Are there any possible astronomical explanations for the Star of Bethlehem or Christmas star?

Regulus and Leo I dwarf galaxy.

Image via Russell Croman.

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The Star of Bethlehem – nowadays often just called the Christmas Star – is a major seasonal symbol throughout the world.

Image captionSome astronomers suggest the star was two bright objects 'in conjunction'

Imagine, if you will, the silhouettes of three regally attired men on camels. They are gazing across gently rolling hills or dunes of white, to a tiny solitary building in the distance. The night is dark, and one exceedingly bright star appears to hover over the small building, sending a bright shaft of light earthward to illuminate its outline. Another light glows gently inside.

Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy: The Three Wise Men (named Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar). Detail from 6th-century Mary and Child surrounded by angels mosaic, by the so-called “Master of Sant’Apollinare”.

Image via Wikipedia.

That is the picture most of us have of the Christmas Star, but it’s an image derived more from imagination and greeting cards than from the Bible. In fact, the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament is the only place this “star” is mentioned in the Bible (Matt 2:2, 7-10, King James Version). Even there, information on the star is sparse. The most telling reference is Matt. 2:9:

When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

For anyone inclined to insist on the literal truth of scripture, this verse solves the question. If this verse is literally true, then the Star of Bethlehem could not have been any known natural phenomenon, simply because none would move that way.

However, if we grant the author of Matthew – who assuredly was not an eyewitness at the Nativity – a little artistic license, the “star” might not have appeared literally in the way described. In that case we can consider some natural, astronomical possibilities. In fact, there is some uncertainty about the use of the word for star in the Greek manuscript. Some contend that the word could have meant or implied an object other than a physical star.

Aaron Robinson caught this Geminid meteor on December 14, 2018, in Ririe, Idaho.

Some artistic depictions show what appear to be a bright meteor or “falling star.” Although exploding meteors, sometimes called bolides or fireballs, can be startling and truly impressive, they last only seconds. They can occur at any time. People far more aware of the night sky than the modern city dweller is likely would not have placed much significance in them. Such transient phenomena could not possibly have “led” the wise men (the Bible never calls them “kings”) to Bethlehem.

There are other astronomical objects or events that might have seemed more significant, but there are problems. First off, we don’t know for sure when Jesus was born. Due to an error by a Church cleric hundreds of years later, the birth of Jesus was thought to be at least four years later than it really was. So today we know that the birth was no later than 4 B.C., and it could have been a little earlier. And it certainly was not on December 25. The Bible does not say, leaving us few clues. One clue we do have, however, is the reference that shepherds were out in the field “keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8), something the scholars say was likely only done in the spring when lambs were born. Thus the birth was likely in the spring, probably between 7 and 4 B.C.

Few astronomical records were kept at the time, except by the Chinese and Koreans. They did record what might have been comets in 5 and possibly again in 4 B.C. The main problem here is that comets were generally regarded as omens of evil and bad fortune by the Chinese and likely also by the magi-astrologers the New Testament calls “wise men.” Rather than follow such a cometary “star,” they likely would have gone the other way.

Another possibility is that the Christmas Star was a nova or supernova, a previously unseen star that suddenly brightens in a big way. Indeed, one such star was recorded by the Chinese in the spring of 5 B.C, and was seen for more than two months. However, its position in the constellation Capricornus meant that it likely would not have seemed to “lead” the wise men in the manner implied in the Bible.

For some, the star was not really a star at all, but a planet, Jupiter. Or more precisely, it was the conjunction or close meeting of Jupiter with two other planets, Saturn and Mars. Planets were “wandering stars” to the ancients, and to many they bore great astrological or mystical significance. Astronomers know that there was a series of such conjunctions in 6 and 5 B.C., occurring in the constellation Pisces (the Fishes), said by some to be the astrological “sign of the Jews.” To add more credence for later Christian writers such as Matthew, the sign of a fish later became the secret sign for Christians.

Mosaic pavement of a 6th century synagogue at Beth Alpha, Jezreel Valley, northern Israel. It was discovered in 1928. Signs of the zodiac surround the central chariot of the sun (a Greek motif), while the corners depict the 4 “turning points” (“tekufot”) of the year, solstices and equinoxes, each named for the month in which it occurs- tequfah of Tishrei, tequfah of Tevet, tequfah of Ni(san), tequfah of Tamuz.

Image via Wikipedia.

Unless some major and indisputable archaeological discovery is found to settle the question once and for all, the mystery of what the Christmas Star was will remain in the realm of faith. Science cannot explain it as any known physical object; history offers no clear record; and religion offers only an untestable miraculous apparition. But although there may be no agreement on the nature of the star or even its actual sighting two millenia ago, all sides can agree on the message the Christmas star heralded: “… on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14).

• Bottom line: Some possible astronomical explanations for the Star of Bethlehem or Christmas star.

{  https://earthsky.org/ }

24-12-2019 om 17:04 geschreven door peter  

'It wasn't behaving within the normal laws of physics': Navy pilot who shot the famous 'Tic Tac' UFO video breaks his silence 15 years after the encounters near USS Nimitz

• Retired Navy pilot Chad Underwood spoke out in interview on Thursday
• He is the one who shot the famous 'Tic Tac' UFO video over Pacific in 2004
• Unusual objects had been tracked by the USS Nimitz carrier group for days
• Pilots of Navy Super Hornet fighter jets subsequently made visual contact
• They described the object as a white oblong shape with no wings or windows 

By KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

The former Navy pilot who shot famous video footage of a UFO encounter near the USS Nimitz carrier group has broken his silence 15 years after the incident.

Chad Underwood spoke out in an interview with New York Magazine published on Thursday, detailing for the first time his experiences over the Pacific in November 2004.

Underwood is the one who coined the description 'Tic Tac' for the oblong, wingless object, and it was his in-flight video that caused a sensation in 2017 when the Pentagon confirmed that the footage was authentic.

In the new interview, Underwood gives a detailed description that backs up other personal accounts of the incident, and admits that to this day he can't be sure whether the object he encountered was from this world or another.

Scroll down for video 

Chad Underwood spoke out in an interview with New York Magazine published on Thursday, detailing for the first time his experiences over the Pacific in November 2004

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The incident unfolded during carrier group exercises in the Pacific, off the coast of Mexico.

For about two weeks, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, part of Carrier Strike Group 11, had been tracking mysterious aircraft intermittently for two weeks on an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.

The radar contacts were so inexplicable that the system was even shut down and restarted to to check for bugs — but operators continued to track the unknown aircraft.

Then on November 14, Commander David Fravor says he was flying in an F/A-18F Super Hornet when he made visual contact with the object, which seemed to dive below the water, resurface, and speed out of sight when he tried to approach it.

As Fravor landed on the deck of the Nimitz, Underwood was just gearing up to take off on his own training run. 

Fravor told Underwood about the bizarre encounter, and urged Underwood to keep his eyes open. Underwood replied that the Princeton's radar crew had already reported an object that they wanted the fighters to attempt to track.

'So, we go out to where our designated training area is. We’re not necessarily looking for something, but the Princeton had a specific object that they wanted us to hunt, for lack of a better word. And all of a sudden, I got this blip on my radar,' Underwood recalled in the new interview.

Underwood was flying in an F/A-18F Super Hornet as part of the USS Nimitz (above) carrier group when he encountered an 'unidentified aerial phenomena'

Navy Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Jim Slaight had been flying about 100 miles off the coast of San Diego (pictured) in each of their F/A-18F Super Hornets (pictured) when they encountered an unidentified flying object described as a 'Tic Tac'

Underwood estimated the object was about 20 miles away, and he was able to pick it up on his infrared gun-pod camera (FLIR).

'The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving. And what I mean by “erratic” is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I’ve ever encountered before flying against other air targets,' Underwood told the magazine.   

'Because, aircraft, whether they’re manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The Tic Tac was not doing that. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, a hundred feet in like seconds, which is not possible,' he said. 

'If it was obeying physics like a normal object that you would encounter in the sky — an aircraft, or a cruise missile, or some sort of special project that the government didn’t tell you about — that would have made more sense to me. The part that drew our attention was how it wasn’t behaving within the normal laws of physics,' Underwood continued.

'Normally, you would see engines emitting a heat plume. This object was not doing that. The video shows a source of heat, but the normal signatures of an exhaust plume were not there. There was no sign of propulsion,' he said.

Underwood said that the object was flying far to high to be birds, and dismissed the notion of a weather balloon because of its erratic and sudden movements.

Underwood estimated the object was about 20 miles away, and he was able to pick it up on his infrared gun-pod camera

(FLIR)

Underwood joins Fravor as well as these former Nimitz and Princeton crew members in speaking out about the unexplained encounter in 2004

The Navy flyer also scoffed at the notion that it was some kind of weather event, given the multiple radar and visual contacts made by both the Princeton and multiple Hornet pilots.

Underwood wasn't able to rule out the notion that the object was some kind of highly advanced, classified U.S. military project — but he did note that he was not given a debriefing warning him of the secret project, as he had in other scenarios as a pilot when he'd accidentally encountered classified planes. 

To this day, Underwood isn't sure what the object was, and he refuses to speculate. 

'I’ve never said that this is what I think it was or speculate as to what I think it was,' he said. 'That’s not my job. But I saw something. And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well.'

'At no point did I want to speculate as to what I thought this thing was — or be 'associated with, you know, “alien beings” and “alien aircraft” and all that stuff. I’m like, “No. I do not want to be part of that community.” It is just what we call a UFO. I couldn’t identify it. It was flying. And it was an object. It’s as simple as that,' he said.

'I’ll let the nerds, like, do the math on what it was likely to be. I just happened to be the person that brought back the video.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-12-2019 om 16:01 geschreven door peter  

24-12-2019 om 15:49 geschreven door peter  

Well, well, well. Yet more proof that, if nothing else, the universe has a deep and savage sense of irony. “Swamp gas” went from a dismissive write-off of UFO encounters to a ubiquitous running joke among the UFO community and public at large. Even if you know absolutely nothing about UFOs you know they’re all either balloons or swamp gas. Now a new study has found that phosphine, the toxic chemical that makes swamp gas so nasty, is a definite indicator of anaerobic life (life that doesn’t use oxygen) and could be one of the best signs of extraterrestrial life. It all comes full circle, eventually.

Phosphine is a foul-smelling, highly flammable, and generally unpleasant toxic gas found in dung piles and in putrid bogs and swamps. It might also be the best biosignature of alien life. According to a press release from MIT, researchers found that there are only two ways phosphine can be produced. In the intensely high-pressure storm systems of gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, and by anaerobic life. According to the researchers, finding phosphine on a rocky alien planet would be a definite indicator that there was life there.

Lead author of the new paper, MIT researcher Clara Sousa-Silva says:

“Here on Earth, oxygen is a really impressive sign of life. But other things besides life make oxygen too. It’s important to consider stranger molecules that might not be made as often, but if you do find them on another planet, there’s only one explanation.”

Clara Sousa-Silva and colleagues at MIT have amassed a database of over 16,000 possible alien biosignatures. Most of these biosignatures are unreliable and could be the byproduct of other forces besides life. But Sousa-Silva has spent the last 10 years studying phosphine in particular, and now concludes that phosphine would be a definite indicator of life.

Phosphine exists on Earth in bogs, swamps, and other unpleasant places.

Phosphine was discovered in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970s. Due to its composite elements, phosphine is a molecule that won’t come together by chance except in the high-energy, high-pressure, violent storms that swirl through gas giants.

Sousa-Silva wondered if phosphine was could be produced here on Earth, specifically by life on Earth. Sousa-Silva says:

“So we started collecting every single mention of phosphine being detected anywhere on Earth, and it turns out that anywhere where there’s no oxygen has phosphine, like swamps and marshlands and lake sediments and the farts and intestines of everything. Suddenly this all made sense: It’s a really toxic molecule for anything that likes oxygen. But for life that doesn’t like oxygen, it seems to be a very useful molecule.”

Sousa-Silva and her team spent the last several years trying to figure out if anything besides life can create phosphine. They found that, on a rocky planet like Earth, there are no forces powerful enough to create the molecule besides life. She says:

“At some point we were looking at increasingly less-plausible mechanisms, like if tectonic plates were rubbing against each other, could you get a plasma spark that generated phosphine? Or if lightning hit somewhere that had phosphorous, or a meteor had a phosphorous content, could it generate an impact to make phosphine? And we went through several years of this process to figure out that nothing else but life makes detectable amounts of phosphine.”

Finding out aliens smell like a putrid swamp wouldn’t be great for our ego as a species.

Sousa-Silva and her team determined that if phosphine was produced by alien life on some faraway rock, it would be detectable even if it was at the quantities produced here on Earth. That means that although phosphine is an indicator of anaerobic life, detecting it may lead researchers to an alien ecosystem as varied as ours. Or at least a big swamp.

Now the real question is when UFO and alien sightings were first being dismissed as swamp gas, were they really being dismissed? What if the aliens have actually been swamp gas this whole time.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

24-12-2019 om 12:53 geschreven door peter  

Diego Maradona claims he was abducted by aliens in a UFO and lost his virginity at 13 to an 'older woman who was reading a newspaper'

• Diego Maradona, 59, has claimed that he has been abducted by a UFO
• The former football star also revealed he lost his virginity aged 13 'in a basement'
• Made the comments in an interview with Argentine sports channel TyC Sports

By WILLIAM COLE FOR MAILONLINE

Footballing legend Diego Maradona has claimed he was once abducted by a UFO and went missing for three days.

The 59-year-old retired midfielder had also said he lost his virginity aged 13 'in a basement with an older lady' who was reading a newspaper at the time.

He recently made the comments in an interview with Argentine sports channel TyC Sports.

Footballing legend Diego Maradona, 59, has claimed he was once abducted by a UFO and went missing for three days

Interviewers had asked Maradona if he believed in UFOs, with the ex-Napoli star saying: 'Why make things up? Once, after a few too many drinks, I was missing from home for three days.

'I got home and said that UFOs had taken me. I said "They took me, I can’t tell you about it".'

In a rather revealing interview, he was also asked when he lost his virginity.

'At 13 years old, in a basement with an older lady. I was on top and she was reading a newspaper,' said the star, according to the Sun. 

Maradona retired his playing career in 1997, and has moved into management, currently coaching Gimnasia de La Plata in his native Argentina

Maradona retired his playing career in 1997, and has moved into management, currently coaching Gimnasia de La Plata in his native Argentina.

But during his time on the pitch he also revealed that he had played 'several times' without having slept the night before.

He also added that his ideal guests for a dinner party were Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Lula (a former Brazilian President), Nestor Kirchner (former Argentine President), Alberto Fernandez (former Argentine President), and Cristina Kirchner (former Argentine President).

Read more:

• News, sport, celebrities and gossip | The Sun

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-12-2019 om 12:43 geschreven door peter  

When you’re known worldwide by one name, it generally means you’re a famous entertainer or a star athlete, usually in the field of football (soccer). Say the name “Maradona” anywhere in the world and you’ll generally get a look of recognition followed by a favorite memory of the Argentine soccer star – winning the 1986 World Cup or kicking the “Goal of the Century, to name a few. Is the name Maradona known beyond Earth? In a recent interview, the diminutive former star, now a manager, admitted to being abducted by a UFO. If so, he’s not the only one-named athlete with this tale. If not … well, everyone also remembers his adventures with adult substances. Which one was it?

“Why make things up? Once, after a few too many drinks, I was missing from home for three days. I got home and said that UFOs had taken me. I said, ‘They took me, I can’t tell you about it’.”

Is there a Universe Cup? Was some team from Alpha Centauri looking for a playmaker? In an interview with the Argentine sports channel TyC Sports, ‘Diego Armando’ Maradona was asked if he believed in UFOs and he blurted out his surprise answer. Well, Maradona was a well-known abuser of cocaine and alcohol during his playing days but the UFO part was a surprise. It doesn’t appear that he’s ever made any other references to UFOs or aliens. However, he seems sincere (although typically jovial) in his other responses about his sex life and memories of the game and fellow players, so there’s at least a possibility he’s sharing a real close encounter, not a blackout excuse.

Another one-name athlete who revealed many close encounters is Ali – that’s Muhammad Ali. On September 7, 1973, he appeared on The Tonight Show with host Johnny Carson and brought up his UFO experiences, which began on a training run in 1970. According to UFO investigator Timothy Green Beckley, by the time Ali died in 2016 he had 16 UFO sightings, many while training.

“I happened to look up just before dawn, as I often do while running, and there hovering above us was this brilliant light hanging as if by an invisible thread.”

While ‘Canseco’ never reached the one-name level of Maradona or Ali, there’s only one Jose Canseco, and earlier this year he talked about his knowledge of time travel which he claimed was given to him by aliens. He also said he’d considered running for president but aliens told him he was better suited for fighting the ‘aliens’ in government as a private citizen/celebrity.

It’s often said that aliens choose to communicate with creative people like artists because they’re more open to unusual possibilities, or perhaps that openness allows creative types to see aliens, spirits and like which are already in our midst. Should an active imagination be ridiculed — “She’s just a daydreamer. What are you smoking?” — or respected? While they may not follow sports, extraterrestrials might seek out creative athletes who have one-name status in hopes that they are believable spokespersons. Is that the case with Maradona, Ali and Conseco?

Let’s ask Renaldo and Serena.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

24-12-2019 om 12:37 geschreven door peter  

As a follow-up to the current controversy concerning Jacques Vallee and bogus alien abductions in South America, I thought I would share with you a couple of cases that suggest such things haven’t just been performed in South America. Consider the following: On May 5, 1980, Myrna Hansen was driving to her Eagle’s Nest, New Mexico, home from a trip to Oklahoma with her young son. Hansen suddenly found herself in a nightmarish world. Under hypnosis she recalled a classic alien abduction in which she was taken on board a UFO, undressed, and subjected to a physical examination. While on board, she also witnessed a “struggling cow sucked up into its underside in some sort of ‘tractor beam.’” More controversially, Hansen stated that after the abduction, she had been taken to an underground base, had seen “body parts” floating in vats, and felt that some sort of “device” had been implanted in her body so that the aliens could monitor and control her thoughts.

When details of Hansen’s description of the underground base were relayed to Kirtland Air Force Base security personnel, they immediately recognized that Hansen was describing a fortified, highly classified section of one of its facilities: the Manzano Weapons Storage Complex, which, at the time, was the largest underground repository of nuclear weapons in the Western world. I find it highly unlikely that aliens would have abducted Hansen to Kirtland Air Force Base (to say the least!), but maybe a military unit – engaged in a faked alien abduction scenario – might have done exactly that.

An example of a case of alleged alien abduction that appears to have been part of a sophisticated mind-control operation is described by Alison, a woman from Arizona, who lives on a ranch not too far from the city of Sedona. From the age of twenty-seven to thirty-one, Alison was subjected to at least five kidnappings that bore all the hallmarks of the classic alien abduction scenario. On each occasion, she was in her living-room, either reading or watching TV, when her two pet dogs – Lucy and Summer – began to act in a distressed fashion, pacing around the room and whimpering. At that point, things always became a blur, and Alison would later find herself in a different part of the house with several hours of time having passed. She would always awake feel groggy, and with a pounding headache and dry mouth.

For days after the weird experiences, she would dream of the moment when things would begin to go awry – which always resulted in a complete loss of electricity inside the house, a deep humming noise emanating from outside the large living-room window, and powerful and intensely bright lights enveloping the room. In her semi-conscious state, Alison would see small shadowy figures scuttling around the room. They would then carry her outside onto a small craft where she was subjected to a gynecological examination and some form of nasal probing. She would then be returned to another part of the house and the aliens would leave. It was only after the aliens had departed that the intense humming noise would cease.

On what Alison believes to have been the fifth abduction, however, the mysterious humming sound abruptly came to a sudden halt, only a few seconds after her cosmic visitors had entered the room. At that point, Alison recalled – significantly, not in a later dream on this occasion but in real time – she began to slowly regain her senses. And, very surprisingly, so did the aliens. In their place was not a group of frail-looking bald-headed, black-eyed “Grays,” but a number of large and burly men wearing what looked like suspiciously like black military fatigues. According to Alison, the men then suddenly started to back away slowly. And, as Alison began to regain her senses, one of them held his hand up “as if to say ‘stay where you are,” and continued to do so until they had exited the ranch house. Alison made her still-slightly-groggy way to the living-room window – just in time to see the group men jump climb aboard not a state-of-the-art extra-terrestrial spacecraft, but instead a very terrestrial-looking black helicopter. At a height of several hundred feet, a powerful lamp was suddenly turned on by someone aboard the helicopter that lit up the dark sky around her property.

Today, Alison has cast aside her ufological beliefs, and firmly believes that as a result of a combination of subliminal hypnosis, mind-altering technologies, and perhaps even non-lethal weaponry designed to temporary disable her nervous system and bodily movement, she was ingeniously made to think she was an alien abductee. But that in reality, she was merely the guinea-pig for the testing of sophisticated weaponry designed to affect and manipulate both mind and body. These are just two examples of several dozen similar cases I have on file. They all suggest that at least some alien abduction events are nothing of the sort. They are far more down to earth in nature.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

24-12-2019 om 12:27 geschreven door peter  

Alien Face Found On Mars Next To NASA Rover, Dec 24, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Dec 24, 2019
Location of discovery: Mars, Sol 5084-5102
Source photo: 

• http://www.gigapan.com/galleries/13640/gigapans/211334
  

I was searching a Mars photo and found this face smack in the center of it. The face really looks human-like. It has a chin, upper and lower lips, nose, nose nostril, eye, brow, hair or hat, cheeks and jaw line. It just seem so old. Sure its a sculpture made from the materials there, but maybe this object was smooth and beautiful when it was made, but over thousands or millions of years degraded. This is 100% proof that not only did intelligent aliens exist on Mars, but...they looked similar to humans. 
Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

24-12-2019 om 12:12 geschreven door peter  

Two unknown anomalies have been caught on camera while flying through space. Both anomalies would have been invisible to human eyes.

Wilbur Allen who captured the objects respectively on December 18 and 21, 2019 believes that the anomalies could be "cloaked" spaceships referring to the tic tac anomalies since several files associated with these anomalies support this assumption.

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

24-12-2019 om 12:02 geschreven door peter  

Something Massive Shows Up On Google Earth

The so-called enormous 300-foot object has gained attention over the internet after the discoverer, and popular YouTuber shared it online. A bizarre, mysterious object has been reportedly discovered on Google Earth in the middle of Antarctica.

The alleged large dark object seems to be different from anything else found nearby. The discoverer and YouTuber MrMBB333 pointed out in a video that the object could measure 277 feet across and around 260 feet high. MrMBB333 further speculated that the melting glaciers in the area might have made the strange object to appear.

One conspiracy theory believer commented on the video saying there’s something strange going on down there, and because of it, the world’s government has made Antarctica off-limits, and only very few individuals can go to certain parts for scientific research.

 Another one suggested the massive object was spotted on the unedited Google Earth application and would not be surprised if the object won’t be there anymore when Google updates Google Earth.

Others pointed out the snow being disturbed in front of the unusual object, leading some to speculate it could a crash landing or secret hanger.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

24-12-2019 om 11:35 geschreven door peter  

Surprisingly, over the course of most of humanity’s existence, we had no idea that other galaxies even existed. All we could see was our own little corner of the universe. It wasn’t until the early 1900’s that the nature of the so-called “Andromeda nebula” was discerned. Edwin Hubble settled the galaxy vs. nebula debate in 1925, and it was finally revealed that this “nebula” was actually a galaxy containing some 400 billion stars and not simply an extension of our own galaxy. Almost 100 years later, our reality (and relative insignificance) is well known, as we are now aware of the fact that the universe contains several BILLION large galaxies, many of which are similar to our own (current estimates guess that there are 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the Universe). With that revelation, we’ve learned that galaxies come in all shapes and sizes too. “So what other kinds of galaxies are there,” you might ask? 

Here are the main types:

Elliptical Galaxies:

First and foremost, we have elliptical galaxies: the largest (and arguably most dull) of the bunch. Generally, galaxies of this type are older and have no overly defined structure (they usually resemble an American football, and are about 6 million light-years across). In addition to this, they don’t contain many star forming regions, as they have used the bulk of their stellar material early in their formation. The massive size of galaxies of this type can be attributed to several galactic mergers, an event prone to advancing star formation activity. During these mergers, many massive stars are formed, which typically live fast and die hard, ejecting mass quantities of heavy metals into the interstellar medium.

 

Spiral Galaxies:

Next, we have spiral galaxies. Our galaxy, and our closest neighbor (Andromeda), are among this type. Galaxies of this type tend to be structured similar to a pinwheel, with a large central bulge, expansive disks, and a halo. They have bright central regions, where intricate filaments of stellar materials extend from. Some of their arms can extend several hundreds of thousands of light-years across (the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across, all in all), and they have stars of various ages scattered about. The material is organized in a way that is conductive to star formation, as something called “density waves” cause the material to circulate through the spiral arms like circling waves, where they ultimately squeeze and collapse, giving life to new stars.

Oddly enough, this classification has two flavors. There are ordinary spiral galaxies and barred spiral galaxies. The Milky Way was long thought to merely be a spiral galaxy, but recently, we found that the Milky Way is actually a barred spiral galaxy. This means that in our central region, we have a large bar near the nucleus where the spiral arms (one contains our solar system) branch out from. Barred-galaxy types usually have spiral arms that are tightly wound. Whilst the ordinary spiral galaxies are looser and less defined.

 

Lenticular Galaxies:

A lenticular galaxy is the love child of spiral and elliptical galaxy, usually containing a central bulge with no spiral arms (sometimes, they are even referred to as “armless spiral galaxies”  (take from that what you will). Many astronomers believe they are the evolutionary bridge between a spiral and elliptical galaxy. They can often be misidentified as either/or, depending on our frame of reference (if we are seeing the galaxy edge or face-on)

Irregular Galaxies:

All galaxies are separated by large expanses of empty interstellar space, but most are anchored together by immense gravitationael forc. Because of this, galaxies that are millions of light-years apart can be drawn toward one another, eventually coming within several thousands of light-years of one another. Some of these galaxies merely interact, before one darts off. Whilst others actually merge, forming newer (more spectacular) galaxies. The result of such a collision is almost always beautiful, but they still leave lasting scars.

As such, many galaxies that have interacted or merged do not have predictable structures. They come in many flavors. Some resemble birds or cigars (like M82, or the Cigar Galaxy), while others look like giant blobs of glowing dust (like the one seen here). Following this similar classification, irregular galaxies often look very similar to peculiar galaxies. Only some of them can develop unusual features (such as jets emanating from the central region in two opposite directions).

 

Dwarf Galaxies

Lastly, we come to the smallest rung on the latter: dwarf galaxies. There might be TRILLIONS of them in the universe, most in orbit around other galaxies. The Milky Way may have as many as 26 of them bound to it (The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were once thought to be, but recent observations indicate that the small galaxies are traveling to fast to be anchored to us.)

{ https://futurism.com/ }

24-12-2019 om 01:11 geschreven door peter  

{ https://futurism.com/ }

24-12-2019 om 00:49 geschreven door peter  

Artist’s concept of the just-launched CHEOPS space telescope, which will study hundreds of exoplanets in greater detail than ever before.

Image via ESA/ ATG medialab/ DLR.

After a one-day delay, the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched its CHEOPS mission last week, on the morning of December 18, 2019, from the spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. CHEOPS is the first ESA mission dedicated to studying exoplanets, those distant worlds orbiting other stars. NASA’s planet-hunting space missions, first Kepler and now TESS, have been finding new exoplanets. CHEOPS will study hundreds of exoplanets already known to exist – out of 4,000-plus now confirmed – to determine their sizes, masses, densities and possible atmospheres.

In this way, CHEOPS will take us some steps along the road of finding out what many exoworlds are actually like, not an easy task.

CHEOPS stands for CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite. The telescope will reside in a sun-synchronous orbit around Earth at an altitude of more than 400 miles (700 km). Kate Isaak, CHEOPS project scientist, said in a statement:

We are very excited to see the satellite blast off into space. There are so many interesting exoplanets and we will be following up on several hundreds of them, focusing in particular on the smaller planets in the size range between Earth and Neptune. They seem to be the commonly found planets in our Milky Way galaxy, yet we do not know much about them. CHEOPS will help us reveal the mysteries of these fascinating worlds, and take us one step closer to answering one of the most profound questions we humans ponder: are we alone in the universe?

Watch the launch below:

Heike Rauer, Director of the DLR Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, said:

More than 4000 exoplanets have been discovered in the Milky Way, yet we still know far too little about these distant worlds in our cosmic neighborhood. We are all eager to see which ‘faces’ the planets characterized by CHEOPS will show us.

So how does CHEOPS observe these planets?

Like some other telescopes, it will watch as the planets transit in front of their stars, as seen from Earth. As Juan Cabrera Perez, Head of the Extrasolar Planets and Atmospheres Department at the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, explained:

We could describe this fluctuation in brightness as a ‘mini stellar eclipse’, as the transiting exoplanet reduces the intensity of the light from the star for a short time. This fluctuation can be measured and analyzed – an area in which we can contribute suitable tools and many years of experience.

• EarthSky 2020 lunar calendars are available! They make great gifts. Order now. Going fast!

Cool photo of CHEOPS launch, December 18, 2019.

Image via ESA/ S. Corvaja.

CHEOPS will focus on some of the most common exoplanets discovered so far, ranging in size from Earth to Neptune, or about approximately 6,000 to 30,000 miles (10,000 to 50,000 km) in diameter. Using data from the transits, CHEOPS can determine the size, mass and density of the planets. All of these are important in order for scientists to figure out the planets’ compositions. Some will be rocky like Earth, while others will have deep, gaseous atmospheres like Neptune or even Jupiter or Saturn. Knowing this will also help scientists determine which of these worlds might be potentially habitable. Of course, rocky planets similar in size to Earth, or a bit larger – super-Earths – would be the most interesting in this regard. Nicola Rando, CHEOPS project manager, said:

Both CHEOPS instrument and spacecraft are built to be extremely stable, so as to measure the incredibly small variations in the light of distant stars as their planets transit in front of them. For a planet like Earth, this amounts to the equivalent of watching the sun from a distant star and measuring its light dim by a tiny fraction of a percent. Now we are looking forward to the first part of the operational activities, making sure that the satellite and instrument perform as expected, ready for scientists to perform their world-class science.

CHEOPS will also be able to find out which of these planets do have atmospheres and whether they have clouds. This will help differentiate between deep, gaseous primordial atmospheres with no real solid surface beneath them, and thinner atmospheres like those on terrestrial planets such as Earth, Venus or Mars.

CHEOPS is just the first of three planned ESA missions to study exoplanets.

The Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) space telescope, expected to launch in 2026, will focus on searching for “Earth-like” planets, ones that are rocky and about the same size as Earth orbiting in their stars’ habitable zones. So far, most such worlds have been found orbiting red dwarf stars, the most common type of star in our galaxy. CHEOPS, however, will look for these planets around sun-like stars. It will also be able to determine the age of these planetary systems with more accuracy than possible before.

A couple of years later, in 2028, ESA will launch the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL) mission, which will study the atmospheres of exoplanets. As well as atmospheric composition, this will help scientists develop a comprehensive catalog of exoplanetary orbits, radii, masses, densities and ages.

All three of these exciting missions, and others, will greatly increase our knowledge of these exotic, far-off worlds.

View larger. | Timeline of ESA and NASA exoplanet missions, including CHEOPS.

Image via ESA.

As Günther Hasinger, ESA Director of Science, said:

CHEOPS will take exoplanet science to a whole new level. After the discovery of thousands of planets, the quest can now turn to characterization, investigating the physical and chemical properties of many exoplanets and really getting to know what they are made of and how they formed. CHEOPS will also pave the way for our future exoplanet missions, from the international James Webb Telescope to ESA’s very own PLATO and ARIEL satellites, keeping European science at the forefront of exoplanet research.

The CHEOPS mission is a partnership between ESA and Switzerland with additional contributions from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. More than 100 scientists and engineers are involved. The nominal mission is expected to last 3 1/2 years. While the CHEOPS science team has the bulk of observation time, 20% of the time is reserved for other scientists from around the world.

CHEOPS and the coming follow-up missions will open an exciting new chapter in exoplanetary study. What fascinating discoveries will they make?

• Bottom line: ESA has successfully launched its CHEOPS space telescope to study hundreds of exoplanets in more detail than ever before.
• Via ESA
• Via German Aerospace Center (DLR)
• Read more: Visit CHEOPS website

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

24-12-2019 om 00:34 geschreven door peter  

The Juno spacecraft’s last perijove – or closest point to Jupiter – resulted in a treasure trove of images. Its next perijove is coming up on December 26. Get updated here, and view Juno’s latest amazing images.

Jupiter’s south pole as seen from the Juno spacecraft on November 4, 2019. These swirling spots are cyclones at Jupiter’s pole. The whole hexagonal arrangement of cyclones is large enough to dwarf the Earth. The central cyclone can be compared to the continental U.S. The smallest one, in the lower right – a new one, seen for the first time in November – can be compared to Texas. 

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI/ ASI/ INAF/ JIRAM.

The Juno spacecraft – which has been orbiting the giant planet Jupiter since July of 2016 – acquires close-up images of the planet at every perijove, or closest point to Jupiter. That happens about every 53 days. The batch of images acquired by the craft in early November, when it swung to within 2,175 miles (3,500 km) of the cloudtops at Jupiter’s south pole, are particularly mind-blowing. The big news for the November flyby … the craft discovered that Jupiter’s south pole has seven large, well defined cyclones now, instead of the six seen previously. These cyclones appear in a hexagonal (six-sided) pattern at Jupiter’s pole, rather than the pentagonal (five-sided) pattern seen previously.

A statement from NASA explained:

When Juno first arrived at Jupiter in July 2016, its infrared and visible-light cameras discovered giant cyclones encircling the planet’s poles – nine in the north and six in the south. Were they, like their Earthly siblings, a transient phenomenon, taking only weeks to develop and then ebb? Or could these cyclones, each nearly as wide as the continental U.S., be more permanent fixtures?

With each flyby, the data reinforced the idea that five windstorms were swirling in a pentagonal pattern around a central storm at the south pole and that the system seemed stable. None of the six storms showed signs of yielding to allow other cyclones to join in …

Then, during Juno’s 22nd science pass, a new, smaller cyclone churned to life and joined the fray.

Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, said:

Data from Juno’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper [JIRAM] instrument indicates we went from a pentagon of cyclones surrounding one at the center to a hexagonal arrangement.

This new addition is smaller in stature than its six more established cyclonic brothers: It’s about the size of Texas.

Maybe JIRAM data from future flybys will show the cyclone growing to the same size as its neighbors.

• EarthSky 2020 lunar calendars are available! They make great gifts. Order now. Going fast!

Jupiter’s pentagon turns hexagon. In this annotated infrared image, 6 cyclones form a hexagonal pattern around a central cyclone at Jupiter’s south pole. That’s in contrast to the 5 cyclones in a pentagonal shape seen previously. 

NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI/ ASI/ INAF/ JIRAM.

To give some sense of the immense scale of cyclones arranged in a hexagonal pattern at Jupiter’s south pole, an outline of the continental United States is superimposed over the central cyclone and an outline of Texas is superimposed over the newest cyclone. The hexagonal arrangement of the cyclones is large enough to dwarf the Earth. This JIRAM image was obtained during the 23rd science pass of the Juno spacecraft over Jupiter, on November 4, 2019.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI/ ASI/ INAF/ JIRAM.

NASA said the flyby:

… also marked a victory for the mission team, whose innovative measures kept the solar-powered spacecraft clear of what could have been a mission-ending eclipse.

To understand what happened, you have to go back to Juno’s entry into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. It was meant to enter an initial 53-day orbit, then reduce the size of its orbit a few months later, in order to shorten the period between science flybys to every 14 days. But the project team recommended to NASA to forgo the main engine burn due to concerns about the spacecraft’s fuel delivery system.

Now Juno is carrying out its mission, NASA said, although it’s taking longer than originally plannned. But Juno’s longer life at Jupiter is what led to the need to avoid Jupiter’s shadow. Steve Levin, Juno project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, explained:

Ever since the day we entered orbit around Jupiter, we made sure it remained bathed in sunlight 24/7. Our navigators and engineers told us a day of reckoning was coming, when we would go into Jupiter’s shadow for about 12 hours. We knew that for such an extended period without power, our spacecraft would suffer a similar fate as the Opportunity rover, when the skies of Mars filled with dust and blocked the sun’s rays from reaching its solar panels.

View larger. | In this image, you can see a shadow on Jupiter, cast by its moon Io. Io’s shadow can be seen on Jupiter through earthly telescopes, and many pictures have been taken of it from space as well, but this is the first from such a close distance, just 8,450 miles (13,600 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloudtops. JunoCam acquired this image on September 12, 2019.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI/ MSSS. Image processing by citizen scientist Tanya Oleksuik.

NASA explained that, without the sun’s rays providing power, Juno would be chilled below tested levels. The space scientists believed that – during this time – Juno’s battery cells would be drained beyond recovery. So the navigation team set devised a plan to “jump the shadow,” maneuvering the spacecraft just enough so its trajectory would miss the eclipse. NASA said:

The navigators calculated that if Juno performed a rocket burn weeks in advance of November 3, while the spacecraft was as far in its orbit from Jupiter as it gets, they could modify its trajectory enough to give the eclipse the slip. The maneuver would utilize the spacecraft’s reaction control system, which wasn’t initially intended to be used for a maneuver of this size and duration.

On September 30, at 7:46 p.m. EDT (4:46 p.m. PDT), the reaction control system burn began. It ended 10 ½ hours later. The propulsive maneuver — five times longer than any previous use of that system — changed Juno’s orbital velocity by 126 mph (203 kph) and consumed about 160 pounds (73 kilograms) of fuel.

Thirty-four days later, the spacecraft’s solar arrays continued to convert sunlight into electrons unabated as Juno prepared to scream once again over Jupiter’s cloud tops.

Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, explained:

The combination of creativity and analytical thinking has once again paid off big time for NASA … While the team was trying to figure out how to conserve energy and keep our core heated, the engineers came up with a completely new way out of the problem: Jump Jupiter’s shadow.

It was nothing less than a navigation stroke of genius. Lo and behold, first thing out of the gate on the other side, we make another fundamental discovery.

As you read this, Juno is heading toward its next perijove on December 26, 2019. Watch for news and new images shortly after the new year dawns!

View larger. | Swirls and storms in Jupiter’s clouds. This image of a vortex on Jupiter, taken by the Juno mission camera, JunoCam, captures the amazing internal structure of the giant storm. Original image taken on November 3, 2019, at an altitude of approximately 5,300 miles (8,600 km) and a latitude of about 48 degrees north on Jupiter.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI/ MSSS/ Junocam.

Image processing by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt/ Seán Doran.

In this amazing Juno image, south is up. The original image was captured by JunoCam on September 12, 2019.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI/ MSSS/ JunoCam. Image processing by citizen scientist Prateek Sarpal, who titled this “A mind of limits, a camera of thoughts.”

• Bottom line: On its last flyby close to Jupiter – on November 4, 2019 – the Juno spacecraft discovered a new small cyclone at Jupiter’s south pole.
• See all the latest images from NASA’s Juno spacecraft
• Via NASA

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

24-12-2019 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

24-12-2019 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

The 26,000-Year Astronomical Monument Hidden in Plain Sight

By Alexander Rose 

On the western flank of the Hoover Dam stands a little-understood monument, commissioned by the US Bureau of Reclamation when construction of the dam began in 01931. The most noticeable parts of this corner of the dam, now known as Monument Plaza, are the massive winged bronze sculptures and central flagpole which are often photographed by visitors. The most amazing feature of this plaza, however, is under their feet as they take those pictures.

The plaza’s terrazzo floor is actually a celestial map that marks the time of the dam’s creation based on the 25,772-year axial precession of the earth.

I was particularly interested in this monument because this axial precession is also the slowest cycle that we track in Long Now’s 10,000 Year Clock. Strangely, little to no documentation of this installation seemed to be available, except for a few vacation pictures on Flickr. So the last time I was in Las Vegas, I made a special trip out to Hoover Dam to see if I could learn more about this obscure 26,000-year monument.

I parked my rental car on the Nevada side of the dam on a day pushing 100 degrees. I quickly found Monument Plaza just opposite the visitor center where tours of the dam are offered. While the plaza is easy to find, it stands apart from all the main tours and stories about the dam. With the exception of the writing in the plaza floor itself, the only information I could find came from a speaker running on loop, broadcasting a basic description of the monument while visitors walked around the area. When I asked my tour guide about it, he suggested that there may be some historical documentation and directed me to Emme Woodward, the dam’s historian.

I was able to get in touch with her after returning home. As she sent me a few items, I began to see why the Bureau of Reclamation doesn’t explain very much about the monument’s background. The first thing she sent me was a description of the plaza by Oskar J. W. Hansen, the artist himself, which I thought would tell me everything I wanted to know. While parts of it were helpful, the artist’s statement of intention was also highly convoluted and opaque. An excerpt:

These [human] postures may be matched to their corresponding reflexes in terms of angle and degree much as one would join cams in a worm-gear drive. There is an angle for doubt, for sorrow, for hate, for joy, for contemplation, and for devotion. There are as many others as there are fleeting emotions within the brain of each individual who inhabits the Earth. Who knows not all these postures of the mind if he would but stop to think of them as usable factors for determining proclivities of character? It is a knowledge bred down to us through the past experience of the whole race of men.

It is pretty hard to imagine the US Bureau of Reclamation using this type of write-up to interpret the monument… and they don’t. And so there it stands, a 26,000-year clock of sorts, for all the world to see, and yet still mired in obscurity.

While I may never totally understand the inner motivations of the monument’s designer, I did want to understand it on a technical level. How did Hansen create a celestial clock face frozen in time that we can interpret and understand as the date of the dam’s completion? The earth’s axial precession is a rather obscure piece of astronomy, and our understanding of it through history has been spotty at best. That this major engineering feat was celebrated through this monument to the axial precession still held great interest to me, and I wanted to understand it better.

I pressed for more documentation, and the historian sent me instructions for using the Bureau of Reclamation’s image archive site as well as some keywords to search for. The black and white images you see here come from this resource. Using the convoluted web site was a challenge, and at first I had difficulty finding any photos of the plaza before or during its construction. As I discovered, the problem was that I was searching with the term “Monument Plaza,” a name only given to it after its completion in 01936. In order to find images during its construction, I had to search for “Safety Island,” so named because at the time of the dam’s construction, it was an island in the road where workers could stand behind a berm to protect themselves from the never-ending onslaught of cement trucks.

I now had some historical text and photos, but I was still missing a complete diagram of the plaza that would allow me to really understand it. I contacted the historian again, and she obtained permission from her superiors to release the actual building plans. I suspect that they generally don’t like to release technical plans of the dam for security reasons, but it seems they deemed my request a low security risk as the monument is not part of the structure of the dam. The historian sent me a tube full of large blueprints and a CD of the same prints already scanned. With this in hand I was finally able to re-construct the technical intent of the plaza and how it works.

In order to understand how the plaza marks the date of the dam’s construction in the nearly 26,000-year cycle of the earth’s precession, it is worth explaining what exactly axial precession is. In the simplest terms, it is the earth “wobbling” on its tilted axis like a gyroscope — but very, very slowly. This wobbling effectively moves what we see as the center point that stars appear to revolve around each evening.

Presently, this center point lies very close to the conveniently bright star Polaris. The reason we have historically paid so much attention to this celestial center, or North Star, is because it is the star that stays put all through the course of the night. Having this one fixed point in the sky is the foundation of all celestial navigation.

But that point near Polaris, which we call the North Star, is actually slowly moving and tracing a circle through the night sky. While Polaris is our North Star, Hansen’s terrazzo floor points out that the North Star of the ancient Egyptians, as they built the great pyramids, was Thuban. And in about 12,000 years, our North Star will be Vega. The workings of this precession are best explained with an animation, as in figure 1. Here you can see how the axis of the earth traces a circle in the sky over the course of 25,772 years.

Unfortunately it is a bit difficult to see how this all works in the inlaid floor at Monument Plaza. The view that you really want to have of the plaza is directly from above. You would need a crane to get this view of the real thing, but by using the original technical drawing as an underlay I was able to mark up a diagram which hopefully clarifies it (Fig. 2).

In this diagram, you can see that the center of the circle traced by the axial precession is actually the massive flag pole in the center of the plaza. This axial circle is prominently marked around the pole, and the angle of Polaris was depicted as precisely as possible to show where it would have been on the date of the dam’s opening. Hansen used the rest of the plaza floor to show the location of the planets visible that evening, and many of the bright stars that appear in the night sky at that location.

By combining planet locations with the angle of precession, we are able to pinpoint the time of the dam’s completion down to within a day. We are now designing a similar system — though with moving parts — in the dials of the 10,000 Year Clock. It is likely that at least major portions of the Hoover Dam will still be in place hundreds of thousands of years from now. Hopefully the Clock will still be ticking and Hansen’s terrazzo floor will still be there, even if it continues to baffle visitors.

I would like to thank Emme Woodward of the US Bureau of Reclamation for all her help in finding the original images and plans of Monument Plaza. If you have further interest in reading Hansen’s original writings about the plaza or in seeing the plans, I have uploaded all the scans to the Internet Archive.

{ http://longnow.org/ }

23-12-2019 om 23:49 geschreven door peter  

China made an artificial star that's 6 times as hot as the sun, and it could be the future of energy

DAVID ANDERSON, SHIRA POLAN

23-12-2019 om 23:27 geschreven door peter  

Scientists are trying to open a portal to a parallel universe

By THE SUN

Noah Schnapp as Will in “Stranger Things.”

(THE SUN) — Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee are trying to open a portal to a parallel universe.

The project — which has been compared to the Upside Down in the Netflix blockbuster “Stranger Things” — hopes to show a world identical to ours where life is mirrored.

Leah Broussard, the physicist leading the experiment, told NBC the plan is “pretty wacky” but will “totally change the game,” ahead of a series of experiments she plans to run this summer.

Broussard’s experiment will fire a beam of subatomic particles down a 50-foot tunnel. The beam will pass a powerful magnet and hit an impenetrable wall, with a neutron detector behind it.

If the experiment is successful, particles will transform into mirror images of themselves, allowing them to burrow right through the impenetrable wall.

This would prove that the visible universe is only half of what is out there, Broussard said, but she also admitted that she expects the test to “measure zero.”

In “Stranger Things,” portals began opening, connecting a US town to a dark alternate dimension called the Upside Down.

In reality, if a mirror world exists, it would have its own laws of mirror physics and its own mirror history, according to NBC.

However, there wouldn’t be an alternate version of you. Current theory, the outlet explains, only hypothesizes that mirror atoms and mirror rocks are possible — and perhaps even mirror planets and stars.

{ https://stlucianewsonline.com/ }

23-12-2019 om 23:16 geschreven door peter  

NASA Hails Historic Landing by Boeing's Starliner Capsule, But Next Steps Still Murky

Boeing's first CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on the ground at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, shortly after landing on Dec. 22, 2019.

(Image: © NASA/Bill Ingalls)

"It was an absolute bullseye, better than I think anybody anticipated," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said of the landing during a news conference today. "That's good for the agency, it's good for Boeing; that's good for the United States of America."

But not everything went smoothly on OFT. The mission was supposed to last eight days and feature an automated rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station (ISS), demonstrating Starliner's ability to ferry astronauts to and from the orbiting lab and clearing the way for a crewed test flight next year.

But an error with Starliner's onboard timing system, which manifested shortly after liftoff on Friday morning (Dec. 20), nixed that original plan. The timing problem prevented the capsule from properly performing a pivotal engine burn, trapping Starliner in the wrong orbit, NASA and Boeing representatives have said.

So Starliner ended up circling Earth on its own for about 48 hours and then coming home, leaving some original mission objectives unachieved. But that doesn't necessarily mean the capsule will have to refly OFT before astronauts can climb aboard, NASA officials said.

Indeed, going straight to the Crew Flight Test (CFT), which will carry three astronauts to and from the ISS, is definitely still on the table, NASA Commercial Crew Program deputy manager Steve Stich said during today's news conference.

"To me, there's good data out there to suggest that, once we go through it, maybe it's acceptable to go, next step, fly the Crew Flight Test," Stich said. "But we have to go through the data first."

That good data includes a nominal launch and landing, the two most important milestones to check off on a human spaceflight, Stich and Bridenstine both said. And Starliner seems to have performed very well in orbit, Jim Chilton, senior vice president of Boeing’s Space and Launch Division, said during a news conference yesterday (Dec. 21). And today, Chilton estimated that Starliner may end up meeting about 85% of the original OFT objectives, after all data analyses are complete.

But all three men stressed that the NASA and Boeing teams need to perform those analyses before any decisions can be made about Starliner's next flight. 

"I think we're into January, pretty deep into January, before everybody has a thorough understanding" of the OFT data, Chilton said today.

CFT is currently targeted for liftoff sometime next year. If it is decided that Starliner must fly another version of OFT first, the CFT timeline would probably shift to the right by at least three months. That's the estimated minimum amount of time it would take for Boeing to get ready for another OFT, Chilton said today. 

(The Starliner vehicle that landed today won't fly CFT, by the way. This capsule will perform Boeing's first contracted ISS crew mission for NASA. And the crew of that mission, which will be commanded by NASA astronaut Suni Williams, has named the capsule "Calypso," after the ship of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau.)

Boeing has been developing Starliner with funding from NASA's Commercial Crew Program, most notably a $4.2 billion contract that was announced in September 2014. That deal also pays for six operational, crew-carrying flights to and from the ISS.

SpaceX got a similar, $2.6 billion contract at the same time. The California-based company's Crew Dragon capsule aced its version of OFT, called Demo-1, this past March. SpaceX is now gearing up for a key in-flight test of Crew Dragon's emergency-escape system next month; if all goes well with that demonstration, Crew Dragon will be cleared to perform a crewed test flight to the orbiting lab.

Getting one of these private vehicles up and running will end NASA's dependence on Russian Soyuz spacecraft for crewed trips to the ISS, which has been total since the space shuttles were grounded more than eight years ago. And having both of them operational is vital to ensure stable, uninterrupted access to space, Bridenstine said.

"We need to have dissimilar redundancy for how we fly astronauts into space," he said. 

NASA also wants to be just one of many customers that use private American spacecraft to get to and from low-Earth orbit, Bridenstine added. 

"We want to have numerous providers that are competing against each other on cost and innovation, driving down cost and increasing access," he said. "And today was really a great milestone in that eventuality."

• Boeing's CST-100 Starliner Space Capsule (Infographic)
• Boeing in Space: The Latest News, Images and Video
• How Boeing's Starliner Orbital Flight Test Works: A Step-By-Step Guide

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

23-12-2019 om 22:26 geschreven door peter  

Earth's Magnetic North Pole Continues Drifting, Crosses Prime Meridian

By Stephanie Pappas

Earth’s magnetic field protects us from the solar wind by deflecting the charged particles.

(Image: © Shutterstock)

Earth's magnetic north pole, which has been wandering faster than expected in recent years, has now crossed the prime meridian. 

Magnetic north has been lurching away from its previous home in the Canadian Arctic toward Siberia at a rate of about 34 miles (55 kilometers) a year over the past two decades. The latest model of the Earth's magnetic field, released Dec. 10 by the National Centers for Environmental Information and the British Geological Survey, predicts that this movement will continue, though likely at a slower rate of 25 miles (40 km) each year. 

This model is used to calibrate GPS and other navigation measurements. 

Earth's magnetic field is produced by the churning of the planet's iron outer core, which produces a complex, but largely north-south magnetic field. For reasons not entirely understood but related to the planet's interior dynamics, the magnetic field is currently undergoing a period of weakening. That's why magnetic north is drifting. 

As of February 2019, magnetic north was located at 86.54 N 170.88 E, within the Arctic Ocean, according to the NCEI. (Magnetic south similarly does not line up with geographic south; it was at at 64.13 S 136.02 E off the coast of Antarctica as of February 2019.) 

Scientists release a new version of the World Magnetic Model every five years, so this 2020 update was expected. In February 2019, though, they had to release an update ahead of schedule due to the fast clip of magnetic north's movements. The 2020 model shows the "Blackout Zone" around magnetic north where compasses become unreliable and start to fail because of the proximity of true north. The new maps also show magnetic north east of the prime meridian, a boundary the pole crossed in September 2019, according to Newsweek. The prime, or Greenwich, meridian is the meridian that was set as the official marker of zero degrees, zero minutes and zero seconds in 1884;iIt runs through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in England. 

• Related: What If Earth's Magnetic Poles Flip?

It's currently unclear whether Earth's magnetic poles are headed for a flip-flop — switching north and south — or whether the magnetic field will soon strengthen again. Both events have happened in Earth's history without any notable effect on biology. However, modern navigation systems rely on magnetic north and will have to be recalibrated as the poles continue to wander. Already, for example, airports have had to rename some of their runways, which have names based on compass directions. 

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Originally published on Live Science.

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23-12-2019 om 21:56 geschreven door peter