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.
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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!!!
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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.
16-07-2020
Roswell UFO Crash to be officially disclosed as time-traveling future humans
Roswell UFO Crash to be officially disclosed as time-traveling future humans
On June 18, President Donald Trump replied to a question about the Roswell UFO crash from his son, Don Jr, in a podcast. Trump’s reply was that he would consider declassifying what occurred at the 1947 event that was “very interesting”. According to new information from Secret Space Program Insider Corey Goode, Trump was told that the Roswell UFO Crash involved time-traveling humans from the future.
Goode has recently revealed that he is again receiving briefings from reliable insiders about various classified programs. I have in the past discussed Goode’s credibility both as an insider himself with first-hand witness information, and also as a conduit for other insiders who release information and documents to him. This was best exemplified in two leaked Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents that he was the first to publicly reveal back in December 2017, the documents were given to him from a trusted DIA source.
According to newly acquired information from Goode, there is consensus within the “deep black” operations community to move forward with a “limited hangout” where some of the truth about secret space programs will be revealed, while much will continue to remain hidden including the existence of extraterrestrial life.
This is what Goode wrote to me about what Trump has been told and what is about to be officially disclosed:
I have mentioned this in the past. It was brought up again recently after Trump commented on Roswell. POTUS ‘Roswell Briefings’ are basically this: Roswell was NOT an Alien event. It was a mishap from US in the future. POTUS is told that the MAJORITY of the lights seen in the sky are from our own craft operating in the future and creating a temporal butterfly effect. They are told that what the ancients saw in the sky was often the exact same phenomenon….
POTUS is under the impression that because of tests being run in Roswell during the same time that future craft were operating in that Space at a later time… that it caused the craft to pull into the past and crash thus beginning the new tech boom after WWII.
This more accurate account of what happened at Roswell, when compared to an official USAF report released in 1995, will nevertheless disappoint many wanting full disclosure of the extraterrestrial intervention in human affairs that stretches back into antiquity.It appears that those briefing Trump have decided that it is too soon for humanity to be told the full truth, and that a “limited hangout” must be put into effect, and Roswell will be the linchpin for that to happen.
Goode continued to explain what he had been told by his sources:
There is a constant contact between the present and the future since the late 50’s. The ‘PLAN’ that Q often mentions was delivered to the mid 1960’s ‘pre-alliance’ members in full and that plan has been followed ever since. These people carry these weird looking pagers (like from the 80’s/90’s) that has a flip out keyboard that allows the person to communicate with their FUTURE self and command center within these programs. There are Quantum Computers that are used for this communication and it operates in ‘reciprocal dimensions’ where time flows in different directions and at different rates. Data is transmitted in these alternate dimensions.
There is a major time war going on between humans from 2 timelines. One is more of the ‘Wing Maker’ type of future where AI controls a very small population on Earth. There is another group fighting to preserve the timeline by stopping the manipulation of timelines so that they all collapse into the proper one (per ET / Anshar Guidance).
This will not be the first time that a narrative explaining a temporal war between two factions of future humans has been leaked into the public arena.
Back in 2004, Dan Burisch, a microbiologist, came forward to reveal what he had witnessed in classified programs about the existence of two factions of time-traveling future humans (aka extraterrestrials) trying to deal with a converging timeline paradox that would occur by 2012. Of course, what Burisch predicted did not happen suggesting that he was disseminating disinformation in a limited hangout, or such a converging timeline paradox had been delayed.
I did have a series of email Q&A’s with Burisch back in April 2004, and concluded he was part of a limited hangout. It’s no great surprise that information similar to his is now being spun for a more modern audience including Trump, according to Goode:
We are told that some of these people from the future are working directly with elements of current era deep black intel agencies. They have portals in these locations that they do point to point transfers of people and supplies from.
Very interesting stuff… and I can see how POTUS would buy this over little green men. Especially with his history with his uncle who worked on the Tesla papers.
Goode was here referring to Dr. John Trump who was a full professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1943 when he was asked by the FBI to evaluate the national security implications of the papers of the recently deceased Nikola Tesla. Professor Trump later told his nephew, Donald, about some of the advanced technologies used in classified programs, which has led to much speculation over what the current President knows about flying saucers and the Roswell crash.
On July 13, I spoke with Goode who explained that future disclosure announcements will be limited to advanced technology patents that will be released to the general public, similar to five recent patents granted to the US Navy concerning electromagnetic propulsion, power and defense. This patents oriented disclosure process will better familiarize the scientific community and public with principles of time travel and electromagnetic propulsion in order to get them to accept the limited hangout narrative that all UFO sightings involve humans from the future.
A gigantic templar crop circle has appeared out of nowhere on a farmer's field in Northern France, triggering fear and curiosity of thousands of visitors.
Mysterious 'templar' crop circle appears in French field
Photo Credit: Twitter
Crop circle, or crop formation, is nothing new for the world to know and understand. They have been appearing in the US and Europe for decades.
The mysterious phenomenon of patterns created by flattening a large area of the crop was given a term in the 1980s by Colin Andrews.
Over the years, many have connected the phenomenon to extraterrestrials. However, there are those who firmly believe they fall within the realm of hoaxes.
The topic of crop circles received mainstream coverage with M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 thriller ‘Signs’, that showed a family living in the US suburbs waking up to find huge patterns on their cornfield.
But recently, the theory of crop circles being hoaxes took a back seat after a massive pattern appeared in a wheat field in France.
A gigantic templar crop circle has appeared out of nowhere on a farmer's field in Northern France, triggering fear and curiosity of thousands of visitors.
According to reports, the huge templar sign appeared on July 5 in a filed in Vimy, near Lens.
Needless to say, it has attracted thousands of people.
The owner of the land, Gerard Benoit, noticed the pattern while driving his tractor on July 5. The intricate design has been described as a 'Templar Cross'.
“I thought someone had damaged my wheat overnight, but then I realised it was forming a pattern. We've never seen a crop circle before. We see it in movies. Its vandalism, but we said to ourselves, 'It's good for once," Nicolas Benoit, Gerard Benoit's son, told Euro Weekly News.
“We saw a lot of people come to the field and we discovered that there were religious beliefs around it. People are crazy. They come to pray,” Nicolas added.
The Benoit family had shared some pictures of the circles on social media. But they had to remove them as hundreds of people have been visiting their farm since July 5.
"We are not a museum. The crop circles are beautiful, but for someone else," said Nicolas.
Our planet is filled with incredible stories, myths, and legends about incredible civilizations and cultures that inhabited Earth tens of thousands of years ago, before written history.Among all these fascinating legends, including Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, and Shambala among others, there is one especially suggestive for which the ancient Greek historians were interested.
It was the so-called land of Hyperborea, which was said to rival the mythical Atlantis. A place in which, according to the myths, the gods who descended from heaven lived, a place of incredible prosperity, technology, and history.
This mythical land is said to have been like no other. Hyperboreans were said to have been immortal, in addition to being described as Gods. Hyperborea was said to have been a theocracy ruled by three priests of the god Apollo.
Some authors argue that Hyperborea may have been located near or at the arctic circle. Image Credit: Julian Faylona.
Furthermore, the god Apollo drove his flying vehicle to this region every nineteen years to rejuvenate.
It is also said that Medusa was banished to those lands. Various fragments about Pythagoras claimed that he came from the Hyperboreans.
Located far to the north, somewhere near the icy regions of the NorthPole, the legends speak of an ancient and almost forgotten civilization.
Mythical in character, it is said that the Hyperborean civilization flourished in the northernmost region of planet Earth at a time when the area was suitable for human life and development.
Certain esoteric systems and spiritual traditions speak of Hyperborea as the terrestrial and celestial principle of civilization. In other words, the home of the ancient people. The original human.
Some authors have even proposed several theories suggesting that Hyperborea was the original Garden of Eden, the exact place where the earthly planes and celestial planes meet.
The land was described in a number of legends as being the perfect place on Earth, hence its connection to the Garden of Eden.
Hyperborea is said to have been a land where the Sun shone twenty-four hours a day.
Greek Mythology and the Hyperboreans
It is in Greek Mythology where we find a lot of details about this mythical land. According to Greek literature, Hyperborea was a place inhabited by a race of Giants who were described as living in a place ‘beyond the north wind’.
The Ancient Greek believed that Boreas, the God of the North Wind inhabited Thrace, and therefore Hyperborea was commonly referred to as a place located far to the north of Thrace.
As the Greek described Hyperborea as a place where the Sun shone twenty-four hours a day, modern authors have suggested they may have described a location within the North Circle of our planet.
1599 map by Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz illustrating what is believed to be the Arctic Circle composed of a number of islands.
the marvelous road to the assembly of the Hyperboreans.
Pindar also described the otherworldly perfection of the Hyperboreans:
Never the Muse is absent
from their ways: lyres clash and flutes cry
and everywhere maiden choruses whirling.
Neither disease nor bitter old age is mixed
in their sacred blood; far from labor and battle they live.
But it is Greek historian Herodotus who describes this incredible place with detail in his book Histories (Book IV, Chapters 32–36).
Herodotus reported three initial references that apparently mentioned the Hyperboreans, including Hesiod and Homer, the latter purportedly having written about Hyperborea in his lost work Epigoni.
Herodotus also recorded that the 7th-century BC poet Aristeaswrote of the ancient Hyperboreans in a poem (now regrettably lost) called Arimaspea which speaks about a journey to the Issedones, who are thought to have lived in the Kazakh Steppe.
Beyond these lived the one-eyed Arimaspians, further on the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans.
Herodotus thought that Hyperborea prevailed somewhere in Northeast Asia.
So, if Hyperboreans did exist, where was it located then? Different sources indicate different locations.
Some authors argue that the ancient Hyperboreans were located somewhere beyond the snowy Riphean Mountains–a mountain range mentioned by various authors of classical antiquity but whose locations remains a profound mystery. (The Montes Riphaeusmountain range on Earth’s Moon is named in honor of the Riphean Mountains.)
If we take a look at the work of Pausanias: “The land of the Hyperboreans, men living beyond the home of Boreas.”
According to Homer, Boreas was in Trace, so Hyperborea was in his opinion north of Thrace, in Dacia.
But, as the Riphean Mountain’s location was a heavily discussed topic in ancient time, it was a difficult task to agree on the location of both the mountains and the land where the Hyperboreans lived.
According to Hecataeus of Miletus, an early Greek historian, and geographer, the Riphean Mountains were located near the Black Sea. Pindar, however, was convinced that the Ripehean Mountains and Borea was located near the Danube, while Heraclides Ponticus and Antimachus, in contrast, identified the Riphean Mountains with the Alps. They were also convinced that the Hyperboreans were a Celtic tribe who lived beyond the Riphean Mountains.
“In the regions beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily. This island, the account continues, is situated in the north and is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, who are called by that name because their home is beyond the point whence the north wind (Boreas) blows; and the island is both fertile and productive of every crop, and has an unusually temperate climate…”
Plutarch, on the other hand, wrote in the first century AD that the Hyperboreans were most likely the Gauls, who attacked and sacked Rome in the Fourth century BC.
Legends speak of mighty ancient civilizations
To the ancient Greek and Romans, Thule and Hyperborea were one of several terrae incognitae, regions that have not been mapped or documented.
In these uncharted lands, Pliny, Pindar, and Herodotus among others believe that people lived incredible longevous lifespans, surpassing the age of one thousand years.
According to a number of ancient authors, the sun supposedly rose and set only once a year, meaning that if such civilization existed, it was most likely located above or on the arctic circle.
An artists illustration of what Atlantis may have looked like.
The Hyperboreans were allegedly once on the verge of war against a race of soldiers which many authors suggest may have been the Atlanteans. However, the war never happened as the soldiers realized the inhabitants of Hyperborea were far too strong.
This account was preserved by Aelian–a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric. Some beleive the account by Aelian was a work of satire or comedy
Pentagon UFO footage needs scientific and military investigation, states expert
Pentagon UFO footage needs scientific and military investigation, states expert
UFO footage publicly acknowledged by the Pentagon DOES contain physical anomalies which are "worthy of serious scientific and military attention", according to an expert.
Headlines were made across the globe in 2017 when US Navy radar footage of a mystery object with a “glowing aura” and flying erratically was leaked to the public. The debate over UFOs reached fever pitch when the footage emerged of what some called an alien craft. One particular instance details footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet, a twin-engined fighter, showing an unidentified aircraft surrounded by a glowing aura.
The object travelled at a high speed and rotated as it moved - the pilots onboard are captured saying “there’s a whole fleet of them”.
While the US Navy acknowledged the incident, officials at the Pentagon - the United State's Department of Defense - kept quiet until earlier this year when they officially disclosed it.
The DoD said the video was authentic, although did not go into detail about what the craft may be or where it came from.
However, one expert believes the video is definitely worthy of scientific investigation due to its seemingly paranormal nature.
Pentagon UFO footage needs scientific and military investigation, states expert
(Image: DoD)
Are UFOs visiting Earth?
(Image: GETTY)
Adam Dodd, a tutor at the University of Queensland who has an interest in science media research, said: "Thoughts about what UFOs are vary widely – from illusions to alien spacecraft.
"However, a workable, conservative definition is: 'intelligently-controlled airborne objects not apparently made by humans'.
"Only a small fraction of UFO reports collected globally over the past seven decades seem to describe such objects, but the Navy footage appears to fit the bill.
"Whether such objects are vehicles of alien invasion or not, their mere presence would seem to indicate a national security threat, which is partly what makes the Pentagon’s recent announcement so puzzling.
"As observers, we are led to believe that, despite the somewhat visually disappointing resolution, we are watching authentic footage.
"In a way, the visual disappointment helps to qualify the videos as candidates for legitimacy.
"Even though few of us know what such a video “should” look like, we assume that, since UFO encounters are spontaneous and surprising, footage is likely to be somewhat less than satisfactory.
"These expectations present a dilemma. If an image of a UFO is too clear it is likely to be read as obviously fake, but if it’s too blurry it could be anything.
"A superficial reading of the Navy UFO footage would likely lead to the latter evaluation.
"But given the nature of the footage (it is infrared, not technically photographic, so establishes the heat signature of the objects depicted), and the institutional context (the Pentagon is not known for producing and distributing fake UFO videos), it’s hard to avoid concluding the footage shows genuine physical anomalies.
"If that’s the case, it would be worthy of serious scientific and military attention, both of which currently seem absent."
These false-color images of Comet NEOWISE show the concentration of sodium atoms in the comet's dusty ion tail. Astronomers created the images using the Planetary Science Institute's Input/Output facility near Tucson, Arizona. The image on the left shows light reflected off of cometary dust, while the image on the right shows light emitted by sodium atoms. (Image credit: Jeffrey Morgenthaler/Carl Schmidt/Planetary Science Institute)
New images of the bright Comet NEOWISE show signs of a sodium tail, giving scientists fresh insight on what's happening on the surface.
This image of comet NEOWISE was captured by NASA’s Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, on June 24, 2020, as the comet approached the sun.
(Image credit: NASA/STEREO/William Thompson)
Processed data from the WISPR instrument on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe shows greater detail in the twin tails of comet NEOWISE, as seen on July 5, 2020. The lower, broader tail is the comet’s dust tail, while the thinner, upper tail is the comet’s ion tail.
(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Lab/Parker Solar Probe/Guillermo Stenborg)
Images of the comet were obtained on July 8 using the Planetary Science Institute's (PSI) Input/Output facility, which has also spotted sodium in Mercury's comet-like tail as well as Jupiter's atmosphere during past observations.
Scientists can already get a sense of cometary activity by looking at the dust coming from a comet, which can move faster if the particles are tiny and more easily pushed by sunlight. Slower particles tend to be larger and harder to move around. These individual particles affect how the dust tail is shaped.
Like dust, atomic sodium also is affected by sunlight, although it has more specific changes.
"Its [atomic sodium's] momentum kick comes from a very particular wavelength of yellow light — the same color seen in sodium vapor street lamps," research team member Jeffrey Morgenthaler, a PSI senior scientist, saidi a statement.
"Thanks to acceleration by intense sunlight," co-author and Boston University research scientist Carl Schmidt added in the same statement, "the sodium tail takes on a different shape than the tail seen in off-band filtered images, which are dominated by reflected light from dust. In comparison, the sodium tail is narrower, longer and points directly away from the sun."
Sunlight's push on sodium atoms tends to be stronger than its effect on dust and other gases that come off comets. It is difficult to see sodium tails, however, due to the sun's emissions. Notable examples of comets with sodium tails include Hale-Bopp (the famed 1997 naked eye-comet) and the notorious Comet ISON, which fell apart shortly after rounding the sun in 2013.
Morgenthaler and Schmidt will continue to observe NEOWISE as it rounds the sun. They are also using Monte Carlo computer models to simulate the sodium tail and estimate outgassing rates and speeds.
It was not revealed in the statement exactly when the team plans to submit their results to a journal for peer review, but it is common when observing quickly changing astronomical phenomena like NEOWISE to release interim information to keep the community informed.
Pontefract UFO expert releases documentary series on 25th anniversary of Roswell 'alien autopsy' video
Pontefract UFO expert releases documentary series on 25th anniversary of Roswell 'alien autopsy' video
While recent months have seen most of us spend a lot of time inside a Pontefract UFO expert has been using the time to look into his interests beyond the stars.
Author Philip Mantle has released a new four-part documentary series available on Amazon and iTunes that looks into the "UFO crash" at Roswell, New Mexico fin 1947 and the controversial Alien Autopsy film released in 1995, which supposedly depicts a medical examination of an extraterrestial being.
Mr Mantle has published numerous books on the subject and is a former director of investigations at the British UFO Research Association.
He said: "This year is the 25th anniversary of the infamous alien autopsy film hoax. I was involved in it right from day one and I am known, among other things, as an authority on this film."
Philip Mantle
To coincide with the anniversary Mr Mantle has published a revised edition of his book Roswell Alien Autopsy: The Truth Behind the Film that Shook the World, as well as the documentary, which is available now.
Mr Mantle said: "The documentary was released in May. It was due to come out later in the year but with the lockdown in place and people sat at home it made sense to release it a little early.
"I'm still involved in UFO research and investigation and now that the lockdown is being eased I am willing to look into people's reported UFO sightings once again.
"The new book has gained a lot of interest from many different parts of the world, especially now that I have released a lot of new documentation in it.
"There are those that still believe that the alien autopsy film is the genuine article but now that I have released all of this new material there can be no argument that it is 100 per cent fake and all of those behind it are exposed in full."
UFO is the initialism used to denote "unidentified flying objects", a phenomenon that has its roots in Roswell, America in 1947.
There are an average of 70,000 reported UFO sightings every year, worldwide.
The most famous incident in UFO history is Roswell, in July 1947. After the incident, the US Air Force announced being in possession of a flying saucer but later changed its statement, saying it was a weather balloon.
Mr Mantle used the lockdown to finish two further books Intoducing UFOs: A Young Person's Guide and UFO Landings UK. There a no publishing dates yet for these two books, but Mr Mantle has sold the documentary rights for the latter and it expecting filming to begin shortly.
Anyone who would like to request Mr Mantle look into a UFO sighting can email philip.mantle@gmail.com.
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1.4-Million-Year-Old Bone Hand Axe Revises Toolmaking Timeline
Both sides of the recent Ethiopian bone hand axe find.
1.4-Million-Year-Old Bone Hand Axe Revises Toolmaking Timeline
In Ethiopia, a team of experts have uncovered a bone hand axemade, a staggering 1.4 million years ago, by an ancestor of modern humans. It was probably made by the archaic human species Homo erectus. The Ethiopian bone hand axe find is unique because it is made from hippopotamus bone and provides a very early example of H. erectus toolmaking capabilities. The find was made by specialists working at the remote Konso-Gardula site, in Ethiopia. This area has yielded a number of tools made by H. erectus .
The archaic H. erectus species of humans appeared over 2 million years ago and were the first to spread beyond Africa to Eurasia. They were the ancestors of Homo Heidelbergensis , who are, in turn, the probable ancestors of modern humans. It is believed that H. erectus were the first hominins to use fire, and develop other early technologies, including tools.
Bone Hand Axe is Only Second of Its Kind
In recent decades, specialists in Africa have uncovered many hand axes that appear to have been made by H. erectus . These early hand axes were made by whittling away flakes from a stone until it was sharp. This method is known to researchers as the ‘ Acheulean technique ’ reports Haaretz. These tools are typically oval-shaped to allow an early human to grasp the axe and one side was sharpened into a pointed blade.
Experts found the 4-inch (12 cm) bone hand axe at the Konso-Gardula site, which was not particularly surprising. However, what was unusual was that it was made from the femur of a Hippopotamus. The researchers wrote in the PNAS Journal that ‘The large number of flake scars and their distribution pattern, together with the high frequency of cone fractures’ indicated that it was made by an early human, almost certainly a H. erectus .
Finding a hand axe made of bone is rare and Phys.org reports that ‘It represents just the second bone-based H. erectus -made hand axe ever found’. The only other known example, found in Tanzania, was made from an elephant bone .
An analysis of the Ethiopian bone hand axe revealed that is was worn and thus well used. The researchers who unearthed the artifact wrote in PNAS that ‘Edge damage, polish, and striae patterns are consistent with use in longitudinal motions, such as in butchering.’ Moreover, it was almost identical in construction to stone axes from that period.
The biggest outcome of the Ethiopian bone hand axe discovery was how early it was made. Although it is far from the oldest of tools discovered (tools unearthed on the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, and date to 3.3 million years ago) researchers stated that it shows H. erectus had command of skills ‘that had only been thought to have developed half a million years later,’ reports Haaretz. Therefore, based on the bone tool find, H. erectus developed sophisticated toolmaking skills much earlier than widely believed.
The bone hand axe (micro-ct based render) shown placed in a hippopotamus femur
Bone Hand Axe Shows Better Tool Skills Than Formerly Thought
The early human who made the Ethiopian bone hand axe must have been highly skilled. Tohoku University archaeologist Katsuhiro Sano wrote that, ‘That kind of control is even harder to accomplish with bone than with stone’ according to Ars Technica . It provides a fascinating insight into H. erectus and demonstrates that they had a high level of technical knowledge. Sano wrote that these hominins could understand ‘material properties like sharpness and durability well enough to choose the right material for the right job’ according to Ars Technica .
However, there is one mystery about the find: Why use bone in the first place, since stones are more resilient and stronger? One answer is that hippopotamus bones were readily available and may have been more suitable for some specific task. At the time, there would have been plenty of hippos in this area, which at the time was a wetland zone. The Ars Technica article suggests that ‘volcanic activity in east Africa sometimes changed hominins’ access to stone deposits for centuries at a time.’ Therefore, early humans in such areas could have been forced to use bones for toolmaking.
Bone Hand Axe Shows Greater Intelligence and Social Skills
The bone hand axe head shows that H. erectus was technologically advanced. Sano and his collaborators believe that the ‘abundance of workable stone around Konso may have helped Acheulean toolmakers there hone their craft since they had plenty of material to work with’ according to Ars Technica . The sophistication of this hand tool shows that H. erectus may have passed on their knowledge of toolmaking. And this suggests that they were smarter and had more developed social structure than previously believed. Sano and his colleagues stated in the Ars Technica article that ‘Our early hominin cousins were already very resourceful, very competent, and very intelligent.’
The Ethiopian bone hand axe discovery is very important. The unearthing of a hand axe made out of a femur bone demonstrates the evolution of archaic humans that lived in the Konso area. In the PNAS article researchers concluded that this find adds considerably to the ‘known technological repertoire of the African Early Pleistocene Homo.’ Work is continuing at the Konso site and more bone hand tools may be unearthed in the future.
Top image: Both sides of the recent Ethiopian bone hand axe find.
WETENSCHAPDomper op de feestvreugde voor de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten: vanmorgen werd de lancering van de eerste (Arabische) Marsmissie met twee dagen uitgesteld, door de slechte weersomstandigheden. Ook de Verenigde Staten en China willen de komende twee weken raketrovers richting Mars lanceren. Missen ze het (korte) lanceervenster, zullen ze twee jaar moeten wachten op een volgende gelegenheid.
Rusland en Europa vielen als eerste af in de race naar Mars. Door de coronapandemie liepen de plannen van Roskosmos en de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie (ESA) vertraging op waardoor ze zich moesten terugtrekken. Zij zullen het over twee jaar opnieuw proberen.
Het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap NASA, China alsook de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten (VAE) zullen wél nog een kansje wagen de komende twee weken. NASA heeft de lancering van zijn Marsrover Perseverance al enkele keren moeten uitstellen waardoor de lanceerdatum naar 30 juli werd verschoven. En nu de lancering van de VAE eveneens vertraging oploopt, belooft het behoorlijk druk te worden de komende twee weken.
De lanceerdatum van China is voorlopig nog onbekend, maar één ding is zeker: ze kunnen maar beter haast maken, want de duur van het lanceervenster is kort en loopt maar tot 15 augustus. Dat is een gevolg van de baan en de omlooptijd van Mars in verhouding tot die van de Aarde. De periodes waarin Mars met zo min mogelijk energie te bereiken is, komen met intervallen van 2,135 jaar.
In this video clip, an engineer observes as a test of the Mars Helicopter Delivery System at Lockheed Martin Space in Denver on April 2019.
Diep in de ruimte is iets vreemds gaande. Astronomen hebben vier objecten ontdekt die cirkelvormig zijn en die langs de rand extra helder zijn. De wetenschappers hebben geen idee in welke categorie ze de objecten moeten onderbrengen.
De objecten, die lijken op een soort ringvormige eilanden, zijn ‘odd radio circles’ (vreemde radiocirkels) of kortweg ORCs genoemd. De astronomen weten niet precies hoe ver deze ORCs bij ons vandaan staan, maar ze zouden zich in verre sterrenstelsels kunnen bevinden.
In een nieuwe paper over de ontdekking dragen de sterrenkundigen meerdere mogelijke verklaringen aan. Er is alleen één probleem: geen enkele theorie kan alle vier nieuwe ORCs verklaren. Het is in ieder geval uitgesloten dat het gaat om supernova’s, planetaire nevels of stervormende sterrenstelsels. De astronomen speculeren dat we hier te maken hebben met schokgolven die het gevolg zijn van een extragalactische gebeurtenis of activiteit in een radiostelsel.
Nieuw fenomeen
Het is ook mogelijk dat we te maken hebben met een nieuw fenomeen dat we nog niet echt hebben onderzocht, reageerde astronoom Kristine Spekkens van Queen’s University in Canada.
In het centrum van twee van de ORCs zijn sterrenstelsels ontdekt, wat erop lijkt te wijzen dat de objecten zijn gevormd door die stelsels. Twee ORCs bevinden zich bovendien erg dicht bij elkaar, wat betekent dat ze mogelijk dezelfde oorsprong hebben.
De astronomen hebben in ieder geval kunnen bevestigen dat de objecten echt bestaan. Omdat ze nog maar vier van deze raadselachtige objecten hebben gevonden, kunnen ze er nog maar weinig over zeggen.
Ze verwachten nog meer ongewone objecten te ontdekken. Het onderzoek zal naar alle waarschijnlijkheid spoedig te lezen zijn in het tijdschrift Nature Astronomy.
OPMERKING: alle video's zijn geselecteerd en gepost door peter2011
Rainbow UFOs Seen Over Philippines On July 9, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Rainbow UFOs Seen Over Philippines On July 9, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 9, 2020
Location of sighting: Tuguegarao City, Cagayan, Philippines
Source: Facebook
These glowing clouds are actually UFOs sitting atop of real clouds. You can see the dark clouds underneath and the bright glowing colorful UFOs lighting up the area clouds around them. The glowing objects are the outer layer of clouds that many UFOs make, so we don't actually see the UFO here, but the outer edges of the clouds that the UFOs made. Absolutely breathtaking and proof aliens are watching over the Philippines.
TheUFO or unidentified flying object was seen over Saddleworth moor in North West England. Avid bird watcher Alan Jones, 49, of Delph saw the UFO in the early morning hours as he sat in his car at Bleak Hey Nook. At about 5.30am, Mr Jones heard a "whoosh sound" followed by a bright light in his rearview mirror.
According to The Oldham Times, he saw the UFO orb rise from a ball of light before it turned red and vanished into the skies.
Mr Jones compared the sound it made to a plane that has just landed.
He said: "I know it sounds incredible, but this is what I saw."
The bizarre UFO encounter was analysed by self-titled UFO expert and conspiracy theorist Scott C Waring.
UFO sighting: A glowing sphere was seen over Saddleworth moor in Greater Manchester
(Image: GETTY)
UFO sighting: An expert has linked the event to another incident in Cornwall
(Image: GOOGLE/SCOTT WARING)
Mr Waring shared the encounter on his blog ET Data Base in a post titled Glowing Sphere Seen Over Saddleworth.
He said: "Here is another UFO seen over the UK.
"It is a perfect orb and was seen shooting across the sky at 5.3am.
"The object seemed to make a whooshing sound as it passed, which would mean its mostly silent except for the gusts of wind passing around it as it speeds up.
"Lots of alien activity in the UK this week. It looks like something big is about to happen over there, so if you are in that area, keep an eye out.
The former design manager also hinted at the possibility of alien life somewhere beyond Earth.
He said: "I've never thought about whether there is life elsewhere in the Univers, but judging from what saw on Sunday morning, it's got to be a distinct possibility.
"It was beautiful morning with mist hanging over the landscape, and this thing came out of nowhere."
Most experts would, however, agree there are perfectly natural explanations behind UFO sightings.
A common explanation is the sighings are the result of pareidolia.
Pareidolia is a bizarre trick of the mind that causes people to see recognisable shapes and patterns where they do not exist.
Pareidolia can cause people to see animals in clouds and smiling faces in car bumpers.
The US space agency NASA said: "Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon where people see recognizable shapes in clouds, rock formations, or otherwise unrelated objects or data.
"There are many examples of this phenomenon on Earth and in space."
Some really amazing UFO clouds showed up coming from the ocean over the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand last week. It looks as if there were not one but three different UFOs flying near each other. The clouds however were not cooperative and now it looks like three disks layered. Notice the above screenshot...the UFOs have no puffs of smoke anywhere, no curls of mist, which is proof that the vapors are being contained by an invisible force field so they wont blow away. The winds have zero effect on them. This is absolute proof that UFOs make clouds. Scott C. Waring
News states:
"Put simply, these incredible clouds form when air flows over the ranges, a bit like how the sea is altered on the surface by rocks or shallow water below. "The fading southerly conditions in the evening, along with the cooling night, helped produce this dramatic cloud, more often seen over parts of Canterbury (thanks to the Southern Alps and nor'westers)."
Hey My UFO Discovery Got Into The 2020 Movie Proximity! Awesome, UFO Sighting News.
Hey My UFO Discovery Got Into The 2020 Movie Proximity! Awesome, UFO Sighting News.
I was watching the 2020 scifi flick called Proximity. The movie is about a boy who works for JPL and records his own abduction. At 36 minutes into the movie, he is in a cafe explains sightings to a girl. One of them was my discovery back in 2011. I fought for that against NASA. They moved the URLs two different times, but over the months, and then years I found them again. Kinda cool a discovery I made is in a big 2020 movie. I didn't get credit for it, but hey, who does now a days? I got onto twitter and sent a message to the writer Eric Demeusy. Maybe he will answer, maybe not, but still cool a discovery is now in a 2020 film. So just wanted to share with you and take the credit here since I see it nowhere else. I worked hard to keep those photos in the publics hands, I'm not trying to be selfish, but ask so little. Oh, excellent movie, loved the suspense and twits and turns, especially the parts about the reactions of the public...I feel it. Scott C. Waring
@EricDemeusy Hi Eric, my discovery is in your movie, can you please give me credit for it? I fought NASA back in 2011, they made the URLs disappear twice, each time I found them.
Here is another UFO seen over the UK. It is a perfect orb and was seen shooting across the sky at 5:30AM. The object seemed to make a whooshing sound as it passed which would mean its mostly silent except for the gusts of wind passing around it as it speeds up. Lots of alien activity in the UK this week. I looks like something big is about to happen over there, so if you are in that area, keep an eye out. The most common time of the day to catch a UFO is sunrise or sunset. Sounds odd, but true. Scott C. Waring
News states:
Alan, 49, whose hobby is watching owl activity, was in his car at Bleak Hey Nook, near Dirty Lane, at about 5.30am when he first heard a huge "whoosh sound" and then saw the blazing light in his rear view mirror. He turned round and saw the orb rising from the ball of light before it turned red and disappeared in the sky, dispersing into an arc. "The sound it made was like what you often hear when an aircraft has just landed, but it was really loud," said Alan. "I know it sounds incredible, but this is what I saw." Alan, a former design manager for a display exibition company, said: "I've seen some strange things on Saddleworth moor but I've never seen anything like this. It was amazing."
Thankfully, Alan had the presence of mind to get his phone out and take some photographs of what he saw. He added: "I've never thought about whether there is life elsewhere in the universe, but judging from what saw on Sunday morning, it's got to be a distinct possibility. "It was beautiful morning with mist hanging over the landscape, and this thing came out of nowhere." Alan said he had reported his sighting to the local police who said they would investigate.
Above I marked the landing spot of the Devon UFO and the sighting of the Saddleworth UFO a week apart...but may have a connection.
Here is an awesome video of something very large having crushed the trees themselves in a forested area of Devon, Engand. A Ben Landricombe was walking his dog and discovered this area of the forest was crushed down as if something large landed on top of the the trees. You can clearly see the still living trees laying sideways and a circular wall of trees still growing straight and normal on the edges. Very odd, and yes this could be a landing place for a UFO, but it could also be the exact location of a tunnel opening up from an underground base 5km below the surface. Dirt and rock are easy for aliens to open and close with their advanced tech, as easily as a human opens and closes a zip lock bag. 100% proof of alien activity in the area. Scott C. Waring
News states:
Ben Landricombe, from Plymouth, said he discovered an area of flattened trees in the woods near Meddon, at about 4pm on Monday (July 13), while taking his dog for a walk. He said: "Found a crash site in the woods - could be UFO. I stopped to take the dog for a walk in the woods today as we're camping." He said there was no indication as to why the trees were pulled down, adding: "They were snapped at the top - that was what I thought was strange". Ben continued: "We took the dog for a walk and it felt eerie and we walked about a mile and came across this. "We took the pictures and then felt someone was watching us and heard
weird sounds so we ran back to our camper. "Something strange about this place."
Ancient Ruin found on Mars appears scattered due to disaster that hit the region in the past
Ancient Ruin found on Mars appears scattered due to disaster that hit the region in the past
An ancient ruin has been discovered in Melas Mensa on Mars. The ruin appears to be in a state of decay. Seen are what looks like tiles/slabs and megalithic blocks. The structure which is 40 meters across and 20 meters width seems to have openings.
Another structures located in Nili Fossae on Mars appear to have features as the ancient ruin in Melas Mensa. They also seem to have openings as well as a huge pyramidal structure is situated directly next to one of the structured anomalies.
There are also megalithic blocks/slabs surrounding the pyramidal structure and a hole nearby has a circular, disc-shaped artifact sticking out of it.
The structures discovered by Jean Ward are not only strong evidence that Mars was once inhabited by intelligent civilizations but it shows us also that all the structures/ruins appear scattered due to some catastrophe/disaster that hit the region in the past, possible caused by an interplanetary nuclear war which took place on Mars and wiped out any civilization on the planet.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Multiple UFOs emerging from The Dark Side of the Moon
Multiple UFOs emerging from The Dark Side of the Moon
Multiple UFOs emerging from the dark side of the moon on which they then cross the moon.
The footage also shows that the UFOs flying extremely close to the moon casting convincing shadows on the lunar surface before they disappear into space again.
It is unclear whether these unidentified flying objects were en route or ascended from a base on the dark side of the moon.
The UFO footage captured by sky-watcher Herfordshire Alootment Life on July 12, 2020 starts at about the 1 minute mark.
Other videos about the dark side of the moon, selected and posted by pater2011
Saw a round object in the sky. Appeared to be reflecting light. We were camping in Unicoi County, TN and saw a round light in the sky. It seemed to be hovering in place as clouds moved below the object. Took pictures with phone and then with 300mm digital camera. When zooming in there appears to be a chevron in the middle of a circle with a glowing edge.
Check out this amazing book about the top 10 UFO cases in the history.
Daytime UFO video: Flying saucer over Red Lodge, Montana 2-Jul-2020
Daytime UFO video:Flying saucer over Red Lodge, Montana2-Jul-2020
New daytime footage of a flying saucer hovering high in the sky above Red Lodge in Montana. This happened on 2nd July 2020.
Witness report:
Translucent, tic tac like ufo photographed and filmed in Montana. On July 2nd, at 4pm, on a very sunny day, with just a couple clouds, I saw something strange in the sky that looked like stars. There were about 4-5 of them lined up in a star like pattern. Frustrated with poor quality iPhone photos, I went inside my shop and got my HD Canon camera, 210 mm telephoto lens and Tripod.Once I got a good photo I knew I was looking at something out of this world. I could only really see it with the telephoto lens. To my eyes, it just looked like a dot.So I started taking as many photos and video as I could. I was able to take photographs of two UAP’s. The first was further away and the second was closer.The closest one was the easiest to film. Once I started filming it, I could see the object was slowly drifting to the East. Maintaining the same elevation it looked like. It drifted slower than the occasional cloud that drifted by. You can see this in the video.
Fortunately, I filmed the object centered in between a telephone wire and telephone pole was a sense of distance and size.I filmed until my camera died at 4:31 pm. The objects were still slowly drifting just north of town when I had to go back to work. They were gone when I was done with work at 5.I learned more about the object while editing the photos and videos in post.
In adobe premiere, I was able to zoom in enough on the object to see that it was rotating, pulsing, changing shape slightly, morphing, etc.I made a video and have just recently uploaded it to YouTube. I document my experience as best I can in the vid and show all the photos and videos I took.It was in the editing process that I realized this could be one of the tic tac ufos. The thing sounds like the pilots describe.I would appreciate y’all investigating this further.
Don’t forget to follow us on Youtube for the latest UFO videos.
It started with a spring breeze. The Opportunity rover watched with its robotic eyes as the wind blowing through Perseverance Valley kicked puffs of rusty Mars dust into the air. In more than 14 Earth years of exploring the Red Planet, the rover had seen plenty of this kind of weather.
But the dust grew thicker. Small flecks swirled like wildfire smoke through the atmosphere, turning sun-filled midday into dusk, then night. Within a week, the dust storm spanned more than twice the area of the contiguous United States and eventually encircled the whole planet, allowing just 5 percent of the normal amount of light to reach Opportunity’s solar panels. The rover went quiet.
“It got so bad so quickly, we didn’t even have time to react,” says Keri Bean of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Bean had joined Opportunity’s rover-operating team just before that May 2018 storm.
Dust storms like that one, which snuffed out Opportunity for good, are the most dramatic and least predictable events on the Red Planet (SN: 3/16/19, p. 7). Such storms can make the nail-biting process of landing on Mars even more dangerous and could certainly make life difficult for future human explorers.
Despite almost 50 years of study, scientists are missing some key data that would help explain how dust gets kicked into the air to form planet-wide storms and what keeps it circulating for weeks or months at a time.
“We just do not understand how dust storms form on Mars,” says planetary meteorologist Scott Guzewich of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. History has shown that certain regions and seasons are more prone to dust than others. “Other than that, we’re … blind.”
Mars missions set to launch this summer, from the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates, will help solve that pressing mystery. NASA’s new rover, Perseverance, will carry a suite of weather sensors called MEDA, for Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer. Those sensors will build on decades of Mars exploration and fill in missing puzzle pieces.
“Predicting dust is the ultimate goal” for MEDA, says planetary scientist Germán Martínez of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. The data MEDA will collect will be “the most substantial contribution to this topic so far.”
Dust, dust everywhere
Dust is as important to weather on Mars as water is on Earth. With no oceans, scant water vapor and a thin atmosphere, Martian weather can be monotonously calm for about half the Martian year, which lasts close to 687 Earth days. But when the Red Planet’s orbit brings it closer to the sun, dust storm season begins.
In the 10-month dusty season, which corresponds to spring and summer in the southern hemisphere, extra sunlight warms the atmosphere. That warmth generates strong winds as air moves from warm to cool regions. Those winds lift more dust, which absorbs sunlight and warms the atmosphere, generating still stronger winds, which lift even more dust.
There is a season
Mars’ dusty season lasts from the start of southern spring to the end of southern summer (thicker blue line), when the Red Planet orbits closest to the sun. The extra sunlight warms the atmosphere, setting off a feedback loop that can lift dust into the sky and send it circulating around the globe.
UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP NORTH AMERICA LLC/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
The storms come in a range of sizes: Local storms can cover an area about the size of Alaska and last up to three Martian days (each of which lasts about 24.5 hours); global storms can engulf the planet for months. The storm that defeated Opportunity raged from the end of May through late July. Such global storms probably result when several smaller storms merge.
Global dust storms have affected Mars exploration since the arrival of the first long-term robotic visitor in 1971, when NASA’s Mariner 9 orbiter found the planet’s surface entirely obscured. Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, both survived a global dust storm in 2007, yet a large regional dust storm ended the Phoenix lander’s mission in 2008.
There has never been a Mars mission that didn’t worry about dust.
A farmer’s almanac
Luckily, Mariner 9 was an orbiter, with no plans to land. It just had to wait for the skies to clear to start snapping pictures of the Martian surface. But the same 1971 storm is probably to blame for vanquishing two Soviet landers that arrived at almost the same time.
Spacecraft that must land to do their work can’t just wait for better timing. Launch windows for missions between Earth and Mars open only every 26 months or so. Engineers who design landing systems need to know what conditions a spacecraft will face when it gets there, says Allen Chen of the Jet Propulsion Lab, who leads the entry, descent and landing for Perseverance.
The most important factor is the density of the atmosphere. Even though Mars’ atmosphere exerts just 1 percent of the pressure of Earth’s on the planet’s surface, both the thin Martian air and the wind blowing through it slow down the spacecraft and affect where it lands, Chen says.
Perseverance will take pictures of the ground while parachuting through the atmosphere and match the images to an onboard map made with images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Based on those details, an in-flight navigation system will steer the rover to a safe landing spot, helping the rover touch down within an area 25 kilometers wide — the most precise Mars landing ever.
“But that’s dependent on being able to see the ground,” Chen says, without dust obscuring the view.
To land a rover, engineers like Chen rely on forecasts that use the past to tell the future — similar to weather forecasts on Earth, but with less data. Atmospheric scientist Bruce Cantor of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, a self-described Mars weatherman, put out a Mars weather report every week until September 2019. His forecasts are based on statistics and historical data, mostly taken from orbit. “It’s almost like a farmer’s almanac in my head,” he says.
Cantor’s forecasts for Mars landings since 1999 have been “pretty accurate,” he says, and he boasts that he predicted the storm that ended the Phoenix mission to within three days. More accuracy wouldn’t have saved Phoenix, he says. The lander’s batteries were already low from low winter sunlight levels and the buildup of dust on the solar panels. “It was just a matter of what storm was going to be the mission-ending one,” he says.
He foresees clear skies for Perseverance’s touchdown in February 2021. Based on the season and weather patterns in the past, the probability of a dust storm hitting within 1,000 kilometers of the center of Perseverance’s landing area is less than 2 percent, Cantor and colleagues reported in the journal Icarus in March 2019.
But just in case, Chen’s team trained the navigation system to “deal with it being pretty darn dusty,” Chen says.
A constellation of weather stations
As Mars missions get more complex, and especially as NASA and other groups contemplate sending human explorers, being able to prepare for dust storms takes on extra urgency.
“Someday, somebody is going to go to Mars, and they’re going to want to know when and where storms occur,” Cantor says. “That’s when this stuff becomes really important.”
Cantor would know. Well over a decade ago, while testing a different rover system in Southern California, he jumped into a 2-meter-tall dust devil just to see what it would feel like. “Not one of my smartest moves,” he says. He wasn’t injured, but “it did not feel good. It felt like getting sandblasted.”
Martian astronauts would be protected by more than shorts and a T-shirt, but dust could easily invade human habitats and clog air filters — or damage astronauts’ lungs if they breathe it in. The dust may even carry poisonous and carcinogenic materials that could make astronauts ill over the course of a mission.
Astronauts will need to know when to stay inside. Part of the problem in predicting storms is a sheer lack of data. For Earth’s weather, meteorologists use thousands of ground-based weather stations, plus data from satellites, balloons and airplanes. Mars has only six active satellites, run by NASA and the European and Indian space agencies. And just two sets of weather instruments report from Mars’ surface: one on the Curiosity rover, which has been collecting data since 2012 (SN: 5/2/15, p. 24), and a nearly identical set that arrived with the InSight lander in 2018.
Collecting dust
More than seven Earth years in the Red Planet’s dusty atmosphere has taken its toll on the Curiosity rover, shown in “selfies” the rover took in October 2012 (the 84th Martian day of its mission, left) and in February 2020 (Martian day 2,687, right).
JPL-CALTECH/NASA, MALIN SPACE SCIENCE SYSTEMS
But those two spacecraft are practically neighbors, a big weakness for understanding the whole planet. “It’d be like having one of your weather stations in D.C. and the other in Buffalo,” Guzewich says.
Perseverance will help fill in the gaps. So might China’s first Mars rover, Tianwen-1, set to launch in July with an instrument to measure air temperature, pressure and wind. The Russian and European ExoMars mission, scheduled to launch in 2022, includes a lander called Kazachok equipped with meteorology and dust sensors (SN Online: 3/12/20).
From the air, the UAE’s Emirates Mars Mission, known as Hope, will observe weather, including storms, and how the atmosphere interacts with the ground. Over one Martian year in orbit, Hope will help build a global picture of how the atmosphere changes day to day and between the seasons.
Just having a few more weather stations will be a big boost, says José A. Rodríguez Manfredi of the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid, principal investigator for MEDA, the weather sensors on Perseverance. “We will have a mini network working on Mars in a few years.”
But four or five weather stations on the ground probably won’t be enough. To reliably predict dust storms, what Mars scientists need is a global network collecting data all the time.
To cut down on the cost of such a network, Guzewich suggests figuring out which measurements “would give us the most bang for our buck.” For Earth, NASA and other agencies use a type of study called an Observing System Simulation Experiment to figure out which variables are most important for predicting the weather. Satellites are then designed to focus on those most valuable observations. Such a study has never been done for Mars, but the only obstacle is funding, Guzewich says.
“Mars atmospheric scientists have been clamoring” for such experiments, he says. “We’re not going to reproduce Earth’s observing network before humans go to Mars. It’s not going to happen…. But maybe we could do something that is financially and technologically reasonable that really does make a difference and gets us to the point where we can predict the future a couple days in advance.”
China’s space agency plans to launch its first Mars mission, called Tianwen-1, in July. Its rover (illustrated atop the lander) will measure air temperature, pressure and wind, among other things.XINHUA
Blowing in the wind
Mars forecasts also suffer from a lack of fundamental information, Martínez says. How hard does the wind have to blow to lift the dust? And what does the dust do once it’s airborne?
This is where Perseverance will shine. The rover will make the best direct measurements yet of wind speed and direction on Mars, especially the vertical wind that lifts dust upward.
For a long time, scientists struggled to understand how dust was lifted into the air at all. “It seemed like it couldn’t be possible,” Guzewich says. “The atmosphere is so thin, a single particle of dust or sand is so heavy, it just shouldn’t work.” Observations and experiments over the last 20 years suggest that once sand grains start bouncing along the surface, they can knock into other grains and knock smaller particles upward. But it’s still not possible to tell which of those bouncing grains will lead to a storm — or which of those storms will go global.
Mars climatologists have tried to make detailed wind measurements for decades, Martínez says, but have hit several stretches of bad luck. Only five surface missions — the Viking 1 and 2 landers in 1976, the Pathfinder lander in 1997 and the ongoing Curiosity and InSight missions — have provided useful data on wind speed and direction near the surface. And even those have had mixed results.
NASA’s InSight lander, shown here in a mosaic of selfies the spacecraft took, carries a set of weather sensors called TWINS, or Temperature and Wind for InSight. The lander is one of just two weather stations on the Martian surface. Mars atmospheric scientists say they need more to predict dangerous dust storms.JPL-CALTECH/NASA
“Arguably, the best wind record on Mars is still the one from the Vikings, 40 years ago,” Martínez says. Curiosity was supposed to take direct wind measurements in all directions with a pair of electrically heated booms that jutted away from the rover’s neck. “We had great expectations,” Martínez says.
But photos the rover took of itself showed that one boom was damaged as the rover landed, and out of commission. For the first 1,490 Martian days of Curiosity’s mission, the rover could take measurements only when the wind was blowing head on. Then, in October 2016, the second boom broke. In April, researchers suggested a way to hack Curiosity’s temperature sensors to get wind data, but there’s no plan to use that hack at the moment, Guzewich says.
That leaves InSight, but its wind readings are muddled by other parts of the lander getting in the way of airflow. The readings are still useful, but the MEDA team hopes to do better.
Taking lessons from InSight and Curiosity, Perseverance’s MEDA will have more wind sensors that reach farther from the rover’s body. The sensors will be protected by a shield until after the rover has landed safely.
“We are very excited,” Martínez says. “The vertical wind has never been measured before on Mars. We’re going to do that.”
Measuring wind speeds will help scientists determine how hard the wind must blow to kick up dust, the first step in triggering a dust storm.
That figure has personal resonance for Bean, the former Opportunity rover operator. Her first shift was exactly two weeks before the mission-ending global dust storm. She told the rover to use its arm to brush the surface of a rock.
“My coworkers blamed me for starting a whole butterfly effect,” she says. “You brushed the surface,” they joked, “the dust went up, you started the whole dust storm.”
In its end-of-mission report, the Opportunity team admits it will never really know what ended Opportunity’s nearly 15-year run. One possibility is that the dust grew too thick on the solar panels for gentle wind in the calm season to blow the dust off.
One potential fix would be to design future rovers to vibrate their solar panels fast enough to make dust skitter off, Bean says. Once humans are on the planet, they could just clear dust with their arms.
A week or so before Opportunity was officially declared lost, Bean decided to memorialize the rover. “I’d always liked tattoos, but nothing ever spoke to me,” she says. In college, she had studied Mars’ atmospheric opacity — the amount of light that can penetrate an atmosphere’s dust, represented by the Greek letter τ. So Bean got a tattoo on her arm of the last measurement Opportunity sent to Earth: “τ=10.8.” That stands for a night-dark sky in the middle of the day.
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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.
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