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
SpaceX will fly space tourists on Crew Dragon for Space Adventures
SpaceX will fly space tourists on Crew Dragon for Space Adventures
Up to four people could fly higher than any space tourists in history by 2021!
SpaceX and Space Adventures have signed a deal to launch up to four passengers into Earth orbit on a Crew Dragon spacecraft like the one seen here. This Crew Dragon will launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in 2020.
SpaceXjust inked its first deal to launch space tourists into orbit on a Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The private spaceflight company founded by billionaire Elon Musk has signed an agreement with the U.S. space tourism company Space Adventures to launch up to four passengers on an orbital trip aboard a Crew Dragon space capsule. The mission would last up to five days and could launch as early as late 2021, Space Adventures representatives told Space.com.
"This historic mission will forge a path to making spaceflight possible for all people who dream of it, and we are pleased to work with the Space Adventures team on the mission," SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement from Space Adventures.
Under the agreement, Space Adventures will use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon vehicle to fly up to four passengers to Earth orbit. The trip will not visit the International Space Station. Instead, it will remain in orbit as a free-flying spacecraft.
"This will provide up to four individuals with the opportunity to break the world altitude record for private citizen spaceflight and see planet Earth the way no one has since the Gemini program," Space Adventures representatives said in the statement. For comparison, the space station orbits the Earth at an average altitude of about 250 miles (400 kilometers).
"Honoring our combined histories, this Dragon mission will be a special experience and a once in a lifetime opportunity — capable of reaching twice the altitude of any prior civilian astronaut mission or space station visitor," said Eric Anderson, chairman of Space Adventures, said in the statement.
To date, Space Adventures has arranged eight orbital trips to the International Space Station for seven wealthy customers: Dennis Tito in 2001; South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth in 2002; American entrepreneurs Greg Olsen in 2005 and Anousheh Ansari in 2006; Microsoft co-founder Charles Simonyi (twice) in 2007 and 2009; computer game developer Richard Garriott in 2008; and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte in 2009.
Those spaceflights all cost tens of millions of dollars, with Laliberte's flight costing a reported $35 million for his 11-day trip. The passengers, called "spaceflight participants," flew to and from the station on Russian Soyuz space capsules under agreements between Space Adventures and Roscosmos, Russia's space agency.
SpaceX or Space Adventures did not announce exact pricing for the Crew Dragon tourist flight, but the cost per seat is expected to be in the same range of other commercial spaceflight opportunities.
As for timing, it's likely that the free-flying Crew Dragon flight will launch only after SpaceX begins flying NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Those trips are expected to begin later this year.
SpaceX (and rival Boeing) have multi-billion-dollar contracts to fly astronauts on round trips to and from the space station. In 2019, SpaceX performed a successful uncrewed test flight to the station with Crew Dragon, following it up with a launch abort test last month.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft is a reusable space capsule designed to carry up to seven people on trips to and from Earth orbit. SpaceX missions for NASA will launch the capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket, visit the International Space Station for months, then return to Earth for a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
In December, Boeing launched an uncrewed test flight of its own Starliner capsule, but it failed to reach the space station due to software and communications issues. Boeing and NASA are investigating that flight to determine if another uncrewed flight will be required.
Meanwhile, Space Adventures is also working with Roscosmos to fly two space tourists to the International Space Station on a dedicated Soyuz spacecraft in 2021. Roscosmos announced the agreement with Space Adventures last year.
"Creating unique and previously impossible opportunities for private citizens to experience space is why Space Adventures exists," Anderson said. "Since its maiden mission in 2010, no engineering achievement has consistently impressed the industry more than the Dragon/Falcon 9 reusable system."
Editor's note: This story, originally posted at 10 a.m. EST, has been updated to include mission duration, timing and cost details from Space Adventures.
Breakthrough Listen Scans Milky Way Galaxy for Beacons of Civilization
Breakthrough Listen Scans Milky Way Galaxy for Beacons of Civilization
Artist’s concept of a nearby civilization signaling Earth after observing our planet crossing in front of the sun. Astronomers have now scanned 20 nearby stars in the Earth transit zone in search of such signals.
Credit: UC Berkeley image courtesy of Breakthrough Listen
The Breakthrough Listen Initiative today (Friday, Feb. 14) released data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy and the region around its central black hole, and it is inviting the public to search the data for signals from intelligent civilizations.
At a media briefing today in Seattle as part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Breakthrough Listen principal investigator Andrew Siemion of the University of California, Berkeley, announced the release of nearly 2 petabytes of data, the second data dump from the four-year old search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). A petabyte of radio and optical telescope data was released last June, the largest release of SETI data in the history of the field.
The data, most of it fresh from the telescope prior to detailed study from astronomers, comes from a survey of the radio spectrum between 1 and 12 gigahertz (GHz). About half of the data comes via the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, which, because of its location in the Southern Hemisphere, is perfectly situated and instrumented to scan the entire galactic disk and galactic center. The telescope is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, owned and managed by the country’s national science agency, CSIRO.
The remainder of the data was recorded by the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the world’s largest steerable radio dish, and an optical telescope called the Automated Planet Finder, built and operated by UC Berkeley and located at Lick Observatory outside San Jose, California.
“Since Breakthrough Listen’s initial data release last year, we have doubled what is available to the public,” said Breakthrough Listen’s lead system administrator, Matt Lebofsky. “It is our hope that these data sets will reveal something new and interesting, be it other intelligent life in the universe or an as-yet-undiscovered natural astronomical phenomenon.”
“For the whole of human history, we had a limited amount of data to search for life beyond Earth. So, all we could do was speculate. Now, as we are getting a lot of data, we can do real science and, with making this data available to general public, so can anyone who wants to know the answer to this deep question,” said Yuri Milner, the founder of Breakthrough Listen.
Moonset, around 2:30 a.m., at the Very Large Array on the Plains of San Agustin, about 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. The VLA is teaming up with the SETI Institute to capture data that can be searched for intelligent signals.
Credit: UC Berkeley
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the privately-funded SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, also announced today an agreement to collaborate on new systems to add SETI capabilities to radio telescopes operated by NRAO. The first project will develop a system to piggyback on the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico and provide data to state-of-the-art digital backend equipment built by the SETI Institute.
“The SETI Institute will develop and install an interface on the VLA, permitting unprecedented access to the rich data stream continuously produced by the telescope as it scans the sky,“ said Siemion, who, in addition to his UC Berkeley position, is the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute. “This interface will allow us to conduct a powerful, wide-area SETI survey that will be vastly more complete than any previous such search.”
“As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we’re already collecting,” said NRAO Director Tony Beasley. “Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science, and NRAO telescopes can play a major role in answering it.”
Earth transit zone survey
In releasing the new radio and optical data, Siemion highlighted a new analysis of a small subset of the data: radio emissions from 20 nearby stars that are aligned with the plane of Earth’s orbit such that an advanced civilization around those stars could see Earth pass in front of the sun (a “transit” like those focused on by NASA’s Kepler space telescope). Conducted by the Green Bank Telescope, the Earth transit zone survey observed in the radio frequency range between 4 and 8 gigahertz, the so-called C-band. The data were then analyzed by former UC Berkeley undergraduate Sofia Sheikh, now a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, who looked for bright emissions at a single radio wavelength or a narrow band around a single wavelength. She has submitted the paper to the Astrophysical Journal.
Australia’s Parkes radio telescope, 210 feet in diameter, conducted the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the Milky Way galaxy in search of technosignatures from advanced civilizations around other stars.
Photo courtesy of CSIRO
“This is a unique geometry,” Sheikh said. “It is how we discovered other exoplanets, so it kind of makes sense to extrapolate and say that that might be how other intelligent species find planets, as well. This region has been talked about before, but there has never been a targeted search of that region of the sky.”
While Sheikh and her team found no technosignatures of civilization, the analysis and other detailed studies the Breakthrough Listen group has conducted are gradually putting limits on the location and capabilities of advanced civilizations that may exist in our galaxy.
“We didn’t find any aliens, but we are setting very rigorous limits on the presence of a technologically capable species, with data for the first time in the part of the radio spectrum between 4 and 8 gigahertz,” Siemion said. “These results put another rung on the ladder for the next person who comes along and wants to improve on the experiment.”
Sheikh noted that her mentor, Jason Wright at Penn State, estimated that if the world’s oceans represented every place and wavelength we could search for intelligent signals, we have, to date, explored only a hot tub’s worth of it.
“My search was sensitive enough to see a transmitter basically the same as the strongest transmitters we have on Earth, because I looked at nearby targets on purpose,” Sheikh said. “So, we know that there isn’t anything as strong as our Arecibo telescope beaming something at us. Even though this is a very small project, we are starting to get at new frequencies and new areas of the sky.” Beacons in the galactic center?
The so-far unanalyzed observations from the galactic disk and galactic center survey were a priority for Breakthrough Listen because of the higher likelihood of observing an artificial signal from that region of dense stars. If artificial transmitters are not common in the galaxy, then searching for a strong transmitter among the billions of stars in the disk of our galaxy is the best strategy, Simeon said.
Breakthrough Listen, based at UC Berkeley, collects petabytes of data from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia (right) and the Parkes radio telescope in Australia (left) and makes it available to the science community to analyze in search of signals from intelligent civilizations.
Graphic courtesy of Breakthrough Listen
On the other hand, putting a powerful, intergalactic transmitter in the core of our galaxy, perhaps powered by the 4 million-solar-mass black hole there, might not be beyond the capabilities of a very advanced civilization. Galactic centers may be so-called Schelling points: likely places for civilizations to meet up or place beacons, given that they cannot communicate among themselves to agree on a location.
“The galactic center is the subject of a very specific and concerted campaign with all of our facilities because we are in unanimous agreement that that region is the most interesting part of the Milky Way galaxy,” Siemion said. “If an advanced civilization anywhere in the Milky Way wanted to put a beacon somewhere, getting back to the Schelling point idea, the galactic center would be a good place to do it. It is extraordinarily energetic, so one could imagine that if an advanced civilization wanted to harness a lot of energy, they might somehow use the supermassive black hole that is at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.”
Visit from an interstellar comet
Breakthrough Listen also released observations of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, which had a close encounter with the sun in December and is now on its way out of the solar system. The group had earlier scanned the interstellar rock ‘Oumuamua, which passed through the center of our solar system in 2017. Neither exhibited technosignatures.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took this photo of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov in October 2019, two months before its closest approach to the sun.
Photo courtesy of NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt, UCLA
“If interstellar travel is possible, which we don’t know, and if other civilizations are out there, which we don’t know, and if they are motivated to build an interstellar probe, then some fraction greater than zero of the objects that are out there are artificial interstellar devices,” said Steve Croft, a research astronomer with the Berkeley SETI Research Center and Breakthrough Listen. “Just as we do with our measurements of transmitters on extrasolar planets, we want to put a limit on what that number is.”
Regardless of the kind of SETI search, Siemion said, Breakthrough Listen looks for electromagnetic radiation that is consistent with a signal that we know technology produces, or some anticipated signal that technology could produce, and inconsistent with the background noise from natural astrophysical events. This also requires eliminating signals from cellphones, satellites, GPS, internet, Wi-fi and myriad other human sources.
In Sheikh’s case, she turned the Green Bank telescope on each star for five minutes, pointed away for another five minutes and repeated that twice more. She then threw out any signal that didn’t disappear when the telescope pointed away from the star. Ultimately, she whittled an initial 1 million radio spikes down to a couple hundred, which she was able to eliminate as Earth-based human interference. The last four unexplained signals turned out to be from passing satellites.
Siemion emphasized that the Breakthrough Listen team intends to analyze all the data released to date and to do it systematically and often.
“Of all the observations we have done, probably 20% or 30% have been included in a data analysis paper,” Siemion said. “Our goal is not just to analyze it 100%, but 1000% or 2000%. We want to analyze it iteratively.”
Breakthrough Listen, based at UC Berkeley, is supported by a $100 million, 10-year commitment from the Breakthrough Initiatives, founded in 2015 by Yuri and Julia Milner to explore the universe, seek scientific evidence of life beyond Earth and encourage public debate from a planetary perspective.
Contacts and sources:
Robert Sanders University of California – Berkeley
I was having some fun with the Google Mercury map and found so many structure that I had to make a video about them. I only show about ten in this short video, but one day AI will run ramped through the internet and find thousands of structures in the same planet photo. AI is much better at finding and identifying such tiny details, and people might accept discoveries from AI more easily than a human like myself. Can you imagine the technology within one of these ships? It would advance tech on earth thousands of years in just a few days. The country that has one of these ships...will be the most powerful country on earth. Scott C. Wari
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
UFO Seen Shooting Across Sky Over Fremont, California, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Seen Shooting Across Sky Over Fremont, California, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Source: MUFON Location of sighting:Fremont, California, USA Guys there is a close up before and at the end of this video I made to help you see it better. I hope it helps. This is an outstanding video of a circular disk craft shooting across the sky trying to make itself look like a meteor. Its not a meteor, its going too slow and at an angle that would be impossible for a meteor. 100% proof that aliens fly over cities in California. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan Eyewitness states:
Taking my dog for a walk when I saw this about 6pm. going north over Fremont, Ca. took video with iphone. this is an mp4 video.
BruceSeesall shows a UFO hurtling towards the moon. The footage was captured last year. We get in close in 5K strong magnification.
Other UFO sightings as shown in the video: Directional changes seen in infrared camera...UFO changing directions in the skies of Montreal Canada and UFO's plunging in and out of clouds on the moon seen in high quality 5K.
KLIMAATVERANDERING: ZOU DE ZON DE BOOSDOENER KUNNEN ZIJN?
KLIMAATVERANDERING: ZOU DE ZON DE BOOSDOENER KUNNEN ZIJN?
Caroline Kraaijvanger
De aarde warmt op. En volgens sommigen is dat het resultaat van de zonne-activiteit. Is dat denkbaar?
In de jaren zeventig ontdekt paleo-ecoloog Bas van Geel in een veenkolom uit Engbertsdijksveen een klimaatomslag. Veen dat ten tijde van het Subboreaal onder relatief droge omstandigheden was gegroeid, maakte ten tijde van het Subatlanticum (ca. 800 voor Christus) plaats voor veen dat onder zeer natte omstandigheden was ontstaan. De oorzaak bleef onbekend. Tot het eind van de twintigste eeuw. Dan ontdekt Van Geel dat de klimaatomslag samenvalt met een plotselinge afname in de activiteit van de zon. Een ontdekking die zijn professionele leven verandert. “Ik ontpopte mezelf tot een klimaatscepticus.”
Zonne-activiteit Van Geel is geen klimaatscepticus in de traditionele zin van het woord. Zo ontkent hij zeker niet dat de aarde de laatste eeuw is opgewarmd. Wel betwijfelt hij of de rol die CO2 hierin speelt, werkelijk zo omvangrijk is als momenteel wordt aangenomen. Een deel van de opwarming die nu aan CO2 wordt toegeschreven, is volgens hem namelijk niet te herleiden naar onze uitstoot van dit bekende broeikasgas, maar naar de activiteit van de zon. “Ik denk dat we de rol van de zon onderschatten.”
Activiteit op de zon.
Afbeelding: NASA / GSFC / Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Onze actieve moederster Wie wel eens plaatjes van het oppervlak van de zon heeft gezien, weet dat het er aldaar vurig aan toe kan gaan. Onze moederster kan zonnevlammen genereren en coronale massa-ejecties uitspugen. Kortom: onze zon is actief. Maar de mate van activiteit fluctueert. Daarin is – grofweg – een elf jaar durende cyclus te onderscheiden die gekenmerkt wordt door een zonneminimum (een periode met weinig zonneactiviteit) en een zonnemaximum (een periode met veel zonneactiviteit). “De verschillen tussen de energie die een actieve zon afgeeft en de energie die een inactieve zon afgeeft, zijn niet zo groot,” erkent Van Geel. Sterker nog: ze zijn te klein om de klimaatomslagen – zoals bijvoorbeeld die ten tijde van het Subatlanticum – te kunnen verklaren. “Er moeten dan ook versterkingsmechanismen zijn,” denkt Van Geel. Mechanismen die ervoor zorgen dat het geringe verschil tussen een actieve en inactieve zon toch een enorme impact heeft op ons klimaat. Maar wat voor mechanismen zijn dat dan? Er zijn twee hypothesen, aldus Van Geel. De eerste draait om kosmische straling. “Kosmische straling speelt een rol bij wolkenvorming: watermoleculen condenseren door kosmische straling. Als de zon heel actief is, is er weinig kosmische straling in het zonnestelsel.” En zouden dus minder wolken ontstaan. En omdat wolken zonlicht reflecteren (en het aardoppervlak koelen) zou een actieve zon – met enige vertraging – resulteren in een opwarming van dat aardoppervlak. “En dan is er nog een hypothese waar ik persoonlijk wat meer in geloof. Deze hypothese stelt dat de verschillen tussen de energie van een actieve en de energie van een inactieve zon misschien klein zijn, maar dat de veranderingen in de afgegeven UV-straling wel groot zijn.” Tijdens een zonneminimum neemt de UV-straling afkomstig van de zon sterk af en wordt minder ozon gevormd. En dat merken we op aarde, doordat ozon energie absorbeert en in die hoedanigheid dus gezien kan worden als een broeikasgas. Tijdens een zonneminimum wordt er minder van gegenereerd en koelt de aarde dus af.
Een kritische blik op de versterkingsmechanismen “Al achttien jaar proberen we een manier te vinden waarop de vrij kleine waargenomen solaire variaties van de afgelopen dertig jaar versterkt kunnen worden,” vertelt professor Werner Schmutz, directeur van het Physikalisch-Metorologisches Observatorium in Davos, aan Scientias.nl. “Fluctuaties in de hoeveelheid UV-straling die van invloed zijn op ozon in de stratosfeer lijken daarbij het meest veelbelovend.” Maar de hamvraag is natuurlijk: oefent een actieve zon via ozon daadwerkelijk invloed uit op ons klimaat? Schmutz en collega’s zochten dat in 2013 uit en moesten in het resulterende paper concluderen dat het vermeende versterkingsmechanisme eigenlijk geen naam mocht hebben. Oefent de zonne-activiteit dan misschien een effect uit op ons klimaat via kosmische straling? De hypothese klonk professor Terence Sloan, verbonden aan de University of Lancaster, plausibel in de oren. En dus besloot hij dat in 2008 eens uit te zoeken. Het leidde tot een serie papers, waarvan het laatste deel in 2013 gepubliceerd werd. “We ontdekten dat het effect te klein was om te detecteren,” zo vertelt Sloan aan Scientias.nl. “En dus sprake was van een verwaarloosbaar effect op de opwarming van de aarde.” De benodigde, hypothetische versterkingsmechanismen lijken in recente studies dus geen stand te houden.
“DE ZON KAN ZEER ZEKER UITGESLOTEN WORDEN ALS DE OORZAAK VAN DE OPWARMING DIE DE AARDE IN DE LAATSTE VIJFTIG JAAR HEEFT DOORGEMAAKT”
Stralingssterkte Speelt de zonne-activiteit dan helemaal geen rol in het klimaat? Zover willen de meeste onderzoekers ook weer niet gaan. Schmutz grijpt opnieuw terug op zijn studie uit 2013 die het versterkingsmechanisme omtrent UV-straling en ozon praktisch van tafel veegde, maar wel enige invloed van de zon op het klimaat bespeurde. “Als de zon inderdaad, zoals wij vermoeden, van invloed is, dan lijkt dat aan het einde van al onze studies simpelweg toe te schrijven te zijn aan variaties in de totale stralingssterkte van de zon (dus variaties in de hoeveelheid energie die de zon afgeeft).” Die fluctuaties in de intensiteit van het zonlicht dat de aarde bereikt, zijn klein. En het Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stelt dan ook dat recente zonne-activiteit geen noemenswaardige impact heeft gehad op het klimaat. Schmutz is het daarmee eens. “De zon kan zeer zeker uitgesloten worden als de oorzaak van de opwarming die de aarde in de laatste vijftig jaar heeft doorgemaakt, omdat de stralingssterkte stabiel was. En als we wat verder inzoomen, zien we zelfs dat de stralingssterkte sinds de jaren veertig ietsje is afgenomen en in de huidige elf jaar durende cyclus zelfs heel duidelijk is afgenomen.” Vandaar dat klimaatmodellen de huidige opwarming ook niet kunnen reproduceren als ze onze uitstoot van broeikasgassen buiten beschouwing laten en zich alleen laten leiden door natuurlijke fluctuaties, zoals veranderingen in de zonne-activiteit.
Het verleden en de toekomst Maar hoe zit het dan met die opmerkelijke perioden in het verleden, zoals het Maunder Minimum (1645-1715)? Een tijdvak waarin de zonne-activiteit uitzonderlijk laag was, net als de temperatuur op aarde? “Er was een minimale zonne-activiteit in de zeventiende eeuw en die viel samen met een historisch koude periode waarin zelfs de rivier The Theems bevroor,” vertelt Sloan. “Maar niemand kan je vertellen waarom een afname in zonnevlekken een koude periode op aarde veroorzaakt.” “We hebben eigenlijk alleen in het verleden maar goede correlaties gezien tussen zonne-activiteit en een dalende temperatuur,” voegt Schmutz toe. “Aangezien we de stralingssterkte van de zon pas sinds 1978 vanuit de ruimte meten, beslaan onze observaties nog maar een korte tijd. En in die tijd is de zon niet veel veranderd, in ieder geval duidelijk niet genoeg om van invloed te kunnen zijn op het klimaat. En dat betekent dat er op dit moment twee mogelijkheden zijn. De eerste: de zon heeft in ongeveer dertig jaar het volledige scala aan mogelijke variaties laten zien. In dat geval moet de zon uitgesloten worden als een drijvende kracht achter historische klimaatveranderingen.” Een andere optie is dat we in deze dertig jaar – een tijdvak van niks, als je spreekt over een ster die al 4,5 miljard jaar meegaat – eigenlijk nog niets gezien hebben en de zon op grotere tijdschalen tot veel grotere variaties in staat is. “Dan is de zon de belangrijkste verdachte op het gebied van historische klimaatveranderingen.” In andere woorden: op lange termijn zou de zonne-activiteit dus wel een effect kunnen hebben op het klimaat. Maar in welke mate, is onduidelijk. Schmutz en collega’s verkenden dat heikele vraagstuk recent in dit onderzoeksproject. Op basis van modellen – die speculatief van aard zijn en ervan uitgaan dat ons een periode van sterk verminderde zonne-activiteit te wachten staat “Niemand weet zeker of de zon de komende 50 tot 100 jaar in een Grand Minimum belandt, maar we verwachten het” – voorspellen ze dat de zon er de komende eeuw voor kan zorgen dat de temperatuur op aarde 0,5 graden lager uitvalt dan het geval zou zijn als de zonne-activiteit niet sterk zou verminderen. “Als hun model klopt, kan die 0,5 graad afkoeling de effecten van broeikasgassen verminderen,” merkt Sloan op. Maar wederom kan de zon niet het verschil maken. Want de door menselijk handelen aangedreven opwarming van de aarde gaat aanzienlijk sneller dan de voorspelde en zeer speculatieve afkoeling die de zon zou kunnen veroorzaken. Als we niks doen, zitten we aan het eind van de rit dus – ongeacht of de zon nu voor een beetje verkoeling zorgt of niet – met een planeet die enigszins over de kook is.
Van Geel wacht ondertussen rustig de komende jaren af. “De zonneactiviteit loopt nu terug en de vraag is: wat doet het klimaat? Ik denk echt dat we richting afkoeling gaan.” En als dat niet zo is? “Dan heb ik ongelijk en ben ik dom geweest. Maar als ik twijfelde, zou ik niet naar buiten treden.” Sloan en Schmutz zien het op basis van hun onderzoek allemaal heel anders. Het feit dat de aarde opwarmt, kunnen we volgens hen niet afschuiven op de zon. Als de zon al een rol speelt, dan is deze nihil in vergelijking met de rol die onze eigen activiteit speelt. Tegelijkertijd sluiten de onderzoekers nog niet uit dat de zon op lange termijn wel impact kan hebben op het aardse klimaat. Maar hoe dan precies en in welke mate: dat blijft voorlopig in nevelen gehuld. Het lijkt voor het klimaatdebat allemaal niet zo heel relevant, zo benadrukt Schmutz. “Het is in mijn optiek onmogelijk dat huidige, natuurlijke effecten de invloed van ons mensen domineren.”
Bronmateriaal:
Interviews met Bas van Geel, Werner Schmutz en Terence Sloan Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: PublicDomainPictures / Pixabay
NASA geeft toe dat de klimaatverandering natuurlijk is en veroorzaakt wordt door de zon
NASA geeft toe dat de klimaatverandering natuurlijk is en veroorzaakt wordt door de zon
Al meer dan 60 jaar weet de National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) dat veranderingen in de weersomstandigheden op de planeet volkomen natuurlijk en normaal zijn. Maar het ruimteagentschap heeft, om welke reden dan ook, besloten om de zogenaamde door de mens veroorzaakte opwarmingszwendel te laten voortbestaan en zich te laten verspreiden, ten koste van de menselijke vrijheid.
Activiteit op de zon.
Afbeelding: NASA / GSFC / Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Het was in 1958, om precies te zijn, toen NASA voor het eerst opmerkte dat veranderingen in de zonnebaan van de aarde en veranderingen in de helling van de aarde verantwoordelijk waren voor wat klimaatwetenschappers vandaag de dag “opwarming” (of “afkoeling”, afhankelijk van hun agenda) noemen. Met andere woorden, op geen enkele manier verwarmt of koelt de mens de planeet door verbrandingsmotor-voertuigen te rijden of rundvlees te eten.
In 2000 publiceerde NASA op zijn website van het Earth Observatory informatie over de klimaattheorie van Milankovich, waaruit blijkt dat de planeet in werkelijkheid door externe factoren veranderd die absoluut niets met menselijke activiteiten te maken hebben. Maar ook deze informatie is na 19 jaar nog steeds niet in de mainstream media terechtgekomen en daarom beweren “klimaatbeschermers” nu dat we eigenlijk nog maar 18 maanden of 12 jaar over hebben voordat de planeet sterft aan een overschot aan kooldioxide (CO2).
Maar de waarheid is veel meer in overeenstemming met wat de Servische astrofysicus Miloetin Milankovitsj, naar wie de klimaattheorie van Milankovitsj is genoemd, heeft gesuggereerd over hoe de seizoensgebonden en latitudinale variaties in zonnestraling, die de aarde op verschillende manieren en in verschillende tijden raken, de grootste invloed hebben op de veranderende klimaatpatronen van de aarde.
De volgende twee afbeeldingen (door Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC) helpen dit illustreren, de eerste toont de Aarde in een baan dicht bij nul (Excentriciteit: van excentrisch, afwijkend van het centrum) en de tweede toont de Aarde in een baan van 0,07. Deze orbitale verandering wordt weergegeven door de excentrische, ovale vorm in het tweede beeld, die opzettelijk is overdreven om de massale verandering in de afstand tussen de aarde en de zon te laten zien, afhankelijk van of het in het perihelium of het aphelium is.
“Zelfs de maximale excentriciteit van de baan van de aarde – 0,07 – zou niet representatief zijn bij de resolutie van een website”, merkt de Hal Turner Radio Show op.
“Desalniettemin, bij de huidige excentriciteit van 0,017 in het perihelium, is de aarde vijf miljoen kilometer dichter bij de zon dan in het aphelium.”
De grootste factor die het klimaat op aarde beïnvloedt is de zon
Wat betreft de helling van de aarde of de verandering in de axiale helling, laten de twee onderstaande afbeeldingen (Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC) zien hoeveel de aarde kan verschuiven, zowel op haar as als rond haar rotatieoriëntatie. Bij hogere neigingen worden de seizoenen van de aarde veel extremer, terwijl ze bij lagere neigingen veel milder worden. Op dezelfde manier kan de draaias van de aarde een sterke invloed hebben op de seizoensgebonden extremen tussen de twee hemisferen, afhankelijk van welke hemisfeer in het perihelium is uitgelijnd met de Zon.
Er moet worden vermeld dat “klimaat” in het Nederlands “gesteldheid” betekent. Het woord is gekozen omdat de hele dagzijde van de aarde gelijkelijk door de zon wordt bestraald, maar de opwarming hangt uitsluitend af van de invalshoek, de helling van de stralen ten opzichte van het aardoppervlak. Op de warme evenaar is de hoek ongeveer 90%; op de koude polen is hij veel vlakker.
Milankowitsch was in staat om uit deze verschillende variabelen een uitgebreid wiskundig model te ontwikkelen dat de oppervlaktetemperaturen op de aarde ver terug in de tijd kan berekenen, en de conclusie is eenvoudig: het klimaat op aarde is altijd al aan het veranderen geweest en is in een staat van constante verandering, zonder onze tussenkomst als mens.
Toen Milankovitsj zijn model voor het eerst presenteerde, werd het bijna een halve eeuw lang genegeerd. Vervolgens, in 1976, bevestigde een studie in het tijdschrift Science dat de theorie van Milankovich inderdaad juist was en dat deze overeenkwam met verschillende perioden van klimaatverandering die zich in de loop van de geschiedenis hebben voorgedaan.
In 1982, zes jaar na de publicatie van deze studie, accepteerde de National Research Council van de Amerikaanse National Academy of Sciences de theorie van Milankovich als reëel en verklaarde deze waar:
“… orbitale variaties blijven het meest grondig bestudeerde mechanisme van klimaatverandering op tijdschalen van tienduizenden jaren en zijn veruit het duidelijkste geval van een direct effect van veranderende zonnestraling op de lagere atmosfeer van de aarde.”
Als we het geheel in één simpele zin zouden moeten samenvatten, zou het zo zijn: De grootste factor die het weer- en klimaatpatroon op aarde beïnvloedt is de zon, of beter gezegd de periode van de zon. Afhankelijk van de positie van de aarde ten opzichte van de centrale ster op een bepaald moment, zullen de klimaatomstandigheden dramatisch variëren en zelfs drastische anomalieën veroorzaken die alles wat mensen dachten te weten over hoe de aarde werkt op de proef stellen.
Maar in plaats van dit feit te accepteren, dringen de huidige klimaat “wetenschappers”, samen met de linkse, en steeds meer rechtse politici, en natuurlijk de massamedia, erop aan dat niet-herbruikbare boodschappentassen in de supermarkt en geen elektrische voertuigen de planeet snel zullen vernietigen, en dat we absoluut een globale klimaatbelasting als oplossing moeten invoeren.
“Het klimaatdebat gaat niet over wetenschap. Het is een poging om de bevolking politiek en economisch te controleren door de elite”, schrijft een commentator op de Hal Turner Radio Show.
“En het is een andere manier om de bevolking te verdelen tegen zichzelf, waarbij sommigen geloven in de door de mens veroorzaakte opwarming van de aarde en anderen niet geloven, dat wil zeggen verdeel en heers.”
Het lijkt erop dat de woorden “opwarming van de aarde” onlangs zijn vervangen door “klimaatverandering”, en degenen die niet geloven in, of twijfelen over het verband tussen “klimaatverandering” en “kooldioxide” worden “klimaatontkenners” genoemd, wat naar mijn mening een heel slecht gekozen woord is, omdat ik denk dat niemand ontkent dat er een klimaat is. De … Meer lezen over Een nieuwe studie toont aan dat de klimaatverandering niet afhankelijk is van de menselijke CO2-uitstoot
The above graph compares global surface temperature changes (red line) and the Sun's energy received by the Earth (yellow line) in watts (units of energy) per square meter since 1880. The lighter/thinner lines show the yearly levels while the heavier/thicker lines show the 11-year average trends. Eleven-year averages are used to reduce the year-to-year natural noise in the data, making the underlying trends more obvious.
The amount of solar energy received by the Earth has followed the Sun’s natural 11-year cycle of small ups and downs with no net increase since the 1950s. Over the same period, global temperature has risen markedly. It is therefore extremely unlikely that the Sun has caused the observed global temperature warming trend over the past half-century.
Researchers find the planet may have had a dynamic past.
Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
New observations from a spacecraft orbiting Mercury have revealed that the tiny, pockmarked planet harbors a highly unusual interior — and the craft’s glimpse of Mercury’s surface topography suggests the planet has had a very dynamic history.
The observations were taken by a probe called MESSENGER (short for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging), the first ever to enter orbit around Mercury. MESSENGER reached Mercury’s orbit in March 2011, and has since circled the planet twice a day, collecting nearly 100,000 images and more than four million measurements of Mercury’s surface.
A team of scientists from institutions including MIT, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have analyzed the data and precisely mapped the planet’s topography and gravitational fields. From the gravity estimates, the team found that Mercury likely has a highly unusual interior structure — an exceptionally large iron core overlain by a solid layer of iron sulfide and a thin outer shell of silicate mantle and crust. From topographic measurements, the team mapped out a large number of craters on the planet’s surface, making a surprising finding: Many of these have tilted over time, suggesting that processes within the planet have deformed the terrain after the craters formed.
The researchers detail their findings in two papers published this week in the journal Science.
“Prior to MESSENGER’s comprehensive observations, many scientists believed that Mercury was much like the moon — that it cooled off very early in solar system history, and has been a dead planet throughout most of its evolution,” says co-author Maria Zuber, the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics at MIT. “Now we’re finding compelling evidence for unusual dynamics within the planet, indicating that Mercury was apparently active for a long time.”
Mercurial mission
Getting into orbit about Mercury was no easy feat, mostly because of its proximity to the sun. Any spacecraft heading toward the planet speeds up, drawn in by the sun’s powerful gravitational field. To counteract the sun’s pull and slow MESSENGER down, the MESSENGER team programmed the probe to fly by Venus twice, and Mercury three times, before slowing down enough to be captured in Mercury’s orbit with the help of a main engine burn.
Video: Watch a color movie of Mercury’s surface captured by MESSENGER After entering Mercury’s orbit, the spacecraft began measuring the planet’s surface elevations via laser altimetry. Through radio tracking, the probe estimated the planet’s gravity field. Throughout the one-year mission, the MESSENGER spacecraft battled tides from the sun, which tugged the probe out of its optimal orbit, as well as what Zuber calls “sunlight pressure” — photons or packets of light from the sun that exerted pressure on the spacecraft. The team periodically adjusted the probe’s orbit and made precise corrections to its measurements to account for the sun’s effects, mapping out the gravity field as well as the elevation of the surface of Mercury’s northern hemisphere.
Inside and out
The team’s measurements revealed surprising findings both in the planet’s interior and on its surface. From the probe’s gravity estimates, the group inferred that Mercury likely has a huge iron core comprising approximately 85 percent of the planet’s radius. (Earth’s core, by comparison, is about half the planet’s radius in size.) This means that Mercury’s mantle and crust occupy only the outer 15 percent or so of the planet’s radius — about as thin as the peel on an orange, Zuber says.
The researchers also reasoned, given Mercury’s gravity field, that just above the outer molten layer of the planet’s core may be a solid layer of iron and sulfur — a type of layered structure not known to exist on any other planet.
“If the iron and sulfur model is correct, it would have implications for how the dynamo inside Mercury produces the planet's magnetic field,” says Gerald Schubert, professor of earth and space sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles, who did not participate in the research. “The dynamo generation process might work differently in Mercury compared with Earth.”
Co-author Dave Smith, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, says the scientific process that led to the team’s results was a journey in itself.
“We had an idea of the internal structure of Mercury, [but] the initial observations did not fit the theory so we doubted the observations,” Smith says. “We did more work and concluded the observations were correct, and then reworked the theory for the interior of Mercury that fit the observations. This is how science is supposed to work, and it’s a nice result.”
Through laser measurements of the planet’s surface, researchers mapped out multiple geologic features in Mercury’s northern hemisphere, finding the range of elevations to be smaller than that of Mars or the moon. They also observed something unexpected in Mercury’s Caloris basin, the largest impact feature on Mercury: Portions of the floor of the crater actually stand higher than its rim, suggesting that forces within the interior pushed the crater up after the initial impact that created it.
Zuber and her team also identified an area of lowlands approximately centered on Mercury’s north pole that could conceivably have migrated there over the course of the planet’s evolution. Zuber explains that a process called polar wander can cause geological features to shift around on a planet’s surface due to the redistribution of mass on or within a planet by geodynamical processes.
One such process of transporting mass in a planet’s interior is convection within the mantle. Viscous material within the mantle circulates and can push fragments of crust up and out, shifting terrain around the globe. Given Mercury’s extremely thin mantle, as revealed by MESSENGER, Zuber says it’s challenging to understand how convection operated to raise broad expanses of terrain to the elevations observed.
“It’s interesting to think what might be causing the observed deformation,” Zuber says. “It appears there are some very unusual dynamics going on inside Mercury.”
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.
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
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