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
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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 Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
28-09-2019
LAND VAN HERKOMST van de bezoekers aan mijn blog - COUNTRY OF ORIGIN of the visitors to my blog
Stastistiek van Land van herkomst van de bezoekers van mijn blog
Stastistiek Country of origin of visitors to my blog
Stastistiek Herkunftsland der Besucher auf meinem Blog
Stastistiek Pays d'origine des visiteurs sur mon blog
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETEen langsvliegende satelliet heeft foto’s genomen van de zuidkant van de maan, waar eerder deze maand een Indiase maanlander moest neerkomen. Zonder resultaat.
Tijdens de landing werd het contact verbroken met het onbemande tuig, en tot nog toe is het onduidelijk wat er met het apparaat is gebeurd. Ook de foto’s die het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartinstituut NASA nu heeft vrijgegeven, verschaffen niet echt meer duidelijkheid.
Lees ook
India verliest vlak voor maanlanding contact met ruimtetuig
Volgens NASA heeft het betrokken team de lander tot nu toe niet kunnen lokaliseren of fotograferen. “Het was schemer toen het landingsgebied werd gefotografeerd en daarom bedekten grote schaduwen een groot deel van het terrein; het is mogelijk dat de Vikram-lander verborgen ligt in een schaduw”, klinkt het nog. De satelliet van NASA zal in oktober nogmaals langsvliegen, als er meer licht is, en opnieuw foto’s nemen.
De lander, met aan boord een rover (Pragyan), steeg op 22 juli op vanaf aarde en op 7 september verloor het controlecentrum het contact. Volgens NASA is de lander gecrasht. Het was de bedoeling dat Vikram en Pragyan samen de bodem bij de zuidpool van de maan zouden gaan onderzoeken. Daar is misschien waterijs te vinden.
AFP
NASA✔@NASA
Our @LRO_NASA mission imaged the targeted landing site of India’s Chandrayaan-2 lander, Vikram. The images were taken at dusk, and the team was not able to locate the lander. More images will be taken in October during a flyby in favorable lighting. More: https://go.nasa.gov/2n03HuV
NASA recently announced the Artemis lunar exploration program, consolidating its plans plans to land humans on the moon by 2024 and establish a sustainable base there by 2028. This ambitious initiative revives an old question: Will the unique qualities of the lunar surface enable new frontiers in astronomy?
A few decades ago, astronomers had already begun to contemplate different ways their observations could benefit from the absence of an atmosphere on the moon. First, energetic particles such as gamma rays, x-rays,ultraviolet photons or cosmic rayswould not be blocked by an atmospheric blanket as they are on earth, and hence they would reach telescopes with large collecting areas mounted to the lunar surface.Second, observatories sensitive to optical, infrared, millimeter or radio waves could reach their diffraction limit without the blurring or absorption associated with passage through turbulent air.Arrays of detectors could therefore constitute giant interferometers with unprecedented angular resolution.
Third, the lack of an ionosphere would allow radio observatories to receive signals at very low frequencies, below the terrestrial cutoff of 10 kilohertz.This would open a new spectral window into the universe, allowing to map the three-dimensional distribution of hydrogen atoms from their first appearance 0.4 million year after the big bang and through the cosmic dawn, using the highly redshifted 21-centimeter line. Although exciting and path breaking in their own right, these visions were all formulated well before the emergence of the frontier of astrobiology associated with the search for extraterrestrial life.
Can the moon provide clues for extraterrestrial life? A new paper I wrote with Manasvi Lingamanswers this question in the affirmative. The idea is to consider the moon’s surface as a fishing net for interstellar objects collected over time and potentially deliver building blocks of life from the habitable environments around other stars.
The lack of a lunar atmosphere guarantees that these messengers would reach the lunar surface without burning up. In addition, the geological inactivity of the moon implies that the record deposited on its surface will be preserved and not mixed with the deep lunar interior. Serving as a natural mailbox, the lunar surface collected allimpacting objects during the past few billions of years. Most of this “mail” comes from within the solar system.
But the solar system also intercepts objects from interstellar space, ranging from dust particles to free-floating planets and stars. A detection of the first interstellar object, ‘Oumuamua, with a size on the order of 100 meters was reported in 2017.This year, ‘Oumuamua’s cousin was tentatively discovered in the form of a meter-size meteor from outside the solar system that burned up in Earth’s atmosphere in 2014. And most recently, yet another interstellar visitor may have been identified.
Given the search volume and duration of the surveys that made these detections, it is now possible, for the first time, to calibrate the flux of interstellar objects (assuming they enter the solar system on random trajectories). With this calibration at hand, one can calculate the amount of interstellar material that has collected on the moon’s surface over its history. The buildup of interstellar matter can also be observed in real time; another new paper with my undergraduate student, Amir Siraj, showed that a two-meter telescope on a satellite in orbit around the moon can observe interstellar impactors as they crash.
In case some interstellar impactors carry the building blocks of extraterrestrial life, one could extract these biomarkers by analyzing lunar surface samples. Moon rocks delivered to Earth by the Apollo mission were likely contaminated by terrestrial life and are not a viable alternative to a dedicated experimental base on the moon.
Identifying biomarkers from debris of material that originated in the habitable zone around other stars would inform us about the nature of extraterrestrial life. The fundamental question is whether distant life resembles the biochemical structures we find on Earth. Similarities might imply that there exists a unique chemical path for life everywhere or that life was transferred between systems. Either way, a lunar study shortcuts the need to send spacecraft on extremely long missions to visit other star systems.
Getting similar information from a trip to the nearest star system—Alpha Centauri A, B or C—would take nearly nine years round-trip, even if the spacecraft were to travel at the maximum speed allowed in nature, the speed of light;the first half of this period is required for reaching the target and the second half for the information to get back to us.With chemical rockets, this journey would take about 100,000 years, on the order of the timethatelapsedsince the first modern humans began migrating out of Africa.Excavating the lunar surface for physical evidence of extraterrestrial life is dramatically faster.
Based on the newly calibrated flux of interstellar objects, their debris should constitute up to 30 parts per million of lunar surface material.Extrasolar organics might amount to a fraction of an order of a= few parts per 10 million. Amino acids, which serve as the building blocks of “life as we know it,” could amount to a few parts per hundred billion. Standard spectroscopic techniques can be employed to examine individual grains within the lunar regolith and search for signatures that would flag them as extrasolar before unraveling the building blocks of extraterrestrial life within them.
How can extrasolar origin be identified? The simplest flag would be a deviation from the unique solar ratio for isotopes of oxygen, carbon or nitrogen. Laboratories have already demonstrated the feasibility of this method at the required sensitivity levels.
But there is also the exciting opportunity for detecting biosignatures of extinct extraterrestrial life. On Earth, the oldest microfossils, with unambiguous evidence for cells that lived about 3.4 billion years ago, were discovered in the Strelley Pool Formation in Western Australia. It would be tantalizing to find microfossils of extraterrestrial forms of life on the moon. Even more exciting would be to find traces of technological equipment that crashed on the lunar surface a billion years ago, amounting to a letter from an alien civilization saying, “We exist.” Without checking our mailbox, we would never know that such a message arrived.
The opportunity to discover signs of extraterrestrial life provides a new scientific incentive for a sustainable base on the lunar surface. The moon is well known for its romantic appeal, but astrobiology offers a twist on this notion. Here’s hoping that the moon will inform our civilization that we are not alone and that someone else is waiting for us out there.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Maan mogelijk bezaaid met organismen en technologie van buiten ons zonnestelsel. Harvard-astronoom waagt zich aan opmerkelijke theorie
Maan mogelijk bezaaid met organismen en technologie van buiten ons zonnestelsel. Harvard-astronoom waagt zich aan opmerkelijke theorie
Een astronoom van de Harvard-universiteit heeft gezegd dat er mogelijk bewijs van buitenaards leven op de maan kan worden gevonden.
Volgens Abraham Loeb is de maan om diverse redenen de ideale plek om te zoeken naar sporen van aliens.
Omdat de maan geen atmosfeer heeft, zullen ruimtereizigers het maanoppervlak bereiken zonder te verbranden.
Natuurlijke brievenbus
Daarnaast is er geen geologische activiteit op de maan, waardoor alles wat in het verleden is neergekomen op het hemellichaam, bewaard zal blijven.
Loeb stelt dat het maanoppervlak een soort ‘natuurlijke brievenbus’ is die allerlei soorten materialen bevat, waaronder materiaal dat mogelijk afkomstig is van aliens.
Denk daarbij aan biomarkers die ons iets kunnen vertellen over hoe dat buitenaardse leven eruitziet.
Helemaal fantastisch
Er zouden zelfs microfossielen of buitenaardse levensvormen op de maan kunnen zijn, aldus de astronoom.
Maar het zou natuurlijk helemaal fantastisch zijn om sporen van technologische apparatuur te vinden die een miljard jaar geleden op het maanoppervlak is neergekomen.
Daarmee zegt een buitenaardse beschaving eigenlijk ‘we bestaan’, stelt Loeb.
Basis
Hij pleit voor een basis op het maanoppervlak om te kunnen zoeken naar buitenaardse levensvormen of voorwerpen.
Vorig jaar suggereerde de Harvard-astronoom dat een interstellaire bezoeker in ons zonnestelsel genaamd Oumuamua een buitenaardse sonde was.
Is it possible that aliens are not just visiting us, abducting us and learning about us, but also eating us (albeit in a very weird way)? As disturbing and as nightmarish as it might sound, that may well be exactly what is going down. Over the years I have come across cases involving people who have crossed paths with the dreaded Men in Black – only to find themselves falling sick, ill and weak in incredibly short periods of time. It’s as if the MIB are predatory, vampire-like entities. The main difference: one is a fictional entity that feeds on blood and the other is an all too real figure in black. It’s very much the same with the creepy Black-Eyed Children: if you dare to let them in your home, they will drain you dry of your energy. The Shadow People, the Hat-Man, and the Grinning Man fall into this particular category, too. In the world of sci-fi, however, such a thing has occurred in a fashion that mirrors some of the claims concerning what may be afoot in the real world. A 1985 movie, Lifeforce was directed by horror legend, Tobe Hooper – who also directed the groundbreaking 1974 movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the acclaimed 1979 TV mini-series version of Stephen King’s novel, Salem’s Lot.
That the movie featured many well-known actors, including Patrick Stewart (who, in 1987, took on the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation) should have made Lifeforce a big hit. Unfortunately, it was not a hit. At all. Cinema-based earnings didn’t even reach half of the $25 Million budget that had been allocated for the production of the movie. That said, for zombie fanatics, Lifeforce – based on Colin Wilson’s novel, The Space Vampires – should not be missed.
The movie begins in outer space, in 1986, the year that Halley’s Comet made its most recent appearance. A team of astronauts embark on a mission, in a NASA Space Shuttle called the Churchill (named after British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill), to rendezvous with the gigantic comet. On doing so, the crew is shocked to find that deep within Halley’s Comet there is a huge spacecraft of alien origins. Not only that, the ship is filled with numerous, dead, winged monsters and three very human-looking beings: two men and one woman. Unbeknownst to the astronauts, the three entities are not, as is first suspected, fellow Homo sapiens that have been abducted by the gargoyle-like creatures. They are one and the same. In other words, the aliens have the ability to morph into human form and back again. It isn’t long before all three are secretly brought to London, England for study at the fictional European Space Research Center. Despite being heavily guarded by British Army personnel, that’s when the trouble begins.
Clearly not dead, the trio of non-humans appears to be in a collective state of deep, suspended animation. Until, that is, they wake up. The woman, using what might be termed a form of extraterrestrial hypnotism, entrances one of the troops and – utterly naked – moves towards the man, seemingly to kiss him on the lips. This is no normal kiss, however. As the alien female embraces the soldier, she drains his body of its vital energy – the life-force, in other words, of the movie’s title. His body falls to the ground, as a withered, shrunken husk, and the alien escapes from the facility. A couple of hours later, a shocking development occurs. While the military team overseeing the project – and acting to keep everything under wraps and away from the public and the media – tries to figure out what is afoot, word comes in that the body of a woman has been found in nearby woods. She, too, is as withered as an old, leathery Egyptian mummy. When her body is brought to the space center for study, it reanimates – as does the body of the dead soldier. They, too, are now crazed undead entities needing to feed on vital life-energy. A doctor is then violently attacked and bitten. He also dies and returns as a savage monster. And with the morphed alien on the loose, it’s not long before London is engulfed in an epidemic, one in which the living first become the dead, but who then mutate into something far worse.
In a neat twist, the team comes to believe that these energy-sucking aliens – and the people they infect – are responsible for our centuries-old legends and folklore of bloodsucking vampires. But, in reality, it’s energy, and not blood, that the reanimated so badly need. And they don’t dress like cloaked Count Dracula, either. One hundred percent zombie-like in appearance, the ragged dead rise up in violent style, rampaging around the streets of London in huge throngs, attacking the living, sucking them dry, and ensuring their victims soon become marauding killers, just like them. The fate of the entire human race is now precariously hanging in the balance. It’s accurate and fair to say that Lifeforceis an unusual and highly alternative production that blends together three, distinct genres that are generally kept poles apart from each other: zombies, vampires, and science-fiction. Notably, however, all three are successfully fused into what is an entertaining – but unfortunately much under-appreciated – production. A movie that parallels reality? Maybe…
While the great unwashed Facebook hordes were storming Area 51 in Nevada, something equally strange transpired over Minnesota in an area known locally as “Spot 51”. Friday, September 20th, Todd Mitchell, owner of Country Campground in Detroit Lakes, MN, ran his 24-hour security video camera just like any other evening. But this night he wondered if it might document something more exciting than camper arrivals, perhaps some dramatic lightning strikes from an incoming thunderstorm. What he didn’t know was he had recorded something even more extraordinary.
Later when Mitchell reviewed his footage, he forgot all about the lightning when he noticed what appeared to be a fuzzy, black object flitting erratically among the storm clouds, trailing what could be easily mistaken for dark fumes behind it. To the viewer’s eye, it sure looks like a skybound smoke monster, repeatedly performing feats of aerial acrobatics before it vanishes into thin air. Or perhaps it’s an alien spaceship suffering the effects of a faulty exhaust system. Or maybe someone just let the air out of one prime specimen of Charles Fort’s normally invisible sky jellyfish. Any of those options qualify the strange object as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).
Mitchell provided the footage to his TV news station, noting that on a local map, the Detroit Lakes Chamber of Commerce identifies Country Campground as “Spot 51”. The video combined with that revelation resulted in yucks and ample banter at the end of WDAY’s Sept. 25th evening news broadcast. But at least they didn’t play the X-Files theme music.
Looks like I spoke to soon! They saved the X-Files theme music for the second report. To their credit, the TV crew visited the scene, interviewed Mitchell, and even delved into the county’s UFO-related history.
Some may propose that the object Mitchell captured is merely a bug on the lens or some other equally pedestrian explanation. I contacted witness Todd Mitchell and he provided a link to three video clips, which he has uploaded to YouTube for your examination.
Mitchell acknowledges that some of the office to the back of the camera is reflected by the double pane window he shoots the video through. He identifies the small lights to the left and the center of the screen as the reflection of his “Dish Network rack system”. To the far right side, there is additional room reflection.
In Part 1, the video seemed perfectly normal until Mitchell drew my attention, about 10 seconds in, to a tiny, barely perceivable black dot off to the right of the screen, in the part of the sky just above a small tree. The dot moves slowly upward in a more-or-less straight line. Of all three of the objects appearing in these video clips, this one most clearly seems to demonstrate the crawling movement of a bug. It traverses the screen smoothly, seemingly unaffected by wind shear or changes in sky composition, as if creeping across a perfectly flat surface.
In Part 2, we see much more erratic moment, that is also consistent with bugs flying close to the lens. However, the smokey trailing effect following the movement is interesting, but may just indicate video blurring caused by extreme speed.
Part 3, is the most curious because at the last moment some commenters point out that the object seems to weave through a cloud.
When I asked Mitchell if he had ever experienced anything strange or paranormal before his response was, “Oh, heck, no!” “There’s a lot of things that you can generally explain or guess at. But for this I have no guesses,” he says.
When Mitchell’s footage went public, a Native American man stopped by the campground for a visit. He came to share with Mitchell the possibility that perhaps the mysterious sky dweller Mitchell captured on video was a sacred Thunder Being — a bringer of life, a protector of humanity, and an important part of the man’s native heritage. Mitchell intends to review past footage to see if there is any correlation between thunderstorms and the appearance of the strange objects. If there is some relationship to thunderstorms, perhaps that will help explain the similarities between Mitchell’s footage and another strange object spotted in Nebraska during a thunderstorm in 2015.
So what’s your take, is this simply the work of displaced insects attracted to the lights of the campground or could it be something far stranger?
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New Evidence of the Sahara’s Age
New Evidence of the Sahara’s Age
The Sahara Desert is vast, generously dusty, and surprisingly shy about its age. New research looking into what appears to be dust that the Sahara blew over to the Canary Islands is providing the first direct evidence from dry land that the age of the Sahara matches that found in deep-sea sediments: at least 4.6 million years old.
“People have been trying to figure it out for several decades,” said Daniel Muhs, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, Colorado. “More recent studies said it was the beginning of the Pleistocene (about 2.6 million years ago). Then others say a few thousand years ago.” Added to this is a model suggesting the Sahara Desert first appeared as far back as seven million years ago.
Desert dust from Africa is transported west to the Canary Islands and
the CapeVerde Islands every year. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image of “Calima” (dust storm) event on 8 March 2006, taken from the Terra satellite.
Image courtesy of Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA/GSFC.
There is also other evidence that the desert has taken breaks and had wetter, greener periods interspersed with arid times. It’s this sensitivity to climate—and the Sahara’s role in global climate—that makes the region so interesting to researchers.
The new work by Muhs and his colleagues in the Canary Islands focused on thick layers of fine reddish-brown soil found among layers of volcanic rocks and dune sands on Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria islands. The islands are off the west coast of North Africa, at the mouth of a spigot that seasonally pours windblown dust off of the Sahara and across the Atlantic Ocean. Muhs is presenting the results tomorrow at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Phoenix, Arizona.
View from the ground on the Canary Islands on 8 March 2006, when the Calima arrived.
Credit: Daniel Muhs.
Muhs’s and his colleagues’ mission was to find, identify, and date any layers of ancient African dust in what are called paleosols, or buried, ancient soils. In one coastal location studied, they found layers of dunes made from local shells of sea animals; in another, there were layers of lava from the volcanoes that built the islands. Both of these geologic archives contained paleosols made of very fine-grained minerals rich in quartz and mica—minerals that do not reflect the local geology of the islands. They do, however, reflect the minerals found on the nearby African mainland.
Luckily for the geologists, the lava flows that sandwich the windblown fine-grained quartz and mica layers made it possible to nail down approximate ages of the Saharan dust. This is because volcanic rocks contain minerals with what are essentially isotopic clocks that start ticking when the minerals in the lava cool and solidify. And since the layers of lava, paleosols, and other local soils are stacked chronologically with the youngest on top, the lava flows provide some boundaries of when the Sahara was dry enough to launch massive dusty storms out over the Atlantic.
A paleosol on the island of Gran Canaria, sandwiched between basalt flows dated to 3.0–2.9 million years ago—to the Pliocene.
Credit: Daniel Muhs.
In all, the researchers report eight paleosols that record African dust piling up in the Canaries between about 4.8 and 2.8 million years ago, 3.0 to 2.9 million years ago, and at about 400,000 years ago. The oldest paleosols agree with the deep-sea cores, which put the earliest Sahara dust to the Atlantic at about 4.6 million years ago.
That’s not to say the Sahara is 4.6-million-years-old. That’s only as old as Muhs and his colleagues could determine based on the paleosols and lavas they found.
“We could take it further back in time if we can find the paleosols,” Muhs said.
Muhs’s presentation is entitled The Antiquity of the Sahara Desert: New Evidence From the Mineralogy and Geochemistry of Pliocene Paleosols on the Canary Islands, Spain (Paper No. 76-1; https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2019AM/webprogram/Paper335207.html). It is scheduled for Monday, 23 Sept., at 8:05 am in Room 221AB, North Building of the Phoenix Convention Center. It is part of a session titled T2. Geomorphology and Climate Change in Hot Deserts.
Field work in this study for Muhs was supported by the Farouk El-Baz Award of the Geological Society of America
Contacts and sources:
Daniel Muhs, USGS Christa Stratton, Geological Society of America (GSA)
On Tuesday, April 25, 2001, a very strange object is reported by civilians and law enforcement officers in the evening skies near Waynesville, Ohio in Warren County.
From their residence near the 4600 Block of Wilkerson Road, a husband and wife are the first to report a circular lighted object hovering silently in the sky to the south of their location.
The big light of the UFO, pulsating or changing in both color and brightness, was said to be encased within a structure that resembled gridwork or cabling.
The couple advised the Lebanon City Police Department of the object around 10:15 p.m. and the Warren County Communications Center dispatched a Waynesville police officer to the location.
Upon arrival at the scene, the Waynesville officer confirmed the unidentifiable nature of the object and also reported that a second UFO was also in the area.
LOCAL: WHAT IS IT!
Unit #2W30: I have NO IDEA, and you wouldn’t believe it if you came out and saw it! There’s two of them, just sitting stationary and blinking, I mean about five different colors, right here on Wilkerson, just off of South Main Street…
FEMALE OFFICER: This is 480-16
Unit #2W30: I’m not kidding! Go ahead.
FEMALE OFFICER: Okay, we’re on the backside of that, here in the lot because I couldn’t stand it no more. Where is it at, is it in the air?
Unit #2W30: In the air! Okay? He’s got the owner of the house has some binoculars and we’re looking at these things and uh, it’s just I don’t know what they are!
They’re high up, they look like uh, they’re up there but with our binoculars though, the ones he’s got here, you can see them pretty clearly. There’s probably five different colors, there’s two of them and they’ve stayed in the exact same spot the whole time.
They’re not stars, I can tell you that.
As other officers respond to the location and continue to view the abnormalities, dispatchers at the Warren County Communications Center telephone a base operator at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton/Fairborne, Ohio and also places a call to Airborne Express at the Wilmington Airport in Clinton County, Ohio.
Both flight control facilities deny any knowledge of or responsibility for air traffic in the Waynesville, Ohio vicinity during the incident.
While the Waynesville police officers view the object from Wilkerson Road looking south, a police dispatcher also observes the same object from her position at the Warren County Communications Center in Lebanon, Ohio, looking north toward Waynesville. From review of the police tapes, it can be estimated that the primary object may have been in a general location between Waynesville and Lebanon near the intersections of Pekin Road and Route 42.
An officer with the Caesar’s Creek State Police also notes the UFO from his location to the east of Waynesville. A third UFO is sighted in the area during the event, and the police witnesses repeatedly affirm a cogent distinction between the suspected UFOs and routine stars and airplanes. The objects move off by receding further into the distance as other officers from the Ohio State Patrol arrive on the scene.
Dispatchers at the Ohio State Patrol and the Warren County Communications Center express frustration at having to handle this situation and their inability to address the reports and eyewitness confirmation from their officers.
The next evening, Wednesday, April 25, UFOs are again reported in the same area at 9:48 p.m., viewed from Wilkerson Road and also by officers observing from a location near the Waynesville Airport. Disturbingly, another unusual object is seen in the area seven hours later and reportedly pursues a motorist near Genntown, Ohio (about 5-miles from Waynesville).
A female complainant advises the Ohio State Patrol of her ‘extreme concern’ regarding a triangular object with “super bright lights” that pursued her automobile while traveling on Route 122 at 5:00 a.m., April 26.
These and other details were acquired from eyewitness interviews, analysis of various police reports and evaluation of police tapes acquired through the Warren County Director of Emergency Services. Additional data was gathered through field investigation conducted on April 27th and April 28th.
Consideration has been given to the possibility that this situation was engendered by a misperception of routine stars and planets by both civilians and police officers on both evenings. This theory was first advanced by Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center, who was advised of the incident by the Ohio State Patrol while the sighting was in progress.
The star ‘Sirius’ was identified by Davenport as a likely candidate for misperception, but after sober review of the police tapes acquired from the Warren County Department of Emergency Services, this attempt at explanation is not looked upon favorably.
UFO Sightings Not Less, But Reporting Them Is...But The Time Of Change Is Nearing, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Sightings Not Less, But Reporting Them Is...But The Time Of Change Is Nearing, UFO Sighting News.
A lot of people around the world are noticing a significant drop in UFO sightings, but thats not true. The sighting numbers are the same. Its just that most of American news agencies became extremely frightened when Trump was elected US president in 2016...the world changed, not just for the US, but world wide news agencies...they stopped reporting UFO sightings. Why you ask? Because Trump was carrying on about news agencies pushing fake news...not UFO or alien, but in politics. But US news agencies took this personal...and apparently Trumps two words "fake news," that he uses to deflect political news he hates...worked, but not in the political area. It hit the UFO research area hard. It cut 95% of the UFO news coming out of news agencies in the USA almost immediately. He also influenced Facebook, Google and Youtube to change their algorithms to begin to give less attention and less views to UFO and alien related discoveries.
By 2017, world news agencies globally began to stop reporting UFO sightings and alien structures that were discovered. They learn and copy the US in the way that they do things...and sadly adopted this negative trait...and so the world currently believes sightings are getting less and less. But you and I know thats not true.
Even I have slowed down...not because I'm burning out or getting tired or can't find anything to report, but honestly I'm waiting for Trump to exit his presidential office. Its that moment in time that UFO news will stand a chance to begin to get back into the US and world news. But right now...many reporters seem to admire Trump too much and take his words to heart too much. Its like giving a kid a hammer...everything becomes a nail. So...UFO news takes the biggest hit, which leaves real sightings unreported and leaves many eyewitnesses not reporting too, because they see world news is frowning upon such things.
So...I have been waiting...since last year when I was thinking about this...and I am still waiting, holding back. Saving my energy and passion for the right moment in the race. Saving some of my best discoveries. The time is getting near.
Here is an older sighting that I had never seen before, so I will post it here. A UFO cloud was seen back in March of 2017 over Scotland and as it passed over a hill...a colorful thick rainbow appeared linking the ground to the UFO. I believe that the UFO was of course beaming people and supplies down to an underground base about 4-6km below the ground. An incredible once in a lifetime sighting. In my 15 years of reporting UFOs, I have never seen a UFO that created a rainbow. I have seen them in the rainbow or near it, but this is a first. Scott C. Waring
Identical elongated UFOs filmed over France and Costa Rica
Identical elongated UFOs filmed over France and Costa Rica
Identical elongated UFOs have been filmed over France and Costa Rica respectively on September 22, 2019 and May 7, 2019.
While UFO is a descriptive term for an unknown type of flying craft it is noteworthy that sightings of cigar-shaped UFOs traveling in our atmosphere or traveling in space f.e. next to Orion Nebula have been reported much more than any other type of UFOs over the years.
Both videos show the objects in real time as well as in still and enlarged images.
NASA’S NEW BLACK HOLE SIMULATION WILL COMPLETELY MELT YOUR BRAIN
NASA’S NEW BLACK HOLE SIMULATION WILL COMPLETELY MELT YOUR BRAIN
NASA
VICTOR TANGERMANN
Hungry Hungry
A new trippy visualization by NASA researchers shows how a black hole distorts its appearance by skewing the matter around it and warping the light itself with its immense gravity.
Gigantic black holes often appear at the center of large galaxies, where they pack an immense amount of matter into a tiny space. The resulting gravitational field eats up everything, including light.
Warp Zone
In the visualization, the yellow highlights are twisting magnetic fields as they’re making their way through churning gas. The inside gas nearest to the hole itself orbits the hole at almost the speed of light, according to a NASA statement.
The reason it has separate rings jutting out of the bottom is because of intense gravitational forces bending the light emitted by the disk, thereby providing a view of the disk’s underside.
Warping Space And Time
A team of scientists used NASA’s Event Horizon Telescope to snap the first-ever image of a black hole to the world back in April. Scientists are already working on getting an even crisper, higher resolution shot using two or three satellites.
NASA also helpfully included a labelled image of the highlights of its visualization.
‘Stealth Supersonic Spy Jet’ Spotted Near Oregon Air Base Leaves Conspiracy Theorists Guessing
‘Stealth Supersonic Spy Jet’ Spotted Near Oregon Air Base Leaves Conspiracy Theorists Guessing
Something that was universally deemed to be an exotic triangular object made its way over Portland, Oregon, arousing vast speculation over covert USAF projects, both past and present.
There has emerged a series of images supposedly showing a shadow project government spy plane in the skies over Portland, Oregon in the US, apparently a stone’s throw from the Portland Air National Guard Base (PANG). The authenticity of the images has yet to be verified, however.
The triangular, partially lit-up object featured in the snaps couldn’t help but intrigue the vast audience of YouTube conspiracy theorists Blake and Brett Cousins of thirdphaseofmoon, who posted the pictures in a clip over the weekend, citing “multiple accounts” from a number of onlookers in the area.
In the clip, Blake noted that the sighting, more specifically the contours, bears a striking resemblance to the alleged “infamous” TR-3B Black Manta – an aircraft that is thought to have been developed for the US Air Force as part of a black project.
Many have long speculated that the supersonic stealth plane, with a recognisable triangular design, was used during the Gulf War to provide laser designation for the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk attack aircraft.
Blake went on to suggest that the craft in the images was most certainly “military”, given the light it was throwing back.
“FINALLY! It's About To Get Real...TR-3B Pang Base Portland”, the website founders wrote, while another user commented in the same manner:
“Great picture of a TR-3B.”
There were, however, those who thought other options would be even more plausible:
“Judging by the pic that’s not the TR3. That’s the new Stealth AI Drone”, one astonished viewer noted, while another butted in, saying that he would rule out CGI (computer-generated imagery).
Hordes of fans applauded the footage, bringing up the military base in the vicinity: one even suggested that it could be a new stealth drone, the XQ-58A.
Another went deeper into the conspiracy theory, suggesting “they want to be seen” as “it’s part of how they control disclosure”.
“This IS NOT definitely a TR3B! It looks like an F45”, a user commented, with another chiming in with a completely different idea in mind:
“That is a Large Extra-terrestrial Craft. The 2nd clip. The entire ship is phasing in from another dimension and somehow how only exposing its lights. The ship does not reveal its true form for safety reasons (its [sic] massive, that's an understatement), and also due to compassion for us”, the user explained.
The idea about the military testing new equipment is recurrent, though:
“This is not a UFO/this is military aircraft. They were out testing”, one suggested, with another adding: “I saw what looked like an Air Force logo near the nose of the craft”.
Photo: Saucer-Shaped UFO Spotted in Daytime Over Doolin, Ireland
Photo: Saucer-Shaped UFO Spotted in Daytime Over Doolin, Ireland
A local resident was on 19 August reportedly trying to make a spectacular photo of his red-colored car parked on a rocky plain with beautiful bushy clouds in the background. After he returned home, a shocking and unexpected detail appeared on the picture.
The Irish driver noticed a thick and black disk hiding in the clouds.
The Irish driver noticed a thick and black disk hiding in the clouds
The purported alien space ship had visible those classic saucer-shaped features. Notably, the UFO was pictured seemingly tilted - according to hunters for an extraterrestrial - crucial sign that the object was flying when it was accidentally captured on camera.
According to UFO pundit Scott C. Waring, the owner of the thematic online source which broke this news, the sighting of such aerial phenomena has become statistically rare recently, because "In a world where everyone is looking down at their phone, its no wonder why sightings are down this year...few people bother looking up at the sky".
Overnight changes in Mars’ atmosphere could solve a methane mystery
Overnight changes in Mars’ atmosphere could solve a methane mystery
Atmospheric gases may mix differently as the planet’s surface moves in and out of sunshine
The Curiosity Mars rover, shown in a self-portrait taken in May, detected a much higher concentration of methane gas on the ground than an overhead orbiter did. Now there may be an explanation.
Methane released in Gale crater stays in Gale crater. An overnight change in the Martian atmosphere could hold the gas close to the ground until morning, explaining why the Curiosity rover caught a whiff of methane while an overhead orbiter found none.
The theory offers “a way for the two measurements to live in harmony with each other,” says planetary scientist John Moores of York University in Toronto. He and his colleagues lay out the theory’s details online August 20 in Geophysical Research Letters.
Methane should last no more than about 300 years in the Martian atmosphere before sunlight breaks it down. “To see a seasonal cycle tells you that something is actively producing or destroying methane in the present time,” Moores says. Microbes produce methane on Earth, so finding the gas on the Red Planet has been seen as a possible sign of life — although not a definitive one.
Methane “can be produced by abiotic processes,” says Dorothy Oehler, a planetary geologist and astrobiologist with the Planetary Science Institute who is based in Houston. “But even if it’s not directly related to biology, it can enhance habitability for other kinds of microbes. So it’s an important thing to be seeking,” says Oehler, who was not involved in the new study.
Curiosity measured average methane concentrations of 0.41 parts per billion inside Gale crater, a 154-kilometer-wide depression near Mars’ equator. So it was a surprise when the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter, part of the ExoMars mission which arrived at Mars in 2016 (SN: 10/18/16), flew over Gale crater and found no methane at all. There could still be minuscule methane concentrations below 0.05 parts per billion in the atmosphere that the Trace Gas Orbiter can’t smell, the satellite team reported in Nature April 10.
Even so, “it is hard to reconcile those” different findings, Moores says. If Mars is oozing enough methane that Curiosity would sense so much, there should be enough methane in the atmosphere for the orbiter to detect.
But Moores’ team noticed a coincidence: Curiosity took all its methane measurements at night, when the rover is standing still and charging its batteries. Night could also mark a time when gases mix differently in the Martian atmosphere than they do in the daytime, the team realized.
During the day, sunlight warms the air, creating currents and convection that mix different molecules together. So, methane in the daytime atmosphere can get mixed up and diluted. But overnight, the air calms and methane could build up near the surface, where Curiosity can sniff it. At sunrise, the methane would get diluted again.
The idea is plausible, and the argument in the paper is convincing, says planetary scientist Sébastien Viscardy of the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy in Brussels, a member of the Trace Gas Orbiter team. But the theory doesn’t explain everything, he says.
For one thing, Moores and colleagues calculated that, to be consistent with both measurements, only 27,000 square kilometers of Mars’ surface should emit methane at a constant rate. That’s an area equivalent to 1½ Gale craters.
And “it’s difficult to imagine that only Gale emits methane,” Moores says. “Either Gale is even more special than we imagine, or there’s something we’re missing in the chemistry of the atmosphere.”
The bigger problem, Viscardy says, is that the different nighttime methane concentrations detected don’t explain the periodic spikes in methane that Curiosity has also observed (SN: 4/28/15). Those spikes showed huge methane increases occurring at random intervals throughout Curiosity’s mission. The most recent spike, in June 2019, was the largest plume yet observed, with methane levels of about 20 parts per billion, about 50 times above the seasonal average. Within a few days, though, detected methane levels returned to normal.
So the daily change in atmospheric mixing “solves a very small problem, but not the global methane story,” Viscardy says.
What were the mystery fireballs of Devon? Police launch urgent search after 'two fireballs tear through sky' sparking 999 calls over fears of a plane crash
What were the mystery fireballs of Devon? Police launch urgent search after 'two fireballs tear through sky' sparking 999 calls over fears of a plane crash
Two bright lights spotted over south coast of England early this morning
Sparked several 999 calls from witnesses concerned it was a plane crash
Devon and Cornwall police have searched the area and are 'satisfied' it was not a plane crash but more likely an asteroid
Police in Devon are investigating a mysterious bright object spotted falling across the night sky over the south coast.
Two 'fireballs' sparked several 999 calls, with witnesses suspecting there could have been a plane crash.
Plymouth police reached out to the public to try and establish the cause, questioning whether it might have been asteroids breaking up in the atmosphere.
'Did anybody else see two glowing objects falling southwesterly direction out towards Plymouth sound? I know I have been up all night, but that was odd. Asteroid?' the force tweeted.
Plymouth police reached out to the public to attempt to identify a mysterious bright object spotted falling across the night sky over the south coast, questioning whether it might have been asteroids breaking up in the atmosphere
Another officer responded with a picture they managed to take of the bright light at around 5.52am this morning.
The Force Incident Manager for Devon and Cornwall Police said: 'We have had further reports of seeing an object in the sky from some distance away with a trajectory towards the ground, with an item falling off it at some point.
'There have been reports it broke into two and this has come from numerous people.
'We’ve got two aircrafts in the air looking and doing aerial searches of the area. At the moment we are saying it is the Yelverton/Tavistock/Prince Town area.'
Sightings were also reported across the South Coast of England, London and Wales in the minutes before 6am.
In a further update, officers in Devon have ruled out the possibility of a plane crash due to a lack of debris, suggesting it was more likely a meteor shower.
Insp John Shuttleworth said: 'We are as satisfied as we can be that this has not been a light aircraft crash and no persons have been injured.
'The expert opinion of trained search officers is that if there had been an aircraft crash, assets in the air would have seen some debris.
'There have also been a couple of reports from the Cardiff and Dorset areas of people watching meteor showers across the South West.'
WASHINGTON DC – On September 7, the US mini space shuttle X-37B completed two years in orbit. Today it is one of the most enigmatic space apparatuses, as very little information about its mission is known.
Some experts are confident that this spacecraft pursues purely military purposes.
The NASA space agency and the US company Boeing began to carry out the project related to the construction of the X-37 in 1999. At the beginning of the works, its manufacturers considered that the device would be dedicated to repair satellites located at an altitude of up to 700 kilometers. Later however, the military fully classified this project and commissioned it to carry out the Advanced Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
This spacecraft’s previous mission ended in May 2017 after remaining 718 days in orbit. On October 7, 2017, the X-37B made its fifth flight in space and is still there today.
Secret Mission
Although the device has been in orbit for two years, experts can only make assumptions about the tasks this shuttle can perform in space. According to one version, the US military conducts experiments aboard the X-37B. In particular, NASA investigates the influence the space environment has on different materials.
The director of the Space Policy Institute, Ivan Moiseev, explained to Sputnik that this device was created especially for use by the Pentagon. According to the agency’s interlocutor, the X-37B carries smaller intelligence satellites.
Why does X-37B ‘scare’ Washington’s enemies?
Former US Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has almost confirmed the military designation of this spacecraft. Under the policy, the machine’s unusual maneuverability “drives” potential US enemies crazy.
“[…] Our enemies do not know where they will be later, as this occurs on the hidden side of the earth. We know that this lack of knowledge makes them crazy and I am really happy about it,” emphasized the employee quoted by various averages.
Answer from Russia
Ivan Moiseev recalled that the spacecraft’s current orbit passes over the equator, and it is unlikely that the spacecraft will actively change its position using its aerodynamic characteristics.
“To change its tilt and stand on Russia, the X-37B needs to expend a lot of energy that it cannot generate by itself,” he explains.
Moreover, nowadays Russia is one of the largest space powers in the world. Its advanced space control systems can track the flight of US satellites and easily detect all their movements.
“Watching the X-37B is an easier task for us. It’s so big that you just have to turn right or left and then we can figure it out,” Russian Aerospace Forces Major General Anatoly Nesterechuk said.
Not only does Russia now have surveillance satellites, it also has X-37B-like ship-fighting devices. These systems can neutralize them if they pose a threat to your national security.
NASA news: What is this giant black hole on Jupiter? JunoCam snaps stunning pictures
NASA news: What is this giant black hole on Jupiter? JunoCam snaps stunning pictures
NASA’S Juno spacecraft snapped this incredible image of a giant black hole cropping up on the surface of Jupiter – but what is this dark spot blemishing the Gas Giant?
NASA’s spacecraft snapped this stunning portrait of Jupiter during one of its closest flybys of the Gas Giant. The flyby, or perijove, was the 22nd close brush with the planet that took place on September 11 this year. NASA’s Juno performs frequent dives towards Jupiter to study the planet’s surface and takes stunning snapshots of its atmospheric features. In this mesmerising photo, the probe appears to have snapped a large black hole in the upper hemisphere of the planet.
NASA news: What is this large black hole on the surface of Jupiter?
NASA news: The images were snapped by NASA's Juno spacecraft
(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill)
As a result, the moon blotted out the sunlight and cast its round shadow onto the cloudy surface of Jupiter.
Your labours of love have illustrated articles about Juno, Jupiter and JunoCam
NASA
In essence, NASA’s probe witnessed a solar eclipse on Jupiter from high up in orbit.
Raw images of the Jovian eclipse were shared on NASA’s JunoCam directory where amateur astronomers and space enthusiasts have an opportunity to process them.
This particular image was tweaked and processed by software engineer Kevin Gill.
Members of the public are invited to dive into the JunoCam directory to have a go at processing the images.
Some of the best user-submitted images are often put on display by the US space agency.
NASA said: “We invite you to download them, do your own image processing, and we encourage you to upload your creations for us to enjoy and share.
“The types of image processing we’d love to see range from simply cropping an image to highlighting a particular atmospheric feature, as well as adding your own colour enhancements, creating collages and adding advanced colour reconstruction.
NASA news: The dark spot is a solar eclipse of the Galilean moon Io
(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltec /SwRI/MSSS/AstroHD)
“For those of you who have contributed – thank you. Your labours of love have illustrated articles about Juno, Jupiter and JunoCam.”
NASA’s Juno launched into space on August 5, 2011, but it did not reach Jupiter until July 2016.
The spacecraft is the second probe to reach the Gas Giant after Galileo between 1995 and 2003.
Once the mission comes to an end, NASA will deorbit the spacecraft to burn up in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
NASA news: The Juno probe reached Jupiter in July 2016
(Image: NASA)
NASA said: “Juno's principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter.
“Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation.
“As our primary example of a giant planet, Jupiter can also provide critical knowledge for understanding the planetary systems being discovered around other stars.”
The Juno probe is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
Quick facts about the planet Jupiter:
1. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in our solar system.
2. Just like Saturn, the Gas Giant has rings but they are too faint to see.
3. Astronomers believed Jupiter does not have a surface but does have a solid core about the size of Earth.
4. The Gas Giant boats a total of 79 moons of its own.
5. A single day on Jupiter lasts only 10 hours.
6. The clouds on Jupiter are estimated to be about 31 miles (50km) thick.
7. Jupiter’s largest moons were discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610.
8. The Gas Giant weighs twice as much as all the other planets in the system combined.
9. Eleven Earths can fit in a straight line across Jupiter’s equator.
10. The planet’s iconic Great Red Spot is a storm that is bigger than our planet.
The Moon may provide the most efficient method of obtaining evidence for alien life, a groundbreaking new scientific paper has proposed. Harvard astronomers Professor Abraham Loeb and Manasvi Lingam suggest in a new paper how the lunar surface could act as a “fishing net” for interstellar objects. Such objects from outside our solar system could collected over time on the lunar surface and potentially store the building blocks of life from the habitable environments around other stars.
The pair wrote in their paper: “The lack of a lunar atmosphere guarantees that these messengers will not burn up on their way but instead reach the lunar surface.
Will the unique qualities of the lunar surface enable new frontiers in astronomy?
Professor Abraham Loeb
“In addition, the geological inactivity of the Moon implies that the record deposited on its surface will be preserved and not get mixed with the deep lunar interior.
“Serving as a natural mailbox, the lunar surface collected all impacting objects over the past few billions of years.
“Most of this ‘mail’ originated from our neighbourhood within the Solar System.”
Alien life news: Might ET evidence be accumulating on the lunar surface?
Alien life news: Harvard's Professor Abraham Loeb the lunar surface could act as a “fishing net”(Image: Getty)(Image: Getty)
Space scientists now know the Solar System also intercepts external objects from interstellar space.
These range from dust particles to free-floating planets and stars.
The first interstellar object, the 200m long cigar-shaped `Oumuamua, made headlines around the world when it was first reported in 2017.
And earlier this year another was tentatively discovered in the form of one metre-size meteor from outside the Solar system, after burning-up in our atmosphere in 2014.
On the assumption these interstellar enter the Solar System on random trajectories, Professor Loeb and his team estimated the amount of interstellar material collected on the surface of the Moon over its history.
And although Moon rocks were famously returned to Earth by the NASA Apollo mission, they were likely contaminated by human hands.
This, they argue is the reason why evidence of interstellar impactors carrying the building blocks of extraterrestrial life has yet to be discovered on the lunar surface.
Professor Loeb wrote in Scientific American: “The fundamental question is whether distant life resembles the biochemical structures we find on Earth.
“Similarities might imply that there exists a unique chemical path for life everywhere or that life was transferred between systems.
“Either way, a lunar study shortcuts the need to send spacecrafts on extremely long missions to visit other star systems.
Getting similar information from a trip to the nearest star system: Alpha Centauri A, B or C, would take nearly nine years even if the spacecraft were to travel at the maximum speed allowed in nature, the speed of light.
Chemical rockets, meanwhile, could make this journey only after a hundred thousand years, of order the time that elapsed since the first modern humans began migrating out of Africa.
The Harvard astronomers conclude: “Excavating the lunar surface for physical evidence of etraterrestrial life is dramatically faster.”
Maps are handy for travel. But what if you’re traveling to a place never before visited? For the ExoMars mission, due to launch next summer, scientists have developed new 3-D models of the area to be explored, which may be an old Martian river delta.
Here’s a piece of one of the new 3-D models just created to help ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover explore Mars in 2021. The models are so detailed that they show, for example, as dune ripples inside craters, as you see here.
Image via TU Dortmund/ NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ Europlanet.
How do modern-day space explorers prepare to search an unknown terrain? Never mind that the explorers are robots, and that the preparers are space scientists and engineers. Next summer, an ambitious new mission to Mars is scheduled to launch. The ExoMars mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) will carry the robotic Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars. The rover will search for evidence of past Martian life in Oxia Planum, a large plain rich in clays and containing an old river delta. How do they prepare? A team of scientists at TU Dortmund Universityin Germany has created extremely detailed 3-D models of the landing location. These scientists said on September 16, 2019 that they want to use the models to understand the geography and geological characteristics of this unexplored region on Mars, and to help plan the path of the rover.
The 3-D models are called Digital Terrain Models (DTMs). They’re a variation of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) used by space scientists to understand planets, moons and asteroids. These particular maps have a resolution of about 25 centimeters per pixel. One of scientists, Kay Wohlfarth, presented them at last week’s international meeting of astronomers in Geneva, Switzerland.
First, they use high-resolution imagery of Mars’ surface from the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). That imagery is then applied to the classic stereo method of combining two images taken from slightly different angles, in order to create a 3D image of the landscape. But those kinds of stereo techniques can be limited when it comes to dusty and sandy surfaces – basically featureless – in locations like the Rosalind Franklin landing site, Oxia Planum. By necessity, the landing site is relatively flat to help ensure a safe landing.
The DTMs were then further enhanced by using a technique called Shape from Shading in which the intensity of reflected light in the image is translated into information on surface slopes. The slope data is combined with the stereo imagery, providing a much better estimate of the 3-D surface, while achieving the best resolution possible in the reconstructed landscape.
The resulting models give the scientists a much more detailed view of the landing region. As Wohlfarth explained:
With the technique, even small-scale details such as dune ripples inside craters and rough bedrock can be reproduced.
Artist’s illustration of the Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars, part of ESA’s ExoMars mission.
We have taken special care over the interaction between light and the Martian surface. Areas that are tilted towards the sun appear brighter and areas that are facing away appear darker. Our approach uses a joint reflectance and atmospheric model that incorporates reflection by the surface as well as atmospheric effects that diffuse and scatter light.
These new models will be a great aid to the rover as it navigates the landscape, looking for the best places to study with its array of instruments. Not only will the rover examine rocks and soil, it will also be able to drill up to two meters (six feet) into the subsurface, searching for possible biosignatures, chemical traces of past life. Samples will be delivered to the on-board laboratory for analysis.
PanCam, with its stereo and high-resolution cameras, will provide detailed views of interesting features in both visible and near-infrared wavelengths. Spectrometers will determine what rocks are composed of, and how much they were affected by water.
The rover’s drill in a clean room on Earth, in the stowed position. The drill will be able to penetrate down to two meters (six feet) into the subsurface.
According to Jorge Vago, ESA’s ExoMars rover project scientist:
Our rover has really taken shape. We have an incredibly powerful scientific payload to explore the surface and subsurface of Mars on our quest to find biosignatures.
ExoMars will be an exciting mission, and along with NASA’s upcoming 2020 rover, the first since the Viking mission in the 1970s/1980s to look directly for evidence of life. The rover is expected to launch sometime between July 26 and August 13, 2020 on a Russian Proton-M launcher, arriving at Mars in March 2021.
More information about ExoMars mission is available on the mission website.
Bottom line: New 3-D models of the Martian terrain will help the Rosalind Franklin rover search for life on Mars in 2021.
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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 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.