intense color palette in the clouds swirling in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere than seen in previous years. One new study suggest that the gas giant's dilute core was formed by a massive collision billions of years ago.
About 4.5 billion years ago, a young Jupiter collided head-on with a planetary embryo 10 times more massive than Earth. This giant impact formed Jupiter's dilute core, which contains hydrogen and helium, one new study suggests.
Before NASA's Juno mission launched to orbit and study Jupiter, scientists thought that the planet's core was dense and compact. "Astronomers assumed that Jupiter has a small compact core with a mass ranging from 5 to 20 Earth masses," lead study author Shangfei Liu of Sun Yat-sen University in Zhuhai, China, said in an email to Space.com.
This was assumed because Jupiter started off as a rocky and icy planetary embryo. However, studies using data from Juno found that the planet has an extended, dilute core — a core that is not only made up of rocky material and ice, but also hydrogen and helium. This "also means there is no sharp transition between the core and the envelope as we previously envisioned from planet formation theory," Liu said. This dilute core is something that scientists determined could not form naturally.
"That's why we came up with the impact idea: Jupiter was smacked head-on by another massive planetary embryo (about 10 Earth masses) shortly after its formation," Liu said. "Such a catastrophic collision destroyed Jupiter's primordial compact core, and a dilute-core-like structure was formed."
The cores of both the young Jupiter and the planetary embryo merged in this violent impact, the authors of this new study suggest. The materials from both of these cores partially mixed with Jupiter's gaseous envelope, which can be detected in the planet's structure still today.
When Jupiter began building the massive, gaseous envelope that surrounds its core, "its mass increases about 30 times in a fraction of a million years," Liu said. This process, known as the runaway gas accretion stage, disturbed planetary embryos that were developing nearby.
"Through computational simulations, we show that there is at least 40% chance that Jupiter would collide with another planetary embryo in the next few million years," Liu added.
The team determined that the developing planet that collided with Jupiter must have been about 10 times the mass of the Earth, because "smaller impactors cannot penetrate Jupiter's massive envelope," Liu said. Additionally, the collision must have been head-on, because if the object didn't hit Jupiter directly, it would slowly sink toward the center instead of destroying the planet's core, as it would have less impact energy.
Surprise Discovery Reveals Ancient City of Troy is 5,500 Years Old
The city of Troy has fascinated people for millennia. Once thought to be purely mythological, the lost city emerged as a real place in history when it was discovered in Turkey by Heinrich Schliemannin the 1870s. Archaeologists in Turkey have now made a surprising discovery indicating the ancient city could be 600 years older than previously believed. This could transform our understanding of the historic city and our past.
Experts from the Archaeology Department of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University (COMU) have been working on the archaeological site of Troy in recent years.
Troy is located in Turkey’s north-western Çanakkale province. It is located on a mound or tell, Hisarlık overlooking the Aegean. Troy has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988 and in 2018 the Turkish government celebrated the 20th anniversary of the awarding of this accolade.
The ruins of the legendary ancient city of Troy in Turkey.
Troy was immortalized by the legendary Greek poet Homer in his epic poem The Iliad . The work was a key text in the Classical World and is often regarded as the first work in Western Literature. The historicity of the city was proven by German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s, who is regarded as one of the founders of modern archaeology. The Daily Sabahreports that Troy was the setting of the ‘‘Greek Trojan War in which Spartan and Achaean warriors from Greece besieged the city in 13th century B.C’’.
When Schliemann found the site, he believed that he had found evidence of the Trojan War that was so famously portrayed in the epic poem The Iliad . The German even named gold items he found after characters in the Homeric poem, such as ‘ Priam’s treasure’ and ‘Helen’s jewels’. However, there is much more to the history of the city than the reputed Greek and Trojan war.
Troy was destroyed and rebuilt many times over the millennia. It was built on a very strategic site and was as a result possibly attacked many times by invaders. The city may also have been burnt down accidentally. Moreover, earthquakes also may have destroyed the legendary city.
Since the 19 th century, ‘‘a total of 10 layers of settlements were discovered’’ reports Greece High Definition . Experts have called the layers Troy I to Troy XI. The first layer was found by Schliemann and every layer found since has been numbered and they have yielded many artifacts. These layers all represent settlements from Bronze Age cultures to the Byzantine Empire.
The Original Troy
The new layer which indicates a previously unknown destroyed settlement on the site has been termed Troy 0. Rüstem Aslan of COMU told the Daily Sabbah. "We found traces of burns, pottery and wooden beams in the Troy 0 layer". The archaeologists had found evidence for the earliest occupation of the location.
Based on the evidence found previously it was believed that the city was approximately 4,900 years old and dated to the Bronze Age. However, the latest discovery would indicate that the city was first established around 3,500 BC. This means that the settlement to the south of the Dardanelles dates back an astonishing 5,500 years. According to Greece High Definition , this ‘‘suggests the area may have been used as a settlement more than six centuries earlier than previously known’’.
The Enigma of Troy
Based on the various layers found at the ancient site, it appears the city had a very ancient and complex history. The latest finds, according to Argophila ‘‘may reshape our view of this fascinating ancient city’’. Historians are hoping the new layer at Troy may also provide new information not only on the evolution of the city but also on Bronze Age societies. Given the cultural and historic significance of the storied city, any future investigations will be closely followed around the globe.
Top image: Fresco of the battle of Troy. Credit: quasarphotos / Adobe Stock
The most recent social media movement regarding UFOs and Aliens involves Area 51. The idea is that a few hundred thousand people will attempt to #StormArea51 in search of UFOs and dead/alive alien bodies. Arguably, this can be blamed on various factors such as Bob Lazars appearance on Joe Rogan and an increased public interest in the UFO phenomena in recent years.
The idea of storming Area 51 is a joke, it is unlikely that most anyone will take the movement seriously or actually turn up. The secret military in Nevada base is most famously known for its development of advanced, next generation aircraft. However, some claims over the years have suggested there are other areas (S4) connected to the base that have crashed flying saucers. Bob Lazar being the most credible person to make such claims.
Area 51 itself doesn’t have UFOs, or aliens, and even if they ever did they would have been surely moved after the first unauthorised leak of the base by Bob back in 1989.
Despite the idiocy, illegal and bat-spit craziness of the idea of actively taking control of Area 51 there is something to be said for the baseline concept. Disclosing the secrets that are held by parts of the United States government on UFOs and Aliens, whatever they may actually be.
Tom Delonge, the head of To The Stars Academy (TTSA) took to social media (before deleting the tweets) to give an overview about the nature of the secrecy. TTSA have been working with congress to change the nature of national security policy regarding how UFOs are reported by military pilots.
Interestingly, Tom eludes to the fact the government does have detailed information, technology and ‘biological treasures’ aka dead aliens in jars. TTSA are working within the system to change the system, they aren’t tying to break it. The problem is that illegally storming Area 51 will bring about not much. Maybe a lot of violence. The movement may do better to peacefully demonstrate the request for congress to change policy, so that in time we can all see what the true reality actually is.
Nearly 40,000 fires are burning in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, the latest outbreak in an overactive fire season. Don’t blame dry weather, say environmentalists. These Amazonian wildfires are a human-made disaster.
Smoke billows from a fire in the Amazon rainforest near Humaita, in the state of Amazonas, in the northwest corner of Brazil, on August 17, 2019.
Nearly 40,000 firesare incinerating Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, the latest outbreak in an overactive fire season that has charred 1,330 square miles (2,927 square km) of the rainforest this year.
Don’t blame dry weather for the swift destruction of the world’s largest tropical forest, say environmentalists. These Amazonian wildfires are a human-made disaster, set by loggers and cattle ranchers who use a “slash and burn” method to clear land. Feeding off very dry conditions, some of those fires have spread out of control.
Brazil has long struggled to preserve the Amazon, sometimes called the “lungs of the world” because it produces 20% of the world’s oxygen. Despite the increasingly strict environmental protections of recent decades, about a quarter of this massive rainforest is already gone – an area the size of Texas.
Deforestation in the Amazon has spiked since the election last year of the far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Arguing that federal conservation zones and hefty fines for cutting down trees hinder economic growth, Bolsonaro has slashed Brazil’s strict environmental regulations.
There’s no evidence to support Bolsonaro’s view, Garrett says. She said:
Food production in the Amazon has substantially increased since 2004.
The increased production has been pushed by federal policies meant to discourage land clearing, such as hefty fines for deforestation and low-interest loans for investing in sustainable agricultural practices. Farmers are now planting and harvesting two crops – mostly soybeans and corn – each year, rather than just one.
Garrett’s research found that improved pasture management in line with stricter federal land use policies led the number of cattle slaughtered annually per acre to double. She wrote:
Farmers are producing more meat – and therefore earning more money – with their land.
Locations of fires, marked in orange, detected by NASA’s MODIS satellite from August 15 to August 22, 2019.
President Bolsonaro is also pushing forward an ambitious infrastructure development plan that would turn the Amazon’s many waterways into electricity generators.
The Brazilian government has long wanted to build a series of big new hydroelectric dams, including on the Tapajós River, the Amazon’s only remaining undammed river. But the indigenous Munduruku people, who live near the Tapajós River, have stridently opposed this idea.
According to Robert T. Walker, a University of Florida professor who has conducted environmental research in the Amazon for 25 years:
The Munduruku have until now successfully slowed down and seemingly halted many efforts to profit off the Tapajós.
But Bolsonaro’s government is less likely than his predecessors to respect indigenous rights. One of his first moves in office was to transfer responsibilities for demarcating indigenous lands from the Brazilian Ministry of Justice to the decidedly pro-development Ministry of Agriculture.
And, Walker notes, Bolsonaro’s Amazon development plans are part of a broader South American project, conceived in 2000, to build continental infrastructure that provides electricity for industrialization and facilitates trade across the region.
For the Brazilian Amazon, that means not just new dams but also “webs of waterways, rail lines, ports and roads” that will get products like soybeans, corn and beef to market, according to Walker. He said:
This plan is far more ambitious than earlier infrastructure projects that damaged the Amazon.
If Bolsonaro’s plan moves forward, he estimates that fully 40 percent of the Amazon could be deforested.
3. Road-choked streams
Roads, most of them dirt, already criss-cross the Amazon.
That came as a surprise to Cecilia Gontijo Leal, a Brazilian researcher who studies tropical fish habitats. She wrote:
I imagined that my field work would be all boat rides on immense rivers and long jungle hikes. In fact, all my research team needed was a car.
Perched culverts disrupt the water flow of Amazonian streams, isolating fish.
Image via Catesby Holmes.
Traveling on rutted mud roads to take water samples from streams across Brazil’s Pará state, Leal realized that the informal “bridges” of this locally built transportation network must be impacting Amazonian waterways. So she decided to study that, too. She said:
We found that makeshift road crossings cause both shore erosion and silt buildup in streams. This worsens water quality, hurting the fish that thrive in this delicately balanced habitat.
The ill-designed road crossings – which feature perched culverts that disrupt water flow – also act as barriers to movement, preventing fish from finding places to feed, breed and take shelter.
4. Rewilding tropical forests
The fires now consuming vast swaths of the Amazon are the latest repercussion of development in the Amazon.
Set by farmers likely emboldened by their president’s anti-conservation stance, the blazes emit so much smoke that on August 20 it blotted out the midday sun in the city of São Paulo, 1,700 miles (2,736 km) away. The fires are still multiplying, and peak dry season is still a month away.
Apocalyptic as this sounds, science suggests it’s not too late to save the Amazon.
Tropical forests destroyed by fire, logging, land-clearing and roads can be replanted, say ecologists Robin Chazdon and Pedro Brancalion.
Using satellite imagery and the latest peer-reviewed research on biodiversity, climate change and water security, Chazdon and Brancalion identified 385,000 square miles (997,145 square km) of “restoration hotspots” – areas where restoring tropical forests would be most beneficial, least costly and lowest risk. Chazon wrote:
Although these second-growth forests will never perfectly replace the older forests that have been lost, planting carefully selected trees and assisting natural recovery processes can restore many of their former properties and functions.
The five countries with the most tropical restoration potential are Brazil, Indonesia, India, Madagascar and Colombia.
Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.
It's just over 50 years since the the Apollo 11 mission first landed humans on the moon, and (finally) the world's space agencies are now setting their sights on a new, ambitious target. It's quite possible that the next generation of astronauts may include the first person to set foot on Mars.
But if that's going to be the case, there's plenty of work to do yet. Successfully landing on Mars will mean overcoming a whole new set of challenges.
"We are not born to live in space – for us, space is still a hostile environment," says Tommaso Ghidini, head of the structures, mechanisms and materials division at the European Space Agency (ESA).
While it took days to the reach the moon, it's months or even years for the red planet. A zero gravity environment, loneliness and isolation, and a dangerous environment beyond the reach of traditional medical care all add up to make the journey to Mars one filled with risk.
For starters, astronauts on their way to Mars will need to deal with the higher levels of radiation that come with a journey outside the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. According to the ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, one single journey to Mars could see astronauts racking up 60% of the total radiation they should be exposed to in their entire lives – much more than their counterparts on the International Space Station, and several hundred times more than a human back on Earth would face in the same period. Increased radiation exposure is linked to a number of cancers, particularly leukaemia, so future Mars missions will need to develop new ways to cut the levels of carcinogens that astronauts are subjected to.
The solution, according to Ghidini, is some elegant engineering. Hydrogen-containing substances are proven to be good at protecting against radiation, which would mean water could be used as a protective layer within Mars-bound spacecraft. But water is both heavy and bulky, and very expensive to transport into space.
So the ESA is planning to use the fluids that are already onboard – like drinking water for the astronauts or propellants – and store them around areas where the astronauts sleep to give them the best radiation for the longest time. "That way, the water that you have to bring anyway is doing another noble function – protecting the astronauts," Ghidini says.
Water-lined space suits, with fluids concentrated around blood-producing areas of the body, which are already being tested on the ISS, would also be deployed to reduce radiation exposure.
A prolonged lack of gravity, both in space and on Mars, is another problem. As new bone forms along lines of stress; regular weight bearing exercise (even if it's just carrying your own body weight) is needed to stop bone withering away. As space is close to a zero G environment, astronauts experience little stress on their bones, and so fall victim to osteoporosis, a condition where bones can thin and fracture more easily.
While osteoporosis is a common condition on Earth, the near zero G environment in space could cause a new problem for astronauts' bones: they may be at risk of shattering, rather than fracturing as they might here on Earth. Astronauts will need to have a way of replacing any bone that may beyond repair.
The answer, says Ghidini, could lie in 3D bioprinting, where human skin, bones, and even organs could be printed on-demand in spacecraft or on the planet's surface.
Having on-demand replacement bones and organs available to Mars astronauts is one thing, but having the skills onboard the spacecraft when you need them to do the surgery is another.
"Once you have started the mission, you cannot abort it – you can't come back if you have a medical issue. You have to be able to heal the astronaut," Ghidini says.
Using robotic surgery equipment remotely operated by Earth-bound surgeons would seem like the ideal solution to onboard medical emergencies, but there's a 40-minute lag between a communication from Earth reaching Mars due to the distances involved – not the near real-time link that telemedicine would need.
Instead, one of the Mars crew would need to be the designated surgeon. If an emergency did strike, medical experts on earth could build a simulation of the astronaut-patient, which could be used by the astronaut-surgeon to practice on via an augmented reality (AR) headset, until they felt skilled enough to undertake the real surgery. The ISS has already tested the use of AR to help walk astronauts through new projects.
But the health problems that could dog a Mars mission would not only be physical: trapped in a small box floating through empty space with the same handful people for years would put a strain on anyone.
Keeping astronauts in good mental health is another priority for the ESA's researchers. The International Space Station is already seeing the first fruits of its work into mental health in the shape of an AI-equipped robot known as CIMON. It could eventually be used to help monitor and improve an astronaut's mood.
Keeping astronauts entertained is another way of helping their mental health hold up. Food, according to Ghidini, will be one source of distraction for the space travellers.
"We need to have, from an eating perspective, something that is more like an event – it's more social, it's even cultural. It's something where you stay together, you use your creativity, and you relax," he says.
That means cooking. Astronauts could be able to use 3D printing used to create meals with a sense of occasion, a break from a non-stop diet of pouches of dehydrated food. Ghidini's team has already 3D printed a pizza to show how on-demand food could help break the monotony of space dining.
Technologies developed as part of the race for space have now become commonplace: the CT scanner that was developed to test the structural integrity of materials used in the shuttle is now found in hospitals worldwide, while filters developed to recycle astronauts' urine inspired the filters used around the world to purify contaminated or unclean water.
Ghidini hopes that technology created for future Mars missions will eventually be used to improve the conditions for people here. And those next-generation technologies will have to be greener, too.
"We want to go to Mars in a respectful manner, and avoid the mistakes we have done on Earth. We want to go and do recycling on a massive scale – that's the way you do a mission like that, there is no other way. You have to recycle all the equipment, you have to use the resources you find in situ, and that is another lesson we need to bring back to Earth," Ghidini says.
Perhaps space travel will ultimately lend humanity a better perspective on its home planet.
"We are going to Mars because, first of all, we want to protect the Earth much better. Mars was an Earth before, and then it aged incredibly fast – we don't know why – and became what it is today, a cold desert with a mainly CO2 atmosphere. We want to understand what happened to Mars in order to avoid that it happens on Earth."
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
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