Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
30-05-2020
UFO Mysteries: Who Are The Key Figures Behind The Pentagon Release?
UFO Mysteries: Who Are The Key Figures Behind The Pentagon Release?
The recently released Navy UFO videos have been out for years now, so why are they suddenly making news now? We break down the key figures behind the ongoing real-life UFO saga.
Talk of the “unidentified” was once relegated to backchannels, joked about in tabloids, and kept shrouded in mystery by government agencies. But recently the UFO phenomenon has come to the forefront of national news. Headlines are ablaze with news about three UFO videos released by the U.S. Navy. While it is true that these videos have been made available for download by the Department of Defense (DOD), the videos themselves began making waves back in 2017. One of them has been online since 2007. However, perhaps more surprisingly, the Navy admitted that the objects in the videos remain “unidentified.”
In popular culture, depictions of UFOs have blurred the lines between fact and fiction for dramatic effect. While this has evolved from “The Invaders” of The Twilight Zone to the little green men in The X-Files, sci-fi storytelling has long explored the potential existence of “extraterrestrial” beings.
It’s good fun to speculate about aliens, but the real engine drivers behind UFO storytelling are themes of mystery, suspense, and fear—a curiosity of the unknown. Amazon Studios’ latest feature, The Vast of Night, pulls inspiration from science fiction of a bygone era for a story set in 1950s New Mexico about a switchboard operator (Sierra McCormick) and charismatic radio DJ (Jake Horowitz) who discover a strange audio frequency that could change their small town and the future forever.
The film, which is now streaming on Prime Video, brings viewers back to the infancy of UFO curiosity and mythology. Set in the 1950s American heartland with a premise that could be right out of The Twilight Zone, The Vast of Night shows how a fateful radio frequency draws two people into a world of unearthly visitors and possibility. It draws on America’s dawning UFO obsession of the era that accelerated into the mainstream during the days of Sputnik, Cold War hysteria, and the beginning of the space race.
However, it also draws on a long history of stories about encounters and inexplicable phenomena. Those stories take on new context with the U.S. government now acknowledging the credibility of videos of unidentified flying objects.
In December 2017, the New York Times broke the story of a secretive program inside the Pentagon that researched military UFO reports. The project was called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). AATIP’s existence was exposed just a few months earlier in October 2017. That is when rocker Tom DeLonge, former frontman of Blink-182, announced the creation of a UFO and paranormal focused organization called the To the Stars Academy (TTSA). Among an impressive list of former government and intelligence officials joining the project was a man named Luis Elizondo, who claimed to have run a UFO program while working at the Office of the Secretary of Department of Defense (OSD).
Some UFO enthusiasts were shocked by this claim. Those who have used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or have contacted the military about UFO cases were typically told the U.S. government has had no interest in UFO cases since the closing of Project Blue Book in 1969, despite documents showing otherwise.
A 2017 New York Times article referred to a UFO encounter that spanned a few days in November 2004. While conducting training exercises off the coast of San Diego, the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group encountered strange radar readings. At one point, radar supervisor Kevin Day was able to scramble jet fighters to check out one of the objects. Among them was Wing Commander David Fravor, the highest-ranking pilot on board. When they reached the area of the radar target, Fravor spotted an object near the water over a disturbance.
“It was calm that day, but the waves were breaking over something that was just below the surface,” described the Times. “Whatever it was, it was big enough to cause the sea to churn.”
The object itself, Fravor said, looked like a 40-foot long “giant white Tic Tac.” Fravor pursued the object, but he says it soon “accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen” and was gone.
Within a couple of hours of Fravor’s encounter, a second pilot encountered another unidentified object that he captured on his infrared video system. This video is referred to as the “FLIR” video, or “USS Nimitz FLIR1” video, and it is one of the videos recently posted by the DOD.
The other two videos are referred to as the “GIMBAL” and “GO FAST” videos. They were both captured in 2015 by the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group. Like the Nimitz, the Roosevelt Strike Force encountered unknown objects during training exercises, this time off the east coast, from Virginia to Florida.
The New York Times included the “FLIR” and “GIMBAL” videos in the December 2017 article. “GO FAST” was released by TTSA a few months after.
It should be noted that the “FLIR””video first made it onto the internet in 2007. However, very little was known about it. Fravor confirmed the video’s authenticity in a 2015 interview on the military website SOFREP.com. In the interview, Fravor shared details of his UFO encounter and how the video was captured. However, it remains unknown how the footage initially made it onto the internet.
As for the New York Times versions of the videos, they credit AATIP and the Department of Defense. However, the DOD later claimed the “DOD has not released videos related to this program.”
In response, former DOD employee Elizondo told me, “The videos were released in accordance with the strict manner that DOD prescribes to DOD manuals and regulations involving the release of information. It went through the official DOPSR process…”
Leslie Kean, one of the authors of the Times articles, told me they had vetted the videos and she had seen a form (DD1910) submitted by Elizondo to the Navy that was approved and demonstrated the videos were released. The DD1910 was later leaked to Las Vegas investigative reporter George Knapp. The DOD verified the DD1910 was real but claimed the videos were not approved for public release.
The DD1910 is titled “Clearance Request for Public Release of Department of Defense Information.” And the approval stamp states, “Cleared for Open Publication.” In response to my FOIA request, I received a copy of the DD1910 along with email correspondence between Navy officials and Elizondo. There is no indication the Navy had any issue releasing the videos.
Now the DOD is finally acknowledging the videos are real but claim this is the first authorized release. They have not given specifics as to how Elizondo’s request was unauthorized.
The DOD’s track record for accuracy regarding AATIP has not been stellar. They had previously claimed AATIP had nothing to do with UFOs, and Elizondo was not even a part of the program. The DOD has since recanted both claims. So perhaps the big news is not that the video is real, or that the Navy considers them “unidentified.” We already knew that. Maybe the real story is that the DOD is continuing to undermine the facts presented in the New York Times article, despite their past efforts on this front turning out to be misinformation.
Although today it is big news that Navy jet fighters chased UFOs and caught them on camera, at the dawn of the UFO age in the 1950s UFOs made headlines as well. In the late 1950s jet fighters chasing UFOs over the White House in Washington D.C made the front page. In the era for the setting of The Vast of Night, it was still OK to wonder out loud about UFOs. When the U.S. Air Force closed their official investigations, the topic became taboo for decades. Now, after all of this time, UFOs are once again becoming a legitimate topic of discussion.
The Vast of Night is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
Scientists in Europe have found that some features on Mars that were thought to be lava flows may actually have been flows of muddy water.
We know that Mars used to be volcanically active in the past. The planet is dotted with enormous now-dormant volcanoes, and the remains of old lava flows can still be seen today. Now, it seems, some of those lava flows weren’t composed of lava at all, but rather mud, according to researchers in Europe. The finding is evidence for what are called sedimentary volcanism, where liquid mud – water-rich sediments – ruptured from Mars’ subsurface, flowing like lava before refreezing. These features have often been seen on Earth, in association with smaller conical hills that resemble mud volcanoes.
The intriguing peer-reviewed results were published in the journal Nature Geoscience on May 20, 2020.
A possible mud volcano on Mars, just one of thousands. Ancient flows from such features and other volcanic spots had previously been assumed to be lava, but a new study suggests that at least in some cases, it was mud instead. That would mean these landforms really are mud volcanoes, not smaller magmatic volcanoes.
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona/ DLR.
From the paper:
Large outflow channels on ancient terrains of Mars have been interpreted as the products of catastrophic flood events. The rapid burial of water-rich sediments after such flooding could have led to sedimentary volcanism, in which mixtures of sediment and water (mud) erupt to the surface.
Tens of thousands of volcano-like landforms populate the northern lowlands … on Mars. However, it is difficult to determine whether the edifices are related to igneous or mud extrusions …
Here we investigate the mechanisms of mud propagation on Mars using experiments performed inside a low-pressure chamber at cold temperatures. We found that low viscosity mud under Martian conditions propagates differently from that on Earth, because of a rapid freezing and the formation of an icy crust. Instead, the experimental mud flows propagate like terrestrial pahoehoe lava flows, with liquid mud spilling from ruptures in the frozen crust, and then refreezing to form a new flow lobe.
We suggest that mud volcanism can explain the formation of some lava-like flow morphologies on Mars, and that similar processes may apply to cryovolcanic extrusions on icy bodies in the solar system.
The low-pressure vacuum chamber used in the experiments.
An example of mud frozen in simulated Mars conditions. The mud froze on the outside but remained liquid on the inside, and formed cavities and shapes similar to lava on Earth.
The new study was led by researchers from the Institute of Geophysics at the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS). It involved Lancaster University, the Open University and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the U.K., CNRS in France, DLR and Münster University in Germany, and CEED in Norway.
Ernst Hauber of the DLR Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin-Adlershof said in a statement:
We have long been aware that in the early history of Mars, several billion years ago, large amounts of water were released over a short period of time, eroding very large valleys in the landscape, which have long since dried up. Extensively eroded masses of fragmented rock were transported through these outflow channels and into the northern lowlands of the planet, where they were quickly deposited. Later, these rocky masses were covered by younger sediments and volcanic rocks.
Many of the mud flows are found in locations where massive channels were carved by water a few billion years ago. These floods were huge, comparable to the largest floods known on Earth. Water would then seep back into the subsurface, where it could then re-emerge as mud.
How did the researchers determine that some of the lava flows were not really lava, but mud? Lionel Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Lancaster University, explained:
We performed experiments in a vacuum chamber to simulate the release of mud on Mars. This is of interest because we see many flow-like features on Mars in spacecraft images, but they have not yet been visited by any of the roving vehicles on the surface and there is some ambiguity about whether they are flows of lava or mud.
What they found was quite interesting. Flowing mud on Mars didn’t behave at all like flowing mud on Earth, due to the very thin atmosphere and cold temperatures. The vacuum chamber re-created current Martian conditions. The flowing mud on Mars would freeze quickly and form an icy crust. In the vacuum chamber, the mud flows formed shapes similar to pahoehoe lava, which is common in Hawaii and Iceland. After the mud spilled out of ruptures in the ground, it refroze and formed smooth, undulating surfaces. The outer surface of the mud would freeze on contact with the air, while the inner core remained liquid. This liquid can break the frozen crust to form a new flow lobe that then refreezes.
More conical hills thought to be mud volcanoes, in Coprates Chasma on Mars.
Image via Petr Bro¸/ Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter/ NASA/ JPL/ University of Arizona/ The Conversation.
Rock slab called Old Soaker, found by the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater on Mars, which is covered with what are thought to be mud cracks from when a layer of mud dried out about 3 billion years ago.
In another test where the atmospheric pressure was the same as Earth’s, the mud did not form those shapes, even though it was just as cold in the vacuum chamber. Petr Bro¸, lead author of the new study, said:
Under the low atmospheric pressure of Mars, the mud flows behave in much the same way as pahoehoe, or ‘ropy’, lava, which is familiar from large volcanoes on Hawaii and Iceland. Our experiments show that even a process as apparently simple as the flow of mud – something that many of us have experienced for ourselves since we were children – would be very different on Mars.
Hauber added:
However, the impact of this familiar effect on mud has never been investigated in an experiment before. Once again, it turns out that different physical conditions must always be taken into account when looking at apparently simple surface features on other planets. We now know that we need to consider both mud and lava when analyzing certain flow phenomena.
There are tens of thousands of small conical hills in the northern highlands of Mars that may be mud volcanoes. It isn’t clear whether any of them may still be pumping out mud today, but the findings overall show that mud and wet sediments were common on the planet, at least in the past. In Gale Crater, the Curiosity rover has also found cracked, dried rock slabs that look exactly like dried out mud from the bottom of the lake that used to exist there.
Petr Bro¸ of the Czech Academy of Sciences, lead author of the new study.
Mars isn’t the only place where this kind of sedimentary volcanism is thought to occur. There is also evidence for a similar process on the dwarf planet Ceres, which may have once had a muddy ocean beneath its outer icy crust. According to Bro¸:
We suggest that mud volcanism can explain the formation of some lava-like flow morphologies on Mars, and that similar processes may apply to eruptions of mud on icy bodies in the outer solar system, like on Ceres.
Last year it was reported that Ceres likely had subsurface salty muddy meltwater reservoirs that lasted millions of years. The bright spots on Ceres’ surface are now thought to be salt deposits left over from when cryovolcanoes – ice volcanoes – erupted, with the water quickly sublimating away due to the almost complete lack of an atmosphere. Similar features thought to be cryovolcanoes were also discovered on Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft, and on Saturn’s moon Titan by Cassini. If the flows and conical hills on Mars are really also related to Martian mud, then that would show such processes are common in our solar system (including Earth of course), and could potentially provide valuable clues as to how life originated and evolved on our own planet.
Bottom line: Some features on Mars that were thought to be lava flows may actually be mud flows, according to a new study.
Scientists studying data from the Curiosity rover have found evidence for an ancient ice-covered lake in Gale Crater on Mars. The findings support the theory of alternating warmer and colder climates on early Mars.
Artist’s concept of Gale Crater when it was filled by a lake a few billion years ago. The Curiosity rover had previous evidence for the lake or series of lakes over time. Now a new study suggests that the lake could have been covered by ice during colder climate periods.
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ ESA/ DLR/ FU Berlin/ MSSS.
A few billion years ago, Gale Crater on Mars held a lake or series of lakes. There was even a river that once fed into this lake. That’s the conclusion of scientists working with data from NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars, which landed inside Gale Crater in August 2012 and has been exploring the region ever since. Now, a new study of Curiosity data by NASA scientists has added more pieces to the puzzle of what conditions on ancient Mars were like.
NASA announced the study on May 19, 2020. The peer-reviewed paper detailing these findings was published on January 27 in the journal Nature.
The results come from a comprehensive analysis of data from a multi-year experiment onboard the rover, in a chemistry lab called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM). SAM has been analyzing the chemistry and minerals in rock samples, including organic compounds – the building blocks of life – to determine the habitability of this part of Mars early in its history. This testing has previously confirmed abundant liquid water in the past, as well as a variety of organic molecules preserved in Martian rocks.
Diagram of the proposed carbon cycle on Mars. With little water and no abundant surface life on the planet, the cycle is quite different from the one on Earth.
The latest analysis has found evidence for a previous ice-covered lake in Gale Crater, thought to have possibly existed in a colder period between two warmer periods of time. Heather Franz, a geochemist at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) who led the new study, said in a statement:
At some point, Mars’ surface environment must have experienced a transition from being warm and humid to being cold and dry, as it is now, but exactly when and how that occurred is still a mystery.
The evidence supports the idea that Mars’ climate alternated between warmer and colder before finally becoming permanently cold and dry as we see it today. Changes in the axial tilt of the planet and volcanic activity could have played a major part in that instability. Indeed, chemical and mineralogical changes in Martian rocks also show this, with some rock layers being formed in warmer conditions, but others in colder climates.
The Quisquiro salt flat in Altiplano, South America. Scientists think this may be similar to the lake(s) that once existed in Gale Crater on Mars.
So how did Franz and her team find the evidence for an ice-covered lake?
Over five years, Curiosity collected 13 rock and dust samples. From these, the gases carbon dioxide and oxygen were extracted inside SAM. Each sample was heated to 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees Celsius), in order to liberate the trapped gases. The temperatures of the SAM oven at the time provided clues as to the kinds of minerals the gases were coming from. This provided insight into Mars’ carbon cycle, where the gas is exchanged between Mars’ subsurface, surface rocks, polar caps, water and atmosphere. While Mars still has a carbon cycle today, it is a lot different than Earth’s, since it has little water and no abundant surface life. As Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator on SAM, explained:
Nevertheless, the carbon cycling is still happening and is still important because it’s not only helping reveal information about Mars’ ancient climate. It’s also showing us that Mars is a dynamic planet that’s circulating elements that are the buildings blocks of life as we know it.
Mars doesn’t seem to have a lot of carbonates left – minerals composed of carbon and oxygen – which would be evidence for Mars once having a much thicker atmosphere, probably mostly carbon dioxide like today. Such an atmosphere would be needed to help explain how the planet could have once had long-lasting lakes and rivers. But, even though the carbonates may be sparse where Curiosity landed, the ones it has found so far have provided valuable clues about the ancient Martian climate.
Comparison of a carbonate molecule and an oxalate molecule.
Image via James Tralie/ NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center.
By examining the isotopes of the oxygen and carbon dioxide – versions of each element with different molecular masses – scientists can learn what chemical processes were involved in the formation of the rocks, including whether any biological activity might have been involved, as happens on Earth. The analysis showed that in some of the carbonates, the oxygen isotopes were lighter than those found in the Martian atmosphere.
Why is that significant? It suggests the carbonates formed in a cold, likely ice-covered lake. If the carbonates had formed in a warmer lake, then the isotopes should have actually been slightly heavier than the ones from the air. The researchers say that the ice might have sucked up the heavy oxygen isotopes, leaving behind the lighter ones that would eventually be found in the carbonates.
This is puzzling though, because it might mean the atmosphere was still thinner than thought. But without a thicker, warmer atmosphere, how could there have been lakes, rivers and maybe even a northern hemisphere ocean back then, as other other studies have shown?
The answer may be in the form of minerals called oxalates. Franz and her team suggest that some of the carbon may have been stored in oxalates rather than carbonates. The temperatures at which the carbon dioxide was released from some samples inside SAM was too low for carbonates, but just right for oxalates. The ratios of carbon and oxygen isotopes found also support this hypothesis.
Heather Franz at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who led the new study.
If it could be proven that oxalates were involved, that would be intriguing, since they are the most common mineral produced by plant life on Earth, synthesized by the incomplete oxidation of carbohydrates. That in itself wouldn’t prove life on early Mars, however, since they can also be produced by the interaction of carbon dioxide with surface minerals (inorganic or organic catalysts), water and sunlight. This is a process that “mocks” photosynthesis, called abiotic photosynthesis. It may even have paved the way for actual photosynthesis to be used by microbes on Earth.
Additional analysis of these and future SAM samples will be necessary to further figure out what role oxalates played, if any. The upcoming Perseverance rover mission to Jezero Crater, scheduled to launch this summer, should be able to shed more light on the Curiosity findings. Jezero Crater is similar to Gale Crater in that it also used to contain a lake, and an ancient delta is still clearly visible where a river once emptied into the lake. Perseverance is designed to specifically look for evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars, so it will be very interesting to see what it finds.
Bottom line: A new study of results from the Curiosity rover provides evidence for an ice-covered lake once existing in Gale Crater on Mars.
This animation demonstrates the salty ponds and streams that scientists think may have been left behind as Gale Crater dried out over time. The bottom of the image is the floor of Gale Crater, with the peak being the side of Mount Sharp.
Credit:ASU Knowledge Enterprise Development (KED), Michael Northrop > Download larger gif
If you're frustrated that you now have to wait until Saturday (May 30) to see SpaceX's first crewed launch, you can blame Mother Nature and orbital mechanics.
Elon Musk's company was poised Wednesday afternoon (May 27) to launch Demo-2, a crucial test mission that will send NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Crew Dragon capsule. But the weather didn't cooperate, forcing SpaceX to cancel Crew Dragon's planned liftoff atop a Falcon 9 rocket with less than 20 minutes left in the countdown.
The next available launch opportunity doesn't come until Saturday, at 3:22 p.m. EDT (1922 GMT). That's when the space station will be in the desired place relative to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Demo-2's launch site, explained Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance.
"The two days in between — it's just a matter of phasing and how the orbital mechanics work out," Koenigsmann said during a news conference on Monday (May 25). "And there are some other factors that play into that, too — traffic on the station, and so on and so forth."
The weather looked like it was clearing up in the late stages of the countdown Wednesday, and the mission likely could have gotten off the ground if the launch team had about 10 more minutes to work with, SpaceX representatives said. But such leeway isn't available for Demo-2, which has an instantaneous launch window.
"We do the flight analysis assuming that the temperatures of the propellants are below a certain amount, so that we know how much performance is available to the rocket — how much margin we're going to have," SpaceX principal integration engineer John Insprucker said during Wednesday's launch webcast.
"Once you get into propellant loading at T-35 minutes, you have to go as soon as you get to zero," Insprucker said.
Even waiting for a few minutes past T-0 would cause propellant temperatures to rise slightly, he added, "and that changes how much performance you get carrying into orbit. And we don't want to cut into those margins."
You probably don't want to contemplate yet another scrub, but there's good news if that does indeed come to pass: The next launch opportunity after Saturday is Sunday (May 31), at 3:00 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT).
Demo-2 will be the first crewed orbital flight to launch from the U.S. since NASA's space shuttle fleet was grounded in 2011. Since then, American astronauts have flown to and from the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the only available option.
NASA, SpaceX and Boeing have been working for years to end that dependence. In 2014, the two companies signed multibillion-dollar contracts with NASA's Commercial Crew Program to finish development of their astronaut taxis and fly six operational crewed missions to and from the orbiting lab.
SpaceX will be able to start flying those contracted missions after Demo-2 is in the books. Boeing has a bit more work to do, however; the company's CST-100 Starliner capsule still needs to ace an uncrewed mission to the ISS, a milestone Crew Dragon notched in March 2019.
Starliner launched on such a mission this past December but suffered a glitch with its onboard timing system and ended up stranded in an orbit too low to meet up with the space station. Starliner will refly the uncrewed ISS flight before taking astronauts aboard.
.Visit Space.com for complete coverage of SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-2 flight.
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom orFacebook.
This destructive cosmic event has puzzled scientists for more than a century
A mysterious blast in 1908, thought to have been caused by a meteor, flattened a Siberian taiga forest. This photo was taken in 1938, during an expedition by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, investigating the event.
A new explanation for a massive blast over a remote Siberian forest in 1908 is even stranger than the mysterious incident itself.
Known as the Tunguska event, the blast flattened more than 80 million trees in seconds, over an area spanning nearly 800 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) — but left no crater. A meteor that exploded before hitting the ground was thought by many to be the culprit. However, a comet or asteroid would likely have left behind rocky fragments after blowing up, and no "smoking gun" remnants of a cosmic visitor have ever been found.
Now, a team of researchers has proposed a solution to this long-standing puzzle: A large iron meteor hurtled toward Earth and came just close enough to generate a tremendous shock wave. But the meteor then curved away from our planet without breaking up, its mass and momentum carrying it onward in its journey through space.
On the morning of June 30, 1908, the sky above Siberia flared so bright and hot that a witness standing dozens of kilometers from the site thought that his shirt had caught fire, said Vladimir Pariev, co-author of the new Tunguska study and a researcher with the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Following the bright light, which lasted for about 1 minute, was an explosion that smashed windows and knocked people off their feet in a town more than 35 miles (60 km) away, the BBC reported. "The sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire," another witness said in a testimonial. Energy released by the blast was later estimated by scientists to be 185 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, according to NASA.
Initial explanations for the blast included volcanic eruptions and mining accidents, according to NASA, but those claims were not supported by physical evidence. Other later suggestions were more far-fetched, such as a crashed UFO or a black hole collision with Earth — a study describing the black hole hypothesis was published in the journal Nature in 1973 (and was soundly debunked in another Nature study published just a few months later).
The most widely accepted scientific explanation is that a rocky asteroid or comet entered Earth's atmosphere and then disintegrated with a bang about 3 to 6 miles (5 to 10 km) above the ground, Pariev told Live Science in an email. But such an explosion should have strewn the ground with rocky debris, which no one has ever found. By comparison, a meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013 broke into fragments that were discovered within a week, Pariev said.
What if, the researchers questioned, the Tunguska meteor were made of iron rather than rock? Could a massive iron meteor "graze" Earth's atmosphere, approaching close enough to generate a powerful shock wave, then yank free of the planet's gravitational pull and escape without fragmenting?
To test that hypothesis, the scientists calculated meteor paths using computer models. They looked at objects that were as small as 164 feet (50 meters) across and as large as 656 feet (200 m) in diameter. Objects were made of rock, ice or iron, and approached in a trajectory that brought them within 6 to 10 miles (10 to 15 km) of Earth's surface.
The scientists' calculations showed that space bodies made of rock and ice would completely disintegrate under the enormous pressures generated by their passage through the tropospheric altitudes. "Only asteroids made of iron larger than 100 m [328 feet] in diameter can survive and not get cracked and fragmented into many separate pieces," they said.
The researchers estimated that the Tunguska meteor likely measured between 328 and 656 feet (100 and 200 m) in diameter, and hurtled through Earth's atmosphere at roughly 45,000 mph (72,000 km/h). During its fiery passage, the meteor would lose some of its mass. But iron shed by a meteor traveling at such speeds would have escaped as gas and plasma, oxidized in the atmosphere and then dispersed on the ground, becoming nearly indistinguishable from terrestrial iron oxides, according to the study.
Prior studies have calculated the power of shock waves produced by meteors based on the object entering Earth's atmosphere at a very steep angle "and either hitting the ground or exploding in midair," Pariev said.
In the case of the Tunguska meteor, the iron-rich space object could have entered Earth's atmosphere at a very shallow angle — about 9 to 12 degrees tangential to the surface. It then would have grazed through the atmosphere, creating a shock wave at an altitude of around 6 to 10 miles (10 to 15 km) above the ground, capable of flattening trees for hundreds of kilometers and scorching the surface. But because of the meteor's mass and momentum, it didn't break up; it then exited the atmosphere and returned to space, the researchers reported.
However, some lingering questions about this scenario remain, said Mark Boslough, a research professor at the University of New Mexico and physicist with Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Boslough, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that if an object "skimmed through the atmosphere" and didn't blow up, the resulting shock wave would be significantly weaker than an explosion's blast wave.
"An object that survived such a transit through the atmosphere could not have descended close enough to the surface for a sonic boom to do the kind of damage that was observed at Tunguska," Boslough said.
What's more, the pattern of felled trees at the site is radial — emanating from a single point of tremendous energy release, he said. That's something you'd expect to see after an explosion rather than a sonic boom, "even if it had been strong enough to blow trees over." Boslough added that eyewitness accounts at the time of the incident "are consistent with an object that was descending toward the surface before it exploded."
While the study authors didn't numerically calculate the impact of a shock wave that a "grazing" iron meteor of this size could produce, their estimates still suggest that such a wave would be powerful enough to flatten trees and damage the ground as the Tunguska event did, Pariev said in the email.
"Detailed calculations of the shock waves from a grazing asteroid is the subject of our ongoing research," he added.
We spotted some wild and wacky details leading up to SpaceX's now-delayed Demo-2 test flight today (May 27).
Today's mission scrubbed and was delayed for this Saturday at 3:22 p.m. EDT (1922 GMT). However, today's events, which served as a sort of "wet dress rehearsal" for the actual launch, had some interesting highlights. From the minute that veteran NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley arrived this morning, ready to strap into their spacesuits and launch to the International Space Station, to the moment the launch was called off, today's events were chock-full of excitement.
During a preflight news conference Monday (May 26), it was revealed that no one knew yet what the astronauts would eat for breakfast before the launch. Since the earliest days of human spaceflight, the preflight breakfast has been a tradition, with the Apollo astronauts famously eating steak and eggs before lifting off.
The internet lit up with guesses as to what the astronauts would eat before launching and, starting out early in the morning on launch day, Hurley put this mystery to rest: "Steak and eggs. Question answered!" he tweeted.
2. Kelly Clarkson
Pop stardom and spaceflight collided on launch day as Grammy award-winning pop artist Kelly Clarkson sang the national anthem. Her gorgeous belt rang clear and true, even though she wasn't actually at NASA to sing. That's right, like many things right now, Clarkson's performance was conducted virtually through a live video broadcast.
Still, while she may not have been on-site for the launch, her voice was a perfect note to start the day off on.
3. Tesla to the launch pad
Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley rode to the launch pad in style in this modified Tesla Model X, complete with a NASA Worm logo and a license plate reading "ISSBND."(Image credit: NASA/YouTube)
After breakfast and in their spacesuits, the pair of astronauts said goodbye to their families and hopped into a Tesla Model X, modified with NASA's iconic Worm logo. But, as many people noticed online, the logo, plastered across the back of the vehicle, wasn't the only space touch.
The vehicle's license plate read "ISSBND," or ISS (International Space Station) bound. The plate is a cheeky nod to the fact that the astronauts are set to launch from Florida to the space station.
4. Rock out with AC/DC
NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken arrive at the launchpad for the Demo-2 mission on May 27, 2020. (Image credit: NASA TV)
Now, this drive to the launch pad wasn't some silent, stoic drive. The astronauts had a perfectly curated playlist to amp them up as they rode to board Crew Dragon, which was placed high atop the Falcon 9 rocket.
According to SpaceX commentator Lauren Lyons during May 27 live launch coverage, the pair started their drive off with AC/DC's classic song "Back in Black." She shared that the reason they chose to start off their drive with this song is that "they are back," on launch pad 39A, which the astronauts haven't launched from since the end of NASA's space shuttle program in 2011.
Following the heavy metal tune, the pair listened to "the elevator music from the Blues Brothers film," Lyons shared, the song "The Girl from Ipanema," a Brazilian bossa nova standard written by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes in 1962.
Rounding out their playlist, the astronauts blasted (it can only be assumed) the Star-Spangled Banner, "the army French horns version," Lyons said, adding that this is "for very obvious reasons," because astronauts both served in the U.S. military.
5. May I have your autograph?
NASA astronaut Doug Hurley uses a black sharpie to sign SpaceX's White Room, a new tradition, before boarding the Crew Dragon fort the Demo-2 test flight on May 27, 2020. Crew mate Bob Behnken signed is own name a moment later. (Image credit: NASA TV)
Once at the launch pad, before strapping into Crew Dragon, the pair started a brand new tradition: They signed their names on the walls of the white room with a sharpie.
The white room, which was painted white and nicknamed as such during NASA's Gemini program, is the last place that the astronauts visit before entering the spacecraft for launch.
"Yeah, we didn't do that," retired NASA astronaut Leland Melvin said during live commentary.
6. Hitchhiking dino
A small stuffed animal hitched a ride on the Demo-2 mission, strapped in next to NASA astronaut Bob Behnken on May 27, 2020. (Image credit: NASA TV)
The fun didn't stop once the astronauts strapped into Crew Dragon. The capsule can fit up to four passengers but because this is the craft's first crewed test flight, only two astronauts will fly aboard this mission. However, if you looked close enough, you might've spotted a third crew member buckled into the capsule.
The astronauts brought along a small stuffed animal that appears to be a plush dinosaur (or maybe dragon? how fitting), which they buckled into one of the astronaut passenger seats. This fuzzy little astronaut isn't just for fun, however. Astronauts typically bring up items, like this plush dino, as a measure to show the effects of zero gravity to signify that the astronauts have reached space.
Many people, even those who nothing about the paranormal or New Age beliefs, are probably aware of the concepts of auras. They are supposedly extensions of our spiritual energy that surrounds us with a glow that people who are attuned to such things claim they can see. These auras can be different colors depending on one’s mood or personality, and this is sometimes referred to as one’s “life color,” with common colors for adults being blue or violet. Then, in the 1970s a psychic claimed to have discovered a new color of aura, which it was believed marked someone as a highly evolved soul with amazing mental abilities and in some cases paranormal powers.
It began in the mid-1970s, when a psychic specializing in reading auras by the name of Nancy Ann Toppe began to claim that she was finding more and more children with auras that were Indigo in coloration, a color that she had never seen before. She believed that these “Indigo Children” were special souls who had been perfected and reborn on Earth at the time in order to help the earth and start a spiritual evolution in human beings to lead them to enlightenment and expand their consciousness. These Indigo Children displayed numerous exceptional personality traits, and heightened psychic abilities including telepathy, clairvoyance, and astral projection, as well as superior intellect and creativity, and Toppe predicted that, considering the rate in which she was noticing this new color of aura, Indigo Children would become the new norm with just a few generations. The idea was pretty fringe and obscure at the time, but it was picked up and dusted off by authors and self-help lecturers Lee Carroll and Jan Tober, with a little help from a channeled spirit they call Kyron, who wrote a popular book on it in 1998 called The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived, and another book followed in the 2000s by a famous psychic Doreen Virtue, The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children, further propelling it into the mainstream and gained it a good deal of popularity.
So, you might be wondering just what traits an Indigo Child has, and it is a bit complicated as their traits and abilities have undergone changes from author to author in the many books and articles written on them since, but there are a few tendencies that remain fairly standard. One of their main characteristics is their extreme capacity for empathy, sensitivity, curiosity, and creativity, as well as their very strong will. They are also fiercely independent, proud, and highly intelligent, quite often wise beyond their years, leading them to often be described as “old souls.” They have very good, sometimes photographic memories, are supposedly very intuitive, and are very good at figuring out ways to do things and thinking outside of the box. They are very often described as having at least some sort of psychic abilities or the potential for it.
Indigo Children supposedly have quite a few negative traits as well. They are often described as self-important and self-absorbed. They are often rebellious against authority, impatient, easily bored and easily frustrated. Indigo Children are also usually seen as eccentric loners, and do not make friends easily, with antisocial tendencies, although they easily bond with animals. They have an inflated sense of self-worth and can often be narcissistic. Their self-sufficiency and clear sense of purpose can also make them very stubborn and headstrong, and they are often resistant to change. A lot of these negative aspects are said to be direct side effects of their gifts in other areas, for instance they are often frustrated and annoyed that other normal people can’t keep up with their sharp minds and different ways of thinking, which can also make them seem arrogant. Authority bothers them because they often truly believe they have a better way of doing things, and their unconventional views of how things work alienate them from others who are not on the same page.
The whole concept of Indigo Children has really taken off in the mainstream and in popular culture, with numerous books, articles, and even films made about the phenomena, and it is common for celebrities to claim they have an Inigo Child or claim to be one themselves. Despite there being no real evidence of Indigo Children actually existing, the notion has become such a popular New Age belief that it is sometimes labelled as being almost like a religious movement, but of course there is much skepticism in the idea of spiritually awakened people that are presented as the next step of human evolution.
One of the most popular ideas is that this is simply a misdiagnosis of a mental disability such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism. After all, back when the term “Indigo Child” was first coined there was very little understanding of these disorders, and as the movement grew it would be seen by most parents as better to view their child as a special chosen one with magical powers rather than suffering from a disability and a neuro-biological condition. They are not suffering a disorder; they are gifted and special. Belief in the Indigo Child phenomenon could even be making things worse, since making this claim robs the kid of a proper diagnosis and medication, leaving them without the help they really need and raised with a false sense of security. Are these people really just misunderstood people with behavioral defects that have been marked as something more? Or are the Indigo Children actually real? Either way, it is a concept that has really caught on, and will likely be discussed for some time to come.
At the time of this writing, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket had not yet launched humans into space, but even a successful mission probably won’t quell the wrath of the head of Russia’s space agency. No, he’s not just mad about losing the business of taking astronauts to the ISS and back – it’s much worse than that.
“We understand that one thing stands behind all this demagogy: this is a cover for deployment of nuclear weapons in space. We see such attempts, we consider them unacceptable and we will oppose them as much as we can.”
In an interview on the YouTube podcast “Solovyov LIVE” (watch it here in Russian), Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian state space agency Roscosmos, told host Vladimir Solovyov that he believes Musk is serious about detonating 10,000 nuclear warheads on Mars to terraform the planet into one with an atmosphere and climate that can support humans, and Musk’s SpaceX partnership with NASA is proof that the U.S. government approves of it.
“We have commented on each and every such anti-Russian attack which are all nothing but the United States’ attempt to divert public attention from real threats in space and to justify its moves to deploy weapons in outer space and obtain extra financing for such causes.”
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS last month that Russia is not happy with the Space Force, especially with its announcement of the unveiling of its first weapon (a satellite jammer) and its first mission with the mysterious X-37B space plane – both occurring within the past month. And now … SpaceX and its CEO and founder’s grandiose nuclear plans for Mars, with no denunciation by NASA or the U.S. government. In fact, President Trump had this to say about Elon Musk back in February:
“He likes rockets. And he does good at rockets, too, by the way.”
So does Roscosmos, which has managed to shuttle crews and cargo reliably to the ISS ever since NASA shut down the space shuttle program. Roscosmos has announced that it is lowering its costs for launches, which are already less that SpaceX, so it knows this escalation of a Cold War in space is not about money.
“We see such attempts, we consider them unacceptable and we will hinder this to the greatest extent possible.”
“Hinder” … what could that entail? Deploying its own space weapons – both known and secret? Cyberwarfare? Accelerating Russia’s own plans to send humans to Mars? For now, it’s a battle of words where Russia is taking the human rights side for a change.
“It is absolutely obvious that the idea to bomb Mars with nuclear charges is absolutely abhorrent from a humanitarian standpoint. Who gave him right to destroy a planet?”
That’s a good question, Dmitry Rogozin. Does Earth money talk on Mars?
If the first launch of humans by SpaceX is successful, we may soon find out
The asteroids Ryugu and Bennu which orbit between Earth and Mars formed after a much larger rock was split apart, scientists have claimed.
Mathematical modelling suggests the pair - measuring 3,280-foot and 1,610-foot in diameter - formed after two centres of gravity were created.
But rock pulled from both will need to be tested to confirm the theory.
Samples from Ryugu are already onboard Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft and expected to touchdown on Earth in late 2020.
And NASA's OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to land on its suspected-sister by October 20, to collect further samples which will also be flown to Earth.
Mathematical modelling revealed Ryugu (left) and Bennu (right) may have formed from a larger asteroid that broke apart
The model showed after an asteroid shattered its pieces came together at two points
It was based on observations of asteroids in the Mars-Jupiter belt, where Bennu and Ryugu may have originated
Astronomers at the University of Arizona and Laboratoire Lagrange, Ivory Coast, modelled collisions in the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt before making the proposal.
Their study, published in Nature Communications, showed fragments are ejected but then re-accumulate into a spinning-top shape - like that of both asteroids.
They also noted a difference in hydration between the possible-siblings, but said this did not discount the proposed relationship.
The team hopes to be able to measure the composition and age of formation of the samples from both asteroids to confirm their theory.
OSIRIS-REx has beamed images of Bennu's rocky surface back to Earth, revealing the barren lunar surface.
The pictures show its chosen landing site - dubbed 'Nightingale' - which is located in a crater high up the asteroids northern hemisphere.
The spacecraft will cut chunks 0.8 inches in diameter from the asteroid before beginning the journey home.
NASA has sent pictures of Bennu back to Earth. The image above shows the proposed landing site on the asteroid for its spacecraft OSIRIS-REx
OSIRIS-REx will collect small (less than 0.8 inches in diameter) rocks from the surface before beginning the journey back to Earth.
(Artists impression)
Hayabusa2, not to be outdone, sent images of Ryugu's lunar-surface back to Earth in February.
Its pictures revealed reddening in some of the rocks, leading scientists at the University of Tokyo to conclude that it once passed much closer to the sun.
'Immediately after touchdown, Hayabusa2’s thrusters disturbed dark, fine grains that originate from the redder materials,' wrote planetary scientist Tomokatsu Morota of the University of Tokyo and colleagues in their paper,
'The stratigraphic relationship between identified craters and the redder material indicates that surface reddening occurred over a short period of time.'
'We suggest that Ryugu previously experienced an orbital excursion near the Sun.'
Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft has captured this picture of Ryugu's surface. It revealed reddened rocks, which suggests at one point the asteroid may have passed near the Sun
Astronomers are convinced that asteroids Bennuand Ryugucame from the same much bigger space rock that split apart. Both of these asteroids, which orbit between Earth and Mars, are believed to have been formed following the creation of two centers of gravity.
Bennu was discovered in September of 1999 by astronomers in Socorro, New Mexico. The asteroid measures 1,610 feet in diameter. Astronomers in Socorro also discovered Ryugu a few months before in May of 1999 and that asteroid measures 3,280 feet in diameter.
Rock samples from both of these asteroids will need to be analyzed in order to know for sure if they came from the same space rock. Samples have already been taken from Ryugu and are currently on their way back to Earth on Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft which is scheduled to return to our planet later this year.
Bennu
No samples have been taken yet from Bennu, although NASA’s OSIRIS-REx is expected to land on the asteroid on October 20th of this year to collect the specimens. The spacecraft will land on a site called “Nightingale” located in the northern hemisphere of the asteroid and it will then collect samples about 0.8 inches in diameter.
Astronomers from the University of Arizona and Laboratoire Lagrange, Ivory Coast, simulated different collisions that could have taken place in the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt. In their models, they found that pieces of asteroids would be ejected from the rock but would assemble back together in a spinning-top shape which is similar to both Bennu and Ryugu.
Even though the asteroids are different in regards to their hydration levels, they could very well still be from the same space rock. Once the samples from both asteroids come back to Earth, experts will be able to verify for certain if they’re related by determining their age as well as what they are composed of. Pictures of both asteroids can be seen here.
Ryugu
A really interesting fact about the pictures that Hayabusa2 took of Ryugu is that some of the rocks on its surface are reddish in color, suggesting that at some point it traveled pretty close to the sun.
In their paper, planetary scientist Tomokatsu Morota from the University of Tokyo as well as his colleagues wrote in part, “Immediately after touchdown, Hayabusa2’s thrusters disturbed dark, fine grains that originate from the redder materials.” They went on to say, “The stratigraphic relationship between identified craters and the redder material indicates that surface reddening occurred over a short period of time,” adding, “We suggest that Ryugu previously experienced an orbital excursion near the Sun.” The study was published in Nature Communications and can be read here in full here.
I Found A Plane Crash Using Google Earth Map, Video, UFO Sighting News.
I Found A Plane Crash Using Google Earth Map,Video,UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: May 28, 2020 Location of discovery: Yukatan Google Coordinates: 20°58'18.24"N 90°17'0.13"W
I was using Google Earth to look for UFOs and alien bases, when I accidentally came across this plane crash. One wing is partly buried under the trees but its clear that its a plane. The plane measures 20 meters from nose to tail and 28 meters from wing tip to wing tip. The plane appears to be whole and could probably fly again if it was retrieved and repaired. However I do believe that the pilot may be dead in side since it hit the trees and branches may have broken through the cockpit windows. I don't see any trials going in or out of that area, so I believe this crash to be unknown or undiscovered until now. Its not the only plane crash I have discovered. I found flight MH370 under 3 meters of water off the coast of Cape of Good Hope, South Africa on Google Earth Map. I reported it to the Airline that lost it, but they didn't respond, probably because if the flight is found, they will be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the families. If its not found, they they only pay a tiny sum. Therefore they don't wont to find it. Scott C. Waring
This triangle-shaped craft was filmed in the night sky above Lemoore, California back in June 2019. What do you think about this footage?
Witness report:
My girlfriends family were driving from Lemoore and started recording as soon as they seen the craft. It flew away and then made a turn, and hovered right over the car. The car was shaking a lot and was very scary lol. The craft didn’t even make loud noise which was very strange.
thinkstockDe ozonlaag beschermt het leven op aarde tegen schadelijke stralingen.
WETENSCHAPOnze planeet heeft vijf grote massa-extincties gekend. Een daarvan is de Laat-Devonische extinctie, die zo’n 359 miljoen jaar geleden plaatsvond. De oorzaak wordt doorgaans gezocht in een meteorietinslag, maar uit een nieuwe studie blijkt dat de snelle klimaatopwarming en het wegvallen van de beschermende ozonlaag aan de basis liggen. De wetenschappers waarschuwen voor een gelijkaardig scenario als we de huidige opwarming van de aarde niet onder controle krijgen.
De bekendste massa-extinctie in de geschiedenis van de aarde is die van 66 miljoen jaar geleden, toen de dinosauriërs werden uitgeroeid. De minder gekende Laat-Devonische massa-extinctie vond veel vroeger plaats: de belangrijkste uitsterving toen gebeurde vlak voor de Devoon-Carboon-grens, ongeveer 359 miljoen jaar geleden. De Laat-Devonische massa-extinctie had vooral fatale gevolgen voor dieren die in het water leefden en voor planten.
Meestal wordt uitgegaan van een meteorietinslag die net voor de overgang van het Devoon naar het Carboon de enorme extinctie van heel wat mariene en plantensoorten veroorzaakte. Maar sommige microscopisch kleine sporen (voortplantingscellen) van varenachtige planten, ontdekt in gesteenten uit het oosten van Groenland, bleken misvormd te zijn, zo stelt het nieuwe onderzoek dat gepubliceerd is in Science Advances. Volgens de wetenschappers bewijst de beschadiging van het DNA van de planten dat “de hele ozonbescherming verdwenen was”. De verhoogde UV-B-straling wijst immers op een snelle en dramatische verdunning van de ozonlaag, de laag die het leven op aarde beschermt tegen schadelijke stralingen van de zon, zoals tegen UV-straling. Door het wegvallen van die beschermende ozonlaag werd het leven op onze planeet blootgesteld aan een explosie van ultraviolette straling die mutaties veroorzaakte.
Wetenschappers gaan doorgaans uit van twee mogelijke oorzaken van uitroeiingsgebeurtenissen: enorme vulkaanuitbarstingen of meteorietinslagen. Uit kwikgegevens leidt de nieuwe studie af dat er in dit geval geen vulkaanuitbarstingen op planetaire schaal plaatsvonden, in tegenstelling tot bij andere massa-extincties. De massa-extinctie van 359 miljoen jaar geleden zou wél te maken hebben gehad met de grote klimaatopwarming, die een einde maakte aan de intense laatste ijstijdcyclus in het Devoon. De onderzoekers waarschuwen dan ook voor mogelijk gelijkaardige, dramatische gevolgen van de huidige snelle klimaatverandering, waarvoor de mens zélf verantwoordelijk is. “Ozonverlies tijdens de snelle opwarming van de aarde is een proces dat inherent is aan het systeem, met de onvermijdelijke conclusie dat we alert moeten zijn voor zo’n gebeurtenis in de toekomst van onze opwarmende wereld”, klinkt het.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETDe Europese zonneverkenner Solar Orbiter zal de komende dagen de staarten van de komeet ATLAS doorkruisen. Dat heeft het Europese Ruimtevaartbureau ESA gemeld. Hoewel het onbemande ruimtetuig op dit moment geen wetenschappelijke data zou verzamelen, hebben missiedeskundigen ervoor gezorgd dat de vier belangrijkste instrumenten tijdens de unieke gebeurtenis actief worden.
De Solar Orbiter werd gelanceerd op 10 februari. Sindsdien hebben wetenschappers en ingenieurs, met uitzondering van een korte onderbreking als gevolg van de coronapandemie, een reeks tests en opstellingsroutines uitgevoerd die bekendstaan als ‘ingebruikname’.
De einddatum voor deze fase is 15 juni, zodat het ruimtetuig twee dagen later volledig functioneel kan zijn tijdens zijn eerste passage vlakbij de zon ofwel perihelium. De ontdekking van deze onverwachte ontmoeting met de komeet maakte de zaken echter dringender.
Rustig vliegen door de staart van een komeet is volgens ESA een zeldzame gebeurtenis voor een ruimtemissie, iets waarvan wetenschappers weten dat het nog maar zes keer eerder is gebeurd voor missies die niet specifiek op kometen jagen. Al deze ontmoetingen zijn pas achteraf ontdekt met behulp van de data van het ruimtetuig. De aankomende doorsteek van Solar Orbiter is de eerste die van tevoren wordt voorspeld.
De eigenlijke missie van de Solar Orbiter is nieuwe informatie te vergaren over de zon, onder meer door beelden te maken van de noord- en zuidpool van die ster. Vermoed wordt dat die polen een rol spelen in het ontstaan van zonnevlammen, die de elektronica hier op Aarde kunnen verstoren.
Het gaat om een gezamenlijk project van de NASA en het Europese ruimtevaartagentschap ESA, waarbij ook een prominente rol is weggelegd voor de Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van België. De sonde omvat immers de EUI-telescoop van de Koninklijke Belgische Sterrenwacht en het Centre spatial de Liège.
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In Planet Formation, It's Location, Location, Location
In Planet Formation, It's Location, Location, Location
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are finding that planets have a tough time forming in the rough-and-tumble central region of the massive, crowded star cluster Westerlund 2. Located 20,000 light-years away, Westerlund 2 is a unique laboratory to study stellar evolutionary processes because it’s relatively nearby, quite young, and contains a large stellar population.
The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life resembles a glittering fireworks display in this Hubble Space Telescope image. The sparkling centerpiece of this fireworks show is a giant cluster of thousands of stars called Westerlund 2. The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 pierced through the dusty veil shrouding the stellar nursery in near-infrared light, giving astronomers a clear view of the nebula and the dense concentration of stars in the central cluster. The cluster measures between six light-years and 13 light-years across.
Credits: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI) and the Westerlund 2 Science Team
A three-year Hubble study of stars in Westerlund 2 revealed that the precursors to planet-forming disks encircling stars near the cluster’s center are mysteriously devoid of large, dense clouds of dust that in a few million years could become planets.
However, the observations show that stars on the cluster’s periphery do have the immense planet-forming dust clouds embedded in their disks. Researchers think our solar system followed this recipe when it formed 4.6 billion years ago.
So why do some stars in Westerlund 2 have a difficult time forming planets while others do not? It seems that planet formation depends on location, location, location. The most massive and brightest stars in the cluster congregate in the core, which is verified by observations of other star-forming regions. The cluster’s center contains at least 30 extremely massive stars, some weighing up to 80 times the mass of the Sun. Their blistering ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds of charged particles blowtorch disks around neighboring lower-mass stars, dispersing the giant dust clouds.
“Basically, if you have monster stars, their energy is going to alter the properties of the disks around nearby, less massive stars,” explained Elena Sabbi, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and lead researcher of the Hubble study. “You may still have a disk, but the stars change the composition of the dust in the disks, so it’s harder to create stable structures that will eventually lead to planets. We think the dust either evaporates away in 1 million years, or it changes in composition and size so dramatically that planets don’t have the building blocks to form.”
The Hubble observations represent the first time that astronomers analyzed an extremely dense star cluster to study which environments are favorable to planet formation. Scientists, however, are still debating whether bulky stars are born in the center or whether they migrate there. Westerlund 2 already has massive stars in its core, even though it is a comparatively young, 2-million-year-old system.
Using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, the researchers found that of the nearly 5,000 stars in Westerlund 2 with masses between 0.1 to 5 times the Sun’s mass, 1,500 of them show fluctuations in their light as the stars accrete material from their disks. Orbiting material clumped within the disk would temporarily block some of the starlight, causing brightness fluctuations.
However, Hubble detected the signature of such orbiting material only around stars outside the cluster’s packed central region. The telescope witnessed large drops in brightness for as much as 10 to 20 days around 5% of the stars before they returned to normal brightness. They did not detect these dips in brightness in stars residing within four light-years of the center. These fluctuations could be caused by large clumps of dust passing in front of the star. The clumps would be in a disk tilted nearly edge-on to the view from Earth. “We think they are planetesimals or structures in formation,” Sabbi explained. “These could be the seeds that eventually lead to planets in more evolved systems. These are the systems we don’t see close to very massive stars. We see them only in systems outside the center.”
Thanks to Hubble, astronomers can now see how stars are accreting in environments that are like the early universe, where clusters were dominated by monster stars. So far, the best known nearby stellar environment that contains massive stars is the starbirth region in the Orion Nebula. However, Westerlund 2 is a richer target because of its larger stellar population.
“Hubble’s observations of Westerlund 2 give us a much better sense of how stars of different masses change over time, and how powerful winds and radiation from very massive stars affect nearby lower-mass stars and their disks,” Sabbi said. “We see, for example, that lower-mass stars, like our Sun, that are near extremely massive stars in the cluster still have disks and still can accrete material as they grow. But the structure of their disks (and thus their planet-forming capability) seems to be very different from that of disks around stars forming in a calmer environment farther away from the cluster core. This information is important for building models of planet formation and stellar evolution.”
This cluster will be an excellent laboratory for follow-up observations with NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared observatory. Hubble has helped astronomers identify the stars that have possible planetary structures. With Webb, researchers can study which disks around stars are not accreting material and which disks still have material that could build up into planets. This information on 1,500 stars will allow astronomers to map a path on how star systems grow and evolve. Webb also can study the chemistry of the disks in different evolutionary phases and watch how they change, and help astronomers determine what influence environment plays in their evolution.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, another planned infrared observatory, will be able to perform Sabbi’s study on a much larger area. Westerlund 2 is just a small slice of an immense star-formation region. These vast regions contain clusters of stars with different ages and different densities. Astronomers could use Roman Space Telescope observations to start to build up statistics on how a star’s characteristics, like its mass or outflows, affect its own evolution or the nature of stars that form nearby. The observations could also provide more information on how planets form in tough environments.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
Contacts and sources:
Claire Andreoli NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Donna Weaver / Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore
Secret Space U.S. Fleet Being Built In Utah... ET Experiences and Advanced Technology!
Secret Space U.S. Fleet Being Built In Utah... ET Experiences and Advanced Technology!
Secret Space U.S. Fleet Being Built In Utah… ET Experiences and Advanced Technology!
The evidence of an extraterrestrial presence is forever growing, with new information coming forward in regards to dramatic engagements between these strange beings and the United States military and naval forces. Are we obtaining advanced technology from them? Information is now coming forward in regards to the huge construction of space craft built by human hands in Utah.
Highly Top Secret! Presented by Frank Chille Filmed by MUFON PA All content on this channel is licensed, and or produced by Zohar Entertainment Group/Awakening Expo/Phenomena Magazine.
New Earth Found Orbiting Proxima Centauri, Our Closet Neighbor Star
New Earth Found Orbiting Proxima Centauri, Our Closet Neighbor Star
The existence of a planet the size of Earth around the closest star in the solar system, Proxima Centauri, has been confirmed by an international team of scientists including researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE). The results, which you can read all about in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, reveal that the planet in question, Proxima b, has a mass of 1.17 earth masses and is located in the habitable zone of its star, which it orbits in 11.2 days.
This artist’s impression shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System.
This breakthrough has been possible thanks to radial velocity measurements of unprecedented precision using ESPRESSO, the Swiss-manufactured spectrograph – the most accurate currently in operation – which is installed on the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Proxima b was first detected four years ago by means of an older spectrograph, HARPS – also developed by the Geneva-based team – which measured a low disturbance in the star’s speed, suggesting the presence of a companion.
The ESPRESSO spectrograph has performed radial velocity measurements on the star Proxima Centauri, which is only 4.2 light-years from the Sun, with an accuracy of 30 centimetres a second (cm/s) or about three times more precise than that obtained with HARPS, the same type of instrument but from the previous generation.
“We were already very happy with the performance of HARPS, which has been responsible for discovering hundreds of exoplanets over the last 17 years”, begins Francesco Pepe, a professor in the Astronomy Department in UNIGE’s Faculty of Science and the man in charge of ESPRESSO. “We’re really pleased that ESPRESSO can produce even better measurements, and it’s gratifying and just reward for the teamwork lasting nearly 10 years.”
Credit: Hubble Space Telescope/ESA
Shining brightly in this Hubble image is our closest stellar neighbour: Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri lies in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), just over four light-years from Earth. Although it looks bright through the eye of Hubble, as you might expect from the nearest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri is not visible to the naked eye.
Alejandro Suarez Mascareño, the article’s main author, adds: “Confirming the existence of Proxima b was an important task, and it’s one of the most interesting planets known in the solar neighbourhood.”
The measurements performed by ESPRESSO have clarified that the minimum mass of Proxima b is 1.17 earth masses (the previous estimate was 1.3) and that it orbits around its star in only 11.2 days.
Artist’s impression of the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b shown as of a arid (but not completely water-free) rocky Super-Earth. This appearance is one of several possible outcomes of current theories regarding the development of this exoplanet, while the actual look and structure of the planet is known in no ways at this time. Proxima Centauri b is the closest exoplanet to the Sun and also the closest potentially habitable exoplanet as well. It orbits Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf with a surface temperature of 3040 K (thus hotter than light bulbs and therefore whiter, as depicted here). The Alpha Centauri binary system is shown in the background.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
“ESPRESSO has made it possible to measure the mass of the planet with a precision of over one-tenth of the mass of Earth”, says Michel Mayor, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2019, honorary professor in the Faculty of Science and the ‘architect’ of all ESPRESSO-type instruments. “It’s completely unheard of.”
And what about life in all this?
Although Proxima b is about 20 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun, it receives comparable energy, so that its surface temperature could mean that water (if there is any) is in liquid form in places and might, therefore, harbour life.
Having said that, although Proxima b is an ideal candidate for biomarker research, there is still a long way to go before we can suggest that life has been able to develop on its surface. In fact, the Proxima star is an active red dwarf that bombards its planet with X rays, receiving about 400 times more than the Earth.
“Is there an atmosphere that protects the planet from these deadly rays?” asks Christophe Lovis, a researcher in UNIGE’s Astronomy Department and responsible for ESPRESSO’s scientific performance and data processing. “And if this atmosphere exists, does it contain the chemical elements that promote the development of life (oxygen, for example)? How long have these favourable conditions existed? We’re going to tackle all these questions, especially with the help of future instruments like the RISTRETTO spectrometer, which we’re going to build specially to detect the light emitted by Proxima b, and HIRES, which will be installed on the future ELT 39 m giant telescope that the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is building in Chile.”
Surprise: is there a second planet?
In the meantime, the precision of the measurements made by ESPRESSO could result in another surprise. The team has found evidence of a second signal in the data, without being able to establish the definitive cause behind it. “If the signal was planetary in origin, this potential other planet accompanying Proxima b would have a mass less than one third of the mass of the Earth. It would then be the smallest planet ever measured using the radial velocity method”, adds Professor Pepe.
It should be noted that ESPRESSO, which became operational in 2017, is in its infancy and these initial results are already opening up undreamt of opportunities. The road has been travelled at breakneck pace since the first extrasolar planet was discovered by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, both from UNIGE’s Astronomy Department. In 1995, the 51Peg b gas giant planet was detected using the ELODIE spectrograph with an accuracy of 10 meters per second (m/s). Today ESPRESSO, with its 30 cm/s (and soon 10 after the latest adjustments) will perhaps make it possible to explore worlds that remind us of the Earth.
What Did Steven Spielberg and U.S. Presidents Really Know About The UFO Phenomena?
What Did Steven Spielberg and U.S. Presidents Really Know About The UFO Phenomena?
It has been speculated that director Steven Spielberg had obtained inside information pertaining to UFOs and E.T.s from high ranking government officials. Stories of secret meetings with other worldly beings had taken place and even U.S. presidents were involved with signing agreements with them in hope of obtaining advanced technology, but could we really trust them?
Biblical Passages Found on the Walls of Ancient Egyptian Temples are Mystifying
Biblical Passages Found on the Walls of Ancient Egyptian Temples are Mystifying
Biblical Passages Found on the Walls of Ancient Egyptian Temples are Mystifying
Strange markings on the walls of ancient temples continue to mystify the world. Did the ancient Egyptians have an insight into the future and what other wonders lie within ancient sites around the world?
Welcome to Unusual Anomalies & Discoveries Official YouTube Channel. Here you will find interviews, lectures and documentaries on archaeological findings and alternative viewpoints and explanations of science, archaeology, mythology, religion, paranormal, supernatural and history from around the world. Some of the content on this channel are from an archived collection, and all programming showcased is licensed.
Anunnaki Pole Shift History! The Earth’s Magnetic Field is Weakening Rapidly...Could The Unthinkable Happen?
Anunnaki Pole Shift History! The Earth’s Magnetic Field is Weakening Rapidly... Could The Unthinkable Happen?
Exploring and exposing deep knowledge that has been hidden from most of humanity. Beyond his personal story, we explore the origins of humanity at the hand of the Annunaki, how to protect ourselves from a diminished magnetic atmosphere, and the mysteries of space-faring civilizations.
The Anunnaki are a group of deities who appear in the mythological traditions of the ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. Descriptions of how many Anunnaki there were and what role they fulfilled are inconsistent and often contradictory.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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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.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
NASA captures incredible close-up shot of plumes of dust and..
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