UFO Researcher Set Up And Arrested He Claims, UFO Sighting News.

Todays a sad day for UFO researchers. I heard that Tyler from Secureteam10 Youtube channel was recently arrested on domestic violence, probation and assault charges. The channel has over two million subscribers and once brought in over a quarter million US dollars per year. Tyler uploaded a video titled, "I've been set up," causing two million subscribers to get notifications of the video, but he soon took it down. However other Youtubers copied the video and put on their own channels to share with the UFO community. Over a dozen other channels uploaded his video and included other things such as his mug shot, legal charges and such. 

 

Tyler has been a bit mysterious this year, often disappearing from Youtube leaving his channel hanging for up to 6-8 weeks without a single video uploaded. But this time...its very odd. He says he was set up, arrested and beaten behind bars. That its all because of his Youtube channel and that he was told to keep quiet about it. His followers have begun to complain and leave, thinking he cares little for them.

 

I do know that UFO researchers do get followed, do get threatening emails and messages. Some UFO researchers have even been killed in the last few years to keep them from revealing more evidence. Its a dangerous field to be in and one I do not recommend. He was a world famous UFO researcher once and suddenly crashed.

Hopefully he will not give up. Everyone makes mistakes and we don't truly know the circumstances or the pressures he was under at the time. He's got a good channel with over 1000 videos he made, most getting hundreds of thousands and even millions of views. 
Scott C. Waring 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

29-12-2019 om 21:52 geschreven door peter  

NASA Confirms and Accepts The Existence of UFOs on Earth Throughout History

At last, NASA confirms the existence of UFOs throughout the history of humanity. The statement has been released in a document published on its official website.

The author of the document says that ancient observers of mysterious objects spotted in the sky could not assign it to natural causes. Moreover, he says that at least some of the strange phenomena witnessed in the sky by our ancestors were very similar to the UFOs that appear nowadays.

Witnesses, thousands of years ago, made use of a military language – at least in the terms that we understand it today – in order to deal with those incidents.

As you know, military terminology reflects the most advanced technology of a specific time, so when we talk about “military language” referring to the time of our ancestors we need to contextualize the term and apply it to that specific historical period.

This terminology is also used in our days to speak about UFOs in an attempt to rationalize the phenomenon and describe it in the most accurate way.

The author of the document lists numerous “military objects” spotted by ancient witnesses.

If you want to have a look at them, or if you want to know more about the subject, please read the full report “Unidentified flying objects in classical antiquity” posted by NASA here:

• pubs.giss.nasa.gov/…

{ https://knowledgetime.net/ }

29-12-2019 om 18:56 geschreven door peter  

NASA mystery: Strange magnetic pulses at midnight baffle scientists studying Mars

NASA’S InSight Mars probe has detected mysterious magnetic pulses that strike the Red Planet like clockwork, every day at midnight.

29-12-2019 om 18:36 geschreven door peter  

NASA mystery: Strange magnetic pulses at midnight baffle scientists studying Mars

NASA’s InSight lander has been collecting data from Mars since the end of November 2018. The NASA probe was designed to investigate the inner workings of the Red Planet by creating a 3D map of its interior and by measuring the planet’s seismicity. But the scientists analysing the treasure trove of information collected by InSight have uncovered an unusual set of data. The researchers found a series of magnetic pulses occurring every day around midnight, local time on Mars.

{ https://www.businesstelegraph.co.uk/ }

29-12-2019 om 18:18 geschreven door peter  

Astronaut Christina Koch sets new record for longest single space flight by a woman

BY WILLIAM HARWOOD

{ https://www.cbsnews.com/ }

29-12-2019 om 18:04 geschreven door peter  

New Research Claims Octopuses Came From Space

 Newton  -  Biology

A summary of decades of research on a rather 'out-there' idea involving viruses from space has recently been published, and it's raising questions on just how scientific we can be when it comes to speculating on the history of life on Earth. This may sound weird and strange but its serious.

It's easy to throw around words like crackpot, rogue, and maverick in describing the scientific fringe, but every now and then a paper like this comes along, leaving us blinking owlishly, unsure of where to even begin.
A total of 33 names are listed as authors on this review, which was published by Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. The journal is peer reviewed and fairly well cited. So it's not exactly small, or a niche pay-for-publish source.
Science writer Stephen Fleischfresser goes into depth on the background of two of the better known scientists involved: Edward Steele and Chandra Wickramasinghe. It's well worth a read. For a tl;dr version, Steele is an immunologist who already has a fringe reputation for his views on evolution that relies on acquiring gene changes determined by the influence of the environment rather than random mutations, in what he calls meta-Lamarckism.
Wickramasinghe, on the other hand, has had a somewhat less controversial career, recognised for empirically confirming Sir Fred Hoyle's hypothesis describing the production of complex carbon molecules on interstellar dust.
Wickramasinghe and Hoyle also happened to be responsible for another space biology thesis. Only this one is based on more than just the origins of organic chemistry. The Hoyle Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology makes the rather simple claim that the direction of evolution has been significantly affected by biochemistry that didn't start on our planet.
In Wickramasinghe's own words, "Comets are the carriers and distributors of life in the cosmos and life on Earth arose and developed as a result of cometary inputs." Those inputs, Wickramasinghe argues, aren't limited to a generous sprinkling of space-baked amino acids, either.

Rather, they include viruses that insert themselves into organisms, pushing their evolution into whole new directions. The report, titled "Cause of Cambrian Explosion – Terrestrial or Cosmic?", pulls on existing research to conclude that a rain of extra-terrestrial retroviruses played a key role in the diversification of life in our oceans roughly half a billion years ago.
"Thus retroviruses and other viruses hypothesised to be liberated in cometary debris trails both can potentially add new DNA sequences to terrestrial genomes and drive further mutagenic change within somatic and germline genomes," the authors write.
Let that sink in for a moment. And take a deep breath before continuing, because that was the tame part. It was during this period that a group of molluscs known as cephalopods first stretched out their tentacles from beneath their shells, branching into a stunning array of sizes and shapes in what seemed like a remarkably short time frame.
The genetics of these organisms, which today include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, are as weird as the animals themselves, due in part to their ability to their ability to edit their DNA on the fly.
The authors of the paper make the rather audacious claim that these genetic oddities might be a sign of life from space. Not of space viruses this time, but the arrival of whole genomes frozen in stasis before thawing out in our tepid waters.
"Thus the possibility that cryopreserved squid and/or octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted," they write. In his review of the paper, medical researcher Keith Baverstock from the University of Eastern Finland, concedes that there's a lot of evidence that plausibly aligns with the H-W thesis, such as the curious timeline of the appearance of viruses.
But that's just not how science advances. "I believe this paper justifies scepticism of the scientific value of stand alone theories of the origin of life," Baverstock argues. "The weight of plausible, but non-definitive, evidence, great though that might be, is not the point."
While the idea is as novel and exciting as it is provocative, nothing in the summary helps us better understand the history of life on Earth any better than existing conjectures, adding little of value to our model of evolution. Still, with solid caveats in place, maybe science can cope with a generous dose of crazy every now and then.

Journal editor Denis Noble concedes that 'further research is needed', which is a bit of an understatement. But given the developments regarding space-based organic chemistry in recent years, there's room for discussion.
"As space chemistry and biology grows in importance it is appropriate for a journal devoted to the interface between physics and biology to encourage the debates," says Noble. "In the future, the ideas will surely become testable."
Just in case those tests confirm speculations, we recommend being well prepared for the return of our cephalopod overlords. Who knows when they'll want those eggs back? 

• This research was published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.

{ http://www.physics-astronomy.com/ }

29-12-2019 om 17:46 geschreven door peter  

Open a tightly-sealed bottle that’s been hiding in the back of the office refrigerator for a year and the first thing you probably notice is the smell, followed by some weird stuff growing inside. Open a tightly-sealed container that’s been hiding underground for 2 billion years and a bad smell will come as no surprise. But stuff growing inside? That’s the hope of a group of researchers who put a drop of water taken from a sealed pocket in a 2-mile-deep gold mine in South Africa under an electron microscope and saw something that could be … that looks suspiciously like … life! If it is, a lot of other people are interested in it – especially NASA, which thinks this is the same way it will find life on Mars. Will anyone really notice or care if they also find gold on Mars?

“The recent discovery of near saturated brines 3 km below land surface in the South African gold mine, Moab Khotsong (26.98 S, 26.78 E), presents an opportunity to characterize microbial life in potentially ancient brines hosted within the 3.1-2.9 Ga Witswatersrand Supergroup.”

In a presentation at the recent Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union entitled “B11K-2202 – Abiotic (Prebiotic?) Organic Chemistry in a Potentially Ancient Hypersaline Brine: New Insights on the Limits of Microbial Life Inhabiting 3.1 km Deep Fracture Fluid in South Africa,” Princeton University graduate student Devan Nisson unveiled the results of the geophysical equivalent of opening a bottle hidden for a year in the back of your refrigerator. In this case, the ‘refrigerator’ is the Moab Khotsong gold and uranium mine, located in the northern part of South Africa, which claims to have the world’s deepest mine shaft at 3,000 meters (9,800 ft). From those depths, Nisson and her fellow researchers probed deeper with boreholes and eventually hit pockets of pressurized water. Samples were taken back to Princeton, where Inside Science reports that the electron microscope showed something unexpected:

“When they examined the material under a scanning electron microscope, they saw rodlike shapes that appeared to be bacteria or similar-looking microbes called archaea. One of the cells was pinched in the middle, apparently in the process of dividing.”

Did Nisson run out of the lab like Dr. Frankenstein yelling “It’s alive!”? Not yet. She admits that the shapes could be minerals and plans DNA testing to determine if they’re animal, vegetable or mineral. The tests will also verify whether the water has been untapped for 2 billion years or if it was contaminated recently by fissures from mining. What they do know already is that a pocket at that depth contains water that is about seven times saltier than seawater and reaches temperatures of up to 129 degrees Fahrenheit – really hot and salty but still capable of supporting life. It also contains small organic acids and nitrate and sulfate ions that could feed microbes and provide energy.

That’s the same environment NASA expects to find when deep boreholes are drilled into Mars on future missions – hence its interest in what Devan Nisson found when she dug deep into the depths of Moab Khotsong and opened a 2 billion-year-old bottle of salty water. Is it life, life-lite, life-like, like Mars … or just a really deep rabbit hole? We’ll soon find out.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

29-12-2019 om 15:54 geschreven door peter  

There has been a long debate on whether brains can be fossilized and that question may finally have an answer. Scientists claim to have discovered incredibly well preserved fossilized brains in 500-million-year-old bug-like creatures.

The inky stains were found in fossils from an arthropod called Alalcomenaeus that lived during the Cambrian period – between approximately 543 million and 490 million years ago. The bug-like creature’s exoskeleton was well preserved in addition to the soft tissue from the brain and nerves. In their study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B (and can be read in full here), researchers described finding two Alalcomenaeus fossils in which the brains were still preserved.

Co-author of the study, Javier Ortega-Hernández, who is an invertebrate paleobiologist at Harvard University and curator of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, explained, “What we are dealing with in the fossil record are exceptional circumstances. This is not common — this is super, super rare.”

Alalcomenaeus had a nervous system similar to scorpions.

Paleontologists previously found one Alalcomenaeus fossil which was believed to have had preserved nervous tissue; however, there was much controversy over the discovery. But now with two more specimens, it’s pretty convincing proof that nervous tissue in arthropod fossils from the Cambrian period can indeed be fossilized. In fact, all three specimens were discovered buried in similar deposits which allowed the brain tissue to fossilize.

The two Alalcomenaeus fossils were found in the Great Basin in Utah. Ortega-Hernández and his co-authors described the fossils as having symmetrical stains that were found along its mid-line that looked like the nervous system that’s found in modern arthropods like spiders, scorpions, and horseshoe crabs. Additionally, the stains contained carbon which is an important element found in nervous tissue. “The nervous system and the gut kind of cross each other, which is really funky but common in arthropods nowadays,” Ortega-Hernández told Live Science.  Pictures can be seen here.

But not everyone is convinced that they in fact found a fossilized brain. Jianni Liu, who is a professor at the Early Life Institute in the Department of Geology at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, wrote an email to Live Science and argued that the inky stains found in the fossils could have been a “slightly random effect of the decay process” instead of being brain tissue.

Liu and her colleagues studied around 800 fossilized specimens and discovered that almost 10% of them had inky stains around the head. They found that while nervous tissue decays quite rapidly, bacteria from the gut can persist and “produce these so-called biofilms as radiating [stains] which look a bit like parts of a nervous system,” they wrote in a 2018 study.

Nicholas Strausfeld, who is a regents professor in the department of neuroscience at the University of Arizona, explained that when the creatures are buried underneath strong pressure, the remains become flattened out. And since there is a lot of fat found in nervous tissue, it repels water and “have some resistance against decay”.

There is still a lot of work and studying that needs to be done in regards to brain and nervous tissue fossilizing, but these are definitely interesting developments.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

29-12-2019 om 15:41 geschreven door peter  

Watch NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover go for a test drive in preparation for landing on Martian soil

NASA engineers witnessed their newest Mars rover take its first steps in preparation for its next mission that will search for fossilized remains of ancient life on the red planet.

The test took place inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Engineers clad in white bunny suits—special cleanroom attire worn in order to keep the rover’s delicate instruments very, very clean—watched the yet-to-be-named rover inch forward as part of the crucial pre-flight test, which lasted just over 10-hours. 

“Mars 2020 has earned its driver’s license,” Rich Rieber, the lead mobility systems engineer for Mars 2020, said in a news release. “The test unambiguously proved that the rover can operate under its own weight and demonstrated many of the autonomous-navigation functions for the first time. This is a major milestone for Mars 2020.”

During the test, NASA engineers noticed no problems, as the six-wheeled rover successfully performed all its required tasks: it rolled forward and backward and even pirouetted. According to NASA, the rover’s systems, all working in concert, enabled it to steer, turn and drive with ease.

Mars 2020, on the other hand, will be more independent than any of its predecessors. Equipped with advanced auto-navigation software, the rover will drive with the help of a dedicated onboard computer operating on data collected from the vehicle’s high-resolution, wide-field color cameras.

NASA engineers estimate that the rover will travel an average of 650 feet (200 meters) per day. For comparison, Curiosity’s current distance record for a single day is 702 feet (214 meters), although that’s not typical. The Mars 2020 rover will also be sporting more durable wheels. Curiosity’s wheels are visibly worn after seven years on the Martian surface; engineers hope Mars 2020’s wheels will hold up better.

Once on Mars, the rover will land at Jezero Crater—a former lake bed, rich in mineral deposits known for preserving microfossils here on Earth. In this crater, the rover will search for any signs that life may have once existed on Mars. 

While acting as a remote scientist, the rover will unlock clues about the planet’s climate and geology as well as collect samples that will be returned to Earth sometime in the future. 

Following the loss of the Opportunity rover, Curiosity has been the sole robot roaming the Martian surface. That will change in 2021, but they won’t be the only ones.

They will be joined by another: The European Space Agency is teaming up with Russia to send their version of the Mars 2020 rover. The Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover will arrive on Mars at a soon-to-be-announced location, in 2021.

The post Watch NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover go for a test drive in preparation for landing on Martian soil appeared first on TESLARATI.

Source: 

• https://www.teslarati.com/nasas-mars-2020-rover-test-drive-video/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

29-12-2019 om 15:17 geschreven door peter  

Deadly critters — 5 animals you should avoid

As the Latin proverb goes, Homo homini lupus – “man is wolf to man,” which is rather unfortunate as wolves are also wolves to men. Sitting in the kind embrace of modern civilization, it’s easy to forget a lineage fraught with fears of bloodthirsty creatures hidden in the dark.

Tool usage and organized social behaviors landed humanity a spot as the apex predator of the animal kingdom across the globe early on in our history, but there are still many creatures that prove a substantial threat under the wrong circumstances. While humans killing humans is a significant source of death around the world, it “only” accounted for about 560,000 deaths in 2016 — a number that pales in comparison to a single entry on the list of deadly animals.

1. Polar bears

Most animals attack humans intruding upon their territory as an instinctual act of self-preservation. Though many of these attacks prove deadly, it’s rare that other predators seek out human beings as prey. Polar bears, on the other hand, are one of the few animal species that will attack human beings for food, if desperate. Lacking an instinctual fear of humans due to a lack of natural exposure, polar bears see humans as an easily overpowered small mammal, and attacks often prove fatal.

2. Emus

Emus do not prey on humans but are characterized by a curiosity towards people moving in their surroundings as they may follow us simply to observe. Emus have earned a spot on the list as tenacious opponents of human conquest. In the winter of 1932, Australian settlers found acquired lands encroached upon by emu migrations numbering in the tens of thousands. The large presence of emus made agriculture nearly impossible and sparked what was known as “The Great Emu War.” Machine guns, bounties, and organized parties proved no match for the flightless birds, who regularly evaded attacks and left settlers with an awkward truce and miles of barrier fencing.

3. Funnel-web spiders

The list wouldn’t be complete without due respect to the many deadly creatures of the Outback or one of the most common human fears. Australian funnel-web spiders are the most toxic species of spiders. These arachnids are attracted to water and are often found near swimming pools. Most attacks result from the aggression of wandering males, and the bite of an Australian funnel-web spider can kill a child in hours or an adult in one day. Funnel-web spiders were a significant cause of death during early human colonization of their habitats, though anti-venom treatments are fast and effective. Since the widespread availability of funnel-web anti-venom, no deaths have been reported.

4. Hippopotamuses

“River horses” are aquatic herbivores that live in herds. The dense mammals are so heavy that they can walk underwater. Hippopotamus calves are frequent targets of crocodiles, and adults have been observed engaging in anti-predator behaviors. In combination with the fierce territoriality of bulls, these behaviors make the creatures a substantial threat to wandering and fishing humans, with death tolls ranging from 500 to 3,000 per year. Hippopotamuses are most dangerous when they perceive threats to their young or the females are in heat.

 5. Mosquitoes

The deadliest creature to human beings doesn’t bear fangs, claws, or a machine gun but, rather, fragile wings and a thread-like proboscis. A 2016 report from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation showed that mosquitoes are responsible for the largest number of human deaths related to animals. Carrying diseases as diverse as dengue fever and Zika virus, the most lethal disease that mosquitoes spread in the developing world is malaria with approximately 212 million cases in 2015 and 429,000 deaths.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

29-12-2019 om 15:06 geschreven door peter  

On December 26, 2019 the ISS live feed captured very strange bright objects flying over the south Pacific ocean, past Rio di Janeiro .

What are these oddly-shaped objects moving through the nights sky?

It looks like these space anomalies are organic/energetic rather than mechanical.

Did the ISS live feed captured extremely advanced entities, something beyond our comprehension?

  

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

29-12-2019 om 14:16 geschreven door peter  

NEW sighting from UFO hospot ECETI ranch, WA

New UFO footage was recorded from UFO hotspot ECETI ranch in Washington on 23rd December 2019.

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

29-12-2019 om 14:08 geschreven door peter  

The December 26, 2019, annular or ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse was viewed across a narrow track that started at sunrise in Saudi Arabia and ended at sunset over the North Pacific Ocean.

Get the details of this annular solar eclipse here.

View more eclipse photos at EarthSky Community Photos.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Progression into and out of yesterday’s annular eclipse, from Tumon Bay, Guam. Eliot Herman reported: “It was a beautiful day in Guam to observe the eclipse mostly clear blue skies with a little marine haze on the coast. These images were captured with a Questar telescope and a Nikon D850 camera using a Baader solar filter.” Thank you, Eliot!

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Dr Ski at Valencia, Philippines, wrote: “The sun at maximum coverage from my location.” Thank you, Dr Ski!

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Nikunj Rawal wrote from Jamnagar, Gujarat, India: “… 73% maximum eclipse at 09:17 a.m. at Jamnagar, India on December 26. Was worth experience to witness and capture the phenomenon using a long-focal-length telephoto lens with well planned preparations of 2 weeks on top of the Gop Hills Mountain. The annular phase of this solar eclipse was not visible here, unlike South Indian states. This sequence is a combination of 2 consecutive exposures taken with the same camera using the same settings — one taken of the landscape and another of the background of sun using 3.8mm Baader filter.” Thank you, Nikunj!

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Kandaswamy Natarajan wrote from Chennai, Tamilnadu, India: “This morning solar eclipse clicked through my Huwaei mobile camera.” Note that the sun is much too bright to show the eclipse, but Kandaswamy captured it via the lens flare – an internal reflection from his camera – on the photo. Thank you, Kandaswamy!

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Annular solar eclipse – December 26, 2019 – at Al Hofuf, Saudi Arabia by Alexander Krivenyshev of WorldTimeZone.com. Thank you, Alexander!

SRT@stanisdotcom

Annular Solar Eclipse as seen from Chennai, India. 26th December 2019
Visibility : Partial
Maximum Eclipse approx 85% of Sun's disk around 9.30 A.M@the_hindu @IndianExpress @timesofindia

11:49 AM - Dec 26, 2019

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View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Kannan A wrote from Singapore: “On this day – December 26, 2019 – in Singapore, we got to see the annular solar eclipse. It was a very rare moment on this day which coincided with Boxing Day and the 15th anniversary of the 2004 Tsunami in Banda Aceh. During the maximum phase of the eclipse, the clouds formed momentarily allowing stargazers to view the eclipse without the use of specialized equipment, but with precautions taken to protect the eyes. In the north of Singapore, Woodlands, however, I did not get to see the ring of fire but got a pleasant Christmas C!” Thank you, Kannan A!

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | A final word from Kannan A! Thank you!

• Bottom line: Photos from the EarthSky Community of the December 26, 2019, annular or “ring of fire” solar eclipse. The annular eclipse was viewed across a narrow track that started at sunrise in Saudi Arabia and ended at sunset over the North Pacific Ocean. Outside that track, many more viewed a partial eclipse.
• Get the details of this annular solar eclipse here.

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

29-12-2019 om 01:52 geschreven door peter  

29-12-2019 om 01:33 geschreven door peter  

Forbidden Discoveries Documentary 2019 Impossible Devices, Out of Time Technology and Artifacts

Of all the many unexplained phenomena and objects in the world, the ones that hold a great deal of fascination for us are what can be categorized as ancient anomalies. There have been many of these strange out of time discoveries, many more than geologists, archaeologists, and other scientists care to admit. We will look at the existence of puzzling artifacts, inexplicable monuments, human-made marvels and baffling finds regarding to our ancient and prehistory and ask the question, are we missing pieces of the puzzle with regards our past?

Watch eye-opening, thought-provoking, awesome, educational documentaries by subscribing and of course hit the bell button in the top right to stay informed of our latest releases. We will make each film expand the viewer's horizons, especially those open to learning more about the world. We hope you will become aware of facts you may have been previously unaware of in the excellent forbidden ancient discoveries documentary.

Two channels here for you to take a look at Channel 1 DTTV Studios. great video on advanced ancient technology here, if you like it, help us out and subscribe to the new channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC4Cp5xKOFE
Channel 2 DTTV Clips, check the playlist here, if you like the videos and help us out by subscribing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0szHAHAl4&list=PLfoJc2DETLP77uPQflnWMvDTX2kF33uH9
Thanks for all your help and comments over the years

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29-12-2019 om 00:59 geschreven door peter  

Hello, Venus! Parker Solar Probe Makes Second Planetary Flyby.

By Meghan Bartels 

An artist's depiction of NASA's Parker Solar Probe flying past Venus.

(Image: © NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)

The sun is right there in the name of NASA's Parker Solar Probe, but a second mission of opportunity may make the spacecraft just as vital to Venus scientists as to those studying our local star.

Parker Solar Probe launched in August 2018, destined to spend seven years looping ever closer to the sun in hopes of sorting out some of the hottest mysteries about our star. But to do so, the spacecraft needed a carefully choreographed trajectory, one that included seven flybys of Earth's evil twin, Venus. And Venus scientists, who haven't had a dedicated NASA spacecraft since the mid-1990s, were not about to let that opportunity fly past them.

"The Venus flybys are like, if you have like a 48-hour layover in Paris, not leaving the airport," Shannon Curry, a planetary physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, told Space.com. "It would be crazy not to turn on [the instruments]." Curry and her colleagues made her case, and the Parker Solar Probe will gather its second batch of Venus data today (Dec. 26), as the probe makes its closest approach to the planet at 1:14 p.m. EST (1814 GMT).

• Related: The Strange Case of Missing Lightning at Venus

Of course, Parker Solar Probe's instruments are designed to study a star, not a planet. They focus mostly on plasma, the hot mess of charged particles that makes up the sun. Traditionally, planetary scientists want very different instruments on their spacecraft: radar devices to map the surface, spectrometers to identify chemicals and the like. But that doesn't make plasma data superfluous.

Two dedicated Venus missions have carried plasma detectors to the world: NASA's Pioneer Venus Orbiter and the European Space Agency's Venus Express. But those spacecraft were built decades ago. "The stuff that they were able to put on [Parker] Solar Probe takes measurements faster, better, stronger, like the whole deal," Curry said.

And she and her colleagues have plenty of questions about Venus that plasma data could help answer. For today's flyby, the team is particularly interested in a feature called the bow shock, where the planet's neighborhood meets the solar wind of charged particles that constantly stream off the sun.

The precise location of the bow shock varies based on how active the sun is, which changes over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. "We're not positive it'll cross the shock or not, but that's actually important because it'll tell us physically where the shock is at this point in the solar cycle," Curry said. "It tells us a lot about what the sun's doing, and the shock is a nice gauge of that."

And the environment on either side of the bow shock differs dramatically. Outside the shock is the pristine solar wind and the effects of solar storms. But if Parker Solar Probe crosses inside the shock, scientists should be able to better understand how quickly Venus is losing its atmosphere.

"The magnetic fields pile up and actually sort of drag the atmosphere off. It's almost like a slingshot," Curry said. "That's one of the biggest ways the atmosphere of Venus gets removed, the sun's magnetic field lines."

Venus scientists are interested in a more detailed measurement of atmosphere loss, because atmospheric pressure affects what state water takes; it's Earth's even 1 bar of pressure that helps keep our oceans liquid. "At some point, maybe liquids could exist again [on Venus], or maybe they did before and we just don't know," Curry said.

But the Venus atmospheric-loss measurements will really crank up during Parker Solar Probe's next two flybys, in July 2020 and February 2021. These two visits will carry the spacecraft right through what scientists call the tail of Venus, which is where the atmosphere slips away from the planet.

"Those are going to be the super-important ones. I think these first two are almost — not like dress rehearsals, but it's really important to make sure we get everything right," Curry said. "Flybys 3 and 4 will tell us mountains about atmospheric escape at Venus and then a lot of other dynamics we just don't understand."

Curry said that Parker Solar Probe may be able to solve a long-standing mystery about the surface of Venus: whether the planet sports small, patchy crustal magnetic fields. So far, Mars is the only planet where scientists have seen this phenomenon. "It's like a little magnetic rash on its belly, like little bubbles with magnetic fields," Curry said. But no one's gotten a close enough look at Venus to check for them. "We might not [see them], and they might not even be there. We just don't know."

The results of the first Venus flyby, which took place in October 2018, prove the importance of practice. During the pass, the spacecraft ended up shutting its instruments down, convinced that they were pointing straight at the sun, which they aren't meant to do.

"We're just looking at Venus, not the sun. Venus is just a superbright planet the way it reflects," Curry said. "That's why the instruments got confused." Now, Curry said, the project team believes it's figured out how to keep that error from happening again.

And the Venus work is benefiting from a science bonus discovered by the main Parker Solar Probe team, which realized that the spacecraft could gather and send back more data than originally anticipated. Curry had been willing to fight for even just an hour of data on a flyby; during the first maneuver, the team got about 10 hours of observations.

Curry is hoping to build similar Venus collaborations with the European and Japanese team running the BepiColombo mission en route to Mercury and with Europe's Solar Orbiter mission. Like Parker Solar Probe, both of these spacecraft also need to make Venus flybys to reach their targets.

"These are the only measurements of Venus we're going to have for, frankly, it might be the next decade," Curry said. "We have nothing planned to go to Venus." And the missions NASA is considering don't carry plasma instruments like Parker Solar Probe does, so questions like atmospheric loss might go unanswered even then.

Combine those two factors, and the mission's accidental planetary science looks even more precious. "With Venus science," Curry said, "anybody who gets data is a hero."

• Should We Land on Venus Again? Scientists Are Trying to Decide
• Life on Venus? Why It's Not an Absurd Thought
• Can Venus Teach Us to Take Climate Change Seriously?

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

28-12-2019 om 22:16 geschreven door peter  

The Biggest Alien Planet Discoveries of 2019

By Sarah Wells

The year did not disappoint.

An artist's depiction of exoplanets.

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech))

As 2019 comes to a close, it's time to review some of the biggest space science stories of the year. 

From a world with three suns in its sky to lots of possibly habitable real estate, the past year has seen some incredible exoplanet discoveries. Here are 10 of the most memorable.

• Related: The Greatest Spaceflight Moments of 2019
• More: Kaboom! The Biggest Space Bloopers of 2019

10. Teegarden's Star

This graphic shows a comparison of the habitable zones of several alien planets, and how the Teegarden's Star planets measure up. (Image credit: C. Harman)

In June 2019, researchers reported that they had found two Earth-like exoplanets circling a red dwarf known as Teegarden's Star, which lies only 12.5 light-years from Earth. 

The newfound worlds complete one lap around their host star in just 4.9 and 11.4 Earth days, respectively. Despite these close orbits, they're still thought to reside in the "habitable zone" — the range of distances from a star that can support the existence of liquid water on a world's surface — because Teegarden's star is so dim. 

From the data collected so far, scientists believe there might be more exoplanets to find in this system too.

9. Ploonets 

Who said space isn't adorable? In a preprint paper published on the website arXiv in July 2019, scientists gave a fanciful name to a class of wandering exomoons. In the scenario described in the paper, these exomoons were ripped from the gravitational pull of their host planet and pulled toward their host star. 

No longer just a moon, but still not quite an exoplanet, these weird exomoons needed a special name. Previous research had thrown around "moonmoon," but the paper published in July landed on the much cuter "ploonet." 

Ploonets are purely theoretical right now, but the paper showed how their journeys (and subsequent slow deaths) around their host stars might leave recognizable light signals. The researchers think that this light signature might explain some previously unexplained astronomical observations. 

8. Three suns! 

Thanks to a little help from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scientists discovered a strange new exoplanet in a three-star system with a surface temperature around 320 degrees Fahrenheit (160 degrees Celsius.) The exoplanet, called LTT 1445Ab, is 22.5 light-years from Earth and, despite having stars in triplicate, appears to make an orbit around one of them every five days. The other two red dwarfs simply loom in the exoplanet's sky.

In addition to its novel setup, scientists say that the exoplanet would be a perfect candidate for future atmospheric exploration thanks to its positioning between the stars and Earth. Scientists believe this would make it possible for even ground-based Earth telescopes to make observations about the exoplanet. 

7. Gassy preteen with two suns 

In March 2019, scientists used TESS data to discover a gassy, preteen exoplanet that researchers believe to be a mere 43 million years old. The exoplanet, called DS Tuc Ab, orbits one star in a two-star system once every eight days. 

And because DS Tuc Ab is still relatively young, scientists are interested in learning more about what this world's history could tell us about the formation of planets in our own solar system. For example, DS Tuc Ab still experiences considerable losses of its atmospheric gas due to radiation from its host star. Scientists hope to extrapolate this knowledge about DS Tuc Ab to imagine what might happen to Earth and other planets closer to home if they were to lose their atmospheres. 

Related: 10 Things That Blasted Through Space in 2019

6. GJ 357 d: A habitable world?

In July 2019, scientists used TESS data to find yet another treasure trove of possibly habitable exoplanets. The data identified three exoplanets in the dwarf star system GJ 357, which lies 31 light-years from Earth.

Two of the planets — GJ 357 c and d — can be classified as "super-Earths," worlds slightly bigger than our own. Meanwhile, GJ 357 b is something called a hot Earth, meaning that, while its size might be Earth-like, its surface gets much hotter (about 490 degrees Fahrenheit, or 254 degrees Celsius) than that of our own planet.

GJ 357 d in particular has grabbed a lot of attention, because it may well fall into the coveted habitable zone. This planet completes one lap around the host star every 55 Earth days. 

5. A snowball's chance

Scientists have been peering into Earth's baby book to learn a little more about a kind of exoplanet deemed a "snowball." At certain points in their lives, snowballs can become tidally locked with their host star, always showing it the same face, and as a result develop huge, eyeball-like icy oceans on that face. 

Earth itself went through its own snowball phases as a younger planet. Because of this fact, scientists have speculated that snowball exoplanets may well be capable of sustaining life — and research published in July 2019 suggests they might even be better at it than originally imagined.

The paper focused on what might be happening on the land of these snowball planets instead of just their oceans. The study found that snowball planets would likely have relatively temperate inland zones, where temperatures hover around 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) and above — something that Earth-like life could easily handle.

4. Football-shaped world 

In August 2019, scientists reported finding a strange, football-shaped exoplanet shedding its atmosphere at a rapid rate — and losing heavy metals like iron and magnesium along with it. This big, puffy exoplanet, called WASP-121b, is something called a "hot Jupiter," and it orbits so close to its sun that its temperature is hotter than any other known planet  — a whopping 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,538 Celsius) in the upper atmosphere. 

The proximity to its star not only heats up the exoplanet but also causes its football-like bulge as the star's gravity literally threatens to tear the exoplanet apart. Scientists were able to make this original observation using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope but hope to investigate the exoplanet further using the agency's James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2021.

3. Exoplanet water-vapor drama 

A clash over exoplanet data ruffled a few feathers in September 2019 as scientists raced to be the first to report findings of alien-world water vapor. 

The data in question was collected by a Université de Montréal-led team in 2016, 2017, and 2018 and suggested that the air of an exoplanet called K2-18 b features water vapor and clouds — a huge point of excitement for those searching for signs of alien life. But a team from University College London posted an analysis of this data around the same time the Canadian researchers did.

While such scientific scooping is not illegal — the data was open-access — some astronomers saw it as poor form. And the Canadian team leader said he wished the London team had consulted him about their plans. 

The two studies interpreted the data somewhat differently, but both concluded that there is water vapor in K2-18 b's atmosphere. And that's a good thing, all the drama notwithstanding. 

Related: Kaboom! The Biggest Space Bloopers of 2019

2. Starless exoplanets may orbit black holes 

Using a computer model, scientists determined in October 2019 that starless, Neptune-like planets could form around and orbit supermassive black holes. Instead of calling a cozy solar system home, these exoplanets would live on the edge of, or about 10 to 30 light-years away from, a light-eating black hole and would be comprised of icy dust left in its wake. Based on their model, the scientists said that such voracious black holes could be host to tens of thousands of planets. 

At least in theory, anyway; detecting such exoplanets would be extremely challenging. For example, astronomers couldn't use the most prolific planet-detection strategy, the transit method, to find such worlds. The transit method looks for dips in light that result when an exoplanet passes in front of its host start. But, because black holes eat light instead of emitting it, this obviously wouldn't work. So, scientists might have to rely on models and indirect methods for now.

1. Exoplanet collision?

Scientists have been observing a lot of warm dust in the star system BD +20 307, which is about 300 light-years from Earth. And they're starting to get excited, because this dust might be evidence of a fairly recent planetary collision. The observations were first made a decade ago and then reaffirmed in April 2019. 

For scientists, this exciting possibility represents an opportunity to learn more about how such impacts affect the formation and evolution of planetary systems. This hits close to home, as it's believed that Earth's moon formed after a giant impact. 

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect the correct distance to the exoplanets of GJ 357. The correct distance is 31 light-years from Earth, not 31 million light-years.

• 7 Ways to Discover Alien Planets
• The Strangest Alien Planets (Gallery)
• TESS: NASA's Search for Earth-Like Planets

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

28-12-2019 om 21:57 geschreven door peter  

Of the many and varied documents that have surfaced under the terms of the U.S. government’s Freedom of Information Act, one of the most fascinating is a 33-pages-long report on psychic phenomena titled “Paranormal Phenomena — Briefing on a Net Assessment Study.” Written in January 1973 by P.T. Van Dyke and M.L. Juncosa (of RAND) for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), it makes for notable reading. It should be noted that over the years and decades, U.S. military- and intelligence-agencies have (A) tried to use dogs to psychically locate landmines on battlefields; (B) studied out-of-body phenomena; (C) attempted to determine if both animals and people have souls; and (D) studied the possibility of that psychic phenomena can cause heart-attacks. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But, now, let’s get back to that “Paranormal Phenomena — Briefing on a Net Assessment Study.”

Without doubt, the most intriguing section of the document is the one that is titled Possible Military Applications. The section is split into four different parts. The first is titled “Long- and Short-Distance Information Transfer.” It states: “For a variety of reasons, including apparent violations of some basic principles of communication theory, the probability of long-distance telepathic communication being confirmed as a real phenomenon appears rather low; however, these considerations may not apply with equal force to the possibility of short-range information transfer by telepathic means (of the order of a few meters). It should be noted, though, that long-distance telepathic phenomena occupy a paramount place in modern experimental research, but that their confirmation and theoretical explanation would require a modification of known laws of physics.”

The second part goes by the heading of “Equipment Control and System Damage.” It provides the following: “It would not be conceptually difficult, for example, to imagine the utility of psychokinesis (if feasible) in disrupting the electrical systems associated with an ICBM’s guidance program.” This is particularly intriguing as,  in some ways, it ties in with some of the incredible claims that have been made concerning how, in decades past, UFOs have been able to disable ICBMs and affect nuclear-missile-launch facilities. Now, let’s move on.

Part-three has an eye-opening title: “Man-Machine Interactions.” We are told that, “These entail an application of both telepathy and psychokinesis to produce a quasi-symbiotic relationship between man and, say, computing equipment on a more intimate basis than is presently feasible.” Although I don’t buy into the story that the late Philip J. Corso presented in his 1997 book, The Day After Roswell, he certainly addressed this matter: “Were all of this to be true, could it not be argued that the silicon wafers we recovered from Roswell were the real masters and space travelers and the EBE creatures their hosts or servants? Once implanted successfully on Earth, our culture having reached a point of readiness through its development of the first digital computers, would not the natural development stream, starting from the invention of the transistor, have carried us to the point where we achieve a symbiotic relationship [italics mine] with the silicon material that carries our data and enables us to become more creative and successful?”

“Body Control and Healing” is the title of part-four. In relation to those “possible military applications,” Van Dyke and Juncosa said: “One may envision an application of both autogenic phenomena (voluntary control of the autonomic nervous system) and what is traditionally known as ‘faith healing’ to battlefield injuries. There is, in fact, some evidence that certain individuals may accelerate organic healing processes through various psychosomatic effects. The ability to resist normally intolerable conditions, such as torture or brainwashing in captivity, might be another application of these phenomena.”

The conclusions were driven by the concerns that the Soviets might have gotten ahead of the U.S. The “general conclusions” of Van Dyke and Juncosa were as follows: “Over forty years of research in the United States have failed to significantly advance our understanding of paranormal phenomena; in several areas, U.S. research is beginning to track Soviet research; there is much Soviet interest in U.S. work, especially in possible military-oriented research; visible U.S. and Soviet levels of effort appear roughly equal;  there is some evidence of Soviet government funding of certain areas of research; published information on Soviet experimental design and analysis tends to be vague and incomplete; Soviet research is much more oriented toward biological and physical theorizing than is U.S. research; if paranormal phenomena do exist, the thrust of Soviet research appears more likely to lead to explanation, control, and application than is U.S. research.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

28-12-2019 om 21:13 geschreven door peter  

As if Elon Musk needs yet another reason for people to hate his guts, here’s one more that has nothing to do with Teslas, Mars, cave rescues, politics or the dangers of artificial intelligence. Beginning in January, Musk’s SpaceX will conduct regularly-scheduled launches of batches of 60 communications satellites at a time, with a goal of about 1500 by the end of the year, joining the two batches of 60 launched in 2019. Those two raised the ire of astronomers and star-gazers – especially the second batch which are in a low 280 km orbit and clearly visible in the night sky. (Video here and here.) If astronomers think 60 is bad and 1,500 is worse, SpaceX already has approval for a total of 12,000 satellites and has filed paperwork to launch 30,000 more. THIRTY-THOUSAND! No wonder they’re angry.

Radio telescope

Dhara Patel, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, vented disdain to the BBC. Dr. Dave Clements, an astrophysicist from Imperial College London, explained that the moving satellites will mess with telescopes that are taking large surveys of the sky, comparing it to “like someone’s walking around firing a flashbulb every now and again.” The bright lights will also hide anything and everything behind them “whether that’s a nearby potentially hazardous asteroid or the most distant Quasar in the Universe.”

Musk’s mayhem in the midnight sky is already causing problems for ufologists. On December 23rd, a number of people in northern Italy reported seeing a line of at least 25 UFOs. Dr. Jen Golbeck of the Italian astronomical observatory actually sounded excited when she tweeted the explanation for the UFOs:

@jengolbeck
If you saw a row of UFO like lights in the sky in IL, IA, MI (like this but spaced out), that was SpaceX Starlink Satellites! You’ll be able to see them in the next few days, too!
Check here for a map (and set the time back to see their track today)
https://t.co/wtkU9xSFY9

This still sucks.

Who will win this fight for the skies? SpaceX claims it is working on a special coating to make the satellites less reflective, although less is still more when you’re talking 42,000 satellites. The UK company OneWeb is looking to put as many as 2,000 satellites in orbit. While touting its work with astronomers to minimize their influence on the skies, Ruth Pritchard-Kelly, vice president of OneWeb, may have given the best answer to the “Who will win?” question:

“There is no question that the entire world is entitled to be connected to the internet…. So it’s going to happen. And probably three or four of these systems are going to happen.”

So … it’s going to happen. Perhaps Musk can make peace with astronomers by giving them and their telescopes a free trip to nearly-satellite-free Mars.

28-12-2019 om 21:01 geschreven door peter  

Het paleis werd ontdekt op de archeologische site van de oude stad Kuluba, vlak bij Cancún, in het uiterste oosten van het schiereiland Yucatán. Het was een belangrijke plaats tot de komst van de Spaanse ontdekkingsreizigers. De afmetingen zijn indrukwekkend, het paleis was maar liefst 6 meter hoog, 55 meter lang en 15 meter breed. 

Foto's van het eeuwenoude paleis. Bron: Mauricio Marat, INAH.

MAUMARAT

Een archeologe aan het werk.

Bron: Mauricio Marat, INAH

{ https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/ }

28-12-2019 om 20:48 geschreven door peter