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
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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 Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
06-04-2020
Early Mars Had Multiple Water Sources, New Study Shows
Early Mars Had Multiple Water Sources, New Study Shows
An analysis of two Martian meteorites — Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 and Allan Hills (ALH) 84001 — shows that Mars likely received water from at least two vastly different sources early in its history; the variability implies that Mars, unlike Earth and the Moon, never had a global ocean of magma.
This computer-generated view depicts part of Mars at the boundary between darkness and daylight. At top right is NWA 7034.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of New Mexico / Sci-News.com.
“These two different sources of water in Mars’ interior might be telling us something about the kinds of objects that were available to coalesce into the inner, rocky planets,” said Dr. Jessica Barnes, a researcher at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.
“Two distinct planetesimals with vastly different water contents could have collided and never fully mixed. This context is also important for understanding the past habitability and astrobiology of Mars.”
Dr. Barnes and colleagues were able to piece together Mars’ water history by looking for clues in two isotopes of hydrogen: light hydrogen and deuterium.
The researchers analyzed samples they knew were originated from the Martian crust: NWA 7034 (also known as the Black Beauty meteorite) and ALH 84001 meteorites.
Black Beauty was especially helpful because it’s a mashup of surface material from many different points in Mars’ history.
“This allowed us to form an idea of what Mars’ crust looked like over several billions of years,” Dr. Barnes said.
The isotopic ratios of the meteorite samples fell about midway between the value for Earth rocks and Mars’ atmosphere.
When the team’s findings were compared with previous studies, including results from NASA’s Curiosity rover, it seems that this was the case for most of Mars’ 4 billion-plus-year history.
“We thought, ok this is interesting, but also kind of weird. How do we explain this dichotomy where the Martian atmosphere is being fractionated, but the crust is basically staying the same over geological time?” Dr. Barnes said.
The scientists also grappled with trying to explain why the crust seemed so different from the Martian mantle, the rock later which lies below.
“If you try and explain this fairly constant isotopic ratio of Mars’ crust, you really can’t use the atmosphere to do that. But we know how crusts are formed. They’re formed from molten material from the interior that solidifies on the surface,” Dr. Barnes said.
“The prevailing hypothesis before we started this work was that the interior of Mars was more Earthlike and unfractionated, and so the variability in hydrogen isotope ratios within Martian samples was due to either terrestrial contamination or atmospheric implantation as it made its way off Mars.”
Illustration showing the present-day hydrogen reservoirs in and on Mars. The mass fractions (pie chart) of Martian water are based on the mass of water in the bulk crust (C), the mantle (M) and the combined inventory (A) of the atmosphere and polar ice deposits (PID). The mantle mass fraction is the combination of depleted shergottites (DS) and enriched shergottites (ES).
Image credit: Barnes et al, doi: 10.1038/s41561-020-0552-y.
The idea that Mars’ interior was Earthlike in composition came from one study of a Martian meteorite thought to have originated from the mantle — the interior between the planet’s core and its surface crust.
“However, Martian meteorites basically plot all over the place, and so trying to figure out what these samples are actually telling us about water in the mantle of Mars has historically been a challenge,” Dr. Barnes said.
“The fact that our data for the crust was so different prompted us to go back through the scientific literature and scrutinize the data.”
The study authors found that two geochemically different types of Martian volcanic rocks — enriched shergottites and depleted shergottites — contain water with different hydrogen isotope ratios.
Enriched shergottites contain more deuterium than the depleted shergottites, which are more Earth-like, they found.
“It turns out that if you mix different proportions of hydrogen from these two kinds of shergottites, you can get the crustal value,” Dr. Barnes said.
“We think that the shergottites are recording the signatures of two different hydrogen — and by extension, water — reservoirs within Mars. The stark difference hints to them that more than one source might have contributed water to Mars and that Mars did not have a global magma ocean.”
The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
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J.J. Barnes et al. Multiple early-formed water reservoirs in the interior of Mars. Nat. Geosci, published March 30, 2020; doi: 10.1038/s41561-020-0552-y
Homo erectus Existed 200,000 Years Earlier than Previously Thought
Homo erectus Existed 200,000 Years Earlier than Previously Thought
An international team of paleoanthropologists has unearthed a 2-million-year-old skull of Homo erectus, the first of our ancestors to be nearly human-like in their anatomy and aspects of their behavior, in the fossil-rich Drimolen cave system north of Johannesburg, South Africa.
This is an artist’s reconstruction of female Homo erectus from Dmanisi, Georgia. Image credit: Elisabeth Daynes, via tabula.ge.
Homo erectus is one of our direct human ancestors and is best known for migrating out of Africa into the rest of the world.
They walked upright and were a more human-like species than the other hominins found in the Cradle of Humankind.
Homo erectus had shorter arms and longer legs. They could walk and run for longer distances over the African grasslands than the others.
“The Homo erectus skull we found shows its brain was only slightly smaller than other examples of adult Homo erectus,” said Professor Andy Herries, a researcher at La Trobe University and the University of Johannesburg and corresponding author of a paper published in the journal Science.
“It samples a part of human evolutionary history when our ancestors were walking fully upright, making stone tools, starting to emigrate out of Africa, but before they had developed large brains.”
The 2-million-year-old fossil, designated DNH 134, was reconstructed from more than 150 individual fragments recovered from the Drimolen site over a five-year period.
“The newly-discovered fossil demonstrates that Homo erectus, our direct ancestor, clearly evolved in Africa,” added co-author Jesse Martin, a Ph.D. student at La Trobe University.
The DNH 134 Homo erectus cranium from South Africa.
Image credit: Jesse Martin / Reanud Joannes-Boyau / Andy I. R. Herries.
The age of the DNH 134 skullcap shows something else — that at least three hominins lived in southern Africa at the same time.
“Unlike the world today, where we are the only human species, two million years ago our direct ancestor was not alone,” Professor Herries said.
“We can now say Homo erectus shared the landscape with two other types of humans in South Africa, Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus.”
“This suggests that one of these other human species, Australopithecus sediba, may not have been the direct ancestor of Homo erectus, or us, as previously hypothesized.”
“The new crania offered an unparalleled insight into how three different human species, with quite different adaptations, shared a changing environment together,” said co-author Angeline Leece, a Ph.D. student at La Trobe University.
“The discovery raises some intriguing questions about how these three unique species lived and survived on the landscape,” said co-author Dr. Justin Adams, a researcher at Monash University.
“One of the questions that interests us is what role changing habitats, resources, and the unique biological adaptations of early Homo erectus may have played in the eventual extinction of Australopithecus sediba in South Africa.”
“Similar trends are also seen in other mammal species at this time. For example, there are more than one species of false saber-tooth cat, Dinofelis, at the site — one of which became extinct after two million years.”
“Our data reinforces the fact that South Africa represented a truly unique mixture of evolutionary lineages — a blended community of ancient and modern mammal species that was transitioning as climates and ecosystems changed.”
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Andy I.R. Herries et al. 2020. Contemporaneity of Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and early Homo erectus in South Africa. Science 368 (6486): eaaw7293; doi: 10.1126/science.aaw7293
Key point: Some assert human errors, but these pilots say this is what they saw...
By now you’ve probably read the New York Times article detailing a UFO research program run by the Pentagon which received $22 million — a tiny amount by Defense Department standards — from 2007 to at least 2012. The disclosure of the program is the biggest such reveal since Project Blue Book of the 1950s and 1960s and the French government’s 1999 COMETA Report.
If that wasn’t strange enough, the article included declassified footage from a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter’s AN/ASQ-228 sensor display as it trailed a still-unidentified flying object over the Pacific near San Diego on Nov. 14, 2004.
In the footage, the Super Hornet pilot, while traveling at 252 knots at nearly 20,000 feet, switched between his display’s infrared and visual modes as the sensor tried to lock onto the blurry, oblong or pill-shaped object. The flying object appeared white in IR mode, and black in TV mode — indicating that whatever it was, the sensor had picked up on the object’s emission, temperature or reflection.
The video comes from the same incident when Cmdr. David Fravor, a veteran Navy pilot assigned to the USS Nimitz carrier fighter squadron VFA-41 Black Aces, was on a training mission off San Diego. “It was a real object, it exists and I saw it,” Fravor told the Washington Post. Telling the paper that he believes it was “not from the Earth.”
During an exercise, commanders ordered Fravor to intercept an object that was appearing at 80,000 feet — above the range of Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Princeton’s SPY-1 air-search radar — before dropping suddenly to 20,000 feet. “Officials told they had been tracking a couple dozen of these objects for a few weeks,” the paper reported.
The story that followed has circulated in the military aviation world and fighter community for several years, including this write-up by former Navy F-14A Tomcat pilot Paco Chierici at Fighter Sweep. With orders to intercept the object, Fravor in his jet — callsign FASTEAGLE 01 — headed toward with aid from an E-2 Hawkeye early warning and control plane.
The Hawkeye’s sensors, however, couldn’t detect the object and vector him toward it, so Princeton directed FASTEAGLE 01 and Fravor’s wingman, FASETEAGLE 02 to the location, and even asked Fravor whether he was carrying weapons — he wasn’t. He just had two training missiles. Below the jets, Fravor saw whitewater sloshing in the blue ocean.
All four aircrew were eyes out from this point forward. The first unusual indication Dave picked up was the area of whitewater on the surface that Cheeks was looking at over his shoulder as he flew away. He remembers thinking it was about the size of a 737 and maybe the contact they had been vectored on had been an airliner that had just crashed. He maneuvered his F-18 lower to get a better look. As he was descending through about 20K he was startled by the sight of a white object that was moving about just over the frothing water. It was all white, featureless, oblong and making minor lateral movements while staying at a consistent low altitude over the disk of turbulent water.
[…]
In his debrief comments, Dave, his WSO and the two other crews stated the object had initially been hovering like a Harrier. They described it as uniformly white, about 46 feet long (roughly fighter-sized), having a discernible midline horizontal axis (like a fuselage) but having no visible windows, nacelles, wings or propulsion systems.
There was no apparent exhaust or rotor wash, either. The pill-shaped object then “oriented one of its skinny ends towards him,” and rose in a “right 2-circle flow” — fighter speak for when each aircraft have their noses pointed at each other’s tails. The object then accelerated away at “multi-Mach” speed.
The video of the AN/ASQ-228 sensor display occurred later in the day with a different set of fighters. The object at this point appeared stationary before taking off.
This is consistent with a U.S. Navy report obtained by To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a UFO research company which published the footage. The Navy pilots, apparently, first believed the object could have been a classified missile test from a submarine. The Navy report cited a source who indicated the object maneuvered in a manner “that seemed to defy the laws of physics” and “‘tumbled’ into nonsensical angles that made any engagement by the F-18 impossible.”
So what was it? A secret U.S. test project? A classified drone or hypersonic weapon? A maneuverable reentry vehicle or something like DARPA’s Falcon Project? Naval Air Systems Command, which tests airborne weapons, has 36,000 square miles of controlled sea and airspace off the Southern Californian coast. And the Falcon Project’s Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 has reached Mach 22 — albeit six years after the 2004 object sighting in the Pacific.
Or perhaps it was an elaborate hoax, or a software or sensor error. Maybe an atmospheric disturbance? Or let’s say it was an alien spacecraft powered by technology impossible for our tiny primate brains to understand. I hope it’s the last one, but I’m not counting on it. Your guess is as good as mine.
Eyewitnesses, even fighter pilots, are prone to human error. Pilots also know how aircraft operate, and the belief that there is something unusual in the skies is more common in that community than you might assume. Fravor certainly believes what he saw, and many fighter pilots believe him.
Or perhaps it was an elaborate hoax, or a software or sensor error. Maybe an atmospheric disturbance? Or let’s say it was an alien spacecraft powered by technology impossible for our tiny primate brains to understand. I hope it’s the last one, but I’m not counting on it. Your guess is as good as mine.
Eyewitnesses, even fighter pilots, are prone to human error. Pilots also know how aircraft operate, and the belief that there is something unusual in the skies is more common in that community than you might assume. Fravor certainly believes what he saw, and many fighter pilots believe him.
I was on board the USS Princeton (2001-2005) when this all went down. We actually went to GQ (General Quarters) for about 4 hours as all if this was going down. I’ve been telling everyone about this even, but have gotten the usual “yeah right” look when I tell them about it. I saw the video after it happened, but didn’t think that it would somehow make it’s way to the public, considering all of the “security” that surrounded the issue.
Crazy how the world turns, isn’t it?!
Thank you for giving this event life! I no longer look like a tin foil hat wearing idiot!
It's possible that the story of the Men in Black, the mysterious figures that would become the subject of fascination in UFO conspiracy circles and eventually break into mainstream popular culture, can be traced back to one day: June 27, 1947. It's quite possible that it all started with a man, a boy and a dog on a boat.
As the story goes, Harold Dahl was on a conservation mission on the Puget Sound near the eastern shore of Washington’s Maury Island, gathering logs, when he saw six donut-shaped obstacles hovering about a half a mile above his boat. Before long, one of them fell nearly 1,500 feet, followed by raining, metallic debris, some of which hit Dahl’s son, Charles, on his arm, as well as the family dog, who didn’t survive the ordeal. Dahl was able to take some pictures of the aircraft with his camera, which he later showed to his supervisor, Fred Crisman. A skeptical Crisman went back to the scene to look for himself and saw a strange aircraft with his own eyes.
The following morning, Dahl was visited by a man in a black suit. They end up at a local diner, where the man was able to recount in extraordinary detail what Dahl had just experienced. “What I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe,” the man said, according to author Gray Barker’s 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.
Dahl was told not to speak of the incident. If he did, bad things would happen.
The supposed events of Maury Island have continued to fuel conspiracy theories to this day, even though a U.S. government investigation deemed it a hoax after Dahl and Crimson later admitted as much. In particular, the mention of the man in the black suit would evolve into a key obsession for UFO enthusiasts and spread into American popular culture, thanks to a comic-book series and a blockbuster movie trilogy.
In all of their different incarnations, the Men in Black (MIB) usually have one main purpose: to muzzle witnesses of strange, paranormal phenomena. They almost always wear black suits and hats with dark sunglasses, drive black cars and arrive in groups of two or three. Some describe them as one would an FBI agent, while others recall the MIB as having strange appearances, sometimes with supernatural features like glowing eyes and strange complexions.
So how did we get from Harold Dahl to Will Smith?
"The transformation of the story from a first press report to a folkloric tale to a comic book and now to a film illustrates how the myth is transformed,” wrote Phil Patton in The New York Times around the time the first Men in Black movie was released in 1997. “That process is not unlike the children's game of 'telephone' or what the literary critic Harold Bloom calls 'innovation by misinterpretation.' "
Sticking with the telephone analogy, the first call was made to Kenneth Arnold, a pilot who had his own alleged UFO sighting on June 24, 1947 near Mt. Rainier, Washington. Though it happened three days after the Maury Island incident, it was the first widely reported sighting and it “touched off the saucer sensation,” as was written in a 1949 government report on “Flying Saucers.”
The report states that Dahl and Crimson reached out to a Chicago magazine in an attempt to sell their story, and the magazine editor then contacted Arnold, hoping he could help verify their account. Arnold then “summoned two officers of Army A-2 Intelligence to aid in the investigation of Dahl and Crisman's claim,” according to the report.
In July 1947, two Army A-2 Intelligence officers came to investigate. After leaving in their B-25 the next day, the plane caught fire and crashed, killing both officers and doing nothing to quiet UFO conspiracists.
But the Maury Island story gained little notice in the UFO community until Barker’s 1956 book, in which he wrote of his “file on the Maury Island case” that largely consisted of the writings by Ray Palmer, the Chicago magazine editor referred to in the government’s report. Barker went on to connect the dots between “the man, who wore a black suit” who took Dahl to breakfast and three similarly dressed men who allegedly visited a young UFO enthusiast named Albert K. Bender in 1953.
It was Bender who “almost single-handedly ushered in the plague of the Men in Black—just as Arnold inaugurated the era of the UFO,” Ufologist Nick Redfern wrote in his book The Real Men in Black. But it was Barker’s book that told Bender’s story, thus introducing the concept of the MIB to a much wider audience.
(The telephone-game analogy is still holding.)
Kenneth Arnold, center, looks at a photo of an unidentified flying object they sighted while en route to Seattle, Washington with pilots E.J. Smith and Ralph E. Stevens.
“It still has an important legacy,” said Robert Sheaffer, a UFO researcher. “Before its publication, nobody outside a very narrow group of subscribers to flying-saucer newsletters had ever heard of Bender, or his MIB.”
Barker described Bender’s visitors as: “Three men in black suits with threatening expressions on their faces. Three men who walk in on you and make certain demands. Three men who know that you know what the saucers really are!”
Bender, in his own 1962 book Flying Saucers and the Three Men, described the MIB in much more frightening language.
“They floated about a foot off the floor… They looked like clergymen, but wore hats similar to Homburg style. The faces were not clearly discernible, for the hats partly hid and shaded them… The eyes of all three figures suddenly lit up like flashlight bulbs… They seemed to burn into my very soul as the pains above my eyes became almost unbearable,” wrote Bender.
Barker would go on to write several more books related to the paranormal and UFOs, including 1970’s The Silver Bridge, which helped spread the story of another popular paranormal figure, the creature known as Mothman. But how much of his writing was done in good faith has been called into question by many in the UFO-research community.
“Barker made it clear to me that he did not take the MIB or Mothman very seriously,” says Sheaffer, who corresponded with Barker on occasion. “However, he believed that there was still 'something mysterious' about the whole UFO and paranormal thing.”
Regardless of Barker’s motives, countless MIB encounters have been reported since They Knew Too Much was published nearly 60 years ago, and at least one more movie is on the way.
It's possible that Mercury once held the ingredients for life.
In 1974, NASA's Mariner 10 probe flew by Mercury and observed a cracked, cratered landscape. Now, according to one new theory, Mercury's fractured "chaotic terrain" could've been formed by volatiles — elements and compounds that can easily jump from a gas to a liquid or solid — under the surface.
Volatiles, a chemical category that includes water, are essential for sparking and supporting life as we know it here on Earth. So, their potential presence on Mercury is an intriguing development. The study, led by Alexis P. Rodriguez, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, took a closer look at Mercury'schaotic terrain and the possibility that volatiles once shaped a planet with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, a planet that has forever been thought of as "completely inhospitable."
For decades, scientists have studied Mercury's chaotic terrain — a landscape made up of the planet's cracked and ragged surface, complete with jagged, broken-up rocks, sharp peaks and craters.
Mars has chaotic terrain as well, but the Red Planet features connect much more obviously to outflow channels on the Martian surface. With no such channels on Mercury, researchers instead tied the terrain to a powerful asteroid impact that left the Caloris basin, a massive crater still visible on the planet's surface. Until now, it was thought that Mercury's chaotic terrain was created by earthquakes that ravaged Mercury following the impact.
But in the new study, researchers suggest that this couldn't be possible because the timing just doesn't make sense.
"A key to the discovery was the finding that the development of the chaotic terrains persisted until approximately 1.8 billion years ago, 2 billion years after the Caloris basin formed," co-author Daniel Berman, also of the Planetary Science Institute, said in a statement.
This was the "first, kind of, smoking gun," Rodriguez told Space.com. The researchers were able to date these features using data and images from NASA's MESSENGER (MErcury Surface Space ENvironment GEochemistry and Ranging) spacecraft, which studied Mercury from orbit from 2011 to 2015. The team determined the ages of surface features including the chaotic terrain and the crater formed from the asteroid impact.
Additionally, as Rodriguez explained, the scientists noticed that there were many small features like tiny craters still intact in these terrains. With such a massive asteroid impact, "think about the worst earthquakes you could ever imagine," Rodriguez said. "Instead of bringing down buildings you're bringing down mountains … entire mountain ranges."
The researchers reasoned that, if earthquakes following the impact caused the chaotic terrain, then those smaller features wouldn't have been preserved. These observations informed the team/s findings that this previous notion about the chaotic terrain's formation was flawed.
Missing material
But observations have also shown that some parts of the surface features have dropped, as if something below the surface simply gave way. And, as Rodriguez put it, when earthquakes cause buildings to fall, that matter spreads out over the surface. But in this case, they found that there was a whole bunch of matter that should've been in the chaotic terrain that seemed to be missing.
Keeping the conservation of matter in mind, the team suggests in this study that, instead of an impact and earthquakes causing the planet's surface to crack, volatiles under the surface created these features.
"In this case, we're seeing very clear drops in elevation, very, very abrupt surface losses that indicate that the materials were removed somehow," Rodriguez said.
Illustration of the solar system, showing the paths of the eight major planets as they orbit the Sun, plus the asteroids and comets. The four inner planets are, from inner to outer, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The four outer planets are, inner to outer, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
They concluded that it's much more likely that volatiles underneath Mercury's surface were heated by magma even farther down. Because of this heating, the volatiles became gaseous and sublimated.
"Maybe these materials were volatile and they were transported away, and they could've condensed in other parts of the planet, or maybe they were entirely removed from the planet by solar winds," he added.
The sudden loss of this material is what the scientists think caused the planet's surface to crack and fall apart, creating the chaotic terrain we see today.
So how could volatiles, which are essential to life here on Earth, survive on a planet whose daytime temperatures soar to 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius) and drop to minus 290 degrees F (minus 180 C) at night?
While the planet's surface swings wildly between temperature extremes, just below the surface, temperatures are milder, Rodriguez explained.
Rodriguez said that it's "likely that there was some sort of water that formed" in part of Mercury's crust. But the team cannot yet tell exactly what volatiles were present when the planet's surface broke apart.
However, not only are the researchers continuing this work to find an answer to that question, they are also working to understand a much more recent phenomenon.
The future on Mercury
While these events happened billions of years ago, "there is evidence of recent volatile removal within the chaotic terrain … maybe ongoing right now," Rodriguez said.
Mercury planet solar lens flare. Elements of this image furnished by NASA
He explained that, following this study, researchers will be working on "the possibility of selecting a landing site where we could potentially sample these volatile-rich materials using some type of lander."
This work was published March 16 in the journal Scientific Reports
As unlikely as it may sound, Mercury may have once been able to support subsurface microscopic life, according to a new study from the Planetary Science Institute.
Mercury – closest planet to the sun in our solar system – as seen during the first flyby of the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2008.
When it comes to the possibility of life elsewhere in our solar system, Mercury is easily one of the last places you’d think of. Being the closest planet to the sun – with no true atmosphere – it is a broiling, uninhabitable place of desolation. But was it always like that? As unlikely as it seems, a new study announced by researchers at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) suggests that some regions in Mercury’s subsurface might have once been hospitable enough for prebiotic chemistry or – perhaps – even simple microscopic lifeforms.
The intriguing findings were published in a new peer-reviewed paper in Scientific Reports on March 16, 2020.
The study focuses on Mercury’s chaotic terrain (aka its weird terrain): vast, cratered and “knobby” landscapes first seen by the Mariner 10 flybys in 1974. There are evolving ideas on how it came to be, but – according to the new study – this terrain was created by the removal of massive amounts of volatiles – chemical elements and compounds with low boiling points – in Mercury’s upper crust (and not simply seismic disturbances from the Caloris Basin impact as long thought).
The chaotic terrain studied is antipodal – on the direct opposite side of the planet from – the Caloris Basin. The new analysis is based on much higher-resolution images taken later by the MESSENGER spacecraft. From the paper:
Mercury’s images obtained by the 1974 Mariner 10 flybys show extensive cratered landscapes degraded into vast knob fields, known as chaotic terrain (AKA hilly and lineated terrain). For nearly half a century, it was considered that these terrains formed due to catastrophic quakes and ejecta fallout produced by the antipodal Caloris Basin impact. Here, we present the terrains’ first geologic examination based on higher spatial resolution MESSENGER (MErcury Surface Space ENvironment GEochemistry and Ranging) imagery and laser altimeter topography. Our surface age determinations indicate that their development persisted until ~1.8 Ga, or ~2 Gyrs after the Caloris Basin formed.
Furthermore, we identified multiple chaotic terrains with no antipodal impact basins; hence a new geological explanation is needed. Our examination of the Caloris Basin’s antipodal chaotic terrain reveals multi-kilometer surface elevation losses and widespread landform retention, indicating an origin due to major, gradual collapse of a volatile-rich layer. Crater interior plains, possibly lavas, share the chaotic terrains’ age, suggesting a development associated with a geothermal disturbance above intrusive magma bodies, which best explains their regionality and the enormity of the apparent volume losses involved in their development. Furthermore, evidence of localized, surficial collapse, might reflect a complementary, and perhaps longer lasting, devolatilization history by solar heating.
Map of a chaotic terrain on Mercury (white outline). This region is on the antipode – the opposite point on the sphere of the planet – from the Caloris basin.
Illustrations depicting the formation of chaotic terrains on Mercury. (A) A perspective cross-sectional view of Mercury’s cratered terrains undergoing structurally controlled upper crustal devolatilization and collapse. (B) Chaotic terrain landscape following large-scale volatile losses from the upper crust.
The findings mean that Mercury had a thick volatile-rich – possibly but not necessarily water-rich – crust in this location. Mercury’s surface temperature reaches a scorching 430 degrees Celsius [800 degrees Fahrenheit] during the daytime, and in the absence of an atmosphere, it plummets to -180 degrees Celsius [-290 F] at night. So, its surface environments have rightfully been out of scientific consideration as a possible host of life. However, the paper raises the prospect that some subsurface regions of Mercury have shown capacity for hosting life.
The materials in the chaotic terrains were once part of geologic deposits deep underground, where crustal volatiles would have been protected. Those volatiles could have included water or water ice. PSI coauthor Daniel Berman said:
The deep valleys and enormous mountains that now characterize the chaotic terrains were once part of volatile-rich geologic deposits a few kilometers deep, and do not consist of ancient cratered surfaces that were seismically disturbed due to the formation of Mercury’s Caloris impact basin on the opposite side of the planet, as some scientists had speculated. A key to the discovery was the finding that the development of the chaotic terrains persisted until approximately 1.8 billion years ago, 2 billion years after the Caloris Basin formed.
Another coauthor, Gregory Leonard at the University of Arizona, said:
We identified multi-kilometer surface elevation losses within the chaotic terrains located at the Caloris Basin’s antipode. This finding indicates that enormous volumes of crustal volatiles turned into gas and escaped the planet’s upper crust over a surface area slightly larger than that of California, approximately 500,000 square kilometers [200,000 sq miles].
It has been thought that Mercury’s chaotic terrain was formed by the impact that created the Caloris Basin, but the new research suggests it may have been formed by the removal of crustal volatiles instead.
Image via NASA/ Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/ Carnegie Institution of Washington.
As Rodriguez also noted, the chaotic terrains on Mercury appear to be global, and might be found elsewhere as well, on Mercury-like exoplanets:
Our investigation also shows that there are also numerous extensive chaotic terrains in other regions of the planet, which have latitudinal distributions ranging from equatorial to subpolar. Hence, Mercury’s volatile-rich crust appears to be greater than regional, perhaps global, in extent, and it is most likely made up of compositionally diverse volatile compounds. The apparent compositional diversity suggests that the planet’s upper crust might effectively be comprised of a large number of compositional and thermal conditions, some perhaps habitable, existing in Mercury-like exoplanets.
But just how did the crustal volatiles get released from the subsurface? According to PSI scientist Kevin Webster, it was most likely due to volcanoes:
Vast lava fields formed soon after the development of the chaotic terrains, so volcanic heat could have destabilized and released the apparently vast volumes of crustal volatiles.
As for how Mercury obtained its volatiles in the first place, PSI scientist and coauthor Jeff Kargel added:
We also observe evidence of surficial devolatilization, probably caused by solar heating. If so, we have an opportunity to infer the range of Mercury’s volatile properties and compositions. A possibility is that Mercury’s volatile-rich crust was delivered via impacts from the frigid confines of the outer solar system or the main asteroid belt. Alternatively, volatiles were outgassed from the interior.
The battered surface of Mercury, as seen by the MESSENGER spacecraft. Bright rays radiate outward from Hokusai Crater in this view.
Image via NASA/ Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/ Carnegie Institution of Washington.
The researchers also noted that volatiles could have still been escaping from Mercury’s subsurface even much more recently, perhaps even still going on to this day. As Rodriguez noted:
Evidence of recent, and perhaps on-going, volatile losses from within near-surface geologic materials on Mercury has been previously documented through the investigation of small depressions known as hollows, which kind of resemble melt pits in terrestrial permafrost. However, an unresolved issue remains the age disparity between these hollows and their volatile-bearing geologic units, which are thought to be billions of years old. Our results suggest that some hollows might represent the locations where lavas or sublimation lags covering these ancient geologic materials underwent collapse. This is exciting because their distribution might highlight areas where we can effectively access volatile-rich material, that after billions of years existing in the subsurface, have been finally been exposed to the surface.
If Mercury’s early volatiles did include water or ice – something still unknown – then conceivably the planet could have had habitable niches in its subsurface. According to Kargel:
While not all volatiles make for habitability, water ice can if temperatures are right. Some of Mercury’s other volatiles may have added to the characteristics of a former aqueous niche. Even if habitable conditions existed only briefly, relics of prebiotic chemistry or rudimentary life still might exist in the chaotic terrains.
Alexis Rodriguez at PSI, lead author of the new study.
We also know that water ice still exists on Mercury today, in deep polar craters that are always in permanent shadow, and therefore much colder since there is no atmosphere to distribute heat from the sunlit regions. As PSI scientist Mark Sykes said:
If these results are confirmed, this and other similar areas of collapse on Mercury could be important considerations for future landing sites to investigate the origin of the planet’s volatile-rich crust and, perhaps, even its astrobiological potential.
The idea that Mercury could have supported life, or at least prebiotic chemistry, sounds outlandish at first thought, but – just maybe – this scorching, airless little world wasn’t always as inhospitable as it is now, at least underground.
Bottom line: Habitable conditions may have once existed in Mercury’s subsurface, according to a new study from the Planetary Science Institute.
Cette vidéo n'est pas de moi. Un ami me l'a transmis. Filmé vers Montréal en fin d'après midi avec un Nikon P1000
Il me raconte:
Je film régulièrement la Lune de jour, au moment du premier et dernier croissant. Je pense que si une activité cachée doit être visible sur la Lune, c'est à ce moment la, quand la population ne l'observe pas, parce qu'il fait jour et que le premier ou dernier croissant la rend plus discrète dans le ciel. Et après des centaines de vidéos, le 26 mars...
Here’s a question for all you stargazers out there: what can you see passing through the sky at night that resemble stars or satellites, but all moving in a row?
Many people have been asking this question recently, in light of unusual sightings of things in the night sky seen in a variety of locations across the globe.
One such report was shared with me by a pilot back in November, who gave the following description of an unusual looking string of lights he observed in the sky:
“Earlier this evening, at 35,000 feet and 2300z/7 pm Atlantic Standard time, I and my copilot saw a string of lights, high enough to be single points and not resolvable into objects, all irregularly strung out but in a perfect line and all with constant distances, covering in distance maybe 1/8 to 1/6 the arc of the sky, moving from roughly 335 degrees to 155 degrees on the compass and visible for 20-30 seconds.
“At the time we were near 23N, 74W or roughly due south of San Salvador island,” he recalled.
The time of the sighting was just after sundown, and the pilot (who requested that his name not be used) and his co-pilot observed the moon rising east of them.
“All told there were probably 15-20 points strung out irregularly but in a perfect line, with no ionization trails or burning visible.”
The pilot was perplexed by what they had seen and was unable to recall observing anything similar in the past. He also explained that he was familiar with the sorts of things common to the night sky on any clear night, which ranges from meteors to commercial satellites.
“I’ve seen a lot of meteors up here as most of my flying is at night, and these were not meteors. I checked my satellite tracking app on my phone, but it showed nothing.”
So what were the objects these pilots observed in the sky while flying near San Salvador Island back in November?
Recent reports indicate that similar observations have continued into 2020, particularly by witnesses in the southwest from states like California, to as far south Mexico. General descriptions given liken the objects to a “strange row of lights” seen passing through the night sky, usually just after sundown.
Although the pilot who contacted me in November was unsure of what the objects were that he and his co-pilot observed, he did have one idea about what could account for the lights they saw.
“I assume this is a string of low earth orbit satellites, or space junk,” he wrote to me, “but I honestly have no idea where to start.”
This is an excellent guess, especially on account of the fact SpaceX had just launched a series of satellites into space around the same time of the San Salvador sighting.
According to Gizmodo, “SpaceX launched 60 satellites into orbit back in May and another 60 in November 11 as part of the Starlink satellite constellation, meant to increase satellite internet access.”
Starlink satellites as seen from space shortly after launch in May 2019
(Credit: Starlink / Wikimedia Commons).
The satellites, according to Ryan F. Mandelbaum in his Gizmodo piece, “are also producing bright trains of lights across the sky, stoking UFO fears for those unaware of the satellites and distracting astronomers.”
Although the deployment of these satellites may increase the availability of satellite internet in some locales, not everyone is thrilled about SpaceX’s new project. Many astronomers worry that having a “night train” of satellites drifting through the sky poses the risk of “obscuring our natural view of the cosmos,” as well as causing interference with “important astronomical observations,” George Dvorsky writes.
Will SpaceX’s Starlink satellites prove to be beneficial in the long run, or simply a nuisance to astronomers and night sky “purists”? Although this remains to be seen, what’s for certain is that the Starlink array will become a common sight in the years to come for anyone who spends enough time looking at the night sky.
Russia is in many ways still mysterious land that many in the West consider to be rather murky and misunderstood. Buried within the files of the strange and paranormal there are numerous cases from Russia and the former Soviet Union that for whatever reasons have managed to slip through the cracks and remain forgotten conundrums that few people have ever even heard of, and some of these revolve around UFOs and alien beings in the frigid waters of this mysterious land. Here we will take a look at some remarkably odd accounts of UFOs and strange entities that orbit bodies of water in this secretive realm.
One very intriguing and spectacular account supposedly occurred in 1959 in what was then Soviet-controlled Poland. In February of that year, several witnesses in the area of a place called Gdynia observed a glowing light fall from the sky to go plunging into the frigid waters of the harbor, which was choked up with ice floes at the time. It apparently created quite a commotion at the time, and thinking that perhaps an aircraft had gone down there was a search and rescue effort launched with a team of divers. It was there down through the icy waters in the muck at the bottom that the divers would allegedly uncover a piece of shiny metal that had not rusted and was assumed to be part of whatever it was had come down out of the heavens.
According to the account, this metal piece was turned over to the Polish Navy, who made a preliminary examination of it before sending it off to the Polytechnic University of Gdynia, where it apparently vanished into the mists of time. In the meantime, the Navy closed the whole area down and restricted access, but the weirdness was only just beginning. A few days after the object had come down into the harbor, it was reported that several military personnel came across what was described as a “strange silhouette humanoid” that appeared to be wearing a uniform of some sort and was apparently injured, with burns on its face and crawling along the beach in exhaustion, wet and seeming to have crept out of the water. The soldiers tried to communicate with the strange humanoid, which appeared to be male, but they were not familiar with the language he spoke. As he was obviously seriously injured, it was arranged to bring this being to the hospital, where it would get even stranger still.
Once at the hospital it was immediately clear that this humanoid was weirder than anyone had thought. His uniform was made of some sort of strange metallic material that no one recognized, and no matter what medical staff did they seemed to be unable to remove it. The uniform had no discernible buttons, zippers, or any way to put it on or take it off, and the material it was constructed of apparently could not be cut or torn. In overall appearance he appeared to be almost identical to a human being, although there were anomalies, such as extra digits on his fingers and toes, and other minor differences that marked him as being not human. Doctors tended as well as they could to the burns on the being’s face, but when they removed an armband on the uniform he apparently went into some sort of cardiac arrest and died.
The body was sent in for an autopsy, and they purportedly needed specialized equipment to remove that odd uniform. When the body was examined, the humanoid was purportedly found to have a completely different circulatory system than human beings, as well as different organs. Unbelievably there was another of these creatures found on the same beach in the meantime, and this one apparently fell into a coma-like state and was placed in some sort of frozen stasis, the body whisked away and hidden somewhere. What happened to these two bodies and that piece of what is assumed was their crashed ship? No one seems to know. The case has been picked up by UFOlogists over the years and has been written of at length by UFO researcher Arthur Shuttlewood and others, but there seems to be very little to verify the story, no witnesses that have been interviewed, and it has the feel of being almost urban legend rather than anything else. However, one does wonder just what happened here, if anything.
An even earlier account of a similar type of apparent UFO crash into a body of water comes to us from November of 1928, at remote Lake Vedlozero, near Shuknavolok, in Russia’s Yaroslavl province. One evening an incandescent object spewing flames was seen to crash into the lake, and while this may sound like it surely must have been a meteor there would be a series of very strange sightings that suggested otherwise. Shortly after this object came down, people would begin to report seeing what they called “water goblins” in the lake or wandering along the shore, described as dwarfish beings with hairless rounded heads and long thin arms and legs. In some reports they were described as wearing metallic shiny one-piece suits of some sort. It is possible that these were misidentification of the seals that occasionally appear in the lake, but with very little other information on this case it is hard to say.
These are bizarre cases to be sure, but perhaps not quite as much so as what happened to a Russian submariner and diver named Nikolay M., as he was diving one day in 1997 in the Bay of Finland, in the Saint Petersburg region of Russia. Nikolay allegedly was diving in shallow water when he saw an elongated object on the bottom which was reminiscent of a cucumber. He at first took it to be a part of some sort of wreckage, and tried to get it to the surface by tying some old rope around it, but he was ultimately unable to budge the odd object. Undeterred, he decided to actually haul it out with his car, which was on shore and not that far away. He retrieved a pneumatic drill in order to drill holes in the thing to attack a sling to it, but when he started drilling into the object it began to issue forth streamers of a thick dark liquid like oil, which crept out into the water. In spite of this startling development, he kept pressure on the drill to go deeper, after which it stopped upon hitting something within. At this point the object reportedly split open to regurgitate a bubble containing a humanoid creature with porcelain white skin and a bleeding wound where the drill had apparently hit it.
The creature did not seem pleased, and fixed the diver with a malevolent gaze, after which it lashed out with taloned hands to grab his arm and cut into his flesh. Nikolay then supposedly used the drill to bore into his attacker, after which it let go and he lost consciousness. The next thing he knew, he was being dragged from the water by rescuers. It was found that he had sustained deep cuts on his arm and lost a piece of his hand, but there was no sign of the strange cucumber object or its bizarre, unearthly occupant. What did this man see? Was it some sort of cocoon? If so, for what? Nobody knows.
Of course when talking about weird alien and UFO activity in Russian waters it is only natural that Lake Baikal comes into it at some point. Lake Baikal lies in the Russian region of Siberia, between the Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast. At 5,387 feet (1,642 meters) deep and with a surface area of 12,248 square miles (31,722 square kilometers) it is the deepest lake in the world and the seventh largest by surface area. The lake is so large and so deep that it is estimated to hold 20% of the world’s unfrozen fresh water. The area has long been known for its UFO related weirdness as well. There have long been numerous reports of strange lights and alleged alien spacecraft over the lake, but perhaps the most interesting stories come from declassified Soviet era documents compiled on unexplainable incidents by the Russian navy under the command of deputy Navy commander Admiral Nikolay Smirnov. Although the documents are not completely focused on UFOS or even Lake Baikal in particular, the two make regular appearances and the documents mention numerous UFO related incidents and sightings around Lake Baikal nevertheless.
Lake Baikal
One such account describes how in 1958, a Russian TU-154 plane crashed into the lake’s frigid waters after allegedly being pursued by a UFO. Other reports come from various fishermen, who have seen strange lights hovering over the lake, cruising underwater or even spectacularly erupting from below the waves to shoot into the sky above. People have also reported UFOs rapidly descending from the heavens only to gently alight upon the surface of the lake and float like a boat. One of the most bizarre accounts related to aliens and UFOs at Lake Baikal allegedly happened in 1982, when navy divers in the lake reported encountering humanoid creatures that were dressed in silvery suits about 164 feet (50 meters) underwater. The report claims that three of the divers were killed when they tried to pursue the creatures and four divers were seriously injured. The Russian government denies that any of the accounts in their documents stem from otherworldly sources and maintains that everything described must have some natural explanation.
The reports of lights and humanoid creatures in Lake Baikal’s depths have, perhaps not surprisingly, led to theories that aliens could have underwater bases here, and there are other bizarre reports of strangeness in the lake that seem to somewhat support this far out notion. In 1977, a deep water submersible called Paysis was involved in scientific research operating at a depth of 1,200 meters in the dark, frigid water. At one point, the vehicle’s spotlight turned off and it was in complete darkness until a sudden bright beam shone upon it from an outside source. The blinding light reportedly remained fixed on the submersible for several seconds before flickering out and once more leaving the sub in cold blackness. It has never been satisfactorily explained what the source of the light was.
These are just a few of the many reports to come out of the secretive nation of Russia, where a lot of paranormal and UFO related accounts seem to just disappear before anyone has a chance to really look at them. It seems to be largely believed that for as elusive as many seem to think the West is with such reports, the former Soviet Union is perhaps even more so, such reports mostly confined to very murky waters indeed. What are we looking at with these accounts of underwater UFOs and beings that have been coughed up from the depths? Are these simply sensationalized accounts, hoaxes, or something more? It is hard to say, and as long as such accounts find their way to the light of day there will undoubtedly be discussion and speculation.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
After 4,400 Years Ancient Comet Atlas Arrives Again, Something to Worry About?
After 4,400 Years Ancient Comet Atlas Arrives Again, Something to Worry About?
Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS, was discovered on Dec. 28, 2019, by the survey Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System and it will become one of the brightest objects in the night sky and potentially the 'comet of a generation'.
The comet's tail, which is about 3.3 million km, or more than twice as wide as the sun, is dust and gas while according to Lyudmila Koshman, astronomer at the Moscow Planetarium, the comet's core contains poisonous chemical compound called cyanogen.
ATLAS makes it's close approach to the Earth on May 23, 2020 and according to official statements it poses no danger to Earth as even at its closest point it will be more than 72 million miles away from our planet.
Now this ancient comet visited our solar system approximately 4,400 years ago when the great pyramids were being built in Egypt.
Just a coincidence that the 'Great Biblical Flood' began approximately 4,359 years ago? According to Sir Isaac Newton a comet was the cause of Noah's flood.
We've seen many different reasons why so many different cultures throughout so many different periods of history have looked at comets as harbingers of doom and disaster so the arrival of 'Atlas' in our skies in April and May with this covid-19 outbreak hitting full stride during the same time period is something to think about writes Allnewspipeline in an in-depth article on this issue.
Besides the comet ATLAS there are also potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. According to NASA, five asteroids including 2 city-killer NEOs approaching Earth this weekend and for example Asteroid (1998 OR2). This asteroid has an estimated diameter of 1.1 to 2.5 miles (1.8 to 4.1 kilometers), or about the width of the isle of Manhattan and on it's closest approach on April 29 it will be 3.9 million miles (6.3 million km) from Earth.
While they say that comet ATLAS and or other approaching asteroids or comets pose no threat to earth, with the asteroid impact in Nigeria last week still in mind, with the whole world in lockdown, we may wonder whether there is more going on then that they tell us.
The Hubble Space Telescope is tracking down a suspected black hole that shredded a wayward star that came too close for comfort.
The famed space observatory made the find while hunting down the source of a powerful burst of X-rays caught in 2006 by two other cosmic telescopes: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton).
At the time, astronomers weren't sure if the X-rays had come from inside or outside of the Milky Way galaxy, but new high-resolution photography by Hubble shows that the X-ray source (known as 3XMM J215022.4−055108) is located in a star cluster at the edge of another galaxy. That's exactly where an intermediate-sized black hole (IMBH) may lurk — at least, according to theory.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the location of an intermediate-mass black hole named 3XMM J215022.4−055108 (in the white circle). Hubble's high-resolution imagery revealed that the black hole resides inside a dense star cluster far beyond the Milky Way galaxy, in the outskirts of another galaxy pictured at the center of this image. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/D. Lin (University of New Hampshire))
The team's work further suggests the star cluster may have been the core of a small dwarf galaxy disrupted long ago, when the dwarf galaxy strayed too close to the larger galaxy that currently hosts the star cluster. Gravitational interactions with the larger galaxy may have ripped the dwarf galaxy apart, leaving only a small cluster of stars in its wake. In much the same way, astronomers believe that the gravitational pull of the black hole inside this cluster shredded a star that got too close, thereby producing the X-ray flare detected in 2006.
If the X-rays indeed came from a black hole, astronomers suspect the object is about 50,000 times the mass of our sun. That's a featherweight compared with the supermassive black hole that lies in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which has a mass four million times greater than that of the sun.
"IMBHs have been particularly difficult to find because they are smaller and less active than supermassive black holes; they do not have readily available sources of fuel, nor as strong a gravitational pull to draw stars and other cosmic material which would produce telltale X-ray glows," NASA officials said in a statement. "Astronomers essentially have to catch an IMBH red-handed in the act of gobbling up a star."
An artist's impression of an intermediate-mass black hole tearing apart a wayward star that passed too close. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/D. Player (STScI))
IMBHs are believed to be a "missing link" in our understanding of how black holes evolve. Astronomers have seen many examples of small black holes that are similar in size to a star, and other examples of much larger black holes that typically reside in the centers of galaxies.
But IMBHs remain difficult to confirm as astronomers struggle to understand how supermassive black holes got so darn big, compared to stellar-sized black holes. Hubble and other observatories have found other IMBH candidates in the past, but this newest observation is considered the strongest evidence yet for this class of black hole, according to NASA.
"Intermediate-mass black holes are very elusive objects, and so it is critical to carefully consider and rule out alternative explanations for each candidate. That is what Hubble has allowed us to do for our candidate," Dacheng Lin, a research assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire and principal investigator of the new study, said in the statement.
One other theory for the X-rays was that a neutron star — the dense remnants of an exploded supernova star — may have been responsible. Based on the X-ray glow of the chewed-up star, however, astronomers calculated that the black hole's mass was 50,000 solar masses, which is far more massive than a neutron star (typically about the size of a small city). The mass was calculated using both the X-ray luminosity — the inherent brightness of the X-rays — and the shape of the spectrum.
Hubble also helped track down another possible IMBH in 2009. The object, called HLX-1, was spotted on the edge of a galaxy known as ESO 243-49 — and also resides in a star cluster that could have been a dwarf galaxy in the ancient past. The X-rays spotted in the case of HLX-1, however, likely came from the accretion disk surrounding the black hole. The accretion disk is considered the point of no return for light or other objects to escape a black hole's gravity.
"The main difference is that our object is tearing a star apart, providing strong evidence that it is a massive black hole, instead of a stellar-mass black hole as people often worry about for previous candidates including HLX-1," Lin said.
A NASA astronaut works outside the International Space Station. NASA received more than 12,000 applications in March 2020 from people wanting to become astronauts.
The results are in and, no surprise, a lot of people want to be a NASA astronaut.
More than 12,000 people have applied to join what NASA is calling the "Artemis Generation," a new class of astronauts to help the agency return humans to the moon and reach outward to Mars. It's the second highest number of applications the agency's astronaut corps has ever received, NASA officials said.
"We've entered a bold new era of space exploration with the Artemis program, and we are thrilled to see so many incredible Americans apply to join us," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement today (April 1). "The next class of Artemis Generation astronauts will help us explore more of the moon than ever before and lead us to the Red Planet."
When NASA put out the call for a new astronaut class in February, anticipation was already high. After decades flying in low Earth orbit, NASA is again shooting for the moon with its Artemis program, which aims to land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024. The agency hopes to continue on to Mars in the 2030s.
NASA began taking applications on March 2 and stopped on Tuesday (March 31). The space agency received applications from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and four U.S. territories. The sheer number of applications is second only to the record 18,300 applications NASA received in 2016 for its most recent astronaut class (which graduated in January).
"For this round of applications, NASA increased the education requirement for applicants from a bachelor's degree to a master's degree in a science, technology, math, or engineering field," NASA officials said in the statement. "In addition, the application period was shortened from two months to one."
Now comes the hard part: winnowing down the massive applicant pool to just a handful of candidates with the "Right Stuff" to fly in space.
"We're able to build such a strong astronaut corps at NASA because we have such a strong pool of applicants to choose from," said Anne Roemer, NASA's manager of the Astronaut Selection Board and director of human resources at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It's always amazing to see the diversity of education, experience and skills that are represented in our applicants."
NASA is expected to announce its final selections for the new astronaut class in mid-2021. Once selected, the astronaut candidates will spend the next 2.5 years training for spaceflight and will then have to wait to be selected for a space crew. That timeline would likely mean they may not fly until after 2024, NASA's current target for a moon return.
But the new astronauts are sure to train to fly on NASA's new Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System megarocket (the centerpiece for NASA's Artemis missions), as well as for missions to the International Space Station on private spacecraft like SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner capsule.
NASA currently has 48 active astronauts and has trained 350 astronauts since the agency began training space travelers in the 1960s.
DE KOMEET ATLAS IS BINNENKORT MOGELIJK MET HET BLOTE OOG TE BEWONDEREN!
DE KOMEET ATLAS IS BINNENKORT MOGELIJK MET HET BLOTE OOG TE BEWONDEREN!
Caroline Kraaijvanger
De komeet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) kan de komende maanden wel eens voor spektakel gaan zorgen.
De komeet werd eind vorig jaar ontdekt en stevent momenteel af op onze zon. Hoewel je dan mag verwachten dat de helderheid van de komeet toeneemt, gaat het bij C/2019 Y4 wel vrij snel op het moment. De helderheid neemt zelfs zo snel toe, dat het zomaar zou kunnen dat deze eind april met het blote oog te bewonderen is.
Toename in helderheid “Het is wel een beetje verrassend dat de helderheid zo snel toeneemt,” vertelt onderzoeker Karl Battams, verbonden aan het US Naval Research Laboratory, aan Scientias.nl. “Dit is een komeet die al een paar duizend jaar niet meer in het binnenste van ons zonnestelsel is geweest, dus waarschijnlijk bevat deze nog veel bevroren gassen. Nu de komeet dichter bij de zon in de buurt komt – ongebruikelijk dichtbij zelfs voor een komeet – beginnen deze snel te verdampen en dat zorgt ervoor dat de komeet helderder wordt.”
Op dit moment is de komeet al vrij helder. “Je kunt de komeet nog niet met het blote oog zien, maar je kunt hem zeker zien met een verrekijker of kleine telescoop. We denken dat de komeet tegen het einde van april ’s nachts met het blote oog zichtbaar kan zijn.”
Omvang kern Of dat ook daadwerkelijk gaat gebeuren, is afhankelijk van een aantal factoren. “Het hangt af van de omvang van de komeet (we weten niet precies hoe groot deze is), hoeveel bevroren gassen deze nog bezit en hoe goed de komeet om kan gaan met de geringe afstand tot de zon,” vertelt Battams. “Als de komeet een grote kern heeft en veel bevroren gassen, dan is het mogelijk dat deze tegen het eind van mei zelfs zichtbaar is op klaarlichte dag. Als de komeet een kleine kern of een wat zwakkere kern heeft, is het mogelijk dat deze uiteenvalt nog voor perihelium (het punt waarop de komeet het dichtst bij de zon is, red.) is bereikt.” Welk scenario straks bewaarheid wordt, is koffiedik kijken. “We weten het gewoon niet.” Battams vertelt dat hij lang dacht dat het aannemelijker was dat de komeet uiteen zou vallen dan dat deze heel helder zou worden. Maar inmiddels is hij daar niet meer zo zeker van. “Tot op heden houdt de komeet zich vrij goed, dus ik ben wel steeds optimistischer dat de komeet standhoudt, maar ik denk niet dat deze straks bij daglicht met het blote oog te zien zal zijn.”
Bijzonder Als de komeet eind mei wel overdag te zien is, zou dat heel bijzonder zijn. De laatste keer dat een komeet ook overdag te bewonderen was, was in 2007. Komeet McNaught gaf toen een fraaie show weg. “Het is heel zeldzaam dat kometen dat doen en ik denk niet dat C/2019 Y4 het gaat doen. Maar ik hoop dat ik het mis heb.”
Onderzoek Onderzoekers houden de komeet ondertussen goed in de gaten. Want terwijl de komeet de zon nadert, kan deze heel wat geheimen prijsgeven. “Alle kometen hebben een verhaal te vertellen en dat geldt ook voor deze,” aldus Battams. “Ze kunnen ons meer vertellen over de samenstelling van het jonge zonnestelsel, want ze bevatten relatief ongerepte materialen uit de periode dat ons zonnestelsel ontstond. Wanneer ze dichter bij de zon in de buurt komen en dat materiaal sublimeert, kunnen we iets meer over de samenstelling van zo’n komeet te weten komen. En wanneer ze heel dicht bij de zon in de buurt komen, kunnen we ook bestuderen hoe hun stof en gassen de interactie aangaan met de zonnewind en dat vertelt ons weer meer over de zon.”
Maar wetenschappers hebben nog een reden om juist C/2019 Y4 op de voet te volgen. “Deze komeet is met name heel interessant, omdat het een broertje ljkt te zijn van komeet C/1844 Y1: een heel heldere komeet die in 1844 werd gezien. Ooit, duizenden jaren geleden, maakten deze kometen deel uit van hetzelfde object dat later uiteen is gevallen. Dat gebeurde waarschijnlijk nabij de zon.” Of komeet ATLAS dat kunstje nu, in 2020, gaat herhalen, blijft in nevelen gehuld. “Dat moeten we afwachten.”
Bronmateriaal:
Interview met Karl Battams Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: Buddy_Nath (via Pixabay)
They’re called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs. Astronomers analyzed data from the Dark Energy Survey – which just completed 6 years of observations – to find over 100 new little worlds in the cold outer reaches of our solar system.
Computer-generated concept of the rotation of a trans-Neptunian object, in this case the small world we call Haumea. This little world is egg-shaped because of its fast rotation; its “day” is just under 4 hours long. Meanwhile, its “year” – or orbit around the sun – lasts about 285 Earth-years. Haumea is also known to have a ring and 2 tiny moons.
Objects like Haumea, depicted above, are minor planets, called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs. They orbit in the cold outer reaches of our solar system, out beyond Neptune, taking hundreds of years to orbit the sun once. There are estimated to be perhaps 70,000 TNOs, each at least 60 miles (100 km) across. This month, astronomers at the University of Pennsylvania announced that they’ve successfully pinpointed over 100 new TNOs. As with all known planets, moons and minor planets in our solar system, each one of these little worlds is sure to be unique. The new study also outlines a new approach for finding even more of these far-off worlds.
The updated peer-reviewed findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series on March 10, 2020.
The results come from data obtained by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), which just completed six years of observations this past January. DES’s focus, as the name implies, is to study dark energy, but it is also well-suited to finding TNOs and other smaller solar system objects beyond Neptune. DES typically looks at galaxies and supernovas, so the researchers needed to devise a new way to track movements of much smaller and closer objects. Grad student Pedro Bernardinelli, who led the study, said in a statement:
Dedicated TNO surveys have a way of seeing the object move, and it’s easy to track them down. One of the key things we did in this paper was figure out a way to recover those movements.
Locations of the new TNOs discovered in the DES dataset from the first four years. The outline shows DES’s search range and the color of each dot shows how far away the object is in astronomical units (one AU is the sun-Earth distance, 93 million miles or 150 million km). Two of the detections were more than 90 AU, over 8 billion miles (13 billion km) away.
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.
So how did the researchers find all of these TNOs?
Images from the first four years of DES data contained about 7 billion “dots” that are all of the possible objects able to be detected by the DES software. But many of those would be data errors or larger objects like stars, supernovas or galaxies, which are actually much farther away. Bernardinelli removed any objects that were visible in the same locations on multiple nights, narrowing down the list to about 22 million candidates. He then looked at those objects to see if any of them formed pairs or triplets. That would help the researchers see where those objects might appear on subsequent nights.
That process whittled down the list of candidates much further still, down to about 400 objects. Bernardinelli said:
We have this list of candidates, and then we have to make sure that our candidates are actually real things.
Size comparison of the largest TNOs, including Pluto.
Some of those candidates might still not be actual TNOs, however. So how to figure out which ones are, if any?
The researchers looked for additional images of the objects of interest. According to Bernstein:
Say we found something on six different nights. For TNOs that are there, we actually pointed at them for 25 different nights. That means there’s images where that object should be, but it didn’t make it through the first step of being called a dot.
Another method to ferret out any real TNOs was to stack the images, creating a sharper view. This helped to further sort out real objects from false ones. Bernardinelli said:
The most difficult part was trying to make sure that we were finding what we were supposed to find.
In the end, 316 confirmed TNOs were found in the DES data. Of those, 145 are new objects, not previously discovered. These TNOs range from 30 to 90 times the distance of Earth from the sun. By comparison, Pluto, the best-known TNO (and dwarf planet), is 40 times that distance.
The Blanco Telescope dome at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The telescope used the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) for the Dark Energy Survey.
Finding over 300 TNOs overall is impressive, especially for a survey that isn’t even intended to look for them as a primary goal. The researchers think that as many as 500 may be found in the DES data once they rerun their analysis on the entire dataset. Also, the same techniques can now be used in additional astronomical surveys, such as by the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Bernardinelli said:
Many of the programs we’ve developed can be easily applied to any other large datasets, such as what the Rubin Observatory will produce.
These kinds of datasets could even help scientists finally find the long-sought-after Planet Nine, a hypothetical giant planet about the size of Neptune that may orbit the sun in the extreme outer fringes of the star system, much farther than Pluto. By studying the orbits of additional newly-found TNOs, researchers might finally be able to determine Planet Nine’s location, if it does indeed exist. As 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 catalog 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.
Pedro Bernardinelli at University of Pennsylvania, who led the new TNOs study.
Even if Planet Nine isn’t found, however, the datasets of these intriguing little worlds will provide a wealth of new information about how they – and other planets, moons, asteroids and comets – first formed in the early history of our solar system.
Bottom line: Researchers using the Dark Energy Survey have found over 100 new minor planets beyond Neptune. They’re called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs.
Image captionArtwork: The presumed black hole revealed itself by tearing apart a star that ventured too close
A team of astronomers has found what it says is the best evidence yet for an elusive class of black hole.
They say the presumed "intermediate-mass" black hole betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that ventured too close.
These medium-sized objects are a long-sought "missing link" in the evolution of the cosmos.
Researchers used two X-ray observatories, along with the Hubble telescope, to identify the object.
"Intermediate-mass black holes are very elusive objects, and so it is critical to carefully consider and rule out alternative explanations for each candidate, said Dr Dacheng Lin, from the University of New Hampshire in Durham, US, who led the study.
"That is what Hubble has allowed us to do for our candidate."
The nature of the X-ray flare meant that it could be explained by just two scenarios, according to Dr Lin. It was "either a distant (outside our galaxy) intermediate-mass black hole disrupting and swallowing a star or a cooling neutron star in our own galaxy", he told BBC News.
Neutron stars are the crushed remnants of an exploded star.
What is a black hole?
Image copyrightNASA GSFC/JEREMY SCHNITTMANImage captionArtwork: Black holes come in different sizes, but mid-sized ones have proved elusive
A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape
Despite the name, they are not empty but instead consist of a huge amount of matter packed densely into a small area, giving it an immense gravitational pull
There is a region of space beyond the black hole called the event horizon. This is a "point of no return", beyond which it is impossible to escape the gravitational effects of the black hole
In order to distinguish between the two scenarios, the Hubble Space Telescope was pointed at the X-ray source to resolve its precise location. The telescope provided strong evidence that the X-rays emanated not from an isolated source in the Milky Way, but a distant, dense star cluster on the outskirts of a different galaxy.
This was just the type of place astronomers expected to find a mid-sized black hole. Dr Lin said the Hubble data made this the "most likely" explanation.
So-called supermassive black holes are commonly found at the centres of galaxies; for example, our own Milky Way hosts a massive central black hole called Sagittarius A*.
Image copyrightNASA / ESA / D. LIN (UNH)
Image captionThe black hole (circled) lies on the outskirts of a large galaxy
Image copyrightESAImage caption
Artwork: The X-ray flare was found among thousands of observations taken by the XMM-Newton orbiting observatory
But intermediate-mass black holes have been particularly difficult to find because they are smaller and less active than the massive types. In addition, they don't have as much nearby cosmic material to act as fuel, and lack the strong gravitational pull required to draw stars inwards to produce X-ray flares.
Astronomers effectively had to catch a mid-sized black hole red-handed - in the act of gobbling up a star.
Dr Lin and his colleagues had to comb through thousands of XMM-Newton observations to find one candidate.
Image copyrightNASAImage captionThe Hubble Space Telescope was used for resolve the location of the X-ray source
The X-ray glow from the shredded star allowed astronomers to estimate the black hole's mass at 50,000 times the mass of the Sun.
This isn't the first candidate for a mid-sized black hole. But seeing the object tearing a star apart makes this detection the most persuasive yet, according to Dr Lin's team. A Nasa video has visualised how the black hole might have consumed the star:
Intermediate-mass black holes are key to many questions about black hole evolution. For example, does a super-massive black hole grow from a mid-sized one?
Astronomers also want to understand how mid-sized black holes form and whether they tend to reside in dense star clusters, such as this one.
"Studying the origin and evolution of the intermediate-mass black holes will finally give an answer as to how the supermassive black holes that we find in the centres of massive galaxies came to exist," said team member Dr Natalie Webb, from the University of Toulouse, France.
A FARMER may have become the first person in the world to be killed by a UFO, according to astonishing claims made in a new book.
Brazilian Luis Barroso Fernandes died from a mysterious illness after he claimed he was "zapped" by "small aliens" he said came out of a strange "disc".
Luis just a few days before his deathCredit: Philip Mantle
Brit investigator Philip Mantle now believes Brazilian Luis Barroso Fernandes may be the first person to die following a close encounter with a UFO - and has published the bizarre claims for the first time in a new book.
Luis says he heard a strange buzzing sound and spotted the object in the sky a few kilometers outside the city of Quixadá, according to the book.
He later claimed that the disc landed 30 meters away from him and two small alien beings emerged, one holding some sort of "flashlight". He said the "unknown entity" then zapped him and his donkey in the face, apparently leaving them both paralysed.
Luis was said to be in perfect healthy before the alleged sightingCredit: Philip Mantle
When he woke up he says he was several meters away, he felt dizzy, was trembling, had burn marks on his face, trouble breathing and an intense headache.
A cowboy found the shaken farmer and took him home to his wife who called in top doctors, who apparently could not diagnose his mysterious condition.
He was examined by Dr Antônio Moreira Magalhães, who listened to Fernandes's account and, although he did not believe in flying saucers at the time, did concede that something very serious happened to the farmer.
The doctor recorded all the information in the medical records and prescribed an anti-allergy drug, a tranquilizer and absolute rest for Luis following the alleged incident in 1973.
Luis's hair apparently became grey the day after the alleged sightingCredit: Philip Mantle
But Fernandes continued to feel ill, with severe pain throughout his body, burning eyes and the left side of his body was still red.
According to the book, a few days after the encounter his hair turned grey and he had lapses of memory.
Those around him claimed he was perfectly fit before the alleged incident but then his health rapidly deteriorated, and he began to regress mentally until he was like a child.
His relatives even took him to a psychiatric hospital in Fortaleza, in the São Geraldo neighborhood, where he was examined by 16 doctors - all of whom also failed to make an accurate diagnosis, the book claims.
Dr. Magalhães also began to follow the health of Fernandes and was able to verify his worsening medical condition and mental capacity.
Before his death in April 1993, Fernandes could only mutter the words: "Mom", "give" and "fear."
The claims are being made in new book UFO Contacts in BrazilCredit: Philip Mantle
Two students, military personnel and a local radio broadcaster also reported seeing the UFO over the city on the same date.
Philip Mantle, a former director of investigations for the British UFO Research Association, has published the account in a new book UFO Contacts in Brazil.
He told The Sun: "Many people claim to have come into direct contact with a UFO and some even claim that it has hurt them as a result.
"A bruise here, a small cut there, but Luis Barroso Fernandes may be the first person ever killed after his encounter with a UFO."
The book author Thiago Luiz Ticchetti added: "Contact with a UFO is not common at all but when the UFO in question shoots a beam of light at you, a light that hits you full in the face is extremely rare.
"This is what happened to Luis Barroso Fernandes.
"The illnesses that followed his immediately after this encounter is bizarre to say the least and went undiagnosed by a number of different doctors.
"Did the beam of light that hit him cause these illnesses and eventually his death? We will probably never know but this is one of the most bizarre and rarest such close encounters on record, of that there is no doubt."
When you think of how an alien abduction might play out, what do you imagine? Many of us might immediately conjure up thoughts of a person out in the middle of nowhere, far from home in some remote setting, where the weirdness begins. This might seem to make sense, as why would UFOs do it any other way? Yet, there are many supposed encounters that have happened in decidedly more mundane circumstances, with people being whisked away in familiar environments and even from their own homes, and here is a selection of some such very odd cases of abductions from the last places you might suspect.
Some of the stranger UFO abductions do come from the outdoors, but not necessarily under the kind of circumstances one would expect for such spectacular encounters. One of these supposedly happened one summer evening in 1995, when a group of friends was out having a casual BBQ party right in the suburban yard of a home in Derbyshire, in the East Midlands of England. They had all been talking and having a blast until 10:30 PM rolled around and things took a turn for the decidedly bizarre. The witnesses would later claim that a very large, disc shaped craft had descended from the sky to hover over their party, after which they all suddenly fell violently ill, displaying nausea and uncontrollable vomiting. The strange UFO would then float off into the distance, but something was obviously not right.
It seemed as if there was some missing time involved, as one of the witnesses noticed that the BBQ itself had gone from glowing coals to dead ash, and the food that had sat upon it was burned to a charred crisp. When they realized all of this and looked at their watches, it would turn out that a full 90 minutes had passed, which none of them could recall. In the following days they would all be plagued by strange nightmares and feelings of inexplicable, crippling anxiety, and they then agreed to be hypnotized to try and dredge up any memories of what had happened during that lost 90 minutes. In separate sessions, they would all recall under hypnosis that they had been brought aboard that weird craft and examined in some sort of room that looked reminiscent of an operating theater but with walls that were “round, but divided into squares.” A few of them would even recall having been to other planets, and it leaves one to wonder just what happened during this otherwise normal BBQ.
More well known than this is the 1969 case of a José Antonio da Silva, in Bebedouro, Minas Gerais, Brazil. He was just out for a leisurely day of fishing not far from his home on one calm day when he realized that there was someone moving about behind him and whispering. This was odd enough as it was, but then he says he was suddenly struck by a sudden paralysis, which sent him sprawling to the ground unable to move. He was then approached by several figures speaking an unfamiliar language and dressed in helmets and suits that seemed to be fashioned of aluminum foil, who roughly grabbed him and dragged him aboard a nearby cylindrical metallic craft of some sort. Once aboard, one of the beings slapped a helmet on him and things would quickly graduate from the weird to the utterly bizarre.
The UFO sped away as he was brought to some sort of large, sterile looking room. There before him was allegedly a humanoid being covered with hair and with reddish hair on its head that flowed down to its waist, and it was surrounded by several other, smaller dwarfish beings. They had in their possession all of his fishing equipment and tackle, which they seemed to be intently examining with great interest. As the frightened and startled Da Silva looked around this bizarre room, he claimed that he had seen other people in there, kept upon a shelf of some sort and awake but seemingly paralyzed much as he was. One of the smaller, hairy dwarf-like creatures approached him and made him drink some sort of dark green concoction, after which they spoke with him about human civilization and during this time one of the creatures snatched away his crucifix. After that, Da Silva was apparently taken back to Earth, where he would awaken outside of the town of Vitoria, a full 200 miles from where he had started. When he later got back to the nearby town, he would realize that he had been gone for nearly 5 days. Whatever happened to this man, it wasn’t your typical leisurely day out fishing.
Even weirder than these accounts are those abductions that have supposedly occurred within rather residential or even urban areas. In march of 1988 there was one such account from a witness by the name of Helen Thomas, who was out along with her mother Carol near Birmingham, England when they took a trip down a residential alleyway on their way to work at a nearby mill. As they went through one alleyway as they always did, they became aware of a strange humming sound that reverberated around them, followed by a blinding light from above. Both of the women reportedly felt extremely dizzy and nauseous at this time, and just as they felt they could not bear it anymore the light was simply gone as suddenly as it had appeared.
They soon realized that several hours had passed which they could not account for, and Helen’s jacket was oddly very wet, despite the fact that it had not been raining and everything around them was dry. Over the coming days both of them would experience their skin breaking out in blisters and welts for no apparent reason, and they also had frequent nosebleeds and a strange discharge from their navels. They would eventually tell of what had happened to UFO researcher Tony Todd, who was convinced that they had been abducted and arranged to have them hypnotized. Under hypnosis it would all get stranger still, as they described what had happened to them in that alleyway during their missing time.
They claimed that after the light had enveloped them they had found themselves in a bright, white room, lying atop tables next to each other and with “wet netted cloths” over them. Around them were several odd beings with large heads, very thin, long arms, and “wet, wrinkled skin.” In the corner was another, different being, who looked almost human and had blonde hair, blue eyes, and was dressed in some sort of silver uniform with an insignia upon it. These creatures then pushed glass tubes into their belly buttons, and they both had the instinctive feeling that the beings were “taking eggs” from them. One of the creatures examined Helen’s leather jacket, rubbing it upon its body and seemingly fascinated with the texture of the leather. When the examination was complete the two women were shown a display covered with strange symbols and images of violence and war. They had then been dropped off back into the alleyway from which they had been taken.
It is another weird case among many, and our next one comes from a woman who was allegedly just innocently out hanging out her wash. The woman known only as a “Mrs. G” was purportedly out on her balcony hanging out clothes when a bright light suddenly swept down from the sky to hover right above her. She says the UFO shot down a beam of light that brought her up into a craft of some sort, upon which were strange beings dressed in “tight, shiny metallic suits.” She then felt some sort of strike from behind and woke up again in her own yard, where it became apparent that several hours had passed. She apparently then went about finishing the chore she started with, and it is unclear how this story really ends.
Perhaps even spookier than these accounts we have looked at so far are those in which people have been abducted by otherworldly forces from right out of the comfort of their own homes. A stunning example of this is the apparent abduction of a woman by the name of Betty Andreasson, in the city of South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, in the United States. On the evening of January 25, 1967, Betty was in the kitchen of her home while her seven children, mother, and father were right nearby in the living room. It would have seemed to be just a normal evening if it wasn’t for the weirdness that was about to unfold.
At around 6:30 PM, the lights flickered, followed by a thin beam of reddish light projecting down through the kitchen window, and that was when Betty’s father looked outside to see five strange humanoid creatures approaching the home. These creatures apparently “hopped” towards the home and phased right through the door, after which the entire family was supposedly frozen in time. The creatures were described as being about 5 feet tall, with pear-shaped heads, wide eyes, and small ears and noses, their mouths mere slits. They were dressed in blue one-piece suits of some sort, and each hand had only three fingers. All of them travelled about by levitating, and they seemed to be particularly interested in Betty, who they led outside to a large, metallic craft outside. Betty would later relate how she had been brought aboard this ship and subjected to examinations, as one of the creatures apparently stayed behind to look after her paralyzed family. After they were done, they were all released with lost time. Hypnosis would uncover some of this, and it would be actively investigated by UFO researcher Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who found the family to be perfectly sane and reliable witnesses. Just what happened here? Who knows?
Lastly, we have a case from a witness in the Houston suburb of Pearland, Texas, who says this happened right as he was taking a nap on the sofa in his own home. He says he woke to what he though at first to be vivid hallucinations, as if he had been drugged, but it would soon prove to be far stranger. He says of his harrowing experience:
I looked to my right and saw something in my bathroom. It was small, I thought maybe a squirrel or raccoon had gotten in the house. I closed the door to trap it, but upon a closer inspection, nothing was there. I heard what I thought were voices and strange noises coming from my neighbors’ yard. From my window, it looked like my neighbors were building a very large tall bench swing, there was a red color coming from this area. I thought that the neighbors were maybe playing with lights of some sort and that this may have been the reason for the strange colors in my bedroom. This all happened around midnight. I wanted to find out what was possibly happening next door so I went downstairs.
As I was reaching the stairs I noticed an unrecognizable symbol on the wall that seemed to be made of blue light. When I touched it, it felt warm. This light also cast a blue reflection on the white enamel paint of the bannister. I realized that this could not have been a reflection from next door because of the lack of windows in my staircase. When I got outside, it was quiet. I asked “hello” and didn’t get an immediate response. The air felt staticy and it felt as though if I touched anything that I’d receive a shock. When I peered through the fence I saw ten black spheres; Four on top, three below, then two and one, like an inverted triangle. It rose slightly, then the top left sphere broke away from the others and came towards me. At first I panicked and could not move. As I looked into this sphere, it had an iridescence to it that made me feel calm when I looked at it. I do not remember going back to my room, I just remember being there. I noticed the clock said 1:45am. I also noticed some dried crusty blood around my right nostril. The room still had those two strange colors moving all around the surfaces of the walls and ceiling.
Not understanding what was happening, I jumped into bed and buried my face in the pillows. I woke the next morning with the distinct feeling that this was real and not a dream. There were still bits of dried blood in my nostril and for a few days after, the area just to the side of my nostril still hurt. Deep under the skin like when a pimple is coming up. Then it went away. I know this happened to me, everything inside me says it was real. I have no way of explaining it and I have no real way of filing it away in my mind like you would with a normal experience.
Looking at such cases as we have here, it would seem that UFO abductions are a phenomenon far from just those people wandering about on the fringes of civilization. It seems that this is something that can happen to anyone at any time, which makes it all even creepier and more unsettling than it already is. What are we to make of such reports? Are these truly visitations from creatures from beyond our world and understanding, or is there something more to it all? Whatever one may think, these certainly remain up there with some of the stranger UFO abduction cases there are, and are certainly worthy of further discussion.
In modern accounts of UFO sightings, one variety of unidentified flying objects remains particularly prevalent: the so-called “black triangles,” which denote large, dark-colored and slow-moving three-sided aircraft. Reports of the objects have maintained a remarkable degree of consistency over time, and involve massive objects that fly at low altitude, and are generally observed moving at night.
Reports of sightings of these objects began to become prevalent in the 1980s and even saw some coverage in American periodicals like Popular Mechanics, where sightings of vast “flying wings” were likened to being the next generation of American stealth aircraft.
Despite their appearance over places like California’s Antelope Valley—a locale that has been long associated with sightings of experimental aircraft produced by the Lockheed Corporation—many of the reports were difficult to bite off and chew. Greg Pope’s reporting on sightings of what he dubbed “the big wing” in Popular Mechanics in late 1991 noted that some of the descriptions of these aircraft by California residents “simply strains credulity.”
Sightings continued throughout the 1990s, and not just in America, but elsewhere around the world. A “wave” of such reports occurred over Belgium in the early 90s and similar sightings that have continued over the UK and Canada seemingly rule out the possibility that experimental aircraft of U.S. origin can account for such reports.
Sightings in the U.S. aren’t relegated solely to the southwest, either. A report I received from one individual (who preferred not to be named) occurred when he was a youth growing up in northern Kentucky. The period would have been between 1994 and 1995, and one Saturday evening during an outdoor gathering at his parent’s home, he and around ten others observed, “a completely silent, black triangle fly south to north directly over our heads.”
The witness estimated that the aircraft was flying at an altitude of approximately 100 to 150 feet “and moved silently.” The object appeared to have three lights on the bottom, and subsequent phone calls made by the mother of the witness to the control tower at the nearby Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport indicated that no unusual objects were observed, nor detected on radar.
Sightings of a similar object occurred over southern Illinois in January 2000, when police began receiving phone calls in the early morning hours about a massive object observed flying at low altitude over St. Clair County. The aircraft was followed by several officers, and dispatch recordings gave real-time descriptions a massive, triangle-shaped object.
“I couldn’t find a single significant difference between the St. Clair object and an advertising blimp in transmit, which is exactly what the FAA told the Riverfront Times,” noted Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast in 2014. It is fair to ask, in light of this explanation, why an advertising blimp would have been operating at approximately 4 AM over southern Illinois, and why no flight logs were ever disclosed to account for the craft in question being a conventional blimp.
Reports of similar objects have continued in recent times, too. In 2020, KLAS reporter George Knapp wrote of a sighting by journalist Cateland White, who described seeing a large, slow-moving triangular object as it passed over her home in 2019.
White gave the following description of the object:
“It was triangular shaped, and there were rectangular reflectors,” White said. “There was no interior light coming out of it at all. And by the time it got out of sight, I bet it was five to eight minutes. It was really slow. And I couldn’t figure out how it was staying in the air.”
Such accounts beg the question of not only whether experimental aircraft may be operating in the skies over America, but also whether they have been deployed for service here and in other countries around the world. Then there is the other possibility, of course, that they are not part of the current inventory of the United States, or that of any other nation.
Whatever their source, the so-called “black triangles” have reached near-mythical status among aviation buffs, and represent some of the most perplexing modern cases involving large unidentified aircraft in our skies.
Nibiru - Dr Sam.. Do Nibiru and Comet Atlas have something in common ?
Nibiru - Dr Sam.. Do Nibiru and Comet Atlas have something in common ?
The comet Atlas looks as if it’s coming in from the direction of Ursa Major, dipping down and will go through Perseus, Taurus and Orion during the months of May and June (sky map link below). And Dr Sam is right, a lot of the links are exaggerating the size of the core of Comet Atlas, when in fact they are measuring the coma of gas, “the envelope” as Dr Sam calls it, which surrounds the core.
commentary by Dr. Sam
Recently, there was much conversation about comet Atlas (C / 2019 Y4), which should appear at the end of this month. Some took advantage of this natural astronomical event to amplify, to intimidate and to provoke terror. And link it to the Carona virus, and its dissemination. And it is a bad omen, and frighteningly will clash with Earth, and that it is the very planet-comet which will end the world … !!!! ….
I don’t know … what is the interest of these people in causing terror among people … ?? !! … Is it not enough for them, the situation of people now of fear and anxiety, and they lack resources beyond by the general paralysis in all aspects of life … until things get worse ?? !!! …. Or maybe the intention of them is only to gain admiration, and fame at the cost of capturing the ideas and thoughts of the people, and spreading panic among them … !!! …
Gentlemen, Here are some facts about this comet with the small core formed of ice how they made of it a giant with their ignorance. The core of this comet is made of carbon ice with two atoms (one molecule) … which gives it the green, which is something common in the formation of comets. The dimensions of these cores extend (for a few miles) … However, when the icy comets approach the sun, they generally interact with the solar wind. In this way, they evaporate and extend and mix these vapours of carbon with the dust to form a very large envelope of gas, depending on the activity of the core and its interaction with the wind coming from the sun.
On this basis, the diameter of the (envelope of the comet) reached about 450,000 miles, or that is, five times the diameter of Jupiter. Please pay attention … I said that the envelope of the comet is not its core … The diameter of the Earth at the equator is about 12750 km. As for the length of its field which flows, with the solar wind it extends for about 6,000,000 km. Notice the difference !!!
This comet needs to have a solid and coherent core at the points of perihelion … and for that to happen, its carbon ice must be firmly maintained in front of the sun. If it passes the sun and withstands the strong solar winds during the period of perihelion … we will witness a spectacular view of it, it will be breathtaking … and with brilliance that passes the (5 mag) barrier, which means a brilliance greater than Venus’, and a tail long and clear … And if the core disappears, the fate of this comet will be the same as comet ISON 2013, which disintegrated and faded, and nothing was left of it. To see this natural astronomical phenomenon, we must look towards the northwest of the terrestrial sky at the end of this month, according to the most recent studies …
I repeat … that this comet has nothing to do with the planet-comet, or with what is happening on the Earth, and it will not represent any danger, because it is distant by tens of millions of kilometers from Earth, and it has only a small core of ice, ..and enough to intimidate and frighten the people, and have pity on the minds of the people. Instead of this, we must educate the people, and introduce them to what is happening, and give to the scientific phenomena their natural size in a manner simple and easy for them to understand. God is the guardian of all things. And the peace and the mercy and blessings of God be with you.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
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