Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 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...
10-11-2019
Is a New Particle Changing the Fate of the Universe?
Is a New Particle Changing the Fate of the Universe?
Ever since our universe emerged from an explosion of a tiny speck of infinite density and gravity, it has been ballooning, and not at a steady rate, either — the expansion of the universe keeps getting faster.
But how quickly it's expanding has been up for a dizzying debate. Measurements of this expansion rate from nearby sources seem to be in conflict with the same measurement taken from distant sources. One possible explanation is that, basically, something funky is going on in the universe, changing the expansion rate.
And one theorist has proposed that a brand-new particle has emerged and is altering the future destiny of our entire cosmos.
Astronomers have devised multiple clever ways of measuring what they call the Hubble parameter, or Hubble constant (denoted for the folks with busy lives as H0). This number represents the expansion rate of the universe today.
One way to measure the expansion rate today is to look at nearby supernovas, the explosion of gas and dust launched from the universe's largest stars upon their death. There's a particular kind of supernova that has a very specific brightness, so we can compare how bright they look to how bright we know they're supposed to be and calculate the distance. Then, by looking at the light from the supernova's host galaxy, astrophysicists can also calculate how fast they are moving away from us. By putting all the pieces together, we then can calculate the universe's expansion rate.
But there's more to the universe than exploding stars. There's also something called the cosmic microwave background, which is the leftover light from just after the Big Bang, when our universe was a mere baby, only 380,000 years old. With missions like the Planck satellite tasked with mapping this remnant radiation, scientists have incredibly precise maps of this background, which can be used to get a very accurate picture of the contents of the universe. And from there, we can take those ingredients and run the clock forward with computer models and be able to say what the expansion rate should be today — assuming that the fundamental ingredients of the universe haven’t changed since then.
These two estimates disagree by enough to make people a little bit worried that we're missing something.
Look to the dark side
Perhaps, one or both measurements are incorrect or incomplete; plenty of scientists on either side of the debate are slinging the appropriate amount of mud at their opponents. But if we assume that both measurements are accurate, then we need something else to explain the different measurements. Since one measurement comes from the very early universe, and another comes from more relatively recent time, the thinking is that maybe some new ingredient in the cosmos is altering the expansion rate of the universe in a way that we didn’t already capture in our models.
And what's dominating the expansion of the universe today is a mysterious phenomenon that we call dark energy. It's an awesome name for something we basically don't understand. All we know is that the expansion rate of the universe today is accelerating, and we call the force driving this acceleration "dark energy."
In our comparisons from the young universe to the present-day universe, physicists assume that dark energy (whatever it is) is constant. But with this assumption, we have the present disagreement, so maybe dark energy is changing.
I guess it's worth a shot. Let’s assume that dark energy is changing.
Scientists have a sneaking suspicion that dark energy has something to do with the energy that's locked into the vacuum of space-time itself. This energy comes from all of the “quantum fields” that permeate the universe.
In modern quantum physics, every single kind of particle is tied to its own particular field. These fields wash through all of space-time, and sometimes bits of the fields get really excited in places, becoming the particles that we know and love — like electrons and quarks and neutrinos. So all the electrons belong to the electron field, all the neutrinos belong to the neutrino field, and so on. The interaction of these fields form the fundamental basis for our understanding of the quantum world.
And no matter where you go in the universe, you can’t escape the quantum fields. Even when they’re not vibrating enough in a particular location to make a particle, they’re still there, wiggling and vibrating and doing their normal quantum thing. So these quantum fields have a fundamental amount of energy associated with them, even in the bare empty vacuum itself.
If we want to use the exotic quantum energy of the vacuum of space-time to explain dark energy, we immediately run into problems. When we perform some very simple, very naive calculations of how much energy there is in the vacuum due to all the quantum fields, we end up with a number that is about 120 orders of magnitude stronger than what we observe dark energy to be. Whoops.
On the other hand, when we try some more sophisticated calculations, we end up with a number that is zero. Which also disagrees with the measured amount of dark energy. Whoops again.
So no matter what, we have a really hard time trying to understand dark energy through the language of the vacuum energy of space-time (the energy created by those quantum fields). But if these measurements of the expansion rate are accurate and dark energy really is changing, then this might give us a clue into the nature of those quantum fields. Specifically, if dark energy is changing, that means that the quantum fields themselves have changed.
A new enemy appears
In a recent paper published online in the preprint journal arXiv, theoretical physicist Massimo Cerdonio at the University of Padova has calculated the amount of change in the quantum fields needed to account for the change in dark energy.
If there is a new quantum field that's responsible for the change in dark energy, that means there is a new particle out there in the universe.
And the amount of change in dark energy that Cerdonio calculated requires a certain kind of particle mass, which turns out to be roughly the same mass of a new kind of particle that's already been predicted: the so-called axion. Physicists invented this theoretical particle to solve some problems with our quantum understanding of the strong nuclear force.
This particle presumably appeared in the very early universe, but has been "lurking" in the background while other forces and particles controlled the direction of the universe. And now it's the axion's turn ...
Even so, we've never detected an axion, but if these calculations are correct, then that means that the axion is out there, filling up the universe and its quantum field. Also, this hypothetical axion is already making itself noticeable by changing the amount of dark energy in the cosmos. So it could be that even though we've never seen this particle in the laboratory, it's already altering our universe at the very largest of scales.
Apollo sample processors Andrea Mosie (left), Charis Krysher and Juliane Gross unseal Apollo 17 previously-untouched lunar sample 73002 inside a science glovebox at Johnson Space Center's Lunar Curation Laboratory in Houston on Nov. 5, 2019.
NASA has unsealed one of its last untouched samples of Apollo moon rock to prepare for the return of new material by future lunar missions.
Scientists at Johnson Space Center's Lunar Curation Laboratory in Houston opened the Apollo 17-recovered sample on Tuesday (Nov. 5). The 1.5-inch-wide (4-centimeter) tube holding the small stash of moon rocks and dust was sealed by astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt during the second of their three moonwalks on Dec. 12, 1972.
The 15 ounces (430 grams) of moon material, collected as part of a core sample taken near the rim of Lara Crater, had remained unopened but not under vacuum since being brought to Earth 47 years ago.
"The analysis of these samples will maximize the science return from Apollo, as well as enable a new generation of scientists and curators to refine their techniques and help prepare future explorers for lunar missions anticipated in the 2020s and beyond," said Sarah Noble, the program scientist for NASA's Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) initiative at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.
"We are able to make measurements today that were just not possible during the years of the Apollo program," said Noble in a statement.
View of Apollo 17 core sample 73002, which scientists unsealed for the first time on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019.
(Image credit: NASA/James Blair)
Exposing the moon
The Apollo program brought a total of 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of moon rock and regolith (or soil) back to Earth. Most of those samples, which were gathered by 12 astronauts on six moon-landing missions, have been the subjects of past and present studies. The majority of the samples are held today at Johnson Space Center, with a smaller collection stored off-site for safe keeping.
The sample opened on Tuesday, assigned the ID number 73002, was the upper segment of a 2-foot-long (0.6-meter) "drive tube." The bottom segment, sample 73001, is slated to be opened in January. Together they are the first untouched Apollo moon rock samples to be opened since the 1970s.
The drive tube was used to collect core samples that preserved the vertical layering within the soil, including information about landslides on the moon, and a record of the volatiles trapped within the lunar regolith, perhaps even those escaping from along the Lee-Lincoln Scarp, a fault at the Apollo 17 landing site.
Side by side comparison of scans taken of Apollo 17 core sample 73002: radiograph technology scan in 1974 by NASA and X-ray computed microtomography scan taken in 2019 at the University of Texas at Austin.
(Image credit: NASA/UT Austin)
"Opening these samples now will enable new scientific discoveries about the moon and will allow a new generation of scientists to refine their techniques to better study future samples," said Francis McCubbin, NASA's astromaterials curator at Johnson.
Advances in research techniques, including non-destructive 3D imaging, mass spectrometry and ultra-high resolution microtomy, will allow for a coordinated study of samples 73001 and 73002 at an unprecedented scale. In March, NASA chose nine science teams at agency centers, federal laboratories and universities to examine the pristine samples using these new technologies and processes.
Two other drive-tube samples, one each from Apollo 15 and Apollo 16, will become the only lunar material caches to be kept untouched.
Scanned then unsealed
Before opening sample 73002, the still-sealed tube underwent X-ray computer tomography at the University of Texas Austin to produce a high-resolution, 3D image of the regolith within. The imaging helped scientists understand the sample's structure before unsealing the container and will aid in the dissection and distribution of the sample to the research teams now that it is open.
The scan will also help protect fragile soil components from damage during the tube's processing and provide details of the individual grains and smaller samples, known as "rocklets."
Following the X-ray analysis, the samples will be removed from their tube using specialized tools inside a science glovebox filled with ultra-pure dry nitrogen. The regolith will be portioned into 0.25 inch (0.6 cm) segments, providing scientists the opportunity to understand variation along the length of the core.
This is the first time that NASA has processed a drive tube like this in more than 25 years and curation scientists have been hard at work over the past few months rehearsing the process.
Apollo 17 moonwalker Gene Cernan preparing to collect samples 73001 and 73002 at Station 3 on Dec. 12, 1972.
(Image credit: NASA)
"I grew up on the stories of Apollo, they inspired me to pursue a career in space and now I have an opportunity to contribute to the studies that are enabling the next missions to the moon," said Charis Krysher, the lunar sample processor who was tasked with unsealing the tube on Tuesday. "To be the one to open a sample that hasn't been opened since it was collected on the moon is such an honor and heavy responsibility, we're touching history."
Unlike 73002, the lower drive tube sample 73001 was sealed on the moon in a special vacuum container and then placed in another vacuum container and sealed again once on Earth. According to NASA, that sample will be opened after scientists finetune their plan for capturing the moon's gases that were caught in the container along with the sample itself.
Once 73001 is unsealed, it will be processed in a science glovebox and similarly shared with the scientific teams selected for the ANGSA research.
SpaceX is planning to launch the second installment of its Starlink megaconstellation on Monday (Nov. 11), and astronomers are waiting to see — well, precisely what they will see.
When the company launched its first set of Starlink internet satellites in May, those with their eyes attuned to the night sky immediately realized that the objects were incredibly bright. Professional astronomers worried the satellites would interfere with scientific observations and amateur appreciation of the stars.
"That first few nights, it was like, 'Holy not-publishable-word,'" Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Space.com. "That kind of was the wake-up call."
SpaceX and its leader, Elon Musk, reassured astronomers that once the satellites settled into place, they would stop masquerading as the stars they are named for. McDowell wanted to confirm the accuracy of Musk's statement, so he asked an email Listserv of amateur astronomers to wait for the first batch of Starlink satellites to reach their final orbit, then compare the brightness of specific satellites to the stars around them.
Those observations started in July. McDowell hasn't completed an exhaustive analysis, but he said the preliminary results are concerning, with Starlink satellites regularly clocking in at magnitudes between 4 and 7, which is bright enough to see without a telescope. "The bottom-line answer is, you can consistently see these things," he said.
The initial Starlink launch carried 60 satellites, but that's just a tiny fraction of what SpaceX has described as its long-term plan, of launching tens of thousands of the devices in orbit. "When you're talking about 30,000 satellites, and many above the horizon at any one time, that's what's new about this," McDowell said. "It's not going to be just the occasional interference, it's going to be continual."
McDowell and his colleagues specializing in optical astronomy aren't used to having to ignore technology masquerading as astronomy. But it's a position radio astronomers are quite familiar with, since satellites send data back to their humans in radio frequencies. "That was something that people realized was coming," he said, "whereas the light-pollution aspect caught us by surprise."
In response to the outcry, Musk said in May that he "sent a note to Starlink team last week specifically regarding albedo reduction," which refers to the amount of light reflected by the satellites. In a separate tweet regarding the issue, Musk also said that SpaceX doesn't intend to interfere with optical astronomy. "That said, we’ll make sure Starlink has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy. We care a great deal about science," he wrote.
But McDowell complained that SpaceX hasn't provided any details about what modifications the satellites could endure and how much they would dim. He hopes to repeat his brightness check once the Starlink satellites that SpaceX plans to launch next week reach their final orbits.
"We can hope that that will improve things, but let's see, the proof is in the pudding, right?" he said. "All we can do right now is go on what they've actually put up there. And what they've actually put up there are really bright satellites that if you had many thousands of them would represent a serious change to the night sky."
For McDowell, the concern is about more than Starlink or SpaceX specifically. "This whole new scale of space industrialization means that this is a problem that we have to start worrying about, and in fact, should have started worrying about 10 years ago," he said. "I'm not trying to say we absolutely shouldn't do megaconstellations. But let's phase it in, let's assess the degree of light pollution, let's manage it as a resource."
He hopes that the space community adopts general practices about how much light pollution individual projects can produce, paralleling existing guidelines for managing space debris. "We thought we could ignore the space age in astronomy, but it's here," McDowell said. "Now we have to take it seriously and deal with the impacts on ground-based astronomy."
India has launched just three planetary-science spacecraft, but the country is already eyeing a new destination: Venus.
Scientists and engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have sent plans for a Venus orbiter to the Indian national government and are hoping they'll get approval to go ahead with the mission. The spacecraft could launch in just a few years and would carry more than a dozen instruments.
"The major objective is to map the Venusian surface and subsurface," Nigar Shaji, an ISRO scientist, told a group of Venus experts during a meeting held this week in Colorado.
According to Shaji, the Venus orbiter that ISRO is designing would be able to create such a dataset for Venus in about a year. In addition to mapping the surface itself, looking a bit deeper into the planet should help scientists identify volcanic hotspots scattered across Venus.
Instruments onboard the spacecraft would also study the planet's atmosphere and ionosphere, as well as how Venus interacts with the surrounding environment, Shaji said. ISRO has identified 16 instruments from Indian scientists that it would like to fly. Those include instruments focused on monitoring clouds, identifying lightning strikes, studying the eerie airglow of the planet and measuring the highly charged plasma particles passing by Venus on their way out from the sun.
Another few instruments came from international partnerships. Three of those were proposed by U.S. scientists, but Shaji said ISRO understands that the funding for those instruments is not viable, so the agency is currently assuming the trio won't fly.
If the mission is approved, the spacecraft could launch in June 2023 on one of ISRO's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicles, the same type of vehicle that launched India's Chandrayaan-2 mission to the moon this summer.
In India's history of launches, that spacecraft followed its predecessor, which launched in 2009, and the Mars Orbiter Mission, which launched in 2013. ISRO has also discussed returning to the Red Planet, but preliminary timelines suggest that such a mission would likely launch after the Venus orbiter.
It can be easy to forget that an alien world lives right beneath us – the mysterious ecosystem of the deep ocean, where the creatures of your nightmares lurk far below the surface.
But, the Twitter feed of one Russian fisherman could make you think twice before ever dipping your toes at the beach again.
Murmansk-based Roman Fedortsov has revealed a trove of terrifying catches, from eight-legged arthropods to fish with dagger-like teeth.
Among the many creatures brought to light is the frilled shark – an elusive eel-like shark with rows of terrifying teeth. The frilled shark is often called a living ‘relic’ due to its primitive features
The fisherman works on a trawler based out of a port in northwest Russia, and began sharing his remarkable finds earlier this year, the Moscow Times reports.
Along with his Twitter account, Fedortsov has also shared stunning images of his catches on Flickr.
Among the many creatures brought to light is the frilled shark – an elusive eel-like shark with rows of terrifying teeth.
The frilled shark is often called a living ‘relic’ due to its primitive features.
The fisherman has also revealed photos of the bizarre chimaera, a fish commonly known as the ‘ghost shark.’
On a photo of a bizarre, alien-like creature with a massive jaw and sharp teeth, the fisherman wrote, ‘We’re still arguing about this one. What is it?’ On Twitter, some argue that the specimen in question is a stoplight loosejaw, a deep-sea dragonfish from the genus Malacosteus
The fisherman has also revealed photos of the bizarre chimaera, a fish commonly known as the ‘ghost shark.’ Their eyes glow only when exposed to light. In the darkness of the sea, ghost sharks appear to have sunken, ‘dead’ eyes
Chimaera are known for their winged fins and long, whip-like tails – and an image captured by Fedortsov reveals their haunting green eyes.
But, these glow only when exposed to light. In the darkness of the sea, ghost sharks appear to have sunken, ‘dead’ eyes.
Like sharks and rays, chimaeras have a skeleton made of cartilage.
While he may be better versed in deep sea creatures than most people, some catches had even Fedortsov stumped.
With one photo of a bizarre, alien-like creature with a massive jaw and sharp teeth, the fisherman wrote, ‘We’re still arguing about this one. What is it?’
A terrifying fish with massive teeth is also among the many remarkable catches. According to Fedortsov, the creature is a black scabbardfish
Murmansk-based Roman Fedortsov has revealed a trove of terrifying catches, from eight-legged arthropods to fish with dagger-like teeth
One picture reveals a massive orange ‘sea spiders’ – a marine arthropod with long, spindly legs that’s roughly the size of a human hand
On Twitter, many have chimed in with their thoughts, with some arguing that the specimen in question is a stoplight loosejaw, a deep-sea dragonfish from the genus Malacosteus.
And, not all of the catches are fish.
One picture reveals a massive orange ‘sea spider’ – a marine arthropod with long, spindly legs that’s roughly the size of a human hand.
Creatures of a similar appearance were recently discovered in the Arctic and Southern Oceans, where they’ve been observed at a staggering leg-span of nearly 25 centimetres.
Another bizarre fish, with bulging red eyes and drooping red lips, was identified as a type of grenadier. These are also known as rattails, and can be found deep below the surface from the Arctic to the Antarctic
The fisherman works on a trawler based out of a port in northwest Russia, and began sharing his remarkable finds earlier this year, The Moscow Times reports
While the expert has identified a number of the specimens, some remain a mystery. On this clear creature, he remarked ‘who are you?’
Along with his Twitter account, Fedortsov has also shared stunning images of his catches on Flickr, including this deep sea shark
These sea 'spiders' are actually pycnogonids, a type of primitive marine arthropod, and they grow to massive sizes in a phenomenon known as polar gigantism — but scientists don't know why.
A terrifying fish with massive teeth is also among the many remarkable catches. According to Fedortsov, the creature is a black scabbardfish.
Another bizarre fish, with bulging red eyes and drooping red lips, was identified as a type of grenadier.
These are also known as rattails, and can be found deep below the surface from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
The Twitter feed of one Russian fisherman could make you think twice before ever dipping your toes at the beach again
The fisherman tweeted a photo of this remarkable creature, noting its 'beautiful' color
While deep-sea creatures tend to have an alien-like appearance to begin with, it’s also known that changes in pressure can affect the appearance of some when they’re brought to the surface.
Thousands of feet below the sea, they are subjected to extremely high pressures.
While some are able to withstand dramatic vertical migrations, the lower pressures of the world above are known to cause metabolic problems for others, and can even alter their shape.
This effect can be seen most famously in the case of the blobfish – a creature voted the world’s ‘ugliest animal.’
Not all of the catches are fish. The deep-sea fisherman tweeted this photo, writing 'I'm watching you'
It can be easy to forget that an alien world lives right beneath us – the mysterious ecosystem of the deep ocean, where the creatures of your nightmares lurk far below the surface
Light leaking from a distant galaxy hints at a cosmic makeover’s origins
Light leaking from a distant galaxy hints at a cosmic makeover’s origins
Harsh ultraviolet radiation suggests how hydrogen got ionized in the universe long ago
Visible and infrared light shine from a single star-forming region in the Sunburst Arc galaxy (center). The spot of light is duplicated six times in the arc in this Hubble Space Telescope image, thanks to the gravity of a separate galaxy cluster (not shown).
A leaky galaxy might be offering up clues about a vast cosmic makeover foisted on the universe during its youth.
Within about a billion years after the Big Bang, something stripped nearly all of the hydrogen atoms in the universe of their electrons. This “reionization” puzzles astronomers, who can’t account for all of the energy needed to make such a sweeping change(SN: 2/6/17).
A galaxy dubbed the Sunburst Arc might help. It appears to be blasting ionizing ultraviolet radiation through a small hole (or holes) carved out of the gas that permeates the galaxy, researchers report in the Nov. 8 Science. Similar channels in the earliest generation of galaxies could have provided an escape hatch for harsh light to zap intergalactic hydrogen.
While massive youthful stars can produce ionizing radiation, the light has trouble navigating the thickets of gas and dust within the host galaxy. “Not all of it can get outside the galaxy, let alone reionize the intergalactic medium,” says Brant Robertson, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved with the research. And yet, get out it must, given what happened to the cosmic inventory of hydrogen.
Directly looking for ionizing radiation from the first galaxies is out of the question. Intervening gas clouds absorb that faint light long before it reaches Earth. “The way to go about it is to look for [closer] analogs,” says Joanna Bridge, an astronomer at the University of Louisville in Kentucky also not a part of this study. “We look for galaxies that are similar … and gain an understanding of the physical processes that might have occurred.”
Ionizing radiation blasts out of a single spot in the Sunburst Arc galaxy, made visible here using a special filter on the Hubble Space Telescope. The six spots of light are all from the same source, and are distorted and replicated thanks to the gravity of an intervening galaxy cluster (not shown).T.E. RIVERA-THORSEN, HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE
Meet the Sunburst Arc, a galaxy in the small southern constellation Apus whose light takes nearly 11 billion years to reach Earth — far, but not quite as far as the galaxies responsible for reionization. Part of what makes the Sunburst Arc special is that it hides behind a much closer cluster of galaxies. The gravity from that cluster amplifies and smears the Sunburst Arc’s light into an arc — hence its nickname — creating 12 distorted images of the galaxy smeared across the sky.
Without this gravitational assist, “we probably would not have noticed it,” says Thøger Emil Rivera-Thorsen, an astronomer at Stockholm University. “It would have been just one more speck out of millions.”
Two years ago, Rivera-Thorsen and colleagues noticed that a particular wavelength of ultraviolet light from this galaxy appeared to sneak out through small gaps in its hydrogen gas, like water through a sieve. This light is not energetic enough to ionize hydrogen. But through those gaps, the team hypothesized, more energetic ionizing light might slip out as well.
To test their idea, the team pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at the Sunburst Arc. In all 12 of the gravitationally distorted images, the researchers saw ultraviolet light capable of ionizing hydrogen blasting out of a small region within the galaxy. The source of the ultraviolet light coincides with a splotch of bright light seen in previous Hubble images, light that the team suspects radiates from a pocket of intense star formation no more than about 520 light-years across. The scientists think that the ionizing radiation from these young stars is using one or a few holes in the surrounding gas to escape into intergalactic space.
“This object is a unique lab for understanding the detailed way in which ionizing photons get out of a galaxy,” Robertson says. The find is also reminiscent of another much closer galaxy, where a few years ago astronomers reported a similar leak of ionizing light (SN: 10/10/14).
Whether this actually is a missing piece in the reionization puzzle remains to be seen. “In the part of the universe we studied, this is an atypical galaxy,” Rivera-Thorsen says. Out of hundreds of thousands the team has looked at, no other galaxy appears to behave this way. Whether such open pathways in the gas were more common in earlier galaxies is unknown. “That’s still an open question,” he says.
Scientists Confirm The Discovery Of A Mysterious Interstellar Space Boundary
Scientists Confirm The Discovery Of A Mysterious Interstellar Space Boundary
Abstract imagr of space - Nasa image / shutterstock
NASA scientists behind the Voyager mission are on the brink of something huge – literally. Recent findings from the Voyager 2 probe confirm there is a distinct – albeit mysterious – boundary known as the heliopause between the local space we are in and interstellar space.
Spacecraft Voyager 2 joined its sister craft Voyager 1 on November 5, 2018, when it passed through the interstellar medium. It’s only now that researchers are learning about the space environment the craft is currently moving through.
“This is a watershed moment in our exploration of space: we have for the first time left the confines of ‘home’ and are taking our very first tentative steps into the interstellar space – the Milky Way galaxy of which we are a part,” explained NASA astrophysicist Jeffrey Hayes to IFLScience. “That’s an amazing distance to come in only 62 years, since the launch of the first satellite. Who knows what the next 62 will bring?”
The Voyager 2 probe was launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, and is the second spacecraft to enter interstellar space to study the edge of our solar system. Five studies released this week each identifies findings from one of Voyager 2's five operating science instruments. Altogether, these help us to understand the “cosmic shoreline”, where our Sun ends and the “vast ocean of interstellar space begins,” writes NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Data from Voyager 2 has helped further characterize the structure of the heliosphere, structure of the heliosphere -- the wind sock-shaped region created by the sun's wind as it extends to the boundary of the solar system. NASA/JPL
“Inside is the space we live in, which is the very extended influence of the Sun and the solar wind that it generates, and outside is a region that is not under that same influence,” said Hayes. “Both Voyagers found this to be the case. The original model was that the solar wind would just gradually fade away until one was in the interstellar medium; clearly that’s not the case.”
“The heliopause acts as a somewhat porous boundary that only allows some particles to traverse it," said Hayes. “Because we have only very recently passed through it – in 2012 with Voyager 1, and now with Voyager 2, there are still a lot of aspects of this we don’t understand.”
Voyager 2 also observed that the magnetic field outside of the heliopause is slightly stronger than measurements taken by Voyager 1, which seems to indicate that the interstellar magnetic field changes over small distances. Unexpectedly, charged particles carried by solar wind also appear to “leak” out into interstellar space.
Before Voyager 2 took the first direct measurements of interstellar space, scientists had to infer findings with data taken from a spacecraft much closer to Earth. Hayes said that the current observations are “totally new” and will take time to understand fully.
“In terms of space exploration, it means that we have only barely scratched the surface of what it means to be in interstellar space,” said Hayes.
“All told, we have entered a new era of exploration that is posing as many new questions as it has answered our older ones,” said Hayes, adding that it has taken some 42 years to travel about 143 Astronomical Units (or 143 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun) and only just now have we reached the beginning of interstellar space. If humans as a species hope to explore space, Hayes said we must either learn to be patient or learn to travel faster.
NASA’s Heliophysics Division is set to launch the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission by 2024, carrying with it instruments designed to follow up on the discoveries made by the Voyager probes. In the 2030s, Hayes said that NASA is studying an Interstellar Probe concept mission that would travel out 10 times the distance that the Voyagers are at now.
An artist concept depicting one of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft. NASA/JPL
Wetenschappers bevestigen ontdekking van mysterieuze grens in de ruimte. Wat je moet weten
Wetenschappers bevestigen ontdekking van mysterieuze grens in de ruimte. Wat je moet weten
Ruimtesonde Voyager 2 heeft een nieuwe mijlpaal bereikt door als tweede ruimtevaartuig ooit het zonnestelsel te verlaten.
Wetenschappers hebben nu onthuld wat de NASA-sonde, die op 20 augustus 1977 werd gelanceerd, waarnam op de mysterieuze grens tussen het zonnestelsel en interstellaire ruimte.
Eerder vloog Voyager 1 in 2012 de interstellaire ruimte binnen.
Wonderbaarlijke reis
In de waarnemingen die beide sondes deden toen ze het zonnestelsel verlieten, zaten opvallend genoeg de nodige verschillen.
Eén van de wetenschappers van het Voyager-project, Ed Stone, zei: “Dit is echt een wonderbaarlijke reis geweest.”
Onderzoekers zijn onder meer tot de ontdekking gekomen dat het magnetisch veld van de interstellaire ruimte twee tot drie keer krachtiger is dan altijd werd gedacht.
Raadsel
Dat betekent dat de deeltjes in de interstellaire ruimte tot wel tien keer zoveel druk uitoefenen op de heliosfeer, de ‘bubbel’ waarin het zonnestelsel zich bevindt, dan verwacht.
De grens tussen het zonnestelsel en de interstellaire ruimte, de heliopauze, is voor wetenschappers nog grotendeels een raadsel.
Volstrekt nieuw
“Er zijn nog steeds veel aspecten die we niet begrijpen,” zei astrofysicus Jeffrey Hayes van de NASA.
Hij zei dat de huidige metingen ‘volstrekt nieuw’ zijn en dat het nog veel tijd in beslag zal nemen om ze volledig te begrijpen.
The sun's light and heat keeps our planet alive and a Martian researcher believes UFOs are actually controlling how much is released to Earth.
A YouTuber and 'UFOlogist’ has spotted what he claims to be numerous UFOs traveling around the sun this week in images sent back from the Solar Heliospheric Observatory.
And this might not be their first trip around the sun, as Russian scientists have claimed to have seen the same event ‘six to seven’ years ago.
Scroll down for video
A YouTuber and 'UFOlogist’ has spotted what he claims to be numerous UFOs traveling around the sun this week in images sent back from the Solar Heliospheric Observatory. And this might not be their first trip around the sun, as Russian scientists have claimed to have seen the same event ‘six to seven’ years ago
‘People should know the truth that hides Nasa,’ Myunhauzen writes underneath the video on his YouTube channel.
The video was released to the public yesterday and shows images with strange green lit objects floating around the bright glowing ball of gas.
‘I heard in a news story about 6-7 years back about two Russian scientists that discovered that there were numerous UFOs around the sun at the same time, 24 hours a day, every day,’ reports Scott C. Waring from UFO Sightings Daily on his website.
‘They stated the UFOs would increase and decrease their speed suddenly for no reason and they would make sudden hard right 90 degree turns without slowing down’.
EX-NASA AGENT CLAIMS AGENCY USED CODE WORD SANTA CLAUS FOR THREE UFOS
Three flying saucers were spotted on the moon during Nasa's lunar landings, according to the bizarre claims of a former Nasa contractor.
In a video testimony, Dona Hare says the space agency covered up a series of UFO sighting that they codenamed 'Santa Claus'.
Hare claims she was told by numerous sources, which she does not name, about three UFOs that landed shortly after one of the moon landings.
Not only is she accusing Nasa of hiding UFOs from the public, she has also stated the agency has doctored and obscured thousands of photos. She went on record to state the agency erases anomalies from pictures before selling them to the public.
During her time at Nasa, she was employed as an illustrator and photographic slide technician and received many awards for her work.
She claims Nasa threatened those who dared speak about the UFO sightings or airbrushed pictures.
One would hope if aliens are constantly traveling through space that their vehicles were far more advanced than our spacecraft.
Waring continued to explain that the new story about the discovery by the Russian scientists ‘has long vanished’ from the web.
‘They are out there… around our sun, doing god knows what,’ Waring wrote.
‘They may actually be controlling the sun, to keep a steady temperature here on Earth, or they could be harvesting a very rare and powerful heavy element.’
‘Let’s hope they don’t make a mistake and Barbecue our planet.’
I heard in a news story about 6-7 years back about two Russian scientists that discovered that there were numerous UFOs around the sun at the same time, 24 hours a day, every day,’ reports Scott C. Waring from UFO Sightings Daily
‘They stated the UFOs would increase and decrease their speed suddenly for no reason and they would make sudden hard right 90 degree turns without slowing down’.Waring continued to explain that the new story about the discovery by the Russian scientists ‘has long vanished’ from the web
Another alien hunter found something similar far away from the sun.
An enormous alien structure was, they claim seen moving in the direction of Jupiter’s moon Europa which, according to some, resembles an ‘interstellar mothership’ or ‘an intergalactic cruiser’.
The image was taken by a Canon 650D camera with a 7D-300mm telescopic lens mounted on a tripod in someone’s backyard garden last week.
‘They are out there… around our sun, doing god knows what,’ Waring wrote. ‘They may actually be controlling the sun, to keep a steady temperature here on Earth, or they could be harvesting a very rare and powerful heavy element'
‘Jupiter has long been shrouded in mystery along with its moon and particularly that of Europa,’ says UFO researcher from SecureTeam, Tyler, in a YouTube video – who does not give his full name.
‘There has been a lot of scientific talk about alien life likely existing in the vast oceans that currently exists under its icy surface.’
WAR OF THE WORLDS CAUSED MASS HYSTERIA
'The War of the Worlds' broadcast consisted of simulated news bulletins, which suggested an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress
'The War of the Worlds' was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theater on the Air.
It aired as a Halloween special on October 30, 1938 over the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS Network) by Orson Welles.
The broadcast consisted of simulated news bulletins, which suggested an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress.
The public was in a extreme panic as they really believed the world was being invaded by aliens.
Legend has it that some of the radio audience may have been listening to Edgar Bergen and tuned in to "The War of the Worlds" during a musical interlude.
This means they missed the opening of the show which stated it was just a story.
But recent research suggests this only happened in rare instances.
The video was sent to SecureTeam from Louis Read, a Martian researcher from the city of Bristol in the UK, reports Mirror Online.
The image shows Jupiter glowing on the left and a strange anomaly shining brightly to the right of it, which they suggest is approaching Europa.
Tyler notes that the UFO comes very close to Europa and nothing like this has ever been seen in our solar system – until now.
An enormous alien structure was, they claim seen moving in the direction of Jupiter’s moon Europa which, according to some, resembles an ‘interstellar mothership’ or ‘an intergalactic cruiser’. The image was taken by a Canon 650D camera with a 7D-300mm telescopic lens mounted on a tripod in someone’s backyard garden
SecureTeam is very excited about this ‘amazing find’ because they say there is no doubt that the glowing orbit is a structure and could actually be multiple structures put together. One thing for sure is that this definitely doesn’t belong there and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if this was some sort of alien craft,’ says Tyler.
SecureTeam has expressed their belief about life on fifth planet and believe the icy world of Europa is also on the top of Nasa scientists’ list for next exploration mission.
Enormous alien intergalactic starships approaching and crossing the Sun recorded by UFO researcher
Enormous alien intergalactic starships approaching and crossing the Sun recorded by UFO researcher
On November 5, 2019, during sunset UFO researcher Pedro Ramírez recorded two huge unknown objects approaching and crossing the sun.
When he saw two enormous bright UFOs approaching the sun he started to follow them. Then the earth-sized intergalactic starships seem to come even closer to the sun, as if it were a huge sunspot.
Apparently the spacecraft crossing the sun until the moment they are leaving the sun again into deep space.
Not only these new images are again proof that there is a lot of extraterrestrial activity near the sun, but it also indicates that these UFOs may also be able to withstand the enormous pressure and temperature of the sun.
Voyager 2 left the realm of the sun’s influence a year ago today, becoming the 2nd craft ever to do so. This week, the journal Nature Astronomy published 5 new papers describing what Voyager 2 has been seeing on its journey into the unknown.
View a larger, annotated image. | Look closely at the blue ball. Inside you’ll see a yellow dot representing our sun, and some white ovals representing the orbits of the planets orbiting our sun, including Earth. The lighter blue oval represents the heliosphere, or realm of the sun’s influence, as our sun moves through the space of the Milky Way galaxy. In this artist’s depiction, Voyagers 1 and 2 – launched from Earth in 1977 – are depicted just outside of the heliosphere, on the boundary of interstellar space. The image – not to scale – is via NASA. Both spacecraft are still heading outward …
Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, or the edge of the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by our sun – in August 2012. Heading in a different direction, Voyager 2 crossed another part of the heliopause on today’s date a year ago, November 5, 2018. Thus Voyager 2 became only the second earthly spacecraft to cross into interstellar space, at a distance of some 11 billion miles (18 billion km) from Earth, well beyond the orbit of Pluto. Today, five new research papers in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy describe what scientists observed during and since Voyager 2’s historic crossing (see links to the papers below).
A statement from NASA said:
Each paper details the findings from one of Voyager 2’s five operating science instruments: a magnetic field sensor, two instruments to detect energetic particles in different energy ranges and two instruments for studying plasma (a gas composed of charged particles). Taken together, the findings help paint a picture of this cosmic shoreline, where the environment created by our sun ends and the vast ocean of interstellar space begins.
Before their historic crossing into interstellar space, the Voyagers had already served humanity well. Taking advantage of a rare alignment of planets in the outer solar system, both Voyagers visited mighty Jupiter and ringed Saturn, and Voyager 2 performed the first – and only – flybys of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
Consider that – before Voyager 1 reached the edge of the heliosphere in 2012 – this edge was entirely theoretical in nature. We had never been to the boundary of interstellar space before. Scientists weren’t entirely sure how far this boundary was located from our sun, although their predictions turned out to be amazingly precise. You might know that the sun undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. Scientists expected the heliopause – or boundary region of the heliosphere – to move with the changes in activity on the sun:
… sort of like a lung expanding and contracting with breath. This was consistent with the fact that the two probes encountered the heliopause at different distances from the sun.
And so – due to the malleable nature of the heliopause – the two Voyagers crossed into interstellar space at different times, one six years before the other, and at different distances from the sun. The new papers now confirm that Voyager 2 is not yet in undisturbed interstellar space. Like its twin, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 appears to be in a perturbed transitional region just beyond the heliosphere.Ed Stone, project scientist for Voyager and a professor of physics at Caltech, commented:
The Voyager probes are showing us how our sun interacts with the stuff that fills most of the space between stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Without this new data from Voyager 2, we wouldn’t know if what we were seeing with Voyager 1 was characteristic of the entire heliosphere or specific just to the location and time when it crossed.
Both Voyagers carry a golden record, designed to give any alien civilization that might someday encounter the craft a glimpse of Earth and its abundant life.
The five new papers in Nature Astronomy describe various measurements made by Voyager 2. According to NASA:
The two Voyager spacecraft have now confirmed that the plasma in local interstellar space is significantly denser than the plasma inside the heliosphere, as scientists expected. Voyager 2 has now also measured the temperature of the plasma in nearby interstellar space and confirmed it is colder than the plasma inside the heliosphere.
In 2012, Voyager 1 observed a slightly higher-than-expected plasma density just outside the heliosphere, indicating that the plasma is being somewhat compressed. Voyager 2 observed that the plasma outside the heliosphere is slightly warmer than expected, which could also indicate it is being compressed. (The plasma outside is still colder than the plasma inside.) Voyager 2 also observed a slight increase in plasma density just before it exited the heliosphere, indicating that the plasma is compressed around the inside edge of the bubble. But scientists don’t yet fully understand what is causing the compression on either side.
Speaking of Voyager 2’s findings, NASA also said:
If the heliosphere is like a ship sailing through interstellar space, it appears the hull is somewhat leaky. One of Voyager’s particle instruments showed that a trickle of particles from inside the heliosphere is slipping through the boundary and into interstellar space. Voyager 1 exited close to the very ‘front’ of the heliosphere, relative to the bubble’s movement through space. Voyager 2, on the other hand, is located closer to the flank, and this region appears to be more porous than the region where Voyager 1 is located.
And NASA explained:
An observation by Voyager 2’s magnetic field instrument confirms a surprising result from Voyager 1: The magnetic field in the region just beyond the heliopause is parallel to the magnetic field inside the heliosphere. With Voyager 1, scientists had only one sample of these magnetic fields and couldn’t say for sure whether the apparent alignment was characteristic of the entire exterior region or just a coincidence. Voyager 2’s magnetometer observations confirm the Voyager 1 finding and indicate that the two fields align, according to Stone.
Voyager 1, the faster of the two probes, is currently over 13.6 billion miles (22 billion kilometers) from the sun.
Voyager 2 is 11.3 billion miles (18.2 billion kilometers) from the sun. Traveling at the speed of light, a signal from Voyager 2 requires about 16.5 hours to travel to Earth. By comparison, light traveling from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach Earth. The 22.4-watt transmitter on Voyager 2 has a power equivalent to the light that pops on when you open your refrigerator door. This dim signal from Voyager – which is more than a billion billion times dimmer by the time it reaches Earth – is picked up by the 70-meter antennas at three facilities spaced equidistant from each other – approximately 120 degrees apart in longitude – around the world. These are the sites of NASA’s Deep Space Network at Goldstone, near Barstow, California; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia.
The two Voyagers are powered by steadily decaying plutonium batteries. NASA scientists have been slowly powering down the crafts’ scientific instruments for some years now, attempting to stretch out the amount of time we can continue to communicate with them. Both craft are projected to drop below critical energy levels in the mid-2020s, after which they will fall silent.
In this artist’s concept, a Voyager spacecraft looks back toward our solar system, from its vantage point in interstellar space. The circles represent the orbits of the major outer planets, all visited by Voyager 2: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Image via NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI).
Bottom line: Voyager 2 crossed into interstellar space on November 5, 2018 – one year ago today – becoming the 2nd craft ever to do so. This week, the journal Nature Astronomy published 5 new papers describing what Voyager 2 has been seeing on its journey into the unknown.
Daniel Apai, Associate Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona. Benjamin Rackham, Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Within just 50 light-years from Earth, there are about 1,560 stars, likely orbited by several thousand planets. About a thousand of these extrasolar planets – known as exoplanets – may be rocky and have a composition similar to Earth's. Some may even harbor life. Over 99% of these alien worlds remain undiscovered — but this is about to change.
With NASA's new exoplanet-hunter space telescope TESS, the all-sky search is on for possibly habitable planets close to our solar system. TESS — orbiting Earth every 13.7 days — and ground-based telescopes are poised to find hundreds of planets over the next few years. This could transform astronomers' understanding of alien worlds around us and provide targets to scan with next-generation telescopes for signatures of life. In just over a year, TESS has identified more than 1,200 planetary candidates, 29 of which astronomers have already confirmed as planets. Given TESS's unique ability to simultaneously search tens of thousands of stars for planets, the mission is expected to yield over 10,000 new worlds.
These are exciting times for astronomers and, especially, for those of us exploring exoplanets. Weare members of the planet-hunting Project EDEN, which also supports TESS's work. We use telescopes on the ground and in space to find exoplanets to understand their properties and potential for harboring life.
Undiscovered worlds all around us
Worlds around us await discovery. Take, for example, Proxima Centauri, an unassuming, faint red star, invisible without a telescope. It is one of over a hundred billion or so such stars within our galaxy, unremarkable except for its status as our next-door neighbor. Orbiting Proxima is a fascinating but mysterious world, called Proxmia b, discovered only in 2016.
And that is what makes this planet so exciting: It lies in the "habitable" zone and just might have properties similar to Earth's, like a surface, liquid water, and — who knows? — maybe even an atmosphere bearing the telltale chemical signs of life.
NASA's TESS mission launched in April 2018 to hunt for other broadly Earth-sized planets, but with a different method. TESS is looking for rare dimming events that happen when planets pass in front of their host stars, blocking some starlight. These transit events indicate not only the presence of the planets, but also their sizes and orbits.
Finding a new transiting exoplanet is a big deal for astronomers like us because, unlike those found through stellar wobbles, worlds seen transiting can be studied further to determine their densities and atmospheric compositions.
By measuring the depth of the dip in brightness and knowing the size of the star, scientists can determine the size or radius of the planet.
(Image credit: NASA Ames)
Red dwarf suns
For us, the most exciting exoplanets are the smallest ones, which TESS can detect when they orbit small stars called red dwarfs – stars with masses less than half the mass of our Sun.
Each of these systems is unique. For example, LP 791-18 is a red dwarf star 86 light-years from Earth around which TESS found two worlds. The first is a "super-Earth," a planet larger than Earth but probably still mostly rocky, and the second is a "mini-Neptune," a planet smaller than Neptune but gas- and ice-rich. Neither of these planets have counterparts in our solar system.
Among astronomers' current favorites of the new broadly Earth-sized planets is LHS 3884b, a scorching "hot Earth" that orbits its sun so quickly that on it you could celebrate your birthday every 11 hours.
Artist's impression of an exoplanet transiting a red dwarf star.
(Image credit: L. Calçada/ESO)
No Earth-like worlds yet
But how Earth-like are Earth-sized planets? The promise of finding nearby worlds for detailed studies is already paying off. A team of astronomers observed the hot super-Earth LHS 3884b with the Hubble Space Telescope and found the planet to be a horrible vacation spot, without even an atmosphere. It is just a bare rock with temperatures ranging from over 700 C (1300 Fahrenheit) at noon to near absolute zero (-460 Fahrenheit) at midnight.
The TESS mission was initially funded for two years. But the spacecraft is in excellent shape and NASA recently extended the mission through 2022, doubling the time TESS will have to scan nearby, bright stars for transits.
However, finding exoplanets around the coolest stars — those with temperatures less than about 2700 C (4900 F) — will still be a challenge due to their extreme faintness. Since ultracool dwarfs provide our best opportunity to find and study exoplanets with sizes and temperatures similar to Earth's, other focused planet searches are picking up where TESS leaves off.
Illustration of TESS, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
It also demonstrated how small telescopes — relative to the powerful behemoths of our age — can still make transformational discoveries. With patience and persistence, the TRAPPIST telescope scanned nearby faint, red dwarf stars from its high-mountain perch in the Atacama desert for small, telltale dips in their brightnesses. Eventually, it spotted transits in the data for the red dwarf TRAPPIST-1, which — although just 41 light-years away — is too faint for TESS's four 10-cm (4-inch) diameter lenses. Its Earth-sized worlds would have remained undiscovered had the TRAPPIST team's larger telescope not found them.
Two projects have upped up the game in the search for exo-Earth candidates around nearby red dwarfs. The SPECULOOS team installed four robotic telescopes – also in the Atacama desert – and one in the Northern Hemisphere. Our Exoearth Discovery and Exploration Network – Project EDEN This artist's concept shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like, based on available data about the planets' diameters, masses and distances from the host star, as of February 2018.– uses nine telescopes in Arizona, Italy, Spain and Taiwan to observe red dwarf stars continuously.
The SPECULOOS and EDEN telescopes are much larger than TESS's small lenses and can find planets around stars too faint for TESS to study, including some of the transiting Earth-sized planets closest to us.
This artist's concept shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like, based on available data about the planets' diameters, masses and distances from the host star, as of February 2018.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The decade of new worlds
The next decade is likely to be remembered as the time when we opened our eyes to the incredible diversity of other worlds. TESS is likely to find between 10,000 and 15,000 exoplanet candidates by 2025. By 2030, the European Space Agency's GAIA and PLATO missions are expected to find another 20,000-35,000 planets. GAIA will look for stellar wobbles introduced by planets, while PLATO will search for planetary transits as TESS does.
However, even among the thousands of planets that will soon be found, the exoplanets closest to our solar system will remain special. Many of these worlds can be studied in great detail – including the search for signs of life. Discoveries of the nearest worlds also represent major steps in humanity's progress in exploring the universe we live in. After mapping our own planet and then the solar system, we now turn to nearby planetary systems. Perhaps one day Proxima b or another nearby world astronomers have yet to find will be the target for interstellar probes, like Project Starshot, or even crewed starships. But first we've got to put these worlds on the map.
The burst released as much energy in 20 seconds as our sun does in about 10 days.
On Aug. 20, NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope on the International Space Station detected a sudden spike of X-rays caused by a massive thermonuclear flash on the surface of a pulsar, the crushed remains of a star that long ago exploded as a supernova. The X-ray burst, the brightest seen by NICER so far, came from an object named SAX J1808.4-3658, or J1808 for short.
The observations reveal many phenomena that have never been seen together in a single burst. In addition, the subsiding fireball briefly brightened again for reasons astronomers cannot yet explain. The data reveal a two-step change in brightness, which scientists think is caused by the ejection of separate layers from the pulsar surface, and other features that will help them decode the physics of these powerful events. The explosion, which astronomers classify as a Type I X-ray burst, released as much energy in 20 seconds as the Sun does in nearly 10 days. J1808 is located about 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, spins at a dizzying 401 rotations each second, and is one member of a binary system.
Its companion is a brown dwarf, an object larger than a giant planet yet too small to be a star. A steady stream of hydrogen gas flows from the companion toward the neutron star, and it accumulates in a vast storage structure called an accretion disk. Hydrogen raining onto the pulsar's surface forms a hot, ever-deepening global 'sea'. At the base of this layer, temperatures and pressures increase until hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium nuclei, which produces energy — a process at work in the core of our Sun. The helium settles out and builds up a layer of its own. Eventually, the conditions allow helium nuclei to fuse into carbon. The helium erupts explosively and unleashes a thermonuclear fireball across the entire pulsar surface.
As the burst started, NICER data show that its X-ray brightness leveled off for almost a second before increasing again at a slower pace. The researchers interpret this 'stall' as the moment when the energy of the blast built up enough to blow the pulsar’s hydrogen layer into space. The fireball continued to build for another two seconds and then reached its peak, blowing off the more massive helium layer. The helium expanded faster, overtook the hydrogen layer before it could dissipate, and then slowed, stopped and settled back down onto the pulsar’s surface. Following this phase, the pulsar briefly brightened again by roughly 20 percent for reasons the team does not yet understand.
A telescope mounted on the International Space Station has detected a record-setting X-ray burst coming from a flash on the surface of the remains of an exploded star.
On Aug. 20 at about 10:04 p.m. EDT (0204 GMT on Aug. 21), NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope, which is on the space station, detected a sudden and extreme surge of X-rays. The brightest X-ray burst ever observed by NICER, it released as much energy in 20 seconds as our sun does in about 10 days, according to a statement from NASA.
The burst came from the object SAX J1808.4-3658, or J1808, a pulsar (a type of neutron star, or the remnants of a star that exploded as a supernova far in the past). The extra-bright burst was created by a thermonuclear flash on the surface of this pulsar, according to the statement.
An artist's illustration of the thermonuclear blast on a pulsar called J1808 that resulted in the brightest burst of X-rays seen to date by NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope. The explosion occurred on Aug. 20, 2019, and released as much energy in 20 seconds as our sun does in almost 10 days.
(Image credit: NASA)
"This burst was outstanding," lead researcher Peter Bult, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the statement. "We see a two-step change in brightness, which we think is caused by the ejection of separate layers from the pulsar surface, and other features that will help us decode the physics of these powerful events."
This ultrabright, record-setting event is classified as a Type I X-ray burst, which is the most common type; it's identified by a brightness that often rises rapidly, and then slowly declines.
With this NICER observation, scientists will be able to improve their understanding of such extreme eruptions and learn more about what causes them on such objects as the J1808 pulsar.
Creating a thermonuclear eruption
Pulsars often spin rapidly and emit X-rays from hotspots at their poles. J1808, which is about 11,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius, spins about 401 times every second.
The eruption on this pulsar's surface traces back to the binary system it's in, which includes a brown dwarf (an object too large to be a planet and too small to be a star). Hydrogen gas flows from this object to J1808, forming an accretion disk around it. After a period of time, this gas becomes so dense that some of it will lose its electrons (or ionize), which makes it more difficult for this gas, and therefore light, to move around the pulsar in this disk.
Trapped in this slow movement, that energy starts to build, heat up, ionize and create even more of this "trapped energy," which makes it even harder for gas to move in the disk. Eventually, the gas in the disk stars to spiral inward until it finally falls onto the pulsar. The hydrogen in the gas falls on the surface, adding to a "sea" of such material. At the bottom of this sea, extreme temperatures and pressures force the hydrogen nuclei to fuse and form helium nuclei — a process known as nuclear fusion.
"The helium settles out and builds up a layer of its own. Once the helium layer is a few meters deep, the conditions allow helium nuclei to fuse into carbon. Then the helium erupts explosively and unleashes a thermonuclear fireball across the entire pulsar surface," Goddard's Zaven Arzoumanian, the deputy principal investigator for NICER, said in the statement.
After the eruption began, the burst's brightness leveled off for just a second before increasing again, just more slowly, the NICER data showed. This brief stall and pace change was caused by a buildup of energy that blew the pulsar's hydrogen layer out into space. The object's helium layer was blown out into space next, after the burst continued to grow. After the helium layer blew out into space, it quickly overtook the hydrogen and then settled back onto the pulsar.
Following this wild explosion, the pulsar got brighter again, but scientists can't yet explain this final brightening.
It’s the first time state-run media has “publicly unveiled a plan for manned missions to the Red Planet”. With the country hoping to send Taikonauts - Chinese astronauts- to the moon first in a test run before the big final flight. In a statement published by China Daily, the China Aerospace and Technology Corporation said: “The next steps in (China’s) manned space programs will be manned exploration of the moon.
“(We will) set up bases on the moon to conduct scientific operations, expand a habitable place for mankind and gain experience and expertise for deep-space expeditions beyond the moon.”
But the organisation added: “The long-term goal is to send humans to Mars.”
The mission should provide insight into the traces of life on Mars and it’s thought that it will also give insight into the development of life on Earth.
If successful the mission would place China squarely in front of NASA in Mar’s exploration eclipsing past feats such as the Mars Curiosity Rover.
China plans to first send astronauts to the Moon
(Image: GETTY)
Chinese Taikonauts
(Image: GETTY)
The unveiling of the Chinese exploration bid comes as NASA announces its own plans explore the planet’s surface with a new autonomous helicopter.
A small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020.
The new chopper will pave the way for other flying machines on Mars including possible human piloted flying machines.
Susan Gorton, NASA’s manager for the Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology (RVLT) project said: “Flying a heavier-than-air vehicle within Mars’ thin atmosphere has never been done before, and we’re excited our aeronautics experts could help with this important space mission.
“This first Mars Helicopter will serve as a technology demonstrator that, if successful, will enable future scientists to remotely explore regions of the planet’s surface far from its mothership’s landing site.
Ms Gorton added: “The Mars Helicopter’s initial flight will represent that planet’s version of the Wright Brothers’ achievement at Kitty Hawk and the opening of a new era.
“For those of us whose research revolves around all things related to flight, that would be a remarkable, historic moment.”
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is also championing this historic first, he said: “NASA has a proud history of firsts.
“The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling.
“The Mars Helicopter holds much promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration missions to Mars.”
US Republican politician John Culberson of Texas echoed Bridenstine’s appreciation of the impact of American firsts on the future of exploration and discovery.
He said: “It’s fitting that the United States of America is the first nation in history to fly the first heavier-than-air craft on another world.
“This exciting and visionary achievement will inspire young people all over the United States to become scientists and engineers, paving the way for even greater discoveries in the future.”
The Mars Rover on the planet's surface
(Image: GETTY)
In size and capabilities the helicopter is about the size of a small drone.
Its hoped the chopper will be able to explore locations on Mars that are otherwise inaccessible such as cliff sides and cover far more territory than rovers at a resolution that cannot be achieved by current orbital assets.
The mystery handbag of the Gods: Depicted in Sumer, America, and Göbekli Tepe
The mystery handbag of the Gods: Depicted in Sumer, America, and Göbekli Tepe
How is it possible that thousand-year-old depictions of the Anunnaki show the gods carrying a mysterious bag, and halfway around the world we find the same thing depicted by ancient Mesoamerican civilizations? Depicted by the ancient Sumerian representations of the Anunnaki, the mysterious ‘handbag’ of the Gods is seen in several cultures in America and Göbekli Tepe. Coincidence?
Compelling evidence—found in the last couple of decades—has proven mankind is a species with amnesia. The countless discoveries made all across the globe has forced us to question everything about the origin of mankind, ancient cultures and history in general.
Slowly and piece by piece, we have been exploring and gathering small pieces of a MASSIVE puzzle that have driven us in the right direction when searching for answers mainstream scholars have not been able to fully answer.
How can you explain the countless similarities among civilizations that inhabited Earth thousands of years ago, which were separated by tens of thousands of kilometers?
Why did nearly all ancient cultures on Earth decide to build Pyramids? And why are so many pyramids eerily similar?
It’s as if nearly all ancient civilizations followed the same blueprint. It’s as if somehow, ancient cultures were interconnected thousands of years ago.
One of the most interesting and mind-boggling enigmas can be traced back to Ancient Mesopotamia—comonly referred to as the Cradle of Civilization—where a mysterious motif has driven many authors to question history as we have been taught.
The ancient Sumerians depicted the Ancient Anunnaki with curious items. Two of the most interesting objects seen in the ancient Sumerian deities were the ‘hand watch’ seen on nearly all depictions, and the mysterious ‘bag’ carried by the Gods.
Curiously, if we travel thousands of kilometers around the globe from Mesopotamia to the Americas, we will find that the ancient Maya, Aztecs and other ancient civilizations utilized the same motif when depicting their deities.
Furthermore, if ew travel to Egypt we will see that the Ankh symbol was also carried around by the gods just as the mystery handbag in ancient Mesopotamia and the Americas.
Why is it that ancient civilizations in America, Egypt, and ancient Mesopotamia depicted their deities carrying a mysterious object in their hand? Is it possible that all ancient cultures in America, Egypt and Mesopotamia were visited by the same ‘Gods’?
Interestingly, the Ancient Anunnaki were nearly always represented in a humanoid form, even though numerous traits indicate clear differences between the Anunnaki and ordinary humans, the facial features of the Ancient Anunnaki Gods were always well-hidden thanks to the large beards.
Just as the ancient Sumerians depicted their deities in a humanoid form, the Ancient Egyptians and different cultures in the Americas did the same thing.
The obvious question here is why? Why did ancient cultures—separated thousands of kilometers from each other—depict their deities in a nearly identical way? Furthermore, how is it even possible that the Ancient Sumerians depicted their gods carrying a mysterious bag, and that people halfway across the world did the same thing?
At the archeological site of La Venta, we will find a stone stele depicting the ancient Mesoamerican God Quetzalcoatl, who is curiously holding in his hand the same ‘Bag’ we see in ancient Sumerian depictions.
But this isn’t the only site in Mexico where the curious representation was found.
If we travel to Tula—an important regional center which reached its height as the capital of the Toltec Empire between the fall of Teotihuacan and the rise of Tenochtitlan—we will find their massive ‘Atlantean’ statues, and if we observe closely, we will notice that once again the mysterious handbag is present.
Toltec temple ruins in Tula, Mexico Credit: Pinterest
If we travel to Göbekli Tepe, located on a remote hilltop in southern Turkey we will find the same THING.
Göbekli Tepeis one of the oldest (if not oldest) ancient megalithic temples on our planet. There, intricate massive stone pillars arranged into a set of rings stand tall and proud telling a millennia-old story when different civilizations ruled the over the planet. The massive stones were believed to have been carved by Neolithic hunter-gatherers some 12,000 years ago, even though recent evidence points towards the fact that
The mysterious temple, which consists of three huge stone circles was deliberately buried for an unknown reason in the distant past. After 13 years of digging, archaeologists investigating the ancient site have failed to recover a single stone-cutting tool. No one has been able to understand how ancient mankind, which was believed to be incapable of such feasts, erected some of the greatest stone-works on the planet.
Does the presence of the mysterious bag, carried by the gods, indicate that these two cultures connected in a mysterious way?
Why did ancient cultures depict their Gods carrying the mysterious handbag? What was inside it?
And most importantly, how is it even possible that the mysterious handbag is present in different civilizations around the globe—which according to mainstream scholars were never connected?
What if the Ancient Anunnaki—depicted by the Ancient Sumerians—and the Gods who visited the ancient Maya, Aztec, Toltec and Olmec civilizations are in fact the SAME?
What do you think this mysterious bag is meant to represent? Do you think it is just a coincidence that these three sites—and there are more—feature all the same thing? What could have been carried by the ‘Gods’ that was so important that nearly all ancient cultures had to illustrate it?
REUTERSTechniekers werken aan het eerste volledig elektrische vliegtuig van NASA.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET NASA, vooral bekend voor haar ruimtetechnologie, heeft gisteren haar eerste volledig elektrische vliegtuig, de X-57 ‘Maxwell’ onthuld. Het ruimtevaartagentschap hoopt eind 2020 de eerste vlucht met het vliegtuig te kunnen realiseren.
NASA startte in 2015 met de ontwikkeling van een volledig elektrisch vliegtuig en onthulde gisteren de vorderingen in het onderzoekscentrum in de woestijn van Californië. De ontwikkelaars hopen eind 2020 de eerste vlucht met het volledig elektrische vlucht te kunnen maken.
Het toestel is gebaseerd op een tweemotorig propellervliegtuig, waarbij de traditionele verbrandingsmotoren vervangen werden door elektrische motoren. Er zijn 14 elektromotoren die worden aangedreven door speciaal ontworpen lithium-ionenaccu’s, dezelfde technologie die ook in mobiele telefoons en elektrische auto’s wordt gebruikt.
NASA hoopt dat met meer verbetering de techniek ook zal toegepast kunnen worden in commerciële vluchten. Daarvoor zal er echter nog gesleuteld moeten worden aan het ontwerp om te voldoen aan de internationale standaarden voor bijvoorbeeld veiligheid, energie-efficiëntie en geluidsoverlast. “We richten ons op dingen die de hele sector kunnen helpen, niet slechts één bedrijf”, vertelde Brent Cobleigh, een projectmanager bij NASA’s vluchtonderzoekscentrum, aan Reuters.
REUTERSNASA testpiloot Wayne Ringelberg oefent in een simulator voor de eerste vlucht van NASA met een elektrisch vliegtuig.
NASA pronkte ook met een nieuw gebouwde simulator waarmee ingenieurs en piloten kunnen voelen hoe het zal zijn om de afgewerkte versie van de X-57 tijdens de vlucht te manoeuvreren.
note peter2011.
NASA's X-57 Maxwell, the agency's first all-electric experimental aircraft, aims to help engineers study potential electric propulsion benefits.
One cornerstone of many a conspiracy theory is that of mysterious secret bases. Governments around the world do have extremely secretive, off-limits bases scattered throughout all corners of the globe, which draw to them such stories of strange experiments, secret research, UFOs, and all manner of high strangeness. Many of these have become legendary for the thick cloud of intrigue and bizarre tales orbiting them, such as the infamous and much-discussed Area 51 in Nevada. My colleague Nick Redfern recently also talked about deep weirdness at the top-secret Porton Down military installation in the English county of Wiltshire. However, while the stories surrounding many of these sorts of facilities may or may not hold any truth, at least the bases themselves are known to be real, if not fully understood. Yet there are other supposed secret bases out there that hover out in the realm of pure speculation, rumor, myth. For some supposed secret bases, their very existence seems to be fueled by pure conspiracy theory, and it is not really known if they have ever even existed or not. These are the weird, very often eyebrow raising tales of phantom secret bases that may or may not exist and the bizarreness that surrounds them.
One such base is known as Base AL/499, and is known primarily through the testimony of a James Casbolt, who came forward to claim to have been a high level intelligence operative at the top secret facility. According to Casbolt, Base AL/499 is supposedly located 200 feet under the earth in a subterranean cavern under the English village of Peasemore, and is involved with the top secret Project Mannequin, which supposedly seeks to primarily to clone genetically enhanced humans and to research various methods of mind-control to create sleeper assassins that could be activated at any time. The base is apparently overseen by the NSA, and it is all made even more ominous when considering the fact that Casbolt also claims that Base AL/499 has connections with the secret society the Illuminati.
Besides human cloning and mind control there are also the supposed bases dealing with aliens and UFOs. Area 51 is there and has been done to death, so let’s look at some more obscure such bases which are currently unknown to even really exist. Out in the remote wasteland of the Kalahari Desert of South Africa there is allegedly a secret underground base called Camp 13, which is most well-known from what is called the “Kalahari Incident.” On May 7, 1989, a bizarre unidentified spacecraft is said to have crashed into the desert near the border with Botswana, after being aggressively shot down by South African fighter jets. The South African military then immediately descended upon the downed craft, and apparently found their electrical equipment to inexplicably malfunction in the vicinity.
The craft itself was said to be made of a smooth, silvery substance, and inside there were found to be three passengers of apparently extraterrestrial origin, about 5 feet in height and with thin bodies, large heads, and dressed in tight silver one-piece outfits. The area of the crash had also seemingly experienced an immense heat that had fused together the sand in the location into smooth glass. The military did their best to hide the site with fresh sand and whisked off the craft and its occupants, who were reportedly still alive at the time. UFO researcher Tony Dodd has claimed that the United States negotiated with the South African government to hand over the alien spacecraft and its passengers, but South Africa then supposedly secretly kept one of the alien crew members and had it hidden away at the mysterious Camp 13. Is there anything to this odd story? Who knows?
Speaking of rumored secret bases harboring UFOs and aliens, there is also supposedly one called Dulce Base lurking in the wilds of the U.S. state of New Mexico within the Archuleta Mesa, which lies on the Colorado-New Mexico border near the small town of Dulce. The base, which has gained legendary status in the UFO community, was allegedly first discovered by the public in 1979, when a local electrician named Paul Bennewitz began picking up what he claimed to be radio transmissions between government forces and aliens emanating from the mesa, which he became convinced were from some secretive underground base. At the time, the story became a big hit in UFO circles, and there was much talk of what the government was up to out there in those badlands. The whole thing received further fuel when a man named Phil Schneider came forward to claim that he had actually worked at the facility, before proceeding to take the tale deeper into the weird.
Schneider would go on to describe the layout of the base in great detail, saying it had 7 levels and was a joint operation between the United States government and extraterrestrials. According to Schneider, the base had thousands of aliens living there, where they were allowed to experiment on humans in secrecy in exchange for pieces of advanced technology and peace. Eerily, the base also supposedly had an underground subway system running between it and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has its own mythology of conspiracy theories as well. Another supposed former employee at the base was a man named Thomas Costello, who claimed to have been a security guard there and that he seen horrific experiments carried out on both humans and aliens alike first hand during his tenure at the facility. According to an article by Mike Rothschild on Dulce Base from Skeptoid:
Castello added depth and detail to the existing story, telling of underground caves occupied for centuries by reptoids, caves that were taken over by the RAND Corporation for use by the New World Order to create biological weapons. The former guard spoke of fleets of alien ships stored at Los Alamos, human/alien hybrid cloning, his arguments with a cranky reptoid leader named “Khaarshfashst” and a vast system of tunnels running under the entire country.
All manner of stories have been laid on the alleged base ever since, such as that it is ground zero for an interstellar war and that there has even been a shoot-out between humans and aliens on the premises. Schneider would eventually develop cancer, which he claimed to have contracted from an alien weapon during the incident, and committed suicide in 1996. Considering these rather far-fetched claims, the fact that all of our information on the alleged base comes from three possibly mentally troubled people, the sense of a detachment from reality to the whole tale, and the fact that there doesn’t actually seem to be any evidence at all of anything approaching what is described going on at Archuleta Mesa, there has understandably been quite a lot of skepticism aimed at the existence of the Dulce Base, and it is largely completely left to the imagination.
Just about as bonkers as the mythology of Dulce Base is the tale of a top secret government facility purportedly lying under the McCarran International Airport, in Las Vegas, Nevada. According to an elaborate report from a Reddit user named Blue_KeyCard, the infamous and mysterious Area 51 is merely a front and distraction from where the real secret experiments are being conducted, deep down in the bowels of the earth beneath McCarran Airport. The mysterious base itself, which is apparently called NEXUS, is described as a massive, labyrinthine complex deep down under the airport, where it remains hidden partly because the airport drowns out any suspicious sounds from it and city of Las Vegas consumes so much power that it its own immense power consumption doesn’t look suspicious.
McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas
Within the NEXUS base, there are claimed to be four distinct sections called “Hives.” According to the witness, Hive 1 is for “finance, accounting, operations/organization divisions, troop training/housing, and some small-scale weapons testing.” Next is Hive 2, which is for “Chemical engineering, some nano-tech research, and advanced psychological fitness,” then Hive 3 with its bioweapon and disease research and testing of “advanced space-travel and space-warfare technologies, particle engines and gravitational beams,” as well as research into inter-dimensional anomalies, and finally the sinister and terribly mysterious Hive 4, which is apparently kept in a “total information blackout.” In this place clearance is especially limited, and there is seemingly no communication at all with the outside world. Even more ominous is that the facility supposedly harbors what the witness calls possibly “the most terrifying thing in the world,” which he explains thus:
Another thing I’ve read minimally about are “the twins.” I don’t know who or what these are, but they’re the “above-top-secret” gem of Hive 4. It is treasonous to even correspond about them on our secure networks unless you are cleared to do so, and only four employees are. I’ve only seen a few things about them. One was a medical record. No vitals, unusual vocalizations that manifest hallucinations and psychosis in nearby employees, and skin that produces violent nausea when touched. The document was basically speculation that the skin functions much like the Australian stinging tree or a jellyfish. I read documents about people who worked with them as well. In 4, a woman was remanded to the psychological ward after being in the same room with them, and a soldier who stood outside of the laboratory where they are kept basically killed himself. Specifically, he peeked inside during a routine access, then began bashing his own brains out with the butt of a pistol while singing an Irish folksong. The woman who was remanded to psych was even weirder: during breakfast with her colleagues, she grabbed a fork, stood up, walked out of the mess hall, stripped all of her clothes off, blinded herself in both eyes, then somehow managed to make her way all the way up to Floor 1 where the access corridor to Hive 3 is located. How she managed to operate the dozens of keycard readers, passcode boxes, and retinal scanners is still under review. Last email regarding her was sent in 2012, about how she sits in the dark of solitary on Floor 11’s psych ward with a permanent and blissful grin on her face. One of my colleagues whom I trust told me that he saw the twins once through hacked access to a video feed. He said they are woman-like, about twice as tall as a full-grown man, with unidentifiable black growths dangling from their heads (like hair but thicker), and they basically float a few inches off the ground and drag their toes lightly as they move. They’re utterly pale. He never saw the faces, but he claims that they appear to distort reality (or at least the video feed) in such a way that space looks bent around them.
It is all very, very strange and compelling stuff, if not obviously charged with an whiff of pure fabrication. Just what is going on here? The Reddit user claims that all of this is going on as the U.S. government actively seeks to maintain the illusion that Area 51 is where all of these experiments are being carried out, in order to divert attention away from the real site. Is there anything to any of this tale at all or is this just the ranting of a delusional individual or a flat out hoax? You can read the whole report here and see what you think. It seems worth taking this all with a grain of salt or two, as it did come from Reddit, and is most likely a fabricated piece of spooky creepypasta, but it is all very entertaining nonetheless.
If that is not enough for you, then how about a tale of a secret government base complete with flesh eating aliens? According to a report that is allegedly from files published by the United States Department of Agriculture, a secret base was constructed in New Mexico within the Tonto National Forest. One witness allegedly told about the base in a mysterious email on December 30, 2013, which was described thus:
David received a call this morning at the front desk from a male caller reporting the construction of a secret government installation upstream from the Salt River Canyon past Pinal Creek (Upstream from Roosevelt Lake). Aliens and at least one detached head are involved. Caller claims to have seen construction cranes coming out the side of the cliffs, miniature stealth planes and UFOs, aliens and people working together at the site, aliens eating humans. He found a severed head and claims to have pictures of some of this stuff. Caller reported that he is 60, not crazy and doesn’t do drugs. He said he had already called the ‘office at the lake’, but he didn’t know if those people were turning the other cheek or maybe those people have been paid off.
Wait, what? Flesh eating aliens? Severed heads? What in the world? The witness claimed he didn’t do drugs, so there’s that, I guess. Besides its sheer insanity, this account is somewhat curious in that there are others who have claimed that a base lies in the same vicinity as well. Former US Air Force Intelligence Officer George A. Filer has said that he was contacted by a man named Scott Heckman, who spoke of a base in the same area. The witness claimed that the area was a hotbed of UFO activity, as well as unexplained disappearances, and said thus:
The most major base that I have been able to follow the craft towards is located in the Tonto National Forest. I discovered this while camping in the Sierra Ancha Wilderness. The UFOs kept flying down into the basin two minutes apart. They flew low, out of the southeast at about two thousand feet above the terrain. During the daytime A-10s use the area for training. Re-fueling practice also occurs here both day and night. These areas have also been plagued with several unexplained disappearances that have occurred in Cochise County over the last 30 years. Cars are abandoned with people’s ID; money and keys left behind. Their occupants are mysteriously missing, never to be seen again.
Information on one extremely weird supposed base was relayed to me personally by the anonymous contact calling himself Molten13, who I have written of here at Mysterious Universe before. This mysterious individual claimed to me that there were several bases lying under the deserts of Nevada and New Mexico, where he alleges he worked as what I suspect was some sort of security post. Molten13 claimed that the base was used for all manner of strange experiments including mental powers, mind control, inter-dimensional travel, teleportation, time travel, genetic experimentation, and apparently even individuals with unique powers, such as “guys who can walk through walls.” According to this source there was even supposedly seemingly an extraterrestrial kept in some sort of suspended animation down in a bio-containment unit.
All of this was described as research that mankind was not ready for, and supposedly took place down in a self-sufficient base hidden away even from the upper echelons of the government. According to Molten13, there was some sort of security breach at one point in which he suspects that something escaped out into the Nevada wilds. He claimed that whatever this was, it confronted me personally in a bizarre encounter I had at around the same time, which I have written of here before. I have come to the conclusion that this is most likely just a hoax and someone yanking my chain, and Molten13 has disappeared, with not even my article about him drawing him back out. Nevertheless, it is an incredibly far-out tale, and you can read more about it in my article on the incident here.
It is impossible to know how much truth any of these wild stories have, and considering their tenuous nature of being based on hearsay and rumors with no real evidence, there is no way to prove them or disprove them, keeping them firmly in the domain of speculation and the imagination. However, regardless of whether any of these secret bases and others like them exist or not, they still serve to be intriguing and entertaining, and show that such conspiracy theories have a tenacious ability to stubbornly continue to sprout up and spread. Is this all fiction, the product of disillusioned minds, hoaxes, or somehow rooted in reality? We will probably never know for sure, but these bases certainly do exist in conspiracy mythology.
Have they finally found the REAL missing link? Scientists discover 12 million-year-old ape fossil with straight hind legs for 'walking upright' in the heart of Europe
Have they finally found the REAL missing link? Scientists discover 12 million-year-old ape fossil with straight hind legs for 'walking upright' in the heart of Europe
The remains were unearthed in the mountainous region of Allgäu in Germany
Danuvius guggenmosi was broad chested and lived around 12 million years ago
Standing at around three-and-a-half feet the ape had a unique walking style
It would have both swing from tree limbs and walked on its human-like feet
A 'missing link' between humans and our ape-like ancestors that lived around 12 million years ago has been unearthed in Bavaria, Germany.
According to researchers, the bizarre creature had arms suited to hanging in trees but legs like ours — making it like an 'ape and human in one'.
The discovery provides the first image of what the last common ancestor of apes and humans looked like — with fossils from this period being rare.
Named Danuvius guggenmosi after a Celtic river god, the find of the broad-chested primate also pushes back the timeline for when walking on two feet began.
Based on the shape of Danuvius' bones, experts have concluded that the animal moved around in a unique way, dubbed 'extended limb clambering'.
They describe this technique as a combination of both swinging from branch-to-branch and walking on the ground.
Danuvius was about three-and-a-half feet tall and weighed up to five stone.
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A 'missing link' between humans and our ape-like ancestors, pictured, that lived around 12 million years ago has been unearthed by palaeontologists in Bavaria, Germany
'It is a missing link. It was astonishing for us to realise how similar certain bones are to humans, as opposed to great apes,' said paper author and palaeontologist Madelaine Boehme of the University of Tübingen in Germany.
'I personally was most surprised by the amount of Danuvius similarity in the back and shin bones, in contrast to apes. This was totally unexpected to all of us.'
'Danuvius is like an ape and a human — in one.'
'The ape-like features are the slightly elongated arms — like bonobos but not as long as a gorilla's or gibbon's — and the opposable big toe.'
'But even its elbow joint is not like great apes and resembles humans and small apes.'
'[It] would have been able to hang from branches by its arms.
'However, unlike other apes such as gibbons or orangutans, which do not use their legs as much as their arms for locomotion, this species had hind limbs that were held straight and could have been used to walk on,' she added.
'This ape also had a grasping big toe, which meant it would have walked on the sole of its feet.'
Danuvius' teeth identify it as belonging to a group of extinct apes called dryopithecins, which have been found in European rocks dating from the mid–to–late Miocene, or around 16–5 million years ago.
The ape would have had a broad chest, long spine and extended hips and knees — as with all animals that walk on two feet, including humans.
Its remains were dug up in a mountainous region called the Allgäu, which today is popular with tourists for its fairytale-style castles.
The bones came from at least four individuals — a male, two females and a juvenile — and included not only teeth but also parts of the skull, jaw, rib cage and spine, along with arm, leg, finger and feet bones.
According to researchers, the bizarre creature had arms suited to hanging in trees but legs like ours — making it like an 'ape and human in one'
The discovery provides the first image of what the last common ancestor of apes and humans looked like — with fossils from this period being rare
The adult male's skeleton was so complete that the researchers were able to describe its limbs and body proportions in detail.
'It was similar in size to modern-day bonobos. Thanks to completely preserved limb bones, vertebra, finger and toe bones, we were able to reconstruct the way Danuvius moved about in its environment,' explained Professor Boehme.
'Importantly, for the first time, we were able to investigate several functionally important joints, including the elbow, wrist, hip, knee and ankle, in a single fossil skeleton of this age. From the skull we have found the left part of the face.'
'We could estimate its stature — a little more than one metre (3ft 3in). Females weighed about 19 kg (3 stone) and males 31 kg (5 stone).'
Danuvius would have had a powerful grasp and flat, human-like feet for walking. It also had a mobile wrist and hands with curved fingers.
'Knuckle-walkers like chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas lack the extended knee and have less developed grasping,' said Professor Boehme.
'The fingers of Danuvius also lack the robusticity typical of knuckle-walkers.'
The uniqueness of Danuvius is demonstrated by its small body size, which lay between that of a gibbon and a bonobo, she added.
Named Danuvius guggenmosi after a Celtic river god, the find of the broad-chested primate also pushes back the timeline for when walking on two feet began
Based on the shape of Danuvius' bones, experts have concluded that the animal moved around in a unique way, dubbed 'extended limb clambering'. They describe this technique as a combination of both swinging from branch-to-branch and walking on the ground
'It is a missing link. It was astonishing for us to realise how similar certain bones are to humans, as opposed to great apes,' said paper author and palaeontologist Madelaine Boehme of the University of Tübingen in Germany
'The emerging picture of its locomotion is different from any known living creature,' added Professor Boehme.
'Living primates either favour their arms or their hind limbs — leaping monkeys and humans, respectively, for instance.'
'Danuvius shows upright walking originated in the trees, not on the ground, and early humans did not go through a stage of hunched knuckle-walking.'
'Our last common ancestor with great apes did not look like a chimp, or any living great ape — he may have looked like Danuvius.'
'Danuvius shows us the conditions from where both great apes and humans diverged. And this evolutionary process happened in Europe.'
'Our findings tremendously increase our knowledge about Miocene hominids — African apes and humans. They add bipedalism to the spectrum of behaviours.'
The bones came from at least four individuals — a male, two females and a juvenile — and included not only teeth but also parts of the skull, jaw, rib cage and spine, along with arm, leg, finger and feet bones
Danuvius would have had a powerful grasp and flat, human-like feet for walking. It also had a mobile wrist and hands with curved fingers
The research may answer the question of what kind of early locomotion underlies our bipedal origins, said anthropologist Tracy Kivell of the University of Kent, who was not involved in the present study.
'That would get us closer to answering why and how our human ancestors became less dependent on life in the trees and fully embraced two-footed terrestrial locomotion,' she added.
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Nature.
Danuvius' remains were dug up in a mountainous region called the Allgäu, which today is popular with tourists for its fairytale-style castles
WHEN DID HUMAN ANCESTORS FIRST EMERGE?
The timeline of human evolution can be traced back millions of years. Experts estimate that the family tree goes as such:
55 million years ago - First primitive primates evolve
15 million years ago - Hominidae (great apes) evolve from the ancestors of the gibbon
7 million years ago - First gorillas evolve. Later, chimp and human lineages diverge
A recreation of a Neanderthal man is pictured
5.5 million years ago - Ardipithecus, early 'proto-human' shares traits with chimps and gorillas
4 million years ago - Ape like early humans, the Australopithecines appeared. They had brains no larger than a chimpanzee's but other more human like features
3.9-2.9 million years ago - Australoipithecus afarensis lived in Africa.
2.7 million years ago - Paranthropus, lived in woods and had massive jaws for chewing
2.6 million years ago - Hand axes become the first major technological innovation
2.3 million years ago - Homo habilis first thought to have appeared in Africa
1.85 million years ago - First 'modern' hand emerges
1.8 million years ago - Homo ergaster begins to appear in fossil record
800,000 years ago- Early humans control fire and create hearths. Brain size increases rapidly
400,000 years ago - Neanderthals first begin to appear and spread across Europe and Asia
300,000 to 200,000 years ago - Homo sapiens - modern humans - appear in Africa
50,000 to 40,000 years ago - Modern humans reach Europe
Scientists have unearthed 12 million-year-old fossils in a mountainous region called Allgäu in Bavaria, Germany that provide the “missing link” between humans and our ape-like ancestors.
The ape-man had arms that would allow it to hang from trees, but had legs like modern humans, allowing it to swing from tree branches as well as walk upright on the ground. It even had an opposable big toe which means that it would have walked on the sole of its feet. Additionally, it had mobile wrists and hands with curved fingers. (Pictures of their discovery can be seen here.)
This rare discovery provides scientists with a picture of what the ape-man ancestor looked like millions of years ago and has been given the name Danuvius guggenmosi after a Celtic river god. The Danuvius guggenmosi was approximately three and a half feet tall and weighed as much as five stone (almost 32 kilograms or 70 pounds).
Madelaine Boehme, who is from the University of Tübingen in Germany as well as an author of a paper describing the discovery, said, “It is a missing link. It was astonishing for us to realize how similar certain bones are to humans, as opposed to great apes,” adding, “Danuvius is like an ape and a human – in one.” (Their findings were published in the journal Nature and can be read in full here.)
The teeth from the Danuvius revealed that it belonged to a group of extinct apes called dryopithecins that were around during the middle to late Miocene period approximately 16-5 million years ago. It would have had a broad chest, long spine, and extended hips and knees, just like humans and any other animal that walks on two feet.
In addition to the teeth, parts of a skull, jaw, spine, and rib cage were also discovered as well as a finger, arm, leg, and feet bones. The remains came from at least four individuals (a male, two females, and a juvenile). In fact, there were so many remains found from the adult male that the researchers were able to put together quite a bit of detail about his body proportions as well as his limbs.
“It was similar in size to modern-day bonobos. Thanks to completely preserved limb bones, vertebra, finger and toe bones, we were able to reconstruct the way Danuvius moved about in its environment,” Boehme explained.
She went on to say, “Our last common ancestor with great apes did not look like a chimp, or any living great ape – he may have looked like Danuvius,” adding, “Danuvius shows us the conditions from where both great apes and humans diverged. And this evolutionary process happened in Europe.”
Tracy Kivell, who is an anthropologist at the University of Kent, weighed in on the discovery by stating, “That would get us closer to answering why and how our human ancestors became less dependent on life in the trees and fully embraced two-footed terrestrial locomotion.”
A visitor to a village in southern China has been left stunned after spotting a fish that appears to have a human face.
Trending footage shows the carp sporting markings that resemble a man's mouth, nose and eyes on its head.
A woman who was filming the video was so awestruck by the sight she gushed: 'The fish has turned into a fairy.'
The carp was discovered yesterday in the Miao village in Kunming, China. Carp have long been known to carry markings which can look like a human face, but actually seeing one is rare
The extraordinary animal was discovered yesterday by a visitor in the Miao Village, a tourist destination in the city of Kunming, according to popular blogger Feidian Videos.
Web users in the country have been amazed by the 15-second clip since it emerged today on Weibo, China's equivalent to Twitter.
One person wrote: 'This is scary.'
Another queried: 'Who dares to eat it?'
Carp have long been known to carry markings which can look like a human face, but actually seeing one is rare.
Sightings of 'human-faced carp' have been reported in Taiwan and the UK.
In 2010, a 44-year-old former butcher in Britain discovered that a fish he had bought five months earlier (pictured) started to develop facial features similar to those of a human
A side view of the British man's carp shows it looking a lot more fish-like. The fish, owned by Brendan O'Sullivan of Dagenham in Essex, was said to be worth an estimated £40,000
In 2010, a 44-year-old British man found out that a carp he had bought five months earlier started to develop facial features like those of a human.
'It was astonishing. I could easily make out from the markings two eyes, a nose and a mouth. I thought I was suffering from sunstroke,' said the fish's owner Brendan O'Sullivan of Dagenham, Essex.
Mr O'Sullivan's fish was said to be worth an estimated £40,000.
In 2011, residents in north-eastern Taiwan's Yilan County were surprised to find a black-and-white carp with seemingly human features in a pond run by the local government.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
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