Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
18-02-2020
Meet the Reaper of Death, a new Canadian tyrannosaur
Meet the Reaper of Death, a new Canadian tyrannosaur
Canadian paleontologists have identified a new tyrannosaur species, identified from fossils found in southern Alberta. It’s a large bipedal carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 79 million years ago, making it the oldest known tyrannosaur in northern North America (the previous record holder was aged at 77 million years). Details about this new dinosaur and its evolutionary relationship to other tyrannosaurs were published in the journal Cretaceous Research.
John De Groot, a farmer and amateur paleontologist, found the creature’s fossilized jawbone in 2010 while he was hiking along the Bow River shoreline near the town of Hays, about 120 miles (200 km) southeast of Calgary. It had fallen to the ground from a nearby cliff. In a statement from the Royal Tyrrell Museum, De Groot said:
The jawbone was an absolutely stunning find. We knew it was special because you could clearly see the fossilized teeth.
John De Groot holding casts of Thanatotheristes degrootorum‘s jaw bones. The new dinosaur species was named after him.
Scientists named the new tyrannosaur Thanatotheristes degrootorum. They picked a genus name apt for an apex predator, Thanatotheristes, after Thanatos, the Greek god of death, and theristes, which means one who reaps or harvests.
The dinosaur’s species name, degrootorum, was in honor of John De Groot. Sandra De Groot, his wife, commented:
John always said that one day he would find a dinosaur skull. Finding the jaw was exciting. Hearing that it is a new species, and seeing it given our family name, was beyond belief.
The fossils – pieces of the tyrannosaur’s skull and its upper and lower jaw bone – stayed tucked away in a drawer at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, in Drumheller, Alberta, until the spring of 2019. That’s when University of Calgary’s Jared Voris began to study it.
In a statement from the University of Calgary, Voris, the paper’s lead author, said:
We found features of the skull that had not been seen before in other tyrannosaurs. The fossil has several physical features, including ridges along the upper jaw, which clearly distinguishes it as being from a new species.
Voris thinks that Thanatotheristes was about 26 feet (8 meters) in length, and likely preyed on large plant-eating dinosaurs like Xenoceratops and Colepiocephale.
Vertical ridges along the length of Thanatotheristes degrootorum‘s upper jaw indicated that it was a new tyrannosaur species.
When most people think of tyrannosaurs, it’s the iconic Tyrannosaurus rex that springs to mind. T. rex is engrained in our popular culture, in books and movies, toys and artwork, and lately, in people who run around in inflatable T. rex suits. T. rex lived in present day western North America, around 68 to 66 million years ago. But there are other tyrannosaur species as well, identified from fossils in North America, and paleontologists are trying to understand their evolutionary story.
In their study, the scientists found that Thanatotheristes degrootorum was closely related to two other tyrannosaur species, Daspletosaurustorosus and Daspletosaurus horneri. This trio had common skull features: they had deeper longer snouts and more teeth in their upper jaws than their southern relatives which Voris described as having shorter, bulldog-like faces.
The scientists think that differences in tyrannosaur species – in body shape and size – are adaptations to their environment. Voris said:
Some species are better suited to certain environments. This reduces competition and gives species a better chance at survival.
The next step is to test that hypothesis further and compare how tyrannosaur species from various geological regions differed.
Artist’s depiction of Thanatotheristes degrootorum.
Image via Julius Csotonyi.
Bottom line:Scientists have identified a new tyrannosaur species, Thanatotheristes degrootorum, from fossils found in southern Alberta, Canada. It lived about 79 million years ago, making it the oldest known tyrannosaur in northern North America.
A team of researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands have developed a neural network called “Hazardous Object Identifier” that they say can predict if an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth.
Their new AI singled out 11 asteroids that were not previously classified by NASA as hazardous, and which were larger than 100 meters in diameter — big enough to explode with the force of hundreds of nuclear weapons if they impacted Earth, potentially leveling entire cities. They also focused on space rocks that could come within 4.7 million miles of Earth, as detailed in a paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics earlier this month.
None are an imminent threat, however: not only are their chances of ever hitting Earth astronomically slim, but they are making their flyby between the years 2131 and 2923 — hundreds of years from now.
Using a supercomputer, the researchers fast-forwarded through a simulation of 10,000 years of orbital movements of the Solar System’s planets. The team then reversed the simulation, simulating future Earth-impacting asteroids by flinging them away from Earth and tracking their exact locations and orbits.
“If you rewind the clock, you will see the well-known asteroids land again on earth,” said co-author and astronomer Simon Portegies Zwart from Leiden University in a statement. “This way you can make a library of the orbits of asteroids that landed on earth.”
This simulation served as the training ground for their neural network, which then looked for patterns in the data common among the simulated asteroids that might eventually hit Earth.
To nail down whether their AI was actually good at spotting Earth-impacting asteroids in reality, the team tested it on known data of 2,000 asteroids listed by NASA. The neural network was 90.99 percent accurate in determining which ones were hazardous and which ones weren’t.
The team is now working on making its neural network even more accurate.
“We now know that our method works, but we would certainly like to delve deeper in the research with a better neural network and with more input,” Zwart said. “The tricky part is that small disruptions in the orbit calculations can lead to major changes in the conclusions.”
What is this mystery skull found on a Lincolnshire beach? ( Supplied )
A mysterious skull which appears to have no eye sockets has washed up on a beach in Lincolnshire sparking debate as to what kind of animal it might have belonged to.
The skull, which was discovered at the Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve, was found by a woman who was walking her dog and picking up litter, according to the Lincolnshire Echo.
When she found the grisly specimen she reportedly “couldn’t believe her eyes”.
“I think it's definitely a washed up seal skull that's been bashed about by the tide,” the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said.
“The top part of the jaw is missing and the bottom jaw is out of place by the looks of it.”
She posted photographs of the grisly remains online, with several people trying to work out what it was.
Initial inquiries by The Independent included the suggestion from a London veterinarian that the skull could be the remains of a brachycephalic dog, such as a French bulldog or a pug, which have flat faces and short snouts.
They said from the photographs the creature appeared to have canines, indicating it was from a carnivorous animal. The lack of any discernible eye sockets, led to the suggestion it could have been a malformed puppy.
The plot thickened as the vet said the reddening of the skull could be due to haemorrhage which would suggest evidence of a head trauma, but she also noted the reddening of the skull can also happen after death if the body is left lying on one side so the blood pools.
However, the plot then thinned somewhat after experts from the Natural History Museum and the Grant Museum positively identified the specimen.
The mystery skull (Supplied)
The mystery animal from the sea is none other than a common seal.
A spokesperson for the Natural History Museum said: “According to our principal curator of mammals, Richard Sabin, it is a seal skull and it is missing the front part of the skull which holds the upper dentition.
“According to Richard, it’s tricky to identify species from the single photograph online, but the shape of the check teeth appears consistent with the common seal, Phoca vitulina. Common seals are known to occur at Gibraltar Point.”
Experts at UCL’s Grant museum concurred. Zoology curator Tannis Davidson said: "I’ve taken a look at this and its looks like a seal skull: Phoca vitulina.
“The front of the cranium is broken so only the posterior part of the orbit is visible with lack of post-orbital processes suggesting that it is a seal rather than a dog."
She added: “The alignment of the teeth in the mandible are typical of Phoca vitulina as well as the dental morphology.”
The woman who found the skull told The Independent: “I was litterpicking and just walking my dog on the beach. I do a lot of regular litterpicks.
“I suspected it was a seal skull and it does appear to be one.”
She added: “It's quite common for bones and strange things to wash up on our coast just not every day you find a seal skull but loads do get washed up.”
Discover the Mystery of a 9-Ton Slab of Glass Found in the Cave of Beit Shearim, Israel
Discover the Mystery of a 9-Ton Slab of Glass Found in the Cave of Beit Shearim, Israel
David again assembled all the picked men of Yisrael, thirty thousand strong (Samuel 2 6:1)
Bet Shearim (courtesy: Youtube)
Explore the ancient acropolis of Bet Shearim where Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, head of the Sanhedrin was buried.
THE MYSTERY SLAB OF BETH SHE'ARIM
Beth She'arim was a cemetery located in Galilee. It was one of the most sacred places in the ancient Jewish world. Just adjacent to its catacombs is a natural cave that had long ago been made into a large cistern for storing water. It apparently fell into disuse at the end of the 4th century and filled up partially with four or five feet of clay-like silt.
In 1956 it was decided to convert the cave into a small museum. A bulldozer was taken in to clear the rubble and level off the surface. But, unexpectedly, the bulldozer bumped into something large—so large, that it wouldn't even budge. It turned out to be a large, rectangular slab that looked like concrete. Because of its size, it was left where it was, and the surrounding area was paved over with flat stone.
The slab measures 6½ x 11 ft. and is 18" thick. Its top is perfectly level.
In 1963, members of a joint expedition of The Corning Museum of Glass and The University of Missouri were surveying the region for possible remains of ancient glass factories. Someone suggested that the Beth She'arim slab might be made of glass. The suggestion was greeted with skepticism—indeed, one member of the team volunteered that if the slab was made of glass, he would eat it. A chemical analysis though, confirmed that it was, in fact, made of glass.
In the summers that followed there was a thorough examination of the slab; some of the adjacent paving stones were lifted up and excavation beneath it occurred in several places. Pottery remains found there indicated to Israeli archaeologists that the slab had been in place since about the end of the 4th century.
There was, of course, much speculation as to what this huge piece of glass was. But after the excavations began, the answer became clear. Whoever made this glass some 1600 years ago was not making a glass artifact; they were making glass as a material.
Glassmaking in ancient times was often carried out in two stages. The first was an engineering stage—the hot, hard, dirty work of heating the granular raw materials to a temperature of about 1100°C (around 2000°F) in order to bring about the chemical reactions that transformed them into a fluid melt. When the melt cooled down from this near white heat, it set up into a glass.
Having this work out of the way, the raw, unshaped chunks of glass could be transported to smaller factories where artisans would reheat the glass to soften it and fashion it into wares. The second stage could have been carried out 20 feet away or 500 miles away.
The Beth She'arim slab is a huge piece of glass meant to have been broken up and fashioned into objects somewhere else. But that never happened. Instead, the glass was abandoned right where it was made.
Limestone slab-floor of the melting tank.
Tank floor with built-up side walls.
A sketch of how the furnace may have looked. The chimney is highly conjectural, although there is a hole in the ceiling of the cave, which lines-up with where the chimney would have been erected.
Drawing of wood-fire locations and probable draught flow.
There are two truly astounding things about the slab. First its sheer size: remember it measures 6½ x 11 feet. That means it weighs about 9 tons—18,000 pounds. When discovered, it was the third largest piece of man-made glass in the world and it was made centuries ago. Its size is still rivaled only by the giant telescope mirrors of the 20th century. More astonishing still are the conditions under which it was made. It is estimated that about 11 tons of raw materials had to be heated to 1100°C (around 2000°F), and held at that temperature for perhaps 5 to 10 days. This could have required as much as perhaps 20 tons of wood for fuel. Imagine what it must have been like in that cave—a veritable inferno.
How was the slab made? Excavations showed that the glass still rests on a bed of limestone block that formed the floor of the stone tank in which it was melted. A few of the stones that formed the walls of the tank are said to have been in place in 1956, before the bulldozer arrived. From evidence of heavy burning alongside the slab, we know the fire boxes were located there. A top of some sort must have arched over the tank, so that the flames would have reflected down onto the top of the batch mixture.
We know the glass batch was heated from above. During the excavation, a pavement corer was used to remove an 18" cylinder of glass near the center of the slab. It took an entire day to drill it out. After grinding and polishing the piece was removed. A scientist showed that the glass was homogeneous from the top down, until it came within a few inches of the bottom on the tank floor, where there were partially reacted ingredients that had not completely melted. At the very bottom was some of the original batch, which looks today like coffee grounds. Coming from above, the heat had not penetrated all the way through.
The glass itself has blobs and bubbles and other evidence of its molten history, but the material does not look like glass--it is not transparent. We know why that is too. Chemical analyses have shown that whereas most of the glasses of that time contain about 8% lime—that is, calcium oxide—this glass contains twice that much.
Apparently, some of the limestone, or the plastered arch over the tank, had become disintegrated by the heat, and sifted down into the molten glass as a chalk-like powder. We know that when glasses with excess lime cool slowly—and this glass must have cooled very slowly—the glass becomes partially crystallized. The myriad tiny crystals, visible through a microscope, turn the glass opaque. That is probably why the glass was never broken up to be used for making vessels.
If the Beth She'arim slab had actually been put to its intended use, probably 50 to 60 thousand small vessels could have been blown from its glass.
While the mysteries of the Beth She'arim slab thus appear to be solved, its extraordinary lesson remains. Without it, who would ever have imagined that, at the beginning of the 5th century, glass technologists had the ability—and even more so, the boldness—to undertake such an astonishing adventure in pyrotechnology (watch: Beth She'arim Slab).
UPDATE MARCH 2019:
In 1999, Ian Freestone and Yael Gorin-Rosen posited that the great glass slab at Beth She’arim dates to the 9th century A.D. Therefore, rather than being an example of typical Roman period glassmaking, the slab represents a transitional phase at the beginning of early Islamic glass production, when glassmakers began to replace mineral natron with plant ash as a fluxing agent. The early Islamic date proposed by Freestone and Gorin-Rosen has been generally accepted by other scholars. To learn more, see The Great Glass Slab at Bet She’arim Israel: An Early Islamic Glassmaking Experiment?. — Katherine Larson, Assistant Curator of Ancient and Islamic Glass
Evidence of an unknown species of human ancestor has been found hiding in the DNA of West African people.
Experts made the finding by analysing the human genome, looking for strings of genetic information that were out of place.
This revealed an inheritance of markers from an unidentified human-like species, some of which may be of benefit to their descendants - including one which suppresses the development of tumours.
Researchers believe an ancient species of hominin, known as Homo heidelbergensis, may be the most likely candidate for the 'ghost' species.
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Mysterious evidence of an unknown species of human ancestor has been found hiding in the DNA of West African people. Homo heidelbergensis (artist's model) was an early human ancestor that experts believe may be the most likely candidate
The finding was made by Arun Durvasula and Sriram Sankararaman, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.
They devised a statistical method able to highlight abnormal genetic code without needing the genome of the species it was inherited from.
This bypasses the need for DNA extracted from extinct African hominins as a basis of comparison.
The hotter and wetter climate on the African continent tends to destroy any preserved DNA, unlike samples of human-like species the Neanderthals and Densiovans uncovered in Europe and Asia.
The statistical technique was applied to the DNA of 50 modern Yoruba who had their genetic information sequenced as part of the 1,000 Genomes Project.
This established that roughly eight per cent of their DNA comes from a yet unknown 'ghost' species.
Ancestor species like the Neanderthals and Denisovans have been ruled out of the equation, as we already have their DNA and there is no evidence to suggest they lived in Africa. The journey of Neanderthals and the evolution of Homo sapiens was intertwined for thousands of years
While Homo sapiens may be the only hominin species alive today, tens of thousands of years ago the planet was home to a variety of human and protohuman species.
As the result of interspecies breeding, some of these species' DNA has been passed down to modern humans.
Traces of Neanderthal DNA are still found in people of non-African descent and Denisovan DNA lives on in people of Asian heritage.
Researchers also learned in 2016 that the DNA of an unknown population of archaic hominins continues to exist in Pacific Island peoples.
The Neanderthals and Denisovans have been ruled out of the equation, as we already have their DNA and there is no evidence to suggest they lived in Africa.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN ANCESTOR SPECIES HOMO HEIDELBERGENSIS?
Homo heidelbergensis lived in Africa, Europe and western Asia between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago.
It was an early human ancestor that went extinct long before modern humans migrated to Eurasia from Africa.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the ancestors of modern humans diverged from a lineage that gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Research published by scientists from the University of Utah in August 2017 now suggests that Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged from each other around 744,000 years ago - around 300,000 earlier than previously believed.
This implies that Homo heidelbergensis may have been an early Neanderthal.
Researchers have previously suggested that, between 400,000 and 300,000 years ago, a group of heidelbergensis migrated into Europe and West Asia via yet unknown routes and eventually evolved into Neanderthals
Homo heidelbergensis' evolutionary tree has largely baffled scientists due to scarce fossil records.
The similarity between Neanderthal, Homo heidelbergensis and Homo sapien fossils means researchers previously thought heidelbergensis fossils were simply variants of Homo sapiens.
Modern-day pygmies, who may have interbred with the Yoruba people have also been eliminated from the process, as their DNA has been sequenced and it is not a match.
A small-brained hominin that could be found roaming around the South African plains 250,000 years ago, Homo naledi, is a possible but unlikely contender.
Researchers believe they were too different from us genetically to be able to mate and reproduce successfully
'I would be amazed if there was anything of them in us,' said Mark Thomas of University College London, who was not involved in the study, speaking to New Scientist about the finding.
Experts made the fining thanks to a statistical method which is able to highlight abnormal genetic code without needing the genome of the species it was inherited from. This established that 8% of Yoruba DNA comes from a yet unknown 'ghost' species
Homo heidelbergensis was a more advanced hominin living in Africa around 200,000 years ago and a more probable candidate.
It could also be that the mystery DNA came from an isolated group of Homo sapiens or population of hominins that are as yet unknown to researchers.
Whatever the answer turns out to be, the study is a reminder that our species did not emerge from a single founding population, Professor Thomas told New Scientist
The full findings of the study are available in a paper published in the online print repository bioRxiv.
WHEN DID HUMAN ANCESTORS FIRST EMERGE?
The timeline of human evolution can be traced back millions of years. Experts estimate that the family tree goes as such:
55 million years ago - First primitive primates evolve
15 million years ago - Hominidae (great apes) evolve from the ancestors of the gibbon
7 million years ago - First gorillas evolve. Later, chimp and human lineages diverge
A recreation of a Neanderthal man is pictured
5.5 million years ago - Ardipithecus, early 'proto-human' shares traits with chimps and gorillas
4 million years ago - Ape like early humans, the Australopithecines appeared. They had brains no larger than a chimpanzee's but other more human like features
3.9-2.9 million years ago - Australoipithecus afarensis lived in Africa.
2.7 million years ago - Paranthropus, lived in woods and had massive jaws for chewing
2.6 million years ago - Hand axes become the first major technological innovation
2.3 million years ago - Homo habilis first thought to have appeared in Africa
1.85 million years ago - First 'modern' hand emerges
1.8 million years ago - Homo ergaster begins to appear in fossil record
800,000 years ago- Early humans control fire and create hearths. Brain size increases rapidly
400,000 years ago - Neanderthals first begin to appear and spread across Europe and Asia
300,000 to 200,000 years ago - Homo sapiens - modern humans - appear in Africa
50,000 to 40,000 years ago - Modern humans reach Europe
The 'Ghosts' of 2 Unknown Extinct Human Species Have Been Found in Modern DNA
The 'Ghosts' of 2 Unknown Extinct Human Species Have Been Found in Modern DNA
MICHELLE STARR
When modern humans started emerging from Africa and spreading throughout Eurasia, they found many places already occupied by older hominins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. As humans do, we got rather friendly with our new neighbours: evidence of that hanky pankylives on in our DNA today.
But we're also starting to find glimpses of something strange in our neighbourhoods - traces of ancient, unknown hominins that we've never seen before.
"These archaic groups were widespread and genetically diverse, and they survive in each of us. Their story is an integral part of how we came to be."
After closely analysing the existing literature, Teixeira and his colleague biologist Alan Cooper have identified two such 'ghost' ancestors in modern DNA. The first, identified in Eurasian DNA with the help of artificial intelligence, was widely reported earlier this year.
The second, however, was reported last year, a detail that flew under the radar in a larger paper: a mysterious, and inconclusive, genetic signature exclusively found in the population of Flores, Indonesia. It appears to be as divergent from modern human DNA as Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA is.
By carefully analysing these genetic signatures, the biologists have been able to trace when and where these interbreeding events may have occurred.
"For example, all present-day populations show about 2 percent of Neanderthal ancestry," Teixeira said, "which means that Neanderthal mixing with the ancestors of modern humans occurred soon after they left Africa, probably around 50,000 to 55,000 years ago somewhere in the Middle East."
As the modern humans moved farther east, across into islands of Southeast Asia, they seem to have run into more groups.
"At least three other archaic human groups appear to have occupied the area, and the ancestors of modern humans mixed with them before the archaic humans became extinct," Teixeira said.
One of those groups was the Denisovans. The other two remain a mystery.
The first unknown extinct hominin - named EH1 - was roughly genetically equidistant from Denisovans and Neanderthals. The ancestor of all Asian and Australo-Papuan populations bred with EH1, resulting in 2.6 to 3.4 percent shared EH1 ancestry.
(João Teixeira)
It's less strong now, but that genetic signal can still be detected in the DNA of Aboriginal Australians, East Asians and Andaman Islanders. This led the researchers to tentatively conclude that EH1 likely occupied a region in northern India, where a group of modern humans - the migration branch that went on to Asia, Australia and the Papuan islands - encountered them (1 on the map above).
Modern humans also seemed to have interbred with Denisovans in a number of locations, such as East Asia, the Sunda Shelf, and the Philippines (2, 3, and 4 on the map).
Evidence for EH2 - the extinct hominin that interbred with modern humans on Flores - is a little less clear. It only appears in short-statured people that live near Liang Bua Cave - where Homo floriensis was discovered. So it's highly localised, and has somehow remained contained for the roughly 50,000 years since the two groups met (5 on the map).
Further research is obviously required into this phenomenon. But it certainly seems to point to a very tangled human history.
"We knew the story out of Africa wasn't a simple one, but it seems to be far more complex than we have contemplated," Teixeira said.
"The Island Southeast Asia region was clearly occupied by several archaic human groups, probably living in relative isolation from each other for hundreds of thousands of years before the ancestors of modern humans arrived."
Sadly, it also looks like the arrival of modern humans was pretty closely followed by the extinction of the archaic hominins in each area. Talk about being ghosted.
On April 25 of 1977, a patrol of 6 soldiers in the desert badlands wilderness of a remote area of Pampa Lluscuma, near Putre, Chile, were settled down in their camp at approximately 4:15 AM when something caught their attention in the star-flecked expanse of sky above. The men watched in awe as two very bright lights descended from the heavens, with one of them silently approaching close to the camp to show that it was a brightly lit violet oval of light with two pinpoints of red light at either end, and another of the objects sinking down behind some foothills in the near distance, its violet glow still visible frosting the hills. The remaining light apparently then dropped down to a low altitude and seemed to just roam about over the desert, casting everything in that spooky glow. The men at first cowered under emergency blankets, but it soon became clear that there was no impending danger, and that these lights were simply hovering over the landscape. And thus would begin one of the strangest UFO encounter reports to ever come out of the country of Chile.
At the time this whole light show was odd enough that they felt it was worth investigating, and the leader of the patrol, a Cpl. Armando Valdez volunteered to venture out towards where the unknown light had sunk behind the hills to check things out. Valdez checked that his weapon was loaded and ready, and trudged out across the parched, scrub infested moonscape towards the unknown as his men warily gazed out towards that eerie glow in the distance. Valdez would not be gone for long, stumbling back into the camp a mere 15 minutes later, but something was obviously very wrong with him. He looked haggard, worn out, wild-eyed, and most oddly of all seemed to have accrued several days of beard growth in just that short span of time, when he had been clean shaven just minutes before. The patrol leader seemed to have some trouble walking, and when he sat down he merely stared off into the distance in a trance-like state and cryptically mumbled “You don’t know who we are or where we come from but we will be back soon” before passing out. When the men searched him, they found that the watch Valdez had been wearing inexplicably showed that a full 5 days had gone by, even though he had only been gone a few minutes.
Valdez and his men
Valdez would awaken from his stupor at 7 AM, and oddly his watch seemed to be frozen in time, still stuck at exactly the same point it had been when he had returned to camp. He was more lucid this time, but try as he might he could remember nothing of what had happened to him after he had left that camp, much less why his watch and beard growth seemed to indicate that he had been gone for 5 days rather than 15 minutes. He would later say of his bizarre ordeal:
The surprising thing was the way it approached us. As soldiers we are trained to deal with any situation. But this phenomenon didn’t seem to have any logical explanation. I would like to regain my memory of those fifteen minutes. I would even like to submit to hypnosis to draw out information about what happened.
The case became a media sensation in Chile, but there was some effort made to stem the notoriety of it all, with Chilean President and Commander in Chief Augusto Pinochet eventually putting a ban on any further interviews with the witnesses, and it then sort of slipped into obscurity until some researchers began digging into the story again. Notably journalist and researcher Patricio Abuselme went about reopening investigations into this strange UFO encounter, interviewing witnesses and Valdez himself for his 2010 book La noche de los centinelas (The Night of the Sentries), which he spent nearly 8 years compiling after extensive digging around. Abuselme says of the project:
This is the case that made Chilean ufology known worldwide. However, no one bothered to conduct a serious, in-depth investigation of the case. I took up the challenge in 2002, and it took me eight years to compile the protagonists’ accounts and reassemble this “impossible story.”
When I started this investigation, I did so in the secret hope of explaining the whole case in conventional terms. And I thought I was well on the way until the main protagonist of the story debunked the cases most controversial aspects – the growth of his beard and the wristwatch’s date change – by providing conventional explanations. The problem is that when I tried to corroborate it with the other witnesses, they provided a version that was mutually congruent, but at odds with the one offered by Valdés. For this reason, the book poses a controversy. If someone is looking for a story of mystics in direct contact with Martians, he or she won’t find it here. What they will find is information, information and more information. The outcome of a detailed journalistic investigation that enables the reconstruction of an intriguing real case that captured headlines over 30 years ago.
Interestingly, it has come to light in recent years that the story has indeed changed somewhat, with Valdez coming forward on an interview with Terra.cl. to claim during his research for his own book on the matter titled The Shadow of the Truth, that in retrospect he knew that he was never really abducted by aliens at all, although the strangeness with the watch and the beard was all true. Wait, what? Valdez, by this time retired from the military, would give some shocking comments on the affair that had kept people on their toes looking for answers for decades. However, he far from writes it all off as a fiction, rather being very cryptic about what actually happened. He would say in this interview about his hypnotic regression and the insights he gained:
I’ve been fully involved in developing my book and furthermore, looking into my experience, since I wish to be as factual as possible in my story. Truly, I wasn’t abducted. This is the reason for sensitive nature of what I’m putting forth in the book. Some important background details are being released. Look, it’s really complicated to explain all of a sudden. That’s the reason behind my trip to Putre, my scientific studies and the book I’m writing, because it’s all very complicated. I would say that I knew immediately how things had happened. What I’m explaining in my book [is making known] the reasons for which certain items went off on another track. Indeed. I didn’t think at first that I’d been abducted, although the matter of the growth of beard is true, as well as the subject of my wristwatch. But for this reason I have taken to writing the book to explain the reasons behind all of these things.
My story and explanations have been accepted to a certain extent, and I have told them certain things and in a certain manner. There are many who hold points of view different from my own and I don’t have to deny that there are contradictions. But as I said, the story is mine and they have not influenced me at all regarding my book. In fact, there are those who may agree or not agree with my book tomorrow, and will not stop what I’m doing. There are mixed items. The term UFO today is contaminated by another type of thing, and I prefer to speak in terms of FANI (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). I think that in my experience there is a bit of everything–a good measure of paranormal phenomena, strange effects, lights, many things acting in unison and this is what I am showing in my book, although it’s been hard for me to convey on paper what I felt, what I experienced and what really happened.
It doesn’t make much sense to be honest, and making it even more confusing was an interview Valdez did with researcher Carlos Vergara, which was translated by Mexican UFO researcher Scott Corrales. It is a bit of a confrontational interview, with Valdez being typically cryptic and constantly plugging his book, and here is an excerpt:
– Were you abducted?
– In the context, I would say no…. In other words, had I been abducted, I would have been sucked up and taken by a spacecraft somewhere else. But I will make the truth known in my book.”
– Excuse me, Corporal Valdes. Cut the book talk and tell me something more solid.
– No, no, no. That’s not what its about. I’m not trying to promote myslef. All right, what do you want to know. Ask me and I’ll tell you.”
– Where the hell were you those fifteen minutes?
– I can tell you that I was always present and looking at my men. I even heard everything they said.
– So what’ll it be then? Were you abducted or not?
– I can’t tell you yes or no. I have a truth, but it’s a long story, son. The whole phenomenon must have transpired here on Earth. The truth is harder to explain than a lie. If I said that I went to another galaxy, it would be easier. This is harder to believe.
– I don’t believe you…
– You see? I only want to be at peace with myself. You want the truth? I was never abducted! But another phenomenon occurred.
– What phenomenon?
– Something very close to home, having to do with Earth. And it happened to me with a purpose I have just come to realize. I speak of future things in my book. They call it eschatology…
What in the world is he talking about? It seems in a sense that Valdez is just as confused about what happened as anyone else, and for all of this we are no closer to any real answers as to what he encountered out in that desert wilderness, if anything. was he abducted or not? What does he think really happened? What is the meaning of his beard growth, the weirdness with the watch, and the fact that five others all witnesses the UFOs that kicked off the whole thing? It is hard to say, but it is certainly known that Chile has been rather a hotbed of UFO sightings over the years, so it seems that there could be something genuinely strange going on here. As to what that might be is anyone’s guess, and the Valdez Chilean UFO Encounter remains just as enigmatic as it always has been.
DNA ancestry tests were a popular Christmas gift in 2018 but not so much during the 2019 holidays, according to the latest reports. While the general public (at least in the U.S.) have moved on to the next shiny object (concerned about the privacy and lack of real usefulness of the tests), a group of West Africans who participated in a worldwide genome project searching for evidence of ancient ancestors in modern humans learned that they possess a “ghost DNA” of a mysterious, ancient hominin … one who apparently had a lot of interbreeding relations with the ancestors of modern humans. Could this explain everything? Anything? Will it help sales of DNA tests?
“While introgression from Neanderthals and Denisovans has been documented in modern humans outside Africa, the contribution of archaic hominins to the genetic variation of present-day Africans remains poorly understood. We provide complementary lines of evidence for archaic introgression into four West African populations. Our analyses of site frequency spectra indicate that these populations derive 2 to 19% of their genetic ancestry from an archaic population that diverged before the split of Neanderthals and modern humans.”
In a study published in the journal Science Advances, Sriram Sankararaman, an assistant professor at UCLA in the Computer Science and Human Genetics departments, explains how he and his team examined the genomes of 405 West Africans currently living in Nigeria, Gambia, and Sierra Leone using DNA in collected between 2008 and 2015 as part of the 1,000 Genomes project to find genetic variants with frequencies of at least 1% in the populations studied. While they knew that modern West Africans do not have any Neanderthal or Denisovan ancestry, they were shocked to find a single mysterious ancient hominin whose DNA made up as much as 19% of the genes of those tested.
“We don’t have a clear identity for this archaic group. That’s why we use the term ‘ghost.’ It doesn’t seem to be particularly closely related to the groups from which we have genome sequences from.”
Sankararaman told NPR this interbreeding occurred about 50,000 years ago, after humans and Neanderthals split and the latter left for Europe. The ghost group then split of from humans and did some interbreeding before they disappeared, either becoming extinct or being completely assimilated into the human group. Some of the West Africans tested showed minute percentages of Neanderthal DNA, but the researchers believe this came from later Neanderthals who moved back to Africa or modern humans who have interbred with Neanderthals in Europe and then returned to Africa. That’s a LOT of interbreeding. Does it mean anything?
“Are they just randomly floating in our genomes? Do they have any kind of adaptive benefits? Do they have deleterious consequences? Those are all questions which would be fantastic to start thinking about.”
According to his interview in Inverse, Sankararaman isn’t sure. In fact, he’s uncertain if this was one ghost group or many, nor does he know what happened to them. Unlike the Neanderthals and Denisovans, fossil evidence of these species has not been found – even in fossil-rich Africa where so many remnants of ancient human ancestors have been discovered.
A skull would help
What’s known for certain from this ghost DNA Is that this mysterious group played a big part in the early history of at least four groups of modern West Africans. That’s the kind of information that made DNA testing interesting to begin with.
Would you want to find out your ancestors were a mysterious group that liked to play the ancient field?
DEFORMED OBJECT IN THE KUIPER BELT DEFIES PLANETARY FORMATION THEORY
DEFORMED OBJECT IN THE KUIPER BELT DEFIES PLANETARY FORMATION THEORY
Arrokoth is weird — it is also proving revelatory.
As it flew by Pluto in 2015, NASA’s New Horizons mission spotted something weird: An ancient, deformed planetary body the size of Seattle swam into view, perplexing scientists here on Earth.
This strange encounter turned out to be a scientific boon. Data from the object reveals new details about how planetary bodies, including our own Earth, formed in the early Universe, offering rare insight into the ancient cosmos.
Dubbed Arrokoth, this weird rock is the furthest, most primitive object ever visited by a spacecraft.
Located some billion miles from Pluto, the object lies in the Kuiper Belt, a region beyond the Solar System. The Belt is believed to contain the leftover remains of the Solar System's early formation.
On New Year’s Day, 2019, New Horizons approached Arrokoth at a distance of 2,200 miles, flying directly past it. For reference, New Horizons was four billion miles away from Earth at this point.
NASA's data from the close encounter were published Thursday in three studies in the journal Science. Together, the research supports an unlikely theory of how planetary bodies formed in the early universe.
CLOSE ENCOUNTER
Arrokoth is around 22 miles wide, and is a binary object made up of two lobes that sort of looks like a misshaped, red snowman. It is classified as a "planetesimal" — an object believed to have formed around 3.8 billion years ago, during the Solar System's infancy.
Arrokoth is not the only object that dates to the time. Ancient comets and asteroids which also date from this febrile time have come closer to Earth, but because their orbits bring them near the Sun, they have also been affected by the star's radiation. As a result, they have been severely altered, obscuring some of the data scientists might gain on how they formed. But the Kuiper Belt is cold, and far from the Sun's harmful rays. It also contains some of the first planetary bodies ever formed in the Solar System, making it a potential astrophysics goldmine.
This brief animation moves between two New Horizons spacecraft views of Arrokoth, the spacecraft's New Year's 2019 flyby target in the Kuiper Belt.NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Roman Tkachenko
“These Kuiper Belt objects are a much better preserved sample or window back into the formation stage of planets, or planetesimals,” Alan Stern, principal investigator of New Horizons, said during a press conference to announce the findings on Thursday.
Arrokoth not only reveals some of the secrets of this process, but the data also defy the conventional theory of how planets form.
SLOW AND STEADY
The argument over how planets form has various competing theories, but the two at the center of this new research are the theory of hierarchical accretion and the cloud collapse hypothesis. Hierarchical accretion is a process whereby planetary bodies formed through high speed collisions of small rocks and grains. Cloud collapse, by contrast, is an altogether more gentle process.
Cloud collapse suggests that particles were gradually drawn to each other, until they suddenly collapsed under their gravitational pull, forming massive bodies over time.
The uniform color and composition of Arrokoth’s surface shows the Kuiper Belt object formed from a small, uniform, cloud of material in the solar nebula, rather than a mishmash of matter from more separated parts of the nebula. The former supports the idea that Arrokoth formed in a local collapse of a cloud in the solar nebula.NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Roman Tkachenko
According to the new data dump, the science supports the second theory. Arrokoth's two lobes were formed from the same cloud of material — as separate entities, they orbited around each other before they fused together to form the binary shape, the scientists reveal.
To make the conclusion, the researchers looked at different numerical simulations of interacting bodies at different speeds and angles. The models suggest that an object of this size most likely came together at a low speed — consistent with cloud collapse theory, and not hierarchical accretion.
Other data collected during the flyby jibes with this result: Arrokoth has no signs of a violent origin, and no large craters or fractures — suggesting that it had a rather gentle birth.
“The only way to account for this body is the merger speed was very low,” William McKinnon, NASA's deputy leader of the Geology and Geophysics Investigation team for New Horizons, said Thursday.
“The shape is simply inconsistent with higher velocity accretion, but it does match what we expect to see in the low velocity merger.”
New Horizons launched in January, 2006. The spacecraft was designed to peer into the outskirts of the Solar System by flying by Pluto and venturing on into the Kuiper Belt. Arrokoth was not on the original agenda for the mission, but in this one flyby, the misshapen object ca now be added to its magnificent scientific legacy.
Orange Glowing UFO Moving Fast Over Charles Town, West Virginia, 6-15-2019, UFO Sighting News.
Orange Glowing UFO Moving Fast Over Charles Town, West Virginia, 6-15-2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: 6-15-2019 Location of sighting: Charles Town, West Virginia, USA
This was just reported today, but is from 6-15-2019, cool footage of a glowing red UFO. He said there was four in total and this is the only one he caught. I know this can't be a balloon or chinese lantern because they travel slowly. This object is glowing greatly, white, and moving much too fast. It moves and looks like a lot of UFOs from past sightings. Its a UFO. Scott Waring Eyewitness states:
i saw 4 flying orange fireballs disks flying in a loose 2x2 formation right outside my house. About 30 seconds behind them was the fifth flying orange disk which i got on video.
Glowing UFO Fleet Over Scottsdale, Arizona On 8-4-2016, VIDEO. UFO Sighting News.
Glowing UFO Fleet Over Scottsdale, Arizona On 8-4-2016, VIDEO, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: 8-4-20016
Location of sighting: Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Source: MUFON
Now this is a cool sighting. A fleet of UFOs appears in the sky one by one and probably came from an underground alien base. They rotate in a triangle formation which shows that they are military...because even US military requires a squadron formation and even a wingman so they don't fly alone but with another jet. Here we see one of the UFOs begin to glow powerfully and then suddenly burst away. At this point the woman holding the camera gasps in fear. This was just reported to MUFON today, and I have never before seen it. This is 100% real, and it shows the UFOs flying in triangle formation, and shooting off in two different ways...one instant in a burst, the other slowly moving to the right.
Awesome and important footage because it shows so much in just two minutes.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
Three bright lights moving in formation, then one flashed and disappeared, the blue one zoomed down fast then out of site. Crazy, our jets don’t move like these.
Nimitz technician breaks confidentiality agreement to report his close encounter with Tic Tac UFO
Nimitz technician breaks confidentiality agreement to report his close encounter with Tic Tac UFO
Davy Beaty is the director of the Nimitz Encounter. He shares details of a meeting he had with a Navy technician who was aboard the E-2 Hawkeye plane supporting the F-18 jets sent out to intercept the Tic Tac UFOs seen on the Princeton radar system.
The technician stated that he could see a Tic Tac from the window of his plane which appeared to be flying at about the same altitude.
He also told Beaty about the non-disclosure agreement he and the others on the plane were required to sign after the incident. "It wasn't really a volunteer process, it was more a 'sign this and don't ever talk about what you saw'," he explained.
Beaty also reveals he has spoken to a second witness who saw men come aboard the Princeton to take all evidence of the encounter.
Mars took 20 million years to become the big rusty globe that it is today, according to a new study – almost 15 million years longer than previously suggested.
US scientists think up to three large asteroids around 620 to 1,240 miles (1,000 to 2,000km) in diameter may have hit the planet relatively early in its development.
They think the planet then formed gradually, accumulating mass by pulling particles into its gravitational field that bulked it up to reach its current 4,200-mile diameter.
The study contradicts previous theories that the Red Planet grew rapidly in the space of just 2 billion to 4 billion years after the Solar System started to form.
A Southwest Research Institute team performed high-resolution, smoothed-particle simulations of a large, differentiated projectile hitting early Mars after its core and mantle had formed. The projectile's core and mantle particles are indicated by brown and green spheres respectively, showing local concentrations of the projectile materials assimilated into the Martian mantle
There are around 200 Martian meteorites on Earth, thought to have been ejected from the Mars during collisions with large asteroids.
In the past, scientists have used these Martian meteorites to construct a timeline of the planet's formation and map its mysterious history.
But due to a limited number of meteorites available for research, the scientists think the 'prevailing view of Mars' formation may be biased'.
The team based their findings on computer modelling simulations of an asteroid hitting Mars that took place after the formation of its core and mantle – the layer surrounding the core.
'We knew Mars received elements such as platinum and gold from early, large collisions,' said lead author of the study Dr. Simone Marchi at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
'To investigate this process, we performed smoothed-particle hydrodynamics impact simulations.
'Based on our model, early collisions produce a heterogeneous, marble-cake-like Martian mantle.
'These results suggest that the prevailing view of Mars formation may be biased by the limited number of meteorites available for study.'
Scientists developed this illustration of how early Mars may have looked, showing signs of liquid water, large-scale volcanic activity and heavy bombardment from planetary projectiles. SwRI is modelling how these impacts may have affected early Mars to help answer questions about the planet's evolutionary history
Of approximately 61,000 meteorites found on Earth, just 200 or so are thought to be of Martian origin.
Samples show variations in elements such as tungsten, platinum and gold, which indicate Mars was bombarded by asteroids some time after its primary core formation ended.
'We knew Mars received elements such as platinum and gold from early, large collisions,' said Dr Marchi, whose study was published in Science Advances.
'To investigate this process, we performed smoothed-particle hydrodynamics impact simulations.
'Based on our model, early collisions produce a heterogeneous, marble-cake-like Martian mantle.
'These results suggest that the prevailing view of Mars' formation may be biased by the limited number of meteorites available for study.'
The previous estimate of rapid growth between two billion to four billion years was based on analysis of tungsten in the Martian meteorites.
Elements such as tungsten tend to migrate from a planet's mantle and into its central iron core during formation.
Evidence of these elements in the Martian mantle, as found in these meteorites, indicate that Mars was bombarded by rocky space debris sometime after its primary core formation ended.
Large, early collisions could have altered the balance of tungsten, which could support a Mars formation timescale of up to 20 million years, as shown by the new model.
'To fully understand Mars, we need to understand the role the earliest and most energetic collisions played in its evolution and composition,' Marchi said.
NASA's Mars 2020 Rover will pick up samples of rock and soil from the red planet, deposit them in tubes and leave them on the ground for a future mission to return them to Earth.
The next generation of Mars missions, including plans to return samples to Earth, could provide new information on the variability of iron-loving elements in Martian rocks and the early evolution of the Red Planet.
This July, NASA's Mars 2020 mission will take off with a touchdown on the Martian surface set for February 2021.
The six-wheeled robotic lander will anal;yse the dusty surface of the planet to seek signs of habitable conditions or microbial life in its past.
The Mars 2020 rover's drill can collect core samples of rocks and soils and set them aside in a 'cache' on the surface of Mars.
A future mission could potentially return these samples to Earth.
The European Space Agency and Russia's Roscosmos will also launch the 'Rosalind Franklin rover' this summer as part of the next stage of their ExoMars project to find signs of past life on Mars.
WHAT EVIDENCE DO SCIENTISTS HAVE FOR LIFE ON MARS?
The search for life on other planets has captivated mankind for decades.
But the reality could be a little less like the Hollywood blockbusters, scientists have revealed.
They say if there was life on the red planet, it probably will present itself as fossilized bacteria - and have proposed a new way to look for it.
Here are the most promising signs of life so far -
Water
When looking for life on Mars, experts agree that water is key.
Although the planet is now rocky and barren with water locked up in polar ice caps there could have been water in the past.
In 2000, scientists first spotted evidence for the existence of water on Mars.
The Nasa Mars Global Surveyor found gullies that could have been created by flowing water.
The debate is ongoing as to whether these recurring slope lineae (RSL) could have been formed from water flow.
Meteorites
Earth has been hit by 34 meteorites from Mars, three of which are believed to have the potential to carry evidence of past life on the planet, writes Space.com.
In 1996, experts found a meteorite in Antarctica known as ALH 84001 that contained fossilised bacteria-like formations.
However, in 2012, experts concluded that this organic material had been formed by volcanic activity without the involvement of life.
Signs of Life
The first close-ups of the planet were taken by the 1964 Mariner 4 mission.
These initial images showed that Mars has landforms that could have been formed when the climate was much wetter and therefore home to life.
In 1975, the first Viking orbiter was launched and although inconclusive it paved the way for other landers.
Many rovers, orbiters and landers have now revealed evidence of water beneath the crust and even occasional precipitation.
Earlier this year, Nasa's Curiosity rover found potential building blocks of life in an ancient Martian lakebed.
The organic molecules preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock in Gale Crater — believed to have once contained a shallow lake the size of Florida's Lake Okeechobee — suggest conditions back then may have been conducive to life.
Future missions to Mars plan on bringing samples back to Earth to test them more thoroughly.
Methane
In 2018, Curiosity also confirmed sharp seasonal increases of methane in the Martian atmosphere.
Experts said the methane observations provide 'one of the most compelling' cases for present-day life.
Curiosity's methane measurements occurred over four-and-a-half Earth years, covering parts of three Martian years.
Seasonal peaks were detected in late summer in the northern hemisphere and late winter in the southern hemisphere.
The magnitude of these seasonal peaks – by a factor of three – was far more than scientists expected.
Scientists believe early cosmic impacts may have influenced the evolution of Mars, and this suggests that the Red Planet formed much slower than previously thought.
This illustration shows how early Mars may have looked, with signs of liquid water, large-scale volcanic activity and heavy bombardment from planetary projectiles.
The early solar system was a violent, chaotic place, where planetesimals — small protoplanets measuring up to 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) in diameter — asteroids and other debris collided, shaping the planets and celestial bodies we know today.
A new study from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio shows that Mars was likely struck by planetesimals early in its history. These large, long-ago collisions introduced "iron-loving" elements to the Red Planet, and those elements, in turn, influenced how quickly the planet formed, according to a statement from SwRI.
Using Martian meteorite samples found on Earth, the researchers were able to model the mixture of materials that formed the early Martian mantle. The study revealed that Mars received a variety of elements — such as tungsten, platinum and gold — that are attracted to iron as a result of these collisions.
"To investigate this process, we performed smoothed-particle hydrodynamics impact simulation," Simone Marchi, lead author of the study from SwRI, said in the statement. "Based on our model, early collisions produce a heterogeneous, marble-cake-like Martian mantle."
The meteorite samples suggest that planetesimals bombarded the Red Planet sometime after the planet's primary core formed. That's because "iron-loving" elements like tungsten, platinum and gold generally migrate from a planet's mantle to its central iron core during formation, according to the statement. "Evidence of these elements in the Martian mantle as sampled by meteorites are important because they indicate that Mars was bombarded by planetesimals sometime after its primary core formation ended," SwRI said in the statement.
Earlier studies of the ratio of tungsten isotopes in the Martian meteorite samples suggested that Mars grew rapidly, within 2 million to 4 million years after the solar system began forming, about 4.6 billion years ago. Because tungsten isotopes are produced via radioactive decay processes over time, the ratio of these isotopes in the mantle of Mars provides a clue about the timeline of the planet's formation.
However, the new models show that early, large collisions could have altered the ratio of elements in the Martian mantle, meaning the planet may have formed over a period of up to 20 million years.
Researchers at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio performed high-resolution simulations of a large projectile hitting early Mars after the planet's core and mantle formed. The projectile's core and mantle particles are indicated by brown and green spheres, respectively, showing how the projectile's materials assimilated into the Martian mantle. (Image credit: SwRI/Marchi)
"Collisions by projectiles large enough to have their own cores and mantles could result in a heterogeneous mixture of those materials in the early Martian mantle," Robin Canup, co-author and assistant vice president of SwRI's Space Science and Engineering Division, said in the statement. "This can lead to different interpretations on the timing of Mars' formation than those that assume that all projectiles are small and homogenous."
The findings, published Wednesday (Feb. 12) in the journal Science Advances, provide insight on how Mars evolved and how early collisions affected the planet's formation. The Martian meteorites found on Earth are believed to be the result of more recent collisions with the Red Planet. These meteorite samples offer a unique view into Mars' past, as they contain a record of the planet's history, the researchers said.
"To fully understand Mars, we need to understand the role the earliest and most energetic collisions played in its evolution and composition," Marchi said in the statement.
The so-called Tic Tac UFO encounter off the coast of San Diego in November 2004 by two planes from the USS Nimitz that was only revealed in 2017 when visual footage of the incident and two others was released and confirmed by the Pentagon (and later dismissed) continues to raise more questions than answers. One big question revolves around whether any other planes saw the UFO and why haven’t those pilots come forward. An answer of sorts was given recently by a longtime investigator of the incident.
“The gentlemen I spoke to, I checked his history and he flew the Hawkeye. The reason he declined to appear was because he had to sign a document shortly after the incident telling him not to speak. Even exposing himself and talking to me was complicated for him.”
The Tic Tac UFO
In an extensive new interview on “The Hidden Truth with Jimmy Breslo” (watch it here) which was reviewed by The Daily Star, David Beaty, an Emmy-Award winning producer and cinematographer, UFO researcher and producer of the UFO documentary film “The Nimitz Encounters,” reveals details of his conversation with an unnamed Navy technician who was on an E-2 Hawkeye plane that took off to support the F-18 jets from the USS Nimitz which had encountered the Tic Tac UFOs after they were picked up on the radar of the USS Princeton. Beaty states that the technician saw the Tic Tac UFO through the window of the E-2 Hawkeye and related that all five members of the plane’s crew witnessed it.
So, why haven’t we heard about this encounter until now?
“It wasn’t really a volunteer process, it was more a ‘sign this and don’t ever talk about what you saw’.”
The witness told Beaty the crew was taken to a secure briefing room different to the normal one after training exercises forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. While it has long been an unwritten understanding among pilots to keep UFO sightings to themselves or face ridicule, discipline and possible discharge, this is one of the few actual reports of forcing witnesses to sign documents.
USS Nimitz
For those who haven’t heard the details about the Tic Tac UFO encounter and the subsequent controversies and conspiracy theories surrounding it, the interview provides excellent insights as well as this new information, including Beaty’s interview of yet another witness would claimed to see unidentified men board the Princeton and remove all evidence of the incident.
Did the crew member of the E-2 Hawkeye violate the non-disclosure agreement by talking to Beaty, even anonymously? Probably. Will he suffer consequences? Well, there were only five crew members on the plane – it won’t be hard for the Navy or the Pentagon to pressure any or all of them into revealing who it was. Since so much has already been released, will it matter? In these days of revenge and vendettas, what do you think? Will we hear any more about it? It’s a safe wager to say that the Tic Tac UFO isn’t going away.
One of Earth's premier instruments for studying nearby asteroids is back to work after being rattled by earthquakes, and its first new observations show that a newly discovered space rock is actually two separate asteroids.
The instrument is the planetary radar system at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The observatory was closed for most of January, after a series of earthquakes hit the island beginning on Dec. 28, 2019. The observatory reopened on Jan. 29. Meanwhile, on Jan. 27, scientists using a telescope on Mauna Loa in Hawaii spotted an asteroid that astronomers hadn't seen before. The team dubbed the newfound space rock 2020 BX12 based on a formula recognizing its discovery date.
Because of the size of 2020 BX12 and the way its orbit approaches that of Earth, it is designated a potentially hazardous asteroid. However, the space rock has already come as close to Earth as it will during this pass (2.7 million miles or 4.3 million kilometers); astronomers have calculated the asteroid's close approaches with Earth for the next century, and all will be at a greater distance than this one was.
Radar images show the binary asteroid 2020 BX12, which scientists discovered this year. (Image credit: Arecibo Observatory/NASA/NSF)
The asteroid's flyby wasn't a threat to life on Earth, but it was an opportunity for scientists who were hoping to learn more about space rocks. On Feb. 4 and 5, the radar station at Arecibo set its sights on 2020 BX12. Based on the observations, the scientists discovered that 2020 BX12 is a binary asteroid, with a smaller rock orbiting the larger rock. About 15% of larger asteroids turn out, on closer inspection, to be binary, according to NASA.
The larger rock is likely at least 540 feet (165 meters) across, and the smaller one is about 230 feet (70 m) wide, according to the observations gathered by Arecibo. When the instrument observed the two space rocks on Feb. 5, they appeared to be separated by about 1,200 feet (360 m).
Scientists couldn't gather enough data to be sure, but they suspect that the two rocks might complete an orbit of each other in 45 to 50 hours and that the smaller rock may be brighter than, and tidally locked with, its companion, meaning the same side always faces the larger object.
Existential dread is a key motivator for asteroid discoveries, and planetary defense experts hope that, by surveying nearby space rocks, they will identify a threat with enough time for us to protect ourselves. But asteroids are also scientifically interesting, since they represent rubble from the formation of the solar system.
Anonymous - Deep Space Signals! Something Shocking Is Happening
Anonymous - Deep Space Signals! Something Shocking Is Happening
SHOCKING: Something Is Happening In Deep Space.. (2020)
The biggest question of our time. Are we alone? Alien worlds and distant places in time and space, in search of where alien life might be hiding and what our place is within the history of life. After generations of wondering, the truth is finally within our reach. New research and technologies have brought us closer than ever to an answer – only a few decades in the eyes of some NASA scientists. The search has led to new discoveries that will blow your mind wide open and give a profound new perspective on human life.
The deeper we look, the deeper we see into nature’s imagination, and the more we learn about ourselves. I hope stewing on these thoughts tickles your brain as deeply as it does mine. Extraterrestrial life is hypothetical life which may occur outside of Earth and which did not originate on Earth. Such life might range from simple prokaryotes to beings with civilizations far more advanced than humanity.
The Drake equation speculates about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Unidentified flying object is the popular term for any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft.
A new study from the Planetary Research Institute suggests that briny water could temporarily form on Mars’ surface in the shadows of boulders for just a few days each Martian year.
Field of large boulders as seen by the Mars Pathfinder lander on Mars in 1997. A new study suggests that small pools of liquid water may be able to briefly form in the shadows of such boulders at mid-latitudes in the springtime.
Mars is a cold, very dry, desert world. Although it has ice caps of water ice (as well as carbon dioxide ice) and vast amounts of ice below its surface, no liquid water has been found on Mars’ surface. But there might be some. We might just need to look behind large boulders, in springtime.
A new study from the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) in Tucson, Arizona – announced on February 12, 2020 – adds to previous evidence that small amounts of briny (salty) water might be able to form on the Martian surface under just the right conditions.
The possibility of liquid water on present-day Mars has been debated for half a century. Melting is physically difficult under Martian environmental conditions, because with the total pressure of the atmosphere near the triple point pressure of water, evaporative cooling of ice is high near the melting point.
According to the study, the briny water might be possible for only a few days of each Martian year. The trick is that this can only happen under just the right circumstances. Schorghofer said:
Mars has plenty of cold ice-rich regions and plenty of warm ice-free regions, but icy regions where the temperature rises above the melting point are a sweet spot that is nearly impossible to find. That sweet spot is where liquid water would form.
Three-dimensional computerized view of the Martian surface temperature around a boulder at latitude 30° south. On the side opposite to the sun, temperatures are around -128 degrees Celsius. As the sun rises, this area heats up rapidly, melting frost on the salty ground. This could briefly create small amounts of briny water that later goes back into the atmosphere, via sublimation.
This sweet spot would involve protruding topography, such as boulders, at mid-latitudes. During the winter, a boulder might cast a continual shadow, where water ice can accumulate as frost. When spring came again, the temperature can increase quite quickly. In the computer models used, temperature would rise from -198° Fahrenheit (-128° Celsius) in the morning to -14° Fahrenheit (-10° Celsius) at noon. That is a short enough time that not all the frost would sublimate – pass directly from the solid to vapor state – as it normally does in the very thin, cold atmosphere. From the paper:
Protruding topography creates locations that experience a rapid transition from conditions where water frost accumulates to high solar energy input. Beyond the pole-facing side of a boulder, carbon dioxide and water frost can accumulate seasonally, and once the sun reemerges and the carbon dioxide frost disappears, the water frost is heated to near melting temperature within one or two sols [days on Mars].
The scientists said it is dust within the carbon dioxide frost that helps keep it from sublimating back into the atmosphere as temperatures rise. From the paper:
Overall, melting of pure water ice is not expected under present-day Mars conditions. However, at temperatures that are readily reached, seasonal water frost can melt on a salt-rich substrate.
The whole cycle would repeat, year after Martian year.
In 2008, what appeared to be small drops of briny liquid water were seen on the legs of the Phoenix Mars Lander. These images show changes in the drops over 36 days.
As mentioned above, carbon dioxide ice can also form behind large boulders on Mars. That ice, too, will sublimate in the spring. Scientists have a name for the first day in spring when the carbon dioxide ice disappears. They call it the crocus date.
Water ice melting also occurs either on or just after that date. Thus it is referred to as crocus melting. According to Schorghofer:
Answering the question whether crocus melting of seasonal water ice actually occurs on Mars required a slew of detailed quantitative calculations, the numbers really matter. It took decades to develop the necessary quantitative models.
Today, Mars’ atmosphere is too cold and too thin for water to last long on the surface, even briny water. But there have been other hints that it may occur when conditions are right.
The famous recurring slope lineae on Mars may be evidence of seasonal briny water on Mars. The slope linae are dark streaks that occur on steep slopes during the warmer months and keep recurring in the same locations each year. It still isn’t known exactly what causes them, but theories have ranged from small amounts of flowing briny water to dust slides. If water is involved – not a certainty yet – it could come from the atmosphere, ice pockets or subsurface aquifers.
Norbert Schorghofer at the Planetary Science Institute.
During the Mars Phoenix Lander mission, which landed near the north pole in 2008, images showed small droplets forming on the legs of the spacecraft. While not proven, they certainly looked like drops of briny water that later sublimated away.
Last year, NASA’s InSight lander found possible evidence of current reservoirs of liquid water below the surface. If confirmed, that would be an exciting discovery, in particular for the potential of subsurface life, which would be protected from the severe conditions on the surface. In 2018, it was announced that the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter had found evidence of a salty subsurface lake beneath the ice at the south pole.
If there really are brief pools of liquid water hiding behind Martian boulders at times, that also would be exciting, as Mars would then be the only place other than Earth in our solar system where water would be known to be able to exist on the surface. This could have significant implications for the possibility of microbial life on an otherwise dry and hostile world.
Bottom line: A new study from the Planetary Research Institute suggests that briny water could temporarily form on Mars’ surface under certain conditions.
Harvard-prof: Dit ruimtesignaal is mogelijk van een buitenaardse beschaving
Eerder deze maand kondigden Canadese onderzoekers aan dat ze een krachtig ruimtesignaal hadden ontdekt dat elke 16 dagen meerdere keren wordt uitgezonden vanuit een ver sterrenstelsel.
Volgens professor Avi Loeb van de Harvard-universiteit is er een mogelijkheid dat het ruimtesignaal afkomstig is van een buitenaardse beschaving.
“We weten op dit moment nog niet precies wat de herkomst is van deze signalen, zogeheten snelle radioflitsen,” aldus Loeb in een e-mail aan Futurism.
Kunstmatige oorsprong
“We moeten dus openstaan voor alle mogelijkheden, ook een kunstmatige oorsprong,” benadrukte hij.
“Eén concrete mogelijkheid is dat een buitenaardse beschaving een energiestraal gebruikt om een lading door de ruimte te vervoeren, en dat de Canadese onderzoekers de straling hiervan hebben opgepikt,” zei Loeb.
Je hebt hiervoor echter hele krachtige energiestralen nodig, voegde hij toe.
Totale hoeveelheid zonlicht
In een paper uit 2017 schrijft de professor dat er voor één zo’n straal net zoveel energie nodig is als de totale hoeveelheid zonlicht die de aarde raakt.
De Canadese onderzoekers reageerden in een persverklaring over hun onderzoek dat ‘niet-professionelen’ hebben gesuggereerd dat het gaat om boodschappen van aliens.
Niet uitsluiten
Professor Loeb vindt echter dat je deze mogelijkheid niet zomaar moet uitsluiten.
In 2018 zei hij dat het interstellaire object Oumuamua mogelijk een buitenaardse ruimtesonde was.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.