Former Air Force medic: there are extraterrestrial labs all over the world

05-01-2020 om 23:08 geschreven door peter  

The asteroid belt is a region of our solar system – between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter – in which many small bodies orbit our sun. Here’s a good basic introduction.

Here is the inner part of our solar system, from the sun to the 5th planet, Jupiter. In this illustration, the asteroid belt is the white donut-shaped cloud.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Meet the asteroid belt, a place in our solar system where small bodies – mostly rocky and some metallic – orbit the sun. These little worlds are also sometimes called minor planets. They move mostly between the orbits of the fourth planet Mars and fifth planet Jupiter. Astronomers once thought they were all that was left of a rocky planet, long ago torn apart by Jupiter’s gravity. Now, most astronomers now think the asteroid belt is just rubble that Jupiter’s gravity prevented from ever coalescing into a planet. Thus the asterids are likely simply leftovers from the ordinary processes that created our solar system, 4.6 billion years ago.

Their name, asteroid, means starlike. They got this name because – in the early 1800s, when the first asteroids were discovered – astronomers thought they looked like stars. And yet their movement in front of the star background, caused by their nearness to us, showed them to be something other than stars.

Measurements of the amount of material in the asteroid belt suggest it contains about enough material – combined together – to form a body smaller than Earth’s moon.

Comprising an estimated one to two million asteroids more than half a mile (about a km) across, plus untold millions of smaller ones, the asteroid belt contains objects which vary wildly in size. The smallest are probably no bigger than pebbles. The biggest object in the asteroid belt was also the first one to be discovered, in the year 1801. It is 1 Ceres, which measures some 587 miles (945 km). Ceres is now classified as a dwarf planet, by the way, by the International Astronomical Union.

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This orthographic projection shows the largest body in the asteroid belt – 1 Ceres, discovered in 1801 – now categorized as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union. Ceres is one of several main-belt objects visited by spacecraft. This composite image is from the Dawn spacecraft, still the only earthly spacecraft to have orbited first one body in our solar system (Vesta, 2011 to 2012), then gone on to orbit a second (Ceres, arrived 2015). See the 2 bright spots in Occator Crater? They spawned speculation about alien life on Ceres, but turned out to be salt deposits. This image is made from views Dawn took during its low-altitude mapping orbit, at about 240 miles (385 km) above the surface.

Image via NASA.

Outer space is vast. And thus, despite there being many millions (possibly billions) of objects in the asteroid belt, the average distance between them is 600,000 miles (about a million km). This means that spacecraft can fly through the asteroid belt without colliding with any asteroids, although, obviously, a chance collision can never be ruled out completely. The asteroid belt is certainly nothing like the densely-packed asteroid fields depicted in fantasies like “Star Wars” and its ilk.

Standing on any asteroid in the belt, you would likely be unable to see any other asteroids, because of their distance.

The asteroid belt lies between 2.2 and 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from our sun. One AU is the distance between the Earth and sun. So the width of the asteroid belt is roughly 1 AU, or 92 million miles (150 million km).

Its thickness is similarly about 1 AU thick.

Here’s asteroid 4 Vesta – discovered in 1807 – the 2nd-biggest asteroid after Ceres. The Dawn spacecraft orbited Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012. A towering mountain at this asteroid’s south pole – more than twice the height of Mount Everest – is visible at the bottom of the image. The set of three craters known as the “snowman” can be seen at the top left.

Image via NASA.

The asteroid belt is often referred to as the “main” belt to distinguish it from other, smaller groups of asteroids in the solar system such as the Lagrangians (for example, Trojan asteroids orbiting in Jupiter’s orbit around the sun) and Centaurs in the outer solar system.

What was thought to be a homogeneous belt is now known to be slightly more complicated. There are different and distinct zones within the main belt asteroids, especially at its peripheries, where astronomers now recognize the Hungaria group at the inner edge and the Cybele asteroids at the outer. Toward the middle of the belt there is the highly-inclined Phocaea family.

In addition, astronomers have established that the age of asteroids in the main belt also varies. They’ve now classified several asteroid groupings by their age including the Karin family, a group of about 90 main-belt asteroids that share an orbit and are thought to have come from a single object an estimated 5.7 million years ago. And there is the Veritas family, from an estimated 8.3 million years ago. A very recent group is the Datura family, dating from just 530,000 years ago from a collision.

• Read on Wikipedia about asteroid families.
• Read on Wikipedia about asteroids that have been visited by spacecraft

In order to be round, a body in space has to have enough internal mass to have strong-enough gravity to have pulled itself into the shape of a ball. Most asteroids don’t accomplish this, and thus they come in all sorts of shapes. Here is asteroid 433 Eros – discovered in 1898 – now famous as the 1st asteroid ever to be orbited by a spacecraft, NEAR Shoemaker, in 1998. This object is considered a main-belt asteroid: although its orbit crosses that of Mars, it doesn’t quite reach that of Earth. Yet it’s also considered a near-Earth asteroid … a subject for another day!

Image via NASA.

• Bottom line: The asteroid belt is a region of our solar system – between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter – in which many small bodies orbit our sun.

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

05-01-2020 om 22:51 geschreven door peter  

Parker Solar Probe – now in its 4th orbit around the sun – can endure heat and radiation like no previous mission. This week, 4 new studies in Nature reveal new insights about the sun’s mysterious corona and solar wind.

Scientists who study the sun are buzzing this week about four new papers published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on December 4, 2019. The papers are based on data collected by the record-setting Parker Solar Probe mission – launched in 2018 – during the spacecraft’s first two close sweeps past our parent star (late 2018 and early 2019). These early studies, the scientists say, have provided insights into the two fundamental questions the Parker Solar Probe mission was designed to answer. First, defying all logic, why does the sun’s outer atmosphere – or corona – become much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the sun’s surface? Second, what accelerates the solar wind – a supersonic stream of protons, electrons and other particles – emanating from the corona and permeating the entire solar system?

A December 4, 2019, statement from scientists at the University of Michigan – who work with one of the instruments aboard the Parker Solar Probe – explained:

Both questions have ramifications for how we predict, detect and prepare for solar storms and coronal mass ejections that can have dramatic impacts on Earth’s power grid and on astronauts.

Nour E. Raouafi, project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which built and manages the mission for NASA, added in a separate December 4 statement:

The sun has fascinated humanity for our entire existence. We’ve learned a great deal about our star in the past several decades, but we really needed a mission like Parker Solar Probe to go into the sun’s atmosphere. It’s only there that we can really learn the details of these complex solar processes.

And what we’ve learned in just these three solar orbits alone has changed a lot of what we know about the sun.

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Isn’t this beautiful? It’s an illustration of our sun – our local star – and its outer atmosphere, or corona, extending into space. Mysteriously, the corona is hotter than the sun’s surface. It releases the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that sometimes affects earthly satellites and power grids. Space scientists launched the Parker Solar Probe to study both the corona and solar wind.

Image via NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Lisa Poje/Genna Duberstein.

Justin Kasper of the University of Michigan, who serves as principal investigator for Parker’s Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) instrument suite. He led one of the new studies and is co-author of two others. In their statement, these scientists said that the Parker Solar Probe revealed that the sun’s rotation or spin on its axis – completing a single spin only once every 27 days at its equator – has an impact on the solar wind much farther away than previously thought. They already knew that – near the sun – the sun’s magnetic field pulls the solar wind in the same direction that the sun spins. Farther from the sun, at the distance the spacecraft measured in these first encounters, they had expected to see, at most, a weak signature of that rotation. However, Kasper said:

To our great surprise, as we neared the sun, we’ve already detected large rotational flows – 10 to 20 times greater than what standard models of the sun predict.

So we are missing something fundamental about the sun, and how the solar wind escapes.

This has huge implications. Space weather forecasting will need to account for these flows if we are going to be able to predict whether a coronal mass ejection will strike Earth, or astronauts heading to the moon or Mars.

• See a video: How does the solar wind affect Earth?

Parker Solar Probe’s location with respect to Mercury, Venus and Earth on December 3, 2019. The craft completed its 3rd orbit around the sun on November 15. Its next milestone will be a Venus flyby on December 26.

Image via NASA/JHUAPL/Where is Parker Solar Probe?

Parker Solar Probe’s findings regarding the sun’s magnetic field – which is believed to play a role in the coronal heating mystery – were equally surprising, the scientists said. The new findings relate to what called Alfvén waves, which are waves that occur in a plasma (the sun is so hot that most of its gas exists in plasma form). Alfvén waves were detected in the solar wind long ago. Some researchers though they might be remnants of whatever mechanism is causing the mysterious heating of the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. Parker researchers were on the lookout for indications that might be the case, but found something unexpected. Kasper explained:

When you get closer to the sun, you start seeing these ‘rogue’ Alfvén waves that have four times the energy than the regular waves around them. They feature 300,000 mph velocity spikes that are so strong, they actually flip the direction of the magnetic field.

According to these scientists:

Those polarity-reversing velocity spikes offer another potential candidate for what may cause the corona to get hotter moving away from the sun.

That’s clearly an early result, but it gives space scientists something to be watching for as – aided by breakthrough technologies that let the craft endure heat and radiation like no previous mission – Parker Solar Probe continues to sweep closer and closer to the sun.

Image via Johns Hopkins University.

And sweeping close to the sun is, in fact, Parker Solar Probe’s job. It’ll ultimately come within 4 million miles of the sun’s surface.

The probe launched on August 12, 2018. On October 29 of that year, it broke its first record, coming closer to the sun than any other human-made object (passing within the previous record of 26.55 million miles from the sun’s surface, set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976).

As the Parker Solar Probe mission has progressed, the spacecraft has repeatedly broken its own records, coming closer and closer to the sun. Its most recent perihelion (closet point to sun) – perihelion #3 – was September 1, 2019. The next one – perihelion #4 – will be January 29, 2020. In 2024, the craft is expected to come within 4 million miles of the sun’s surface (3.83 million miles, or 6.1 million km). Click here for a timeline showing upcoming perihelions in the mission.

Data collected during the spacecraft’s first two solar orbits was released on November 12. This week, these four new papers are causing a stir.

And the Michigan scientists aren’t the only ones excited about the data from the Parker Solar Probe. Heliophysicists around the globe have a reason to be excited. For example, Joe Giacalone of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona – team member for another instrument aboard the probe (Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun) – commented to Jasmine Demers in an article in the Arizona Daily Star on December 2, 2019:

This is an exciting time to be a heliophysicist.

The data that is now publicly available comes from a region of space we have never sampled previously. With many brilliant scientists now poring through this amazing data set, new discoveries about our star are soon coming.

Artist’s concept of the Parker Solar Probe sweeping close to the sun. At its closest to the sun – toward the end of its 7-year prime mission – Parker Solar Probe will come well within the mysterious solar corona, or outermost atmosphere, within 3.83 million miles of the solar surface.

Image via NASA: 10 Things to Know about Parker Solar Probe.

• Bottom line: Parker Solar Probe – launched in 2018 and now in its 4th orbit around our local star – is designed to endure the sun’s heat and radiation like no previous mission. This week, 4 new studies in Nature – related to the solar wind and corona – have space scientists buzzing.
  • Source: Highly structured slow solar wind emerging from an equatorial coronal hole
  • Source: Probing the energetic particle environment near the sun
  • Source: Alfvénic velocity spikes and rotational flows in the near-sun solar wind
  • Source: Near-sun observations of an F-corona decrease and K-corona fine structure
  • Via University of Michigan
  • Via NASA

{ https://earthsky.org/  }

05-01-2020 om 22:24 geschreven door peter  

NASA's Sun-Kissing Parker Solar Probe Is Lifting the Veil on Our Closest Star

By Mike Wall 

The first results from the daring mission are in

An artist's depiction of NASA's Parker Solar Probe gathering data about the sun.

(Image: © Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory)

The sun is starting to give up some of its most closely guarded secrets.

The first science results are in from NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP), which has flown faster and closer to the sun than any other human-made object in history. 

The initial PSP returns, which are reported in four papers published online today (Dec. 4) in the journal Nature, begin to lift the veil on Earth's star, which has remained surprisingly mysterious despite forever being the brightest light in our sky.

• Related: NASA's Parker Solar Probe Mission to the Sun in Pictures

"These four papers show that, by going into an unexplored region of the solar system, the PSP has already made great discoveries," Daniel Verscharen, a researcher at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, wrote in an accompanying "News and Views" piece in the same issue of Nature. Verscharen was not involved in any of the new studies.

Kissing the sun

The PSP launched in August 2018, on a $1.5 billion mission to help researchers better understand the inner workings of the sun. 

Mission scientists are particularly interested in solving two long-standing puzzles: how the stream of particles flowing continuously from the sun, known as the solar wind, is accelerated to its tremendous velocities; and why the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is so much hotter than its surface. (Corona temperatures can top 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.1 million degrees Celsius. The solar surface is downright temperate by comparison, at 11,000 F, or 6,000 C.)

The PSP is tackling these questions by brazenly barreling into the corona itself. Once every five months or so, the probe zooms through the sun's sizzling atmosphere, getting unprecedented up-close looks at our star.  

These closest approaches, or perihelion passages, have taken the PSP within 15 million miles (24 million kilometers) of the solar surface to date. Before this mission, the closest a probe had ever gotten to the sun was 26.55 million miles (42.73 million km) — a feat pulled off in 1976 by the Helios 2 craft, a joint effort of the United States and the former West Germany.

Related: The Greatest Missions to the Sun of All Time

Helios 2 also set the record for the fastest speed relative to the sun, at 153,454 mph (246,960 km/h). This mark was broken by NASA's Juno Jupiter orbiter, which reached 165,000 mph (265,000 km/h) during its arrival at the gas giant in July 2016. But the PSP is now the speed king: During the spacecraft's first perihelion pass, on Nov. 6, 2018, the sun's powerful gravity accelerated the PSP to a top speed of 213,243 mph (343,181 km/h).

Conditions in the corona are extreme, of course, so the PSP is equipped with some heavy-duty armor:  a 4.5-inch-thick (11.4 centimeters) carbon-composite shield, which protects the craft and its four science instruments from intense heat and radiation. 

Those instruments are the Fields Experiment (Fields), which is measuring electric and magnetic fields and waves, among other things; the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (ISoIS), which is characterizing the electrons, protons and heavy ions that are accelerated to high speeds in the sun's atmosphere and beyond; the Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR), a set of telescopes imaging the corona and environs; and the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) investigation, which is studying the most abundant constituents in the solar wind (electrons, protons and helium ions).

The four new papers report what these instruments observed during the PSP's first two perihelion passes, which occurred in November 2018 and April 2019.

• Related: NASA's Parker Solar Probe Sun Mission Explained (Infographic)

• Click here for more Space.com videos...

Tracing the "slow" solar wind to its source

One of the studies, for example, found that Fields is starting to get the goods on the "slow" solar wind, a component of the stream that never exceeds about 1.1 million mph (1.8 million km/h). "Slow" is a relative term here; the "fast" solar wind zips along at about twice that velocity.

Scientists already knew that the fast solar wind originates in large coronal "holes" — patches where the outer atmosphere is considerably cooler and thinner than normal — near the sun's poles. And the data from Fields suggest that the slow wind is coming from coronal holes as well, but from smaller ones near the solar equator.

Fields also observed surprising reversals in the solar magnetic field flowing past the spacecraft: The field sometimes flipped its orientation 180 degrees and then, within seconds or minutes, flipped back again.

"These switchbacks are probably associated with some kind of plasma jets," study lead author and Fields principal investigator Stuart Bale, a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. "My own feeling is that these switchbacks, or jets, are central to the solar wind heating problem."

Data from SWEAP, meanwhile, indicate that such reversals are "travelling S-shaped bends in the field lines coming from the sun," as Verscharen put it, and that the flips are boosting the speed of the solar wind. 

Findings from ISoIS help flesh out this emerging picture. The instrument's data show that it takes energetic solar particles longer than previously expected to reach the PSP, perhaps because they're traveling along the surprisingly S-shaped field lines. 

ISoIS has also detected multiple particle bursts that aren't dramatic enough to be noticed by instruments here on Earth.

"It's amazing — even at solar minimum conditions, the sun produces many more tiny energetic particle events than we ever thought," David McComas of Princeton University, ISoIS principal investigator and lead author of one of the new studies, said in a statement. (Solar activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle, and our star is currently in a relatively inactive phase.) 

"These measurements will help us unravel the sources, acceleration, and transport of solar energetic particles and ultimately better protect satellites and astronauts in the future," McComas added.

And WISPR is giving scientists a clearer picture of the sun, the corona and the complex, roiling region immediately surrounding our star. WISPR's images help put the information collected by the other instruments into proper context and also yield insights in their own right. 

For example, the fourth new study reports, WISPR photos provide some evidence for a dust-free zone near the sun, which has been postulated but not yet directly detected. "The detailed images from the PSP also show spatial variations in the solar wind that are consistent with variations in the sun's magnetic field on its surface, and reveal small blobs of plasma that are ejected from the sun and form part of the young solar wind," Verscharen wrote.

• Related: What's Inside the Sun? A Star Tour from the Inside Out

The best is yet to come

The solar-wind answer is a partial one at the moment, and it's still unclear how exactly the corona is heated so dramatically (though the new results provide some intriguing clues). But the PSP team has plenty of time to fill in the blanks, for these newly published results are just the beginning. The spacecraft is designed to continue studying the sun through 2025, and its perihelion passages will keep getting closer and closer, thanks to trajectory-sculpting flybys of Venus.

The PSP's final science orbit, for example, will take it within just 3.83 million miles (6.16 million km) of the solar surface and feature top speeds of about 430,000 mph (690,000 km/h). 

And these future close approaches will become more frequent, because the PSP's path around the sun will shrink. The probe's orbital period is currently about 150 Earth days but will be 88 days by mission's end.

The length of that mission will allow the PSP team to study the sun at diverse stages of its 11-year activity cycle. So, the sun-kissing spacecraft should gather reams of interesting data that keep researchers busy for a long time to come.

"It is expected that PSP data will guide our understanding of the sun and the solar wind for many years," Verscharen wrote. "New models and theories will be motivated by the spacecraft’s discoveries, and this knowledge will be transferable to other stars and astrophysical plasmas throughout the universe."

• Here's What Earth Looks Like When You're Heading to the Sun 
• Solar Quiz: How Well Do You Know Our Sun?
• Launch Photos! NASA's Parker Solar Probe Blasts Off to Touch the Sun

• This story was updated at 2 p.m. EST to include a statement from David McComas.

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/ }

05-01-2020 om 18:35 geschreven door peter  

The Oldest Copy of the First Illustrated Book Has Been Discovered in Egypt

Detail from one of the coffins of Gua, chief physician of Djehutyhotep, governor of Bersha. The paintings recall drawings from the Book of Two Ways. 

Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

It’s always exciting when some kind of human civilizational first is discovered or unearthed by experts, as evidenced by the thrill generated by a recent discovery of cave paintings, thought to be the earliest example of pictorial storytelling, which were uncovered Indonesia. Now, a new study covered this week by the New York Times reports that the oldest copy of the first illustrated book has been found in Egypt by researchers working under the direction of University of Leuven Egyptologist Harco Willems.

Called the Book of Two Ways, the extraordinary narrative told in the tome is about what happens to the soul after death. It’s been dated to be approximately 4,000 years old and at least 4 decades older than any of the other known copies, of which there are approximately two dozen. The text was discovered in a village on the eastern side of the Nile river after Willems’ decision in 2012 to reopen and study the contents of a burial shaft once looted and long abandoned. A detailed report of the findings were published in The Journal of Egyptian Archeology’s September edition.

• SEE ALSO: Caribbean Treasures Long Hidden in Caves Go on View in ‘Arte del Mar’ at the Met

The fragments of the text were discovered within a tomb, atop the coffin of a woman named Ankh. The cemetery in which the tomb was found is a necropolis and quarry called Deir el-Bersha. Ancient Egyptians have always been famously known for their extensive preoccupations with the afterlife, as evidenced by the text The Book of the Dead, which provides readers with incantations and instructions about how to successfully navigate an underworld ruled by the god Osiris and ultimately become a god themselves.

05-01-2020 om 18:06 geschreven door peter  

New research confirms that volcanoes might be erupting on Venus even now. This image shows Idunn Mons, a volcanic peak on Venus, long suspected of being active. The colored overlay shows heat patterns derived from surface brightness data collected via ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft from May 2006 to the end of 2007.

Image via ESA/ NASA/ USRA.

Earth is one of several worlds in our solar system known to have active volcanoes. Now, a new study from Universities Space Research Association (USRA) confirms that – as has been conjectured before – cloud-covered Venus appears to be volcanically active as well.

It’s been known since the early 1990s that Venus has many volcanic features. NASA’s Magellan spacecraft found extensive lava flows beneath the perpetually cloudy atmosphere of Venus, but how old are they? That’s the unanswered question.

Thus, as yet, there’s still no smoking gun to prove that any Venus volcanoes are still active.

USRA announced its intriguing new findings on January 3, 2019. They come not from Venus, but from an earthly laboratory. The peer-reviewed paper was published the same day in Science Advances.

The new evidence stems from spacecraft data on lava flows on the surface of Venus, some of which, the researchers now estimate, may be no more than a few years old. The Venus Express orbiter – launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2005 – continuously sent back science data from its polar orbit around Venus until 2014. It studied lava flows on Venus by measuring the amount of infrared light emitted from Venus’ surface during nighttime.

The data obtained were good enough to distinguish between fresher and older/altered lava flows, but the actual ages of the flows still weren’t well understood.

Justin Filiberto is the study’s lead author and a USRA staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. To learn more about the ages of lava flows on Venus, he and his colleagues simulated conditions in the intensely hot and corrosive atmosphere of Venus in a laboratory. They wanted to see how different minerals might react and change over time, under these conditions, on Venus’ surface.

It turned out that olivine – abundant in basalt rock, which makes up about 90% of Venus’ surface – reacted very rapidly. Within only weeks, it became oxidized, that is, coated with two iron oxide minerals, magnetite and hematite. From the paper:

We obtained VNIR [visible to near-infrared] reflectance spectra of natural olivine that was altered and oxidized in the laboratory. We show that olivine becomes coated, within days, with alteration products, primarily hematite … Our results indicate that lava flows lacking VNIR features due to hematite are no more than several years old.

Therefore, Venus is volcanically active now.

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Maat Mons, a 5-mile-high (8-km-high) volcano on Venus, with lava flows. This perspective view is based on radar images from the Magellan spacecraft, which orbited Venus in the 1990s.

Image via NASA/ JPL/ Wikipedia.

Absolute confirmation of active volcanoes on Venus would be a major discovery. After all, Venus is the world next-inward in orbit around the sun. It’s very similar to Earth in size and density. If it doesn’t have active volcanoes, and Earth does, the question would be, why not?

But if it does have active volcanoes, then this discovery is extremely significant in studies of all the terrestrial rocky planets – not just Venus and Earth, but also Mercury and Mars – in our solar system. Filiberto commented in a statement:

If Venus is indeed active today, it would make a great place to visit to better understand the interiors of planets. For example, we could study how planets cool and why the Earth and Venus have active volcanism, but Mars does not.

Radar image from Magellan of lava channels in the Lo Shen Valles region of Venus.

Image via NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center/ Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Previous studies have also made the case for active volcanoes on Venus, including this one, published on June 28, 2015, in Geophysical Research Letters. According to James Head, a geologist at Brown University and one of the 2015 study’s co-authors:

We were able to show strong evidence that Venus is volcanically, and thus internally, active today. This is a major finding that helps us understand the evolution of planets like our own.

Another clue was the previous detection of upticks in sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the atmosphere of Venus in the 1970s and 1980s by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter. From the paper:

The behavior of SO2 and polar haze can be plausibly explained by episodic injection of SO2 into the cloud top regions, for example, by active volcanism.

This was also noted in the new paper:

This active volcanism is consistent with episodic spikes of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere measured by both the Pioneer Venus Orbiter and the Venus Express, which could have been produced by the same eruption that formed the young lava flows.

Justin Filiberto of Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), the lead author of the new study.

Image via LPI.

Thus the new study now builds on earlier ones, and the case for active volcanoes on Venus becomes stronger and stronger. What will need to happen to confirm active volcanoes on Venus with absolute certainty? Filiberto said:

Future missions [to Venus] should be able to see … flows and changes in the surface and provide concrete evidence of its activity.

Future missions to Venus are currently on the drawing board and advocated by many researchers. They could provide more detailed data on the volcanoes, helping scientists learn their similarities to, and differences from, those on Earth.

Studies have suggested that Venus used to be more Earth-like, billions of years ago. Why did the two worlds diverge so radically, so that Earth is now livable, while Venus is perpetually cloud-enshrouded, with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead?

It’s hoped that data from future spacecraft will help scientists understand why Venus and Earth evolved so differently.

Olivine crystals before and after alteration and oxidation, as seen in laboratory experiments duplicating Venus’ atmosphere. The rapid reaction suggests that similar lava flows on Venus are only a few years old.

Image via Science Advances.

Bottom line: A study by scientists at USRA provides new evidence that Venus is still volcanically active.

• Source: Present-day volcanism on Venus as evidenced from weathering rates of olivine
• Via USRA

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

05-01-2020 om 17:15 geschreven door peter  

Secret Space Whistleblower On Trump Space Force Secret Projects

COAST TO COAST AM – Pioneer in the development of ‘Exopolitics’, Michael Salla, shared evidence that the US Navy began its initial development work on a secret space program in the 1940s, signs that the Trump administration may be more open about secret space programs, as well as assorted whistleblower revelations on the ET presence.

Donald Trump doesn’t take the conventional route, he remarked, and as a businessman he may look at the information he’s exposed to regarding covert technologies, and try to maximize their potential in terms of putting Americans back to work.

Does President Donald Trump Know About Secret Projects in Outer Space?

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

05-01-2020 om 15:00 geschreven door peter  

Russian KGB Secret Files of Alien Races

“Many people have had prophetic warnings about the coming false rapture/alien invasion, I have had several myself. From what I have seen many millions are going to fall for it when it happens. This video shows a record of Alien Races from a KGB agent.

The KGB, translated in English as Committee for State Security, was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its break-up in 1991. As a direct successor of preceding agencies such as the Cheka, NKGB, NKVD and MGB, the committee was attached to the Council of Ministers.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

05-01-2020 om 14:41 geschreven door peter  

Possible triangle UFO sighting above Whitestown, New York 2020

Another great 2020 UFO sighting! This footage of a possible triangle formations was filmed over Whitestown, NY on 3rd January.

Witness report: 

2 triangle ufos changing shape. It was so strange I couldn’t beleive me eyes

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

05-01-2020 om 14:11 geschreven door peter  

UFO sightings across US 'will rise in 2020' with creation of Space Force

EXCLUSIVE: Dozens of UFO sightings in 2019 were attributed to a top-secret military space fleet by conspiracy theorists. And – with US President Donald Trump recently signing a bill to officially recognise the Space Force – some believe sightings could grow

By Simon Green Video News Editor

The establishment of the Space Force will likely lead to a “rise” in UFO sightings this year, a conspiracy theorist has claimed.

The Space Force – a brainchild of Donald Trump – will have the aim of maintaining the “freedom” of the US in space as well as sustaining space operations.

It was officially recognised last month when the US President signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which established a new space branch of the US Air Force.

There are those who believe the Space Force is already in existence, pointing to various military “craft” being spotted across the US in recent months

Blake Cousins is one of those but has said the official creation of the sixth branch of the military will now lead to more UFO sightings.

The owner of YouTube channel thirdphaseofmoon told Daily Star Online: “Is the Space Force going to create more sightings out there?

“Will people interpret a UFO sighting as a Space Force programme?

“Yes, I think the UFO sightings will go on the rise.

“There’s so much experimentation going on with the military and the new technology that is going to be implemented with the new Space Force.

“They are already testing it before it actually comes into fruition next year.”

He went on to claim the Force “has been going on for decades”.

“The Space Force was created in the early 80s,” Blake added.

SPACE FORCE REVEALED?

“Now they’re going to go public because, in my opinion, they can’t hide it anymore.”

Following the signing of the NDA Act on December 21, Trump called space “the world’s newest warfighting domain.”

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

05-01-2020 om 02:12 geschreven door peter  

SPACEX SATELLITES ARE NOW BEING MISTAKEN FOR UFOS—AND MAKING ASTRONOMERS RAGE

It’s not aliens, but short of a planetary takeover by tall greys, it’s something worse.

Starlink was intended to bring affordable internet to millions of people, many in remote areas, but Elon Musk obviously didn’t foresee the side effects. The light pollution that has already plagued astronomers since 120 of what are essentially, at least to a scientist, fake stars were released into low-Earth orbit. Now it just got to be even more of a headache. Not only is the light from these satellites getting in the way of observations, but they are apparently shining bright enough to be mistaken for UFOs.

For whoever doesn’t keep up with SpaceX, this has come as something of a shock. Montana residents recently reported sightings of what they thought were unidentified flying objects to their local news outlets after spotting a train of Starlink satellites that could also be seen from Illionis, Iowa and Michigan in the past week. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise. When the pseudo-constellations were first launched into the night sky in May, Europe experienced a breakout of UFO sightings.

There are reasons this “UFO” phenomenon is more serious than that infamous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, which terrified listeners into thinking Halloween 1938 was the last day of their lives before an alien invasion. Even scarier is that Starlink is looking to launch enough satellites for a total of 12,000. Light pollution could have serious repercussion on astronomical observations.

“The number of such satellites is projected to grow into the tens of thousands over the next several years, creating the potential for substantial adverse impacts to ground- and space-based astronomy,” said a statement released by the AAS not long after the Starlink constellations were first released.

Observatories operate at night for a reason. Unfortunately, light pollution is sabotaging the clear skies they need. When there is too much artificial light after dark, it scatters and creates a sort of artificial daylight in which stars and other celestial objects, many of which are already dim from Earth, do not appear as clearly as they would in total darkness. It also affects what astronomers can infer from spectroscopy, or the study of light spectra (bands of colors). Spectra emitted by objects in space can tell you their chemical compositions and temperatures. Redshift, or how far light from an object is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum, can give away how fast something is moving through the void. Artificial light really messes with what astronomers are already straining to see.

Never mind what Musk says in the tweet below—we already know the futuretech mogul stays optimistic even when a rocket explodes. At least he resolved to reduce the reflectivity on any upcoming Starlink satellites, but some astronomers feel that it’s already too late. It definitely won’t help when competitors start launching their own internet satellites.

In the realm of astronomy, things are being seen rather differently by those who are being blinded trying to do science. The last thing you want to see through the eye of a telescope seeking out dark energy are strange twinkling objects that are definitely not dark energy. Last month, these things gave massive headaches to astronomers running the Dark Energy Survey's Dark Energy Camera (DECam) at the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile. Dark Energy Survey astronomer Clara Martinez-Vazquez tweeted about how 19 of these satellites disrupted observations for over 5 minutes.

“[Negative] impacts could include significant disruption of optical and near-infrared observations by direct detection of satellites in reflected and emitted light; contamination of radio astronomical observations by electromagnetic radiation in satellite communication bands; and collision with space-based observatories,” the AAS statement also mentioned.

That isn’t really what you want when you’re searching for galaxies swarming with dark matter using an ultra-sensitive camera that images vast areas of the sky in visible and near-infrared light. More light is the last thing astronomers need when peering billions of years into the past of faraway galaxies in order to find out what they were like at the dawn of the universe. DECam is equipped with five filters that each capture images in a different color of light. What happens when man-made lights invade those images? As Martinez-Vazquez said, not cool.

The Starlink constellations must be a bummer to alien hunters who are getting excited over mysterious lights that are coming from no other planet but our own. Who knows if too many shiny things in the sky could be drowning out a message from real aliens.

• (via Gizmodo)

{  https://www.syfy.com/ }

04-01-2020 om 22:35 geschreven door peter  

Scientists Have Calculated How Long It'll Take to Reach Distant Stars

• A team of scientists have calculated how long it would take four

operating spacecraft toreach the nearest star.

•  The researchers compared the predicted paths of four spacecraft to

the paths of nearby stars, as measured by the Gaia space telescope, to

see where and when they might overlap.

•  According to their work, posted to the online pre-print server arXiv, it

would take about 90,000 years for Pioneer 10 to swing within striking

distance of a nearby star.

---

The intrepid Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts were launched in 1977, and despite having a roughly 12-year mission lifespan, are still hurtling through space and returning data to eager scientists on Earth. They’ve broken through barrier that protects our solar system and are now zipping through the interstellar medium along with Pioneer 10 and 11.

But how long might it take them, or another spacecraft, to actually reach another star system?

A team of scientists—Coryn Bailer-Jones of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Switzerland and Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory—have done the calculations. Essentially, the pair found a way to chart how long it would take a spacecraft to get from our humble solar system to the next system over, according to a paper uploaded to the pre-print server arXiv.

In the quest for answers, Farnocchia and Bailer-Jones turned to the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope for help. For more than five years, Gaia has been gathering data on billions of stars, charting their orbits and path through the cosmos.

Using this data and data about the projected paths of both the voyager spacecrafts as well as Pioneer 10 and 11, which are careening toward the outer reaches of the solar system, the researchers were able to create a timeline of when these crafts might reach distant star systems. For those eager to visit other worlds, brace for some bad news.

RELATED STORIES

• 

When Voyager 2 Reached Interstellar Space

• 

How Much Longer Will We Talk to Voyager?

• 

Bold Plan to Send a Spacecraft to Neighbor Star

Should they continue their transit, the four spacecraft will come within striking distance of approximately 60 stars in the next million years. And in that same amount of time, they’ll get even closer—try two parsecs, the equivalent of 6.5 light years—to about 10 stars.

Who will have the best shot at reaching and exploring a distant star? Pioneer 10 will swing within .231 parsecs the star system HIP 117795 in the Cassiopeia constellation in approximately 90,000 years. And how long before one of these spacecrafts is hijacked by the orbit of one of these stars? It’ll be about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

You'll have some time to kill.

{ https://www.popularmechanics.com/}

04-01-2020 om 22:22 geschreven door peter  

• Media via Wikimedia

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

04-01-2020 om 22:05 geschreven door peter  

Mimas takes its name from one of the Titans of Greek mythology, who were the sons and daughters of Cronus (the Greek equivalent to Jupiter). Mimas was an offspring of Gaia, born from the blood of the castrated Uranus, who eventually died during the struggle with the Olympian Gods for control of the universe.

Size, Mass and Orbit:

With a mean radius of 198.2 ± 0.4 km and a mass of about 3.75 ×10¹⁹ kg, Mimas is equivalent in size to 0.0311 Earths and 0.0000063 times as massive. Orbiting Saturn at an average distance (semi-major axis) of 185,539 km, it is the innermost of Saturn’s larger moons, and the 8th moon orbiting Saturn. It’s orbit also has a minor eccentricity of 0.0196, ranging from 181,902 km at periapsis and 189,176 km at apoapsis.

With an estimated orbital velocity of 14.28 km/s, Mimas takes 0.942 days to complete a single orbit of Saturn. Like many of Saturn’s moons. Mimas rotation period is synchronous to its orbital period, which means it keeps one face constantly pointing towards the planet. Mimas is also in a 2:1 mean-motion resonance with the larger moon Tethys, and in a 2:3 resonance with the outer F Ring shepherd moonlet, Pandora.

Composition and Surface Features:

Mimas’ mean density of 1.1479 ± 0.007 g/cm³ is just slightly higher than that of water (1 g/cm³), which means that Mimas is mostly composed of water ice, with just a small amount of silicate rock. In this respect, Mimas is much like Tethys, Rhea, and Dione – moon’s of Saturn that are primarily composed of water ice.

Due to the tidal forces acting on it, Mimas is noticeably prolate – i.e. its longest axis is about 10% longer than the shortest, giving it its egg-shaped appearance. In fact, with a diameter of 396 km (246 mi), Mimas is just barely large and massive enough to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium (i.e. to become rounded in shape under the force of its own gravitation). Mimas is the smallest known astronomical body to have achieved this.

Three types of geological features are officially recognized on Mimas: craters, chasmata (chasms) and catenae (crater chains). Of these, craters are the most common, and it is believed that many of them have existed since the beginning of the Solar System. Mimas surface is saturated with craters, with every part of the surface showing visible depressions, and newer impacts overwriting older ones.

Mimas’ most distinctive feature is the giant impact crater Herschel, named in honor of William Herschel (the discoverer of Uranus, its moons Oberon, and Titania, and the Cronian moons Enceladus and Mimas). This large crater gives Mimas the appearance of the “Death Star” from Star Wars. At 130 km (81 mi) in diameter, Herschel’s is almost a third of Mimas’ own diameter.

Its walls are approximately 5 km (3.1 mi) high, parts of its floor measure 10 km (6.2 mi) deep, and its central peak rises 6 km (3.7 mi) above the crater floor. If there were a crater of an equivalent scale on Earth, it would be over 4,000 km (2,500 mi) in diameter, which would make it wider than the continent of Australia.

The impact that made this crater must have nearly shattered Mimas, and is believed to have created the fractures on the opposite side of the moon by sending shock waves through Mimas’s body. In this respect, Mimas’ surface closely resembles that of Tethys, with its massive Odysseus crater on its western hemisphere and the concentric Ithaca chasma, which is believed to have formed as a result of the impact that created Odysseus.

Mimas’ surface is also saturated with smaller impact craters, but no others are anywhere near the size of Herschel. The cratering is also not uniform, with most of the surface being covered with craters larger than 40 km (25 mi) in diameter. However, in the south polar region, there are generally no craters larger than 20 km (12 mi) in diameter.

Data obtained in 2014 from the Cassini spacecraft has also led to speculation about a possible interior ocean. Due to the planet’s libration (oscillation in its orbit), scientists believe that the planet’s interior is not uniform, which could be the result of a rocky interior or an interior ocean at the core-mantle boundary. This ocean would likely be maintained thanks to tidal flexing caused by Mimas’ orbital resonances with Tethys and Pandora.

A number of features in Saturn’s rings are also related to resonances with Mimas. Mimas is responsible for clearing the material from the Cassini Division, which is the gap between Saturn’s two widest rings – the A Ring and B Ring. The repeated pulls by Mimas on the Cassini Division particles, always in the same direction, forces them into new orbits outside the gap.

Particles in the Huygens Gap at the inner edge of the Cassini division are in a 2:1 resonance with Mimas. In other words, they orbit Saturn twice for each orbit competed by Mimas. The boundary between the C and B ring is meanwhile in a 3:1 resonance with Mimas; and recently, the G Ring was found to be in a 7:6 co-rotation eccentricity resonance with Mimas.

Exploration:

The first mission to study Mimas up close was Pioneer 11, which flew by Saturn in 1979 and made its closest approach on Sept. 1st, 1979, at a distance of 104,263 km. The Voyager 1 and 2 missions both flew by Mimas in 1980 and 1981, respectively, and snapped pictures of Saturn’s atmosphere, its rings, its system of moons. Images taken by Voyager 1 probe were the first ever of the Herschel crater.

Mimas has been imaged several times by the Cassini orbiter, which entered into orbit around Saturn in 2004. A close flyby occurred on February 13, 2010, when Cassini passed Mimas at a distance of 9,500 km (5,900 mi). In addition to providing multiple images of Mimas’ cratered surface, it also took measurements of Mimas’ orbit, which led to speculation about a possible interior ocean.

The Saturn system is truly a wonder. So many moons, so many mysteries, and so many chances to learn about the formation of the Solar System and how it came to be. One can only hope that future missions are able to probe some of the deeper ones, like what might be lurking beneath Mimas’ icy, imposing “Death Star” surface!

We’ve written many great articles about Mimas and Saturn’s moons here at Universe Today. Here’s one about the Herschel Crater, one about the first detailed look Cassini made, and one about it’s “Death Star” appearance.

Another great resource about Mimas is Solar Views, and you can get even more info from the Nine Planets.

We have recorded two episodes of Astronomy Cast just about Saturn. The first is Episode 59: Saturn, and the second is Episode 61: Saturn’s Moons.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

04-01-2020 om 21:47 geschreven door peter  

There May Be Active Volcanoes on Venus: New Evidence

By Charles Q. Choi 

They may have erupted in the last few years!

An artist's illustration of volcanoes on Venus. A new study suggests Venus may have harbor active volcanoes today, with eruptions in recent years.

(Image: © ESA/AOES)

Venus may still harbor active volcanoes, with eruptions taking place as recently as a few years ago, a new study finds.

Aside from Earth, the only other place known to host active volcanoes that spew lava is Jupiter's moon Io. Mars and Earth's moon once had active volcanoes, but they died long ago.

Still, there are hints that Venus might harbor active volcanoes, such as traces of sulfurous gases seen in its atmosphere. In addition, about a decade ago, scientists analyzing data from the European Space Agency's Venus Express probe suggested that some of the lava flows on Venus are less than 2.5 million years old, and possibly even less than 250,000 years old. 

• Related: The 10 Weirdest Facts About Venus

Specifically, in 2010, researchers found unusually high emissions of visible to near-infrared light from a number of sites on Venus. Surface regions that are old are expected to have lower emissions of such light after long exposure to weathering from Venus' hot, caustic atmosphere, so these patches of higher emissions hinted at recent lava flows.

However, the exact ages of these lava flows remain uncertain. This is because much is unknown about how quickly volcanic rocks alter in response to Venus' harsh atmosphere and how such changes influence emissions of visible to near-infrared light.

 Hunting volcanoes on Venus 

To see if lava flows seen on Venus are recent, scientists experimented with crystals of olivine, a green mineral commonly found in volcanic rock. They focused on how these crystals altered under conditions similar in some ways to what they might experience on the surface of Venus.

The researchers heated olivine along with regular Earth air in a furnace up to 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees Celsius) for up to a month. They found olivine became coated within days mostly with the reddish-black mineral hematite, which in turn made certain features of olivine more difficult to detect.

Since the ESA's Venus Express, which orbited Venus from 2006 to 2014, apparently could detect signs of olivine even from orbit, these new findings suggested that such olivine came from volcanic eruptions recently, as otherwise chemical reactions with Venus' atmosphere would have obscured it.

"This is the first time we may have seen active volcanism on another planet," study lead author Justin Filiberto, a planetary scientist at the Universities Space Research Association's Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, told Space.com.

The researchers are now following up on their research with other volcanic minerals baked in air more similar to Venus' atmosphere — that is, laden with carbon dioxide and sulfur. "The results with those are pretty much the same," Filiberto said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Jan. 3 in the journal Science Advances. 

• Amazing Venus Photos by ESA's Venus Express
• Venus' Volcanoes Are Likely Still Active
• Weird Volcanoes Are Erupting Across the Solar System

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/news }

04-01-2020 om 21:19 geschreven door peter  

04-01-2020 om 18:55 geschreven door peter  

Massive Deep Underground Bases & Alien Close Encounters

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

04-01-2020 om 17:54 geschreven door peter  

NASA Whistleblower Comes Clean About Poleshift - Are You Prepared?

As we enter the unknown…will you rise to the occasion or sit by the wayside. The decision is yours and yours alone. No one can tell you what to do. We will help you get informed and prepared for the inevitable.

OTHER  WHISTLE BLOWER STORIES, selected by peter2011

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

04-01-2020 om 17:45 geschreven door peter  

Halleys Comet Is Really An Alien Spaceship! NASA Source, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Jan 4, 2020
Location of discovery: suns orbit
Source photo: 

• https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/comets/1p-halley/in-depth/
  

Guys, I hate to break it too you but Helley's comet is a an alien spaceship! The ship measures about 6.5 miles or 11km across. So thats no small ship. It passes earth in its wide orbit, and next time it will pass earth is in 41 years 6 months from today. Thats Jully 27, 2061. The ship is at an odd tilt putting the top of the ship towards its destination and its floor toward the tail the craft is making to disguise itself. Why hide? Because they don't want humans to be frightened of them, they just want to make a flyby to check on things and humanity as well. Nice of aliens to put so much effort into watching over us and worrying about us. Its always good to have friends in high places. :)
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

04-01-2020 om 17:06 geschreven door peter  

Huge bright UFO over St Augustine, Florida

This strange unidentified flying object was seen and recorded in the sky above St Augustine in Florida on 4th December 2019.

Witness report: 

The attached video is edited in order to be able to send it but it actually starts earlier and shows a longer time period Of hovering. The attached video is actually the third time we observed this bluish White white ball in the south East sky. I have pictures of the other times earlier that week. The three times that we saw the white bluish light in our Southeast sky it would either completely turn off or disappear or like in this video the last time we saw it it moved and then disappeared. this was the last night we witnessed it and was also a night that we saw a very high and unusual amount of helicopters flying around our sunset evening.

In addition we have pictures and video of an orangish reddish light that appeared during the same two weeks Knightley in the southwest sky at about 45° hovered and then moved after about an hour or after dark and it moved west across the sky nightly until we couldn’t see it.

My husband who actually recorded this video on his phone had an experience about 20 minutes after this recording that he still won’t share with me and I don’t know if he has any video or picture evidence and I still don’t know what happened other than it really freaked him out.

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

04-01-2020 om 16:35 geschreven door peter