Hundreds of mysterious mini-planets found lurking in far reaches of the solar system

Jasper Hamill

This is Neptune, a large and very cold gas giant which is almost three billion miles away from Earth

(Image: Nasa)

A vast swarm of micro-worlds has been found in a mysterious area of our solar system beyond the chilly ice giant Neptune’s orbit.

Astronomers spotted more than 300 ‘trans-Neptunian’ objects in the far reaches of humanity’s home star system.

These are minor planets and are part of a large population of objects orbiting in a region past Neptune.

The most famous trans- Neptunian object is Pluto, although this classification is controversial because some stargazers think it’s a proper planet even though it was downgraded to the status of ‘dwarf planet’ in 2006.

Researchers from Penn University were looking for dark matter when they observed the new micro-worlds.

It’s hoped that studying these new objects will help to solve the mystery of Planet 9 – a hypothetical huge world believed to exist way out towards the edge of our solar system.

Pluto is regarded as a trans-Neptunian object

(Image: Nasa)

Professors Gary Bernstein said: ‘There are lots of ideas about giant planets that used to be in the solar system and aren’t there anymore, or planets that are far away and massive but too faint for us to have noticed yet.

‘Making the catalogue is the fun discovery part. Then when you create this resource; you can compare what you did find to what somebody’s theory said you should find.’

Last year scientists offered a new theory to explain why they haven’t been able to see Planet 9, suggesting it was a ‘primordial black hole’ the size of a bowling ball with enough gravitational pull to affect the chunks of ice and rock way out in the reaches of space.

Primordial black holes haven’t been proven to exist yet – but it’s believed they are much smaller black holes that formed during the big bang.

Planet 9 has also not yet been officially discovered, but its presence was inferred by analysis of trans-Neptunian objects.

Observations of these objects revealed ‘gravitational anomalies’ which may have been caused by the push and pull of a large planet.

Astronomers have also glimpsed a number of ‘microlensing events’, which is a phenomenon caused when passing light ‘bends’ under the influence of a large object’s gravitational pull.

The Planet 9 object could be one rogue hole that was ‘captured’ by the sun and steered into orbit around it or part of a larger population.

In an early version of a study published on Arxiv, scientists wrote: ‘We highlight that the anomalous orbits of Trans-Neptunian Objects and an excess in microlensing events… can be simultaneously explained by a new population of astrophysical bodies with mass several times that of Earth.’

Primordial black holes haven’t actually been proven to exist yet

(Getty Images/iStockphoto)

‘We take these objects to be primordial black holes and point out the orbits of Trans-Neptunian Objects would be altered if one of these holes was captured by the Solar System, in line with the Planet 9 hypothesis.

‘Capture of a free-floating planet is a leading explanation for the origin of Planet 9 and we show that the probability of capturing a PBH instead is comparable.’

It’s hard enough to spot a planet at the fringes of our solar system, let alone a mini black hole. But these ancient holes may give off ‘annihilation signals’.

This doesn’t mean they sound an alarm before they decide to attack but is the name for a process predicted to take place within ‘dark matter halos’ believed to surround the holes.

{ https://metro.co.uk/ }

15-03-2020 om 22:06 geschreven door peter  

While many sports use inflated balls that trace back to kicking or throwing inflated animal bladders, a game involving a hard rubber ball predates them all because rubber was only grown in Mexico and central America. That game carries the generic name “ballgame” and most people know about it because artwork shows the games were played in the nude and the losers may have been sacrificed – depictions used by European invaders to depict Mesoamericans ad brutal savages to be conquered and educated. As always, the uncovering of new evidence changes things and newly-discovered archeological finds show that Mesoamericans were playing their ballgames as early as 1443 BCE and the game itself was more ‘hip’ that once thought.

“We challenge the lowland paradigm by providing evidence that the earliest highland ballcourt dates to the Early Formative, nearly a millennium earlier than any previous highland architectural data and just over two centuries after the Paso de la Amada court. We contribute two types of ballgame data recently excavated at Etlatongo: remains of two formal superimposed architectural ballcourts and associated ballplayer ceramic figurines.”

A new study published in the journal Science Advances challenges the idea that organized ballgames with rubber balls were developed and played almost exclusively in coastal and lowland areas of Mexico and Central America. Excavations done from 2015 to 2017 by the Formative Etlatongo Project (FEP) in the Nochixtlán Valley of the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico, uncovered a ballcourt dating to 1374 BCE – just 200 years after the oldest known coastal court and centuries before other highland courts.

Athletes hit a rubber ball with their hips in a version of Mesoamerica’s ballgame.

(WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, CHRISTOPH WEIDITZ, GERMANISCHES NATIONALMUSEUM NÜRNBERG)

Even more interesting, figurines of players showed them wearing thick protective belts around their hips, which means they were playing a rare form of ballgame where competitors moved the ball forward and around by bouncing it off of their hips, with walls around the court allowing for bounces and rebounds similar to today’s hockey. The courts were long and narrow, which might make the game resemble a ‘hip’ version of handball.

Finally, there were none of the famous rings or hoops attached to the wall as targets or goals, which indicates this ballgame may have resembled volleyball, with players trying to get their opponents to miss in order to score. This indicates to the researchers that this was an early game in the process of transformation, just like the Mesoamerican society at the time, when warring leaders switched to trade and cooperation between regions and saw the sport as a great way to show power as well as teamwork and friendly competition.

Yeah, yeah, yeah … what about the human sacrifices?

Ah, yes … the part we all remember from history class. Figurines discovered at lowland game sites show players standing over captive opponents, leading to speculation that some sort of victory torture was involved in ballgame. With the known propensity for human sacrifice in other aspects Mesoamerican life, it was probably easy to connect the dots and imply this was an act of beheading and perhaps some games were continued with human heads for balls. No evidence has been found of ballgame-related human sacrifice or blood-spilling at Etlatongo, so it appears the practice evolved later as the game became more symbolic of war, fertility, religion and struggles with the underworld.

As a result of this discovery, archeologists expect to find more ballcourts in the Mexican highlands, which give more insight into life in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, just like sports reflects real life today.

Play ball!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

15-03-2020 om 20:49 geschreven door peter  

Daytime disc-shaped UFO VIDEO: Brooklyn, NY – March 2020

New footage of a solid black oval disc-shaped object flying in the sky above Brooklyn, New York on Saturday, 14th March 2020.

Witness report: 

Very flat donut shaped disc, black in color, no noise, very quiet neighborhood other than birds and occasional cars passing by. I walk my dog every morning at 7am. Today i stepped out for no more than 60 seconds when the brightness of the moon caught my attention.As I glared at the moon for a bit, I saw this flat,black, disc shaped donut appear from over the houses across the street so I immediately took out my phone and started to record it. Got about 2mins on film and went online seeking disc shaped drones… Nothing resembled what I saw and what youre seeing in my video. Then I tried searching flat donut shaped UFOs and found a bunch of these objects like the one in my video. I cant say for sure what it is, but it’s definitely unidentifiable. I hope the public can help me figure out what I saw. Oh and excuse my language, it’s a NYC thing.

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

15-03-2020 om 19:14 geschreven door peter  

99-Million-Year-Old Amber Preserves Skull of Hummingbird-Sized Dinosaur

 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have found an exceptionally well-preserved and diminutive skull of a previously unknown bird-like dinosaur species in a piece of Cretaceous-period amber from northern Myanmar.

Photograph, computed tomography scans and interpretive drawings of the Oculudentavis khaungraaea specimen: (a) photograph of the amber piece with skull ventrolaterally exposed; scan (b) and drawing (c), left lateral view; scan (d) and drawing (e), rostral view; scan (f) and drawing (g), occipital view; scan (h) and drawing (i), dorsal view. Abbreviations: de – dentary, fr – frontal, hy – hyoid bone (or bones), jg – jugal, la – lacrimal, mx – maxilla, pa – parietal, pm – premaxilla, po – postorbital, qd – quadrate, sc – scleral ossicle, so – supraoccipital, sq – squamosal, th – teeth. Scale bars – 5 mm; longer scale bar below (b) applies to (b-i).

Image credit: Xing et al, doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2068-4.

The newly-identified species, named Oculudentavis khaungraae, could represent the smallest known Mesozoic dinosaur in the fossil record.

Its size is on par with that of the bee hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae), the smallest living bird.

“Amber preservation of vertebrates is rare, and this provides us a window into the world of dinosaurs at the lowest end of the body-size spectrum,” said Dr. Lars Schmitz, a researcher in the W. M. Keck Science Department at Claremont McKenna, Scripps and Pitzer Colleges.

“Its unique anatomical features point to one of the smallest and most ancient birds ever found.”

The piece of amber, just 31 x 20 x 8.5 mm, containing the skull of Oculudentavis khaungraae came from the Angbamo site near Tanai in the Hukawng valley of Myanmar’s Kachin province.

Dr. Schmitz and colleagues studied the specimen’s distinct features with high-resolution synchrotron scans to determine how the skull differs from those of other bird-like dinosaur specimens.

They found that the shape and size of the eye bones suggested a diurnal lifestyle, but also revealed surprising similarities to the eyes of modern lizards.

The skull also shows a unique pattern of fusion between different bone elements, as well as the presence of teeth.

Oculudentavis khaungraaea.

Image credit: Han Zhixin.

“The specimen’s tiny size and unusual form suggests a never-before-seen combination of features,” the scientists said.

“The discovery represents a specimen previously missing from the fossil record and provides new implications for understanding the evolution of birds, demonstrating the extreme miniaturization of avian body sizes early in the evolutionary process.”

The specimen’s preservation also highlights amber deposits’ potential to reveal the lowest limits of vertebrate body size.

“No other group of living birds features species with similarly small crania in adults,” Dr. Schmitz said.

“This discovery shows us that we have only a small glimpse of what tiny vertebrates looked like in the age of the dinosaurs.”

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

_____

• L. Xing et al. 2020. Hummingbird-sized dinosaur from the Cretaceous period of Myanmar. Nature 579, 245-249; doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2068-4

{ http://www.sci-news.com/ }

15-03-2020 om 01:38 geschreven door peter  

Archaeologists Unearth Long-Lost Capital of Ancient Maya Kingdom

Archaeologists excavating the site of Lacanja Tzeltal in Mexico have discovered the ruins of the capital of a kingdom....known as Sak Tz’i’ or “white dog”...

Map of architectural groups and stream channels at the site of Lacanja Tzeltal, Mexico.

Image credit: Golden et al, doi: 10.1080/00934690.2019.1684748.

The archaeological site of Lacanja Tzeltal is located in what is today the state of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico. It was likely first settled by 750 BCE and then occupied for over 1,000 years.

Sak Tz’i’ was by no means the most powerful of the Maya kingdoms, and its remnants are modest compared to the more well-known sites of Chichen Itza and nearby Palenque.

“Finding Sak Tz’i’ is still a major advance in our understanding of ancient Maya politics and culture,” said Dr. Charles Golden, an anthropological archaeologist at Brandeis University.

The residents of Sak Tz’i’ lived in the countryside harvesting a wide variety of crops and making pottery and stone tools.

The archaeologists found the remnants of what was likely the city’s marketplace where these goods were brought to be sold.

The kingdom’s residents also came to the city to attend ceremonial ball games in which players kept a solid rubber ball, sometimes as heavy as twenty pounds, bouncing back and forth across a narrow playing field using their hips and shoulders.

On the northeastern end of the city are the ruins of a 45-foot (13.7 m) high pyramid and several surrounding structures that served as elite residences and sites for religious rituals.

The center of religious and political activity was the Plaza Muk’ul Ton (Monuments Plaza), a 1.5-acre (0.6 ha) courtyard where the people gathered for ceremonies. A staircase leads from the plaza to a towering platform, where temples and reception halls were arrayed and members of the royal family once held court and might have been buried.

Sak Tz’i’ had the misfortune of being surrounded on all sides by more powerful states. For the inhabitants of the capital and countryside, this meant the perpetual threat of warfare and violent interruptions of daily life.

The researchers found evidence that the capital was surrounded on one side by steep-walled streams. On the other side, masonry walls were built to keep out invaders.

These fortifications weren’t always effective. Inscriptions on one monument tell of a time when at least a portion of the city was set ablaze during a conflict with neighboring kingdoms.

Ultimately, the survival of Sak Tz’i’ may have depended as much on its ability to make peace with its neighbors — and even play them off of each other — as its military strength.

“This is one of the reasons Sak Tz’i’ holds so much interest for researchers,” Dr. Golden said.

“Little is known about how mid-size Maya realms maneuvered and managed to persist in the face of constant hostilities from more powerful kingdoms.”

Drawing (left) and 3D model (right) of Panel 1 from the site of Lacanja Tzeltal, Mexico.

Image credit: Golden et al, doi: 10.1080/00934690.2019.1684748.

So far, dozens of sculptures have been found among the ruins at the Sak Tz’i’ site, though many have been damaged by looters or degraded over the millennia by rain, forest fires and lush tropical vegetation.

The best-preserved sculpture is a 2- by 4-foot (0.6 x 1.2 m) tablet. Its inscriptions tell stories about a mythical water serpent, described in poetic couplets as ‘shiny sky, shiny earth,’ and several elderly, stony gods whose names aren’t given. There are also accounts of the lives of dynastic rulers.

Another inscription tells of a mythic flood, while others list what are probably historic dates for the births and battles of various rulers, including a king named K’ab Kante’.

This intertwining of myth and reality is typical of Maya inscriptions and had special meaning for ancient scribes and readers.

At the bottom of the tablet is a dancing royal figure. The Maya believed royalty could become one with or even transform into a god. In this case, the ruler is dressed as the rain god connected to violent tropical storms, Yopaat.

In his right hand, he carries an axe that is the lightning bolt of the storm, which has a deified aspect named K’awiil. In his left hand, the figure carries a ‘manopla,’ a stone gauntlet or bludgeon used in ritual combat.

The team’s paper was published in the Journal of Field Archaeology.

source : www.sci-news.com/...

While it may not be the most spectacular Mayan discovery, It’s no doubt an important one...archaeologists also found some incredible artefacts...

{http://www.sci-news.com/ }

15-03-2020 om 00:35 geschreven door peter  

Something Strange Police Dash Cam Footages in Texas and Georgia

Today we’re doing the top five mysterious and unexplained dashcam videos. Let us know what you think of these clips in the comments below! Some of them sure are creepy.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

14-03-2020 om 23:54 geschreven door peter  

These two tiny spacecraft will help pave the way for astronauts to return to the moon

14-03-2020 om 23:18 geschreven door peter  

Maybe You Really Can Use Black Holes to Travel the Universe

Can you really survive traveling through an enormous black hole? A team of physicists has been studying the notion.

(Roen Kelly/Discover)

Hold your finger close to the flame and it will burn. Swipe it through quickly and you won’t feel much. Similarly, passing through a large rotating black hole, you are more likely to come out the other side unharmed.

(Credit:mirbasar/Shutterstock.com)

Hold your finger close to the flame and it will burn. Swipe it through quickly and you won’t feel much. Similarly, passing through a large rotating black hole, you are more likely to come out the other side unharmed. (Credit: mirbasar/Shutterstock.com)

My colleague Lior Burko and I have been investigating the physics of black holes for over two decades. In 2016, my Ph.D. student, Caroline Mallary, inspired by Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film “Interstellar,” set out to test if Cooper (Matthew McConaughey’s character), could survive his fall deep into Gargantua – a fictional, supermassive, rapidly rotating black hole some 100 million times the mass of our sun. “Interstellar” was based on a book written by Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Kip Thorne and Gargantua’s physical properties are central to the plot of this Hollywood movie.

14-03-2020 om 22:23 geschreven door peter  

ExoMars Rosalind Franklin: Rover mission delayed until 2022

Max Alexander

The rover project was first approved in 2005

Europe and Russia have decided to postpone their Mars rover mission.

The ExoMars "Rosalind Franklin" vehicle was due to launch to the Red Planet in July/August but engineers aren't able to get the vehicle ready in time.

Because an Earth-Mars journey is only attempted when the planets are favourably aligned, the robot's next opportunity won't occur until 2022.

The Russian and European space agencies announced the delay on their websites on Thursday.

• America's next Mars rover will be called Perseverance
• Can we finally answer the big question about Mars?
• Europe's Mars rover to make 'pit stop' for repair

The set-back - the latest in a long series for this project - has been signposted for some weeks.

All the hardware is built, but there remains an intimidating list of outstanding checks that must be completed before the mission can be declared flight-ready.

Chief among the obstacles in the timeline are some underperforming electronics boxes in the Russian descent and lander mechanisms that would put the rover safely on the ground; and also the overall flight software from Europe.

Full testing required to achieve confidence in these items necessarily pushes the project beyond July/August.

Matters have been further complicated in recent days by the international coronavirus crisis which has started to disrupt the engineering effort.

"We have made a difficult but well-weighed decision to postpone the launch to 2022. It is driven primarily by the need to maximise the robustness of all ExoMars systems," announced Russian space agency (Roscosmos) Director General, Dmitry Rogozin.

"I am confident that the steps that we and our European colleagues are taking to ensure mission success will be justified and will unquestionably bring solely positive results for the mission implementation."

European Space Agency Director General, Jan Wörner, added that coronavirus was having an impact on the preparations, "because people from different places of industry in Russia, in Italy and France cannot move easily as in the past. So, therefore, there is also an impact, but I would not like to say the coronavirus is the one and only reason - but... it has an impact on the mission, yes."

Launching in late 2022 means the rover will touch down in 2023, given the cruise time to the Red Planet.

NASA/JPL/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONAImage caption

The rover was to be targeted at Oxia Planum on Mars. That won't change for 2023

Rosalind Franklin has been built to try to detect life, past or present, on the Red Planet.

Because of this, the rover and its instruments have been prepared to incredibly stringent levels of cleanliness. This status must now be maintained over the coming two years of storage.

The project's industrial prime contractor, Thales Alenia Space of Italy, will do this in an ISO-7 chamber at its Turin factory.

"We will have to make sure that we flush permanently the ultra-clean zone and maybe even have to make an outgassing activity to make sure pollutants are all evacuated before making the rover ready again to be transferred to [the launch pad in 2022], " explained Francois Spoto, Esa's ExoMars Team Leader.

Unclear is precisely how much the delay will cost, but Esa's Director of Human and Robotic Exploration, David Parker, said it wouldn't have a significant effect on his programmes.

"We have a budget, which includes a contingency margin for delayed launch to 2022," he told BBC News.

"Of course, that's based on our estimates; we now have to go and negotiate with industry to get the confirmed costs. But that's our normal life - we have to estimate the cost of things, define it and then negotiate with industry. But no, it should not be a financial crisis."

ESAImage caption

Artist's impression: The robot rover will search for life on Mars

First envisaged as a small technology demonstration mission, the robot vehicle was formally approved by European nations back in 2005, with a launch first pencilled in for 2011.

Then, as ambitions grew and the design was beefed up, the start date was put back. At first, it was shifted to 2013, but further problems saw slippage to 2016, and then again to 2018.

For much of its history, the rover project, codenamed ExoMars, has had to fumble through with budgets that were insufficient to maintain the promised timelines.

At one stage, back in 2009, Esa decided to join forces with America to try to make the mission happen, only to see Nasa walk away three years later when its priorities changed.

That could have killed the project there and then, but for an offer from the Russians to fill the partnership position vacated by the US.

Even with this fresh impetus, however, the project continued to stumble. The Esa-Roscosmos 2018 target gave way to 2020. Now the launch date is being moved again.

The rover has been an important component of British space policy. The UK is the second biggest contributor to the ExoMars programme.

Graham Turnock, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, said: "ExoMars is an important, ambitious mission, with the UK-built Rosalind Franklin rover set to help us understand the past environment of Mars and search for evidence of life. To be successful, the mission must be carried out within an acceptable level of risk, so I support Esa's responsible decision to delay the launch for further testing."

• Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

{ https://www.bbc.com/ }

14-03-2020 om 21:23 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers were using the Dark Energy Survey (DES) to detect dark energy in space but upon studying the data, they were surprised to come across another major discovery. By analyzing the first four years of data obtained when the DES was in operation (from August 2013 to January 2019), they were able to identify a total of 139 new minor planets.

These minor planets are located far beyond Neptune on the edge of our Solar System. A minor planet can be anything from an asteroid to a dwarf planet. Trans-Neptunian objects (or TNOs) are minor planets in our Solar System that orbit the sun at a farther distance than Neptune. And they’re not easy to find as they are quite small and are very far from us – for comparison, Neptune is 4.5 billion kilometers (30 AU or astronomical units) from the sun.

Gary Bernstein, who is a physicist and astronomer from the University of Pennsylvania as well as one of the authors of the research study, stated, “The number of TNOs you can find depends on how much of the sky you look at and what’s the faintest thing you can find.” The team certainly had a tough job as they studied 7 billion dots that could have possibly been minor planets. They were able to eliminate objects that were located in the same spot for several consecutive nights as they were not moving in the same manner as TNOs would. After extensive work, they were able to conclude that 316 of them were TNOs and 139 had not been previously documented.

The new TNOs were located at distances from 30 to more than 90 astronomical units from the sun – from around the same distance as Neptune is from our sun to more than three times further. As a matter of fact, seven of the new trans-Neptunian objects have been called extreme TNOs, meaning that they have an average orbital distance of more than 150 astronomical units. Once confirmed, these would be the most distance objects ever seen in our Solar System. So far, there have been approximately 3,000 TNOs identified in our solar system.

With the discovery of these new minor planets, and especially the extreme TNOs, researchers are hopeful to finally find evidence of Planet Nine which has been theorized to orbit at a distance of 200 astronomical units. “There are lots of ideas about giant planets that used to be in the Solar System and aren’t there anymore, or planets that are far away and massive but too faint for us to have noticed yet,” Bernstein noted.

With approximately a year and a half left of data still to study, who knows what the scientists will find – maybe they’ll discover hundreds more minor planets or perhaps even proof of the existence of Planet Nine. We’ll just have to wait and see.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

14-03-2020 om 20:35 geschreven door peter  

INWONERS VAN NOORD NEDERLAND VERRAST DOOR DUBBELE MAAN AAN DE HEMEL

Een aantal inwoners van noord Nederland wreef zich een aantal dagen geleden in de ogen, want ondanks dat ze geen alcohol hadden gedronken zagen ze toch dingen dubbel.

Het gebeurde ’s avonds en mensen die naar de maan keken, zagen opeens duidelijk twee exemplaren aan de hemel.

Een dergelijk mysterie vond plaats afgelopen maandagavond in Emmen en op andere plaatsen in Noord Nederland.

Hierna wat een lezer uit Emmen ons vertelt (dank!):

Gisteren om 18.00 uur liep ik met mijn hond en keek ik ook naar de maan. Het leek alsof de wolken precies voor de Maan verdwenen. Ik verklaarde dat met lichtsterkte. Ik keek zelf wel heel raar naar de maan. Ik weet nog dat ik dacht dat het wel een tunnel leek.

Nu krijg ik van vrienden uit Breda met een Nikon p900 deze foto's toegestuurd. Ik dacht eerst dat ze ze zelf gemaakt hadden. Maar nee, wat bleek was dat ze de foto's hadden gekregen van iemand die notabene op steenworp afstand bij mij in de wijk woont

Dit zijn de foto’s:

Op onze vraag of het tweede object pas zichtbaar werd na het maken van de foto, krijgen we het volgende antwoord:

Nee zij nam de foto omdat zij het met het blote oog zag.
Het was een zij. Was zelfs bij mij in de wijk hahaha. Ik zie ook wel eens gekke dingen maar heb nooit camera bij me. Neem vanaf nu mijn mobiel maar eens mee als ik mijn hond aan het uitlaten ben.

En dan nog de verdere toelichting:

Het zit dus verborgen achter de bewolking volgens de maker van de foto, en toen de bewolking wegtrok zag ze het en maakte een foto van de maan en het Licht dat op een maan lijkt. En toeval bestaat niet. Hier zit dus korte tijd tussen en ze vindt het vreemd dat de andere maan achter die wolk zat.

Wanneer een object zich achter een wolk bevindt en vanuit daar tevoorschijn komt zoals ook duidelijk op de foto’s is te zien, kan er ook geen sprake zijn van een lensflare. Bovendien heeft de dame die de foto maakte het tweede object ook met het blote oog gezien.

Klaarblijkelijk is zij niet de enige, want wij ontvingen nog de volgende aanvulling:

Ik heb inmiddels 5 getuigen in Noord Nederland die deze Maan ook hebben gezien.

Mochten er meer mensen zijn die dit hebben gezien of die denken te weten wat het is dat we hier zien, laat het ons weten via redactie (apenstaart) niburu.co

{ https://niburu.co/ }

14-03-2020 om 18:34 geschreven door peter  

Two Shoes Found On Mars Indicate Powerful Weapon Hit Them, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: March 13, 2020
Location of discovery: Mars SOL 1044
Source photo:

•  http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/176281
  

I was looking over a Mars photo when I noticed two objects that resemble shoes. Each shoe is different in size. One is large and the other small as if they were feet from a parent and child. Why would only feet be left is unknown, but nevertheless, they sit there in front of us. Long ago I suggested that Mars may have had a weapon that could turn flesh and bone into stone...a weapon that would leave statues as reminders of the fear that you should have of the enemy. I still believe this to be true, and in front of us is the evidence. 
Scott C. Waring 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

14-03-2020 om 18:15 geschreven door peter  

Impressive ... this is getting more and more exciting, these formations of UFOs and huge spacecrafts moving freely through space and close to the International Space Station.

The ongoing appearance of these clusters of extraterrestrial spacecrafts is no longer a coincidence, something is going on in deep space forcing these UFOs to move to other locations.

You can clearly see the structure and shape of some of these large alien ships.

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

14-03-2020 om 18:06 geschreven door peter  

Scientist who claims coronavirus came from SPACE by meteor says prevailing winds are spreading the disease to the hardest-hit countries

• The bizarre claim was made by astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe
• A meteor was spotted burning up in the sky over China on October 11, 2019
• The scientist said prevailing winds are spreading COVID-19 in 40–60° latitudes
• However, disease experts have debunked his claim that coronavirus is alien  
• Coronavirus symptoms: what are they and should you see a doctor?

By IAN RANDALL FOR MAILONLINE

A scientist who believes coronavirus came from space by meteor now says prevailing winds are spreading the disease to the hardest-hit countries.

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology has  alleged that the meteor that exploded over China in October released viral particles.

Once in the upper stratosphere, the virus either fell to Earth or got caught up in the stratospheric air currents that circle the Earth, he told MailOnline.

From here, the virus has spread along 'a global band of between 40–60° latitude north', with all the 'main strong cases' appearing 'exactly along that range', he said.

Infectious disease experts have debunked Professor Wickramasinghe's claim, however, noting that COVID-19 is similar to other known coronaviruses.

This, they explained, would suggest that it was also transmitted to humans from animals — not from a recent meteorite fall. 

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The scientist who claimed that coronavirus came from space by meteor has said that prevailing winds are spreading the disease to the hardest-hit countries. Pictured, the fireball caused by a meteor burning up in the Earth's atmosphere above China on October 11, 2019

The virus has spread by the prevailing winds along 'a global band of between 40–60° latitude north', with all the 'main strong cases' appearing 'exactly along that range', Professor Wickramasinghe said. Experts have dismissed the claim that the virus could be spread by the air — noting that, even if it did, it would thin out travelling international distances

'The sudden outbreak of a new coronavirus is very likely to have a space connection,' Professor Wickramasinghe told The Express in February.

The astrobiologist is a proponent of 'panspermia' — the theory that life is seeded across the universe by travelling on meteors, comets and space dust. 

A meteor was seen as a blazing, bright fireball flying across the sky in the north-east of the country at around 12:16 am on October 11, 2019.

The space rock — which reportedly shone so brightly that it made the night sky look light day — is thought to have disintegrated in the atmosphere.

'We consider the seemingly outrageous possibility that hundreds of trillions of infective viral particles were then released embedded in the form of fine carbonaceous dust,' he added. 

In support of the theory, he highlighted the 'remarkable aspect' that the coronavirus outbreak occurred in the same region of China as where the fireball was seen.

He added that he thinks that the meteor 'contained, embedded within it, a monoculture of infective 2019-nCoV virus particles that survived in the interior of the incandescent meteor.'

'We believe infectious agents are prevalent in space, carried on comets, and can fall towards Earth through the troposphere. These, we think, can and have in the past gone on to bring about human disease epidemics.' 

The MailOnline asked Professor Wickramasinghe whether the correlation of a single meteor sighting with a virus outbreak proved that the former caused the latter.

'It's an interesting connection to take note of, I suppose, but it certainly doesn't prove that that's the way that it took place necessarily,' Professor Wickramasinghe admitted.

The scientific community, however, has largely dismissed Professor Wickramasinghe's claims.

'The most compelling evidence that SARS-CoV-2 didn’t come from a meteorite is that it is so closely related to other known coronaviruses,' infectious disease specialist Dominic Sparkes of University College London told IFLScience.

'It’s closely related to the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus that caused an outbreak in the early 2000s and the MERS (Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome) virus which still causes disease currently,' he added. 

'SARS was found to be the result of bats transferring virus to civet cats which transferred on to humans, while MERS is known to be passed on to humans from camels.'

'It therefore is far less of a leap to assume the closely-related SARS-CoV-2 virus has been passed on to humans in the same way.' 

The meteor, pictured, was seen as a blazing, bright fireball flying across the sky in the north-east of the country at around 12:16 am on October 11, 2019

Professor Wickramasinghe, however, has dismissed these arguments, suggesting that the similarity of the coronavirus sequences in humans and animals like bat is 'highly questionable' and is 'being re-analysed' — and that even if they were similar, this would not disprove the suggestion that the virus came from space. 

Experts have also previously noted that coronavirus is not being spread by the wind.

'Even if the virus could be spread by air, it would be thinned largely to the extent that people could ignore it after it had travelled a few kilometres,' meteorologist Lam Chiu-ying said last month.

'Don’t believe it, preventing the local spread of the virus is the most important thing.'

COVID-19 only survives for 72 hours on surfaces and the US Centre for Disease Control has said that six feet is a safe distance to avoid person-to-person infection. 

The space rock — which reportedly shone so brightly that it made the night sky look light day — is thought to have disintegrated in the atmosphere

'Viruses from space is an old chestnut that deserves to be roasted immediately,' said virologist Ian Jones of the University of Reading.

'The sequence of the Wuhan virus is very close to those previously observed in bats.' 

'In contrast to the authors’ statement transmission among people is clear, as in the recent Brighton cases, and the epidemiology modelling clearly tracks back to the Wuhan seafood market in December last year.'

'The trouble with this sort of nonsense is that it detracts from the really detailed work that is currently ongoing to track, cope with and prevent infection.'

What the virus really demonstrates is the troublesome side of evolution, everything jostling to gain a toehold somewhere. Getting ahead of it needs a range of dedicated programs, not this sort of guff.'

'We consider the seemingly outrageous possibility that hundreds of trillions of infective viral particles were then released embedded in the form of fine carbonaceous dust,' Professor Wickramasinghe said. His theory has been rebutted by infectious disease experts

Professor Wickramasinghe — along with his colleague Sir Fred Hoyle of the University of Cambridge — has been a leading proponent of the panspermia hypothesis since the mid 1970s.

'The earth is not a disconnected entity in the biosphere — we are connected to the external universe,' Professor Wickramasinghe said.

In the eighties, he proved that some of the dust found in interstellar space contained organic material, most of which was carbon.

Together with Sir Hoyle, he further contended that lifeforms and genetic material continue to enter the Earth's atmosphere to account for new diseases, epidemic outbreaks and the creation of the genetic novelty needed for major-scale evolution.

Professor Wickramasinghe has previously suggested that other deadly diseases came from an extraterrestrial source — including the 1918 flu pandemic, certain strains of mad cow disease and polio, and SARS, which he connected to a 2002 meteorite that exploded over the border of China and Russia.

'There is growing evidence that says this DNA comes from space and it is carried into our atmosphere on micro-meteorites before dissipating,' he told The Express. 

Read more:

• Coronavirus came from METEORITE which hit China last year - bombshell scientist claim | World | News | Express.co.uk

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

14-03-2020 om 16:33 geschreven door peter  

A Scientist Claims It’s Possible Novel Corona Virus Has A Space Connection

After the news that a US patient got a novel coronavirus (N-CoV) and its origin has baffled medical authorities, a scientist claimed that the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is the first wave of space alien biological invasion of Earth.

On the evening of February 26, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that the patient in California who has infected with the COVID-19 didn’t have a travel history in China and any other countries with confirmed cases. According to the CDC, the patient wasn’t exposed to everyone known to have the disease.

California Rep. John Garamendi said that the affected person is in severe condition. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said that they already explained to doctors in the United States that a person needed to have travel history to any country with confirmed cases or be a near touch of an individual who had been in affected areas before with COVID-19 cases.

Meanwhile, Cambridge astrobiologist Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe claims that the COVID-19 virus may have come from a fragment of a comet that exploded in North-East China in October last year.

In Wickramasinghe’s perspective, the sudden outbreak of a new coronavirus is very probable to have an extraterrestrial connection. The British scientist brings up the possibility that masses of trillions of infective viral debris that lived in the bright meteor has been then released embedded within the shape of sweet carbonaceous dust.

Wickramasinghe explains that infectious agents are known to be widespread in the area, which might be transported on comets and fell toward Earth through the troposphere.

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

14-03-2020 om 16:18 geschreven door peter  

14-03-2020 om 02:05 geschreven door peter  

14-03-2020 om 01:40 geschreven door peter  

US Army Refuses to Release Records About Tom DeLonge's UFO Organization

The Army says details about its agreement with To the Stars Academy to research 'novel materials' are exempt from FOIA.

By MJ Banias

IMAGE: STEPHEN J. COHEN/GETTY IMAGES

The U.S. Army refused to release any records about its deal with Tom DeLonge’s UFO-hunting group To the Stars Academy (TTSA).

In October of 2019, the former Blink-182 frontman’s UFO organization joined forces with the US Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command, a research and development body. According to the contract, the government is interested in studying some pretty exotic science such as active camouflage, inertial mass reduction, and quantum communication. In particular, the government is interested in the group’s ADAM Project, which Doug Halleaux, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Ground Vehicle Systems Center described as “a global dragnet for the collection and evaluation of novel materials.” In 2018, TTSA put out a call for individuals and organizations to submit materials from alleged exotic sources as part of the project.

John Greenewald of The Black Vault, a website dedicated to collecting declassified government documents, explained in a recent blog post that the research and reports related to the deal are exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests as per Army Regulation 70-57.

Knowing this, Greenewald instead filed a FOIA Request regarding a copy of all records and emails related to Dr. Joseph Cannon of U.S. Army Futures Command (who is working on the agreement) containing keywords such as "TTSA" and "To The Stars."

The Army got back to Greenewald telling him that 29 documents were found relating to his request, and each page was exempt from his request. The Army stated that it was not going to release any records. Motherboard reached out to Halleaux, the Army’s CCDC spokesperson, who said that any documents related to DeLonge’s organization would be classified as “trade secrets and commercial or financial information [that are] privileged or confidential.”

In other words, the public can’t know what the Army and TTSA is working on because of corporate and commercial secrets, namely intellectual property and finances. This includes related email communications. Halleaux told Motherboard that he personally had no idea what the Army and TTSA were up to, and if he did, he couldn’t talk about it.

TTSA now has roughly four-and-a-half years left on its five-year contract with the Army to research and develop future military technology. Halleaux told Motherboard in 2019 that the government believes the “key technologies or capabilities that [the Army] is investigating with TTSA are certainly on the leading edge of the realm of the possible” and comes at a low cost for the government. Regardless, mounting a complex exploration of the various projects outlined in the CRADA such as “adaptive camouflage,” “beamed energy propulsion,” and “quantum communication” will definitely take some serious collaboration, laboratory set-up, equipment gathering, research and time. It is highly unlikely that any actual technology development has occurred in the last six months.

IMAGE: THE BLACK VAULT

In a written statement to Motherboard, TTSA’s Chief Operating Officer and former director of Advanced Systems Development at Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks, Steve Justice, stated,

“It is easy to assume that TTSA's government [agreement] automatically ‘locks up’ the results of research. However, it must be noted that the discussions with the government that led to the contract language were completed with the knowledge that one of TTSA's prime objectives is public transparency and commercial applications. Note the contract language that specifically identifies two-way sharing of information. The benefit of the [agreement] is to gain access to otherwise inaccessible government laboratories and technical expertise to expose all attributes of unusual materials and share the results. If unusual attributes are found, TTSA may use that information to create applications for public benefit. We cannot speak for any actions the Army might take after studying the results.”

In a follow up request for comment concerning TTSA’s claims concerning the collection of exotic otherworldly and UFO crash debris and materials, Chief Content Officer Kari DeLonge said that she could not comment on whether the company had their hands on truly alien materials, but added that, “we are steadfast and dedicated to responsible analysis and reporting without speculation.”

While the whole weird relationship between UFOs and the Army’s research and development arm has left many people scratching their heads, the real question is why would advanced space faring extraterrestrials keep crashing and leaving their scrap in the deserts of Nevada and New Mexico? Perhaps they are leaving humanity some technological breadcrumbs or they are just jerks dumping their garbage on our planet; whatever the case, the government isn’t saying much.

{ https://video.vice.com/en_us/ }

14-03-2020 om 01:20 geschreven door peter  

23 Years Later, the Phoenix Lights Are Still Unexplained

A new documentary explores one of the most infamous UFO mass sightings in history.

By MJ Banias

IMAGE: LYNNE KITEI/PHOENIX LIGHTS NETWORK

23 years ago today, the people of Arizona witnessed one of the most infamous UFO incidents in history.

A new documentary series by filmmaker Seth Breedlove takes an in depth look into the so-called “Phoenix Lights.” On the Trail of UFOs doesn’t try to prove that the incident was aliens or flares, but instead expertly explores the cultural ramifications of the event on the UFO community.

“As an event, the Phoenix Lights is important simply because it gained so much media attention, was witnessed by so many people, and today, can still not be precisely explained away,” Breedlove told Motherboard. “Every year more witnesses come forward; from airline pilots to military personnel to ordinary people living from places as far removed as downtown Phoenix to Las Vegas.”

On March 13th, 1997, hundreds of Arizonans called their local law enforcement and a popular UFO reporting hotline to report a series of strange lights moving over their cities and towns. The Phoenix Lights case remains one of the largest UFO sightings in history, and continues to be an established fixture of contemporary UFO discourse.

At roughly 7:00 pm, people in northwestern Arizona began reporting a large craft passing overhead. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, the first call they received came in at 8:16pm from a retired police officer in Paulden, Arizona, a town about two hours north of Phoenix. He reported seeing a series of reddish lights arranged in a V-formation.

Over the next couple days, calls continued to pour in regarding the sighting of multiple lights in the sky, some arranged in the shape of a boomerang, and others as odd moving lights with tails and “fireballs.” Ron Regehr, a veteran UFO researcher with the Mutual UFO Network and a former engineer with Boeing and Northrop Grumman, told Motherboard in an interview that he was part of the team that helped in developing the Defense Support Program Satellites (DSP), a series of infrared sensing tactical satellites that detect the launch of missiles, space launches, and nuclear detonations.

Regehr explained that he generated regular reports about what the DSP detected every 60 days. According to Regehr, he received a phone call from a colleague that the DSP picked up an object over South Eastern Nevada. It traveled in that direction until its signal became too weak, and it was lost over Tucson, Arizona.

Regehr told Motherboard that the event was “significant in that so many people witnessed the event and the extent authorities went to to denounce their experience. But, so many people were polarized that it took on an almost immediate ‘cult like’ life of its own. 23 years later folks are still talking about it!”

The world did not notice the event until USA Today picked up the story in June of that year. Arizona’s governor even held a press conference where he brought in his chief of staff dressed in an alien costume, telling the press that they were “too serious” about the UFO stuff. The military eventually took responsibility for the strange lights explaining that the two events were a series of jets flying in close formation and some military flares.

On the Trail of UFOs follows podcaster and author Shannon LeGro into the murky and weird UFO world. While it explores several other cases, the series spends its time analyzing the UFO community and the people who claim to have encounters with the anomalous. Breedlove’s previous documentary work includes Terror in the Skies (2019), The Bray Road Beast (2018), and The Mothman of Point Pleasant (2017). Much like his previous work, Breedlove’s focus is on the individuals caught up in the event, and how it altered their lives instead of trying to ascertain whether aliens or monsters are real. As for the Phoenix Lights, Breedlove points out that “it’s a culturally important event because it illustrates how at-risk witnesses were of being ridiculed if they came forward.”

“I’m not sure today that the response to the Phoenix Lights would be as over-the-top as it was in 1997 when you had the governor going on television with a man in an alien costume to poke fun at the very idea of a UFO,” Breedlove said. “Things have changed drastically in 23 years and the Phoenix Lights helps illustrate that fact.”

• On the Trail of UFOs drops on March 20th on Prime Video.

{ https://www.vice.com/en_us }

13-03-2020 om 23:57 geschreven door peter  

Scientists have just discovered that a jellyfish-like parasite doesn't have a mitochondrial genome - the first multicellular organism known to have this absence. That means it doesn't breathe; in fact, it lives its life completely free of oxygen dependency.

This discovery isn't just changing our understanding of how life can work here on Earth - it could also have implications for the search for extraterrestrial life.

Life started to develop the ability to metabolise oxygen - that is, respirate - sometime over 1.45 billion years ago. A larger archaeon engulfed a smaller bacterium, and somehow the bacterium's new home was beneficial to both parties, and the two stayed together.

That symbiotic relationship resulted in the two organisms evolving together, and eventually those bacteria ensconced within became organelles called mitochondria. Every cell in your body except red blood cells has large numbers of mitochondria, and these are essential for the respiration process.

They break down oxygen to produce a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, which multicellular organisms use to power cellular processes.

We know there are adaptations that allow some organisms to thrive in low-oxygen, or hypoxic, conditions. Some single-celled organisms have evolved mitochondria-related organelles for anaerobic metabolism; but the possibility of exclusively anaerobic multicellular organisms has been the subject of some scientific debate.

That is, until a team of researchers led by Dayana Yahalomi of Tel Aviv University in Israel decided to take another look at a common salmon parasite called Henneguya salminicola.

(Stephen Douglas Atkinson)

It's a cnidarian, belonging to the same phylum as corals, jellyfish and anemones. Although the cysts it creates in the fish's flesh are unsightly, the parasites are not harmful, and will live with the salmon for its entire life cycle.

Tucked away inside its host, the tiny cnidarian can survive quite hypoxic conditions. But exactly how it does so is difficult to know without looking at the creature's DNA - so that's what the researchers did.

They used deep sequencing and fluorescence microscopy to conduct a close study of H. salminicola, and found that it has lost its mitochondrial genome. In addition, it's also lost the capacity for aerobic respiration, and almost all of the nuclear genes involved in transcribing and replicating mitochondria.

Like the single-celled organisms, it had evolved mitochondria-related organelles, but these are unusual too - they have folds in the inner membrane not usually seen.

The same sequencing and microscopic methods in a closely related cnidarian fish parasite, Myxobolus squamalis, was used as a control, and clearly showed a mitochondrial genome.

These results show that here, at last, is a multicellular organism that doesn't need oxygen to survive.

Exactly how it survives is still something of a mystery. It could be leeching adenosine triphosphate from its host, but that's yet to be determined.

But the loss is pretty consistent with an overall trend in these creatures - one of genetic simplification. Over many, many years, they have basically devolved from a free-living jellyfish ancestor into the much more simple parasite we see today.

(Stephen Douglas Atkinson)

They've lost most of the original jellyfish genome, but retaining - oddly - a complex structure resembling jellyfish stinging cells. They don't use these to sting, but to cling to their hosts: an evolutionary adaptation from the free-living jellyfish's needs to the parasite's. You can see them in the image above - they're the things that look like eyes.

The discovery could help fisheries adapt their strategies for dealing with the parasite; although it's harmless to humans, no one wants to buy salmon riddled with tiny weird jellyfish.

But it's also a heck of a discovery for helping us to understand how life works.

"Our discovery confirms that adaptation to an anaerobic environment is not unique to single-celled eukaryotes, but has also evolved in a multicellular, parasitic animal," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"Hence, H. salminicola provides an opportunity for understanding the evolutionary transition from an aerobic to an exclusive anaerobic metabolism."

The research has been published in PNAS.

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

13-03-2020 om 23:26 geschreven door peter