Big UFO/ORB over Odessa, Ukraine 8-Sep-2020

Check our this huge bright unidentified flying object flying over the sky above Odessa in Ukraine. This happened on 8th September 2020.

Witness report:

 I noticed a faintly glowing object that stood out from the background as it was 10 degrees above the horizon. A bright white glow with increasing intensity, the brightness has increased to a magnitude of -3 or -4, it’s like the brightness of Jupiter or Venus, one of the brightest planets. It took me about 15 seconds to pick up a 5x magnification night vision device. A UFO arose in the south over the sea, near the coast 5 km away, filmed from the village of Kotovsky, a wanderer was moving towards the city of Odessa, and Zhivakhova Gora, this place with a hill in the form of a mountain by the sea, in ancient times was a cult place of Greek colonists, now a place of anomalous zones. I rotated focus on the night vision device in an attempt to sharpen and see the possible outlines of the object emitting light but saw nothing but a bright circular sphere, even when the object faded, the sphere shrank to a small point and disappeared. I shot for another minute, in case an object suddenly reappears, but it disappeared from the sight of even infrared radiation invisible to humans, but visible to the device.

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

28-09-2020 om 14:01 geschreven door peter  

We live in a galaxy called the Milky Way. But there is so much more to know about these grand and glorious star islands in space! Click in here, and prepare to have your mind expanded.

This is a giant galaxy cluster known as Abell 2744, aka Pandora’s Cluster, located in the direction of the constellation Sculptor. The cluster is about 4 million light-years across and has the mass of 4 trillion suns. It appears to be the result of a simultaneous pile-up of at least 4 separate, smaller galaxy clusters that took place over a span of 350 million years. Read more about this image at HubbleSite. Image via NASA/ ESA/ J. Lotz/ M. Mountain/ A. Koekemoer/ the Hubble Frontier Fields Team.

A galaxy is a vast island of stars in an ocean of space. Galaxies are typically separated from one another by huge distances measured in millions of light-years. Galaxies are sometimes said to be the building blocks of our universe. Their distribution isn’t random, as one might suppose: galaxies are strung out along unimaginably long filaments across the universe, a cosmic web of star cities.

A galaxy can contain hundreds of billions of stars and be many thousands of light-years across. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is around 100,000 light-years in diameter. That’s about 587,900 trillion miles, nearly a million trillion kilometers.

Galaxies are of widely varying sizes, too.

There are an estimated two trillion galaxies in the universe.

Illustration showing snapshots from a simulation by astrophysicist Volker Springel of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. It represents the growth of cosmic structure (galaxies and voids) when the universe was 0.9 billion, 3.2 billion and 13.7 billion years old (now).

Image via Volker Springel / MPE/ Kavli Foundation.

Galaxies group together in clusters. Our own galaxy is part of what is called the Local Group, for example: a cluster comprising 55 galaxies that we know of so far.

In turn, galaxy clusters themselves group into superclusters. Our Local Group is part of the Virgo Supercluster.

The “glue” that binds stars into galaxies, galaxies into clusters, clusters into superclusters and superclusters into filaments is – of course – gravity, the universe’s construction worker, which sculpts all the structures we see in the cosmos.

Distances from the Local Group for selected groups and clusters within the Local Supercluster, which is called the Virgo Supercluster.

There are several basic types of galaxy, each containing sub-types. Galaxies were first systematically classified, based on their visual appearance, by the famous astronomer Edwin P. Hubble in the late 1920s and 30s, during years of painstaking observations. Hubble’s Classification of Galaxies, as it is known, is still very much in use today, although, since Hubble’s time, like any good classification system it has been updated and amended in the light of new observations.

Before Hubble’s study of galaxies, it was believed that our galaxy was the only one in the universe. Astronomers thought that the smudges of light they saw in their telescopes were in fact nebulae within our own galaxy and not, as Hubble discovered, galaxies in their own right. It was Hubble who demonstrated, by measuring their velocities, that they lie at great distances from us, millions of light-years beyond the Milky Way, distances so huge that they appear tiny in all but the largest telescopes. Moreover, he demonstrated that, wherever he looked, galaxies are receding from us in all directions, and the further away they are, the faster they are receding. Hubble had discovered that the universe is expanding.

A diagrammatic representation of Edwin Hubble’s “tuning fork diagram.” In the late 1920s and 30s, Hubble conducted the laborious observations needed to begin to classify galaxies. His original classification scheme was published in 1936 in a book called “The Realm of the Nebulae.” His original scheme is – like all scientific work – continually being modified. But his idea of a “tuning fork diagram” has continued to be useful.

Image via Las Cumbres Observatory.

The most common type of galaxy is the one most people are familiar with: the spiral galaxy. The Milky Way is of this family. Spiral galaxies have majestic, sweeping arms, thousands of light years long, made up of millions upon millions of stars. Our solar system is situated about 2/3 of the way out from the galactic center towards the periphery of the galaxy, embedded in one of these spiral arms.

Spiral galaxies are also characterised by having a bright center, made up of a dense concentration of stars, so tightly packed that from a distance the galaxy’s center looks like a solid ball. This ball of stars is known as the galactic bulge. At the center of the Milky Way – within the galactic bulge – the density of stars has been calculated at 1 million per 34 cubic light-years, for example.

Meanwhile, in the vicinity of our sun, the stellar density has been estimated as 0.004 stars per cubic light-year. Big difference!

A stunning view of the center of our Milky Way galaxy as seen by the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in Australia in 2019.

Image via Natasha Hurley-Walker (ICRAR/ Curtin)/ GLEAM Team/ Phys.org.

The Milky Way is, in fact, in one of Hubble’s spiral galaxy sub-types: it’s a barred spiral, which means it has a bar of stars protruding out from either side of the center. The ends of the bar form the anchors of the spiral arms, the place from where they sweep out in their graceful and enormous arcs. This is a fairly recent discovery: how the bar forms in a galaxy is not yet understood.

Also established recently is the fact that the disk of the Milky Way is not, as most diagrams depict, flat: it is warped, like a long-playing vinyl record left too long in the sun. Exactly why is not known, but it is thought to be the result of a gravitational encounter with another galaxy early in the Milky Way’s history.

Artist’s illustration of our warped Milky Way. 

Image via Ogle/ Warsaw University/ BBC.

Elliptical galaxies are the universe’s largest galaxies. They are huge and football-shaped.

They come to be because – although most galaxies are flying apart from each other – those astronomically close to each other will be mutually gravitationally attracted. Caught in an inexorable gravitational dance, eventually they merge, passing through each other over millions of years, eventually forming a single, amorphous elliptical galaxy. Such mergers may result in the birth of new generations of stars as gravity’s shock-wave compresses huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust.

The Milky Way is caught in such a gravitational embrace with M31, aka the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2 1/2 million light-years distant. Both galaxies are moving toward each other because of gravitational attraction: they will merge in about 6 billion years from now. However, both galaxies are surrounded by huge halos of gas which may extend for millions of light-years, and it was recently discovered that the halos of the Milky Way and M31 have started to touch.

The two galaxies have had their first kiss.

Galaxy mergers are not uncommon: the universe is filled with examples of galaxies in various stages of merging together, their structures disrupted and distorted by gravity, forming bizarre and beautiful shapes.

Galaxies may take billions of years to fully merge into a single galaxy. As astronomers look outward in space, they can see only “snapshots” of this long merger process. Located 300 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices, these 2 colliding galaxies have been nicknamed The Mice because of the long tails of stars and gas emanating from each galaxy. Otherwise known as NGC 4676, the pair will eventually merge into a single giant galaxy.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

At the lower end of the galactic size scale, there are the so-called dwarf galaxies, consisting of a few hundred to up to several billion stars. Their origin is not clear. Usually they have no clearly defined structure. Astronomers believe they were born in the same way as larger galaxies like the Milky Way, but for whatever reason they stopped growing. Ensnared by the gravity of a larger galaxy, they orbit its periphery. The Milky Way has around 20 dwarf galaxies orbiting it that we know of, although some models predict there should be many more.

The two most famous dwarf galaxies for us earthlings are, of course, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, visible to the unaided eye in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere sky.

Eventually, these and other dwarf galaxies will be ripped apart by the titanic maw of the Milky Way’s gravity, leaving behind a barely noticeable stream of stars across the sky, slowly dissipating over eons.

Lynton Brown captured this beautiful image of the Milky Way over Taylor’s Lake near Horsham, Australia, on April 22, 2019. The 2 objects on the right are the Magellanic Clouds. Thank you, Lynton!

It is believed that all galaxies rotate: the Milky Way takes 226 million years to spin around once, for example. Since its birth, therefore, the Earth has travelled 20 times around the galaxy.

At the center of most galaxies lurks a supermassive black hole, of millions or even billions of solar masses. The record holder, TON 618, has a mass 66 billion times that of our sun.

The origin and evolution of supermassive black holes are not well understood. A few years ago, astronomers uncovered a surprising fact: in spiral galaxies, the mass of the supermassive black hole has a direct linear relationship with the mass of the galactic bulge. The more mass the black hole has, the more stars there are in the bulge. No one knows exactly what the significance of this relationship is, but its existence seems to indicate that the growth of a galaxy’s stellar population and that of its supermassive black hole are inextricably linked.

This discovery comes at a time when astronomers are beginning to realize that a supermassive black hole may control the fate of its host galaxy: the copious amounts of electromagnetic radiation emitted from the maelstrom of material orbiting the central black hole, known as the accretion disk, may push away and dissipate the clouds of interstellar hydrogen from which new stars form. This acts as a throttle on the galaxy’s ability to give birth to new stars. Ultimately, the emergence of life itself may be tied to the activity of supermassive black holes. This is an area of much ongoing research.

While astronomers still know very little about exactly how galaxies formed in the first place – we see them in their nascent forms existing only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang – the study of galaxies is an endless voyage of discovery.

Less than a hundred years after it was realized that other galaxies beside our own exist, we have learned so much about these grand, majestic star cities. And there is still much to learn.

Bottom line: What is a galaxy? Learn about these starry islands in space.

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

28-09-2020 om 01:58 geschreven door peter  

UFO Documentary THE PHENOMENON Lands On October 6

28-09-2020 om 01:45 geschreven door peter  

A Treasure in Ruins: Ancient Mehrgarh Lost to Thieves and Violence

Mehrgarh is an archaeological site situated in the Balochistan, in the southwestern part of Pakistan. In the native Balochi language, ‘mehr’ is said to mean ‘love’, and ‘garh’ means heaven. Thus, the name of the site may be taken to mean ‘the heaven of love’.

Mehrgarh is considered one of the most important Neolithic sites in South Asia, with some of the earliest evidence of agriculture discovered there. Thus, Mehrgarh is sometimes referred to as the earliest farming settlement in South Asia. Additionally, Mehrgarh is a precursor to the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the cradles of civilization . Archaeologists have divided the occupation of Mehrgarh into seven chronological periods, which provides a picture of how the site developed over the millennia.

Passing Traders, Invaders, and Nomadic Tribes

Mehrgarh is located on the Kachi Plain, not far from the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River. The Kachi Plain provides a favorable environment for human settlement due to the presence of water and arable soil, while the Bolan Pass is an important and strategic geographical feature that connects the region to the west.

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A historical sketch from 1842 of Bolan Pass, Balochistan, Pakistan.

( Public Domain )

This pass is the gateway to the Indus Valley from the highlands of Afghanistan, beyond which is the Iranian Plateau and the Fertile Crescent in the Near East. In other words, it was this mountain pass that facilitated movement between the Indus Valley in the east and the other early civilizations in the west. Traders, invaders, and nomadic tribes have traversed this important pass over the millennia.

The Bolan Pass retained its strategic value well into modern times, when the British colonialists used it for their campaigns in Afghanistan. Mehrgarh lies between the modern Pakistani cities of Quetta, Kalat, and Sibi, while Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, the two major urban centers of the Indus Valley Civilization , are located to its southeast and northeast respectively.

Discovering and Excavating Mehrgarh

Unlike Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, the discovery of Mehrgarh occurred at a rather late date. The existence of Mohenjo-Daro was known by archaeologists as early as 1911, although excavations only began in the 1920s. Harappa was already discovered in 1826, with the first excavations taking place in 1920.

Mehrgarh, on the other hand, was only discovered in 1974. It was the French archaeologist, Jean-François Jarrige, who made this discovery. Jarrige was a specialist in South Asian archaeology, and, apart from Mehrgarh, was also responsible for the excavation of sites such as Nausharo (located about 6 km (3.73 miles) from Mehrgarh), Pirak, Sibri, Dauda Damb, Lal Shah, Damboli, and Shah Ghair.

Ruins of Mehrgarh.

(M. Thoury et al./ CC BY 4.0 )

The site of Mehrgarh covers an area of 495 acres (200 hectares, 2 km ²). Jarrige and his team worked continuously there from 1974 to 1986. The excavations at Mehrgarh then stopped for a period of 10 years, before commencing once more in 1997. The archaeologists worked for another four years, and the campaign ended in 2000.

The excavations were carried out jointly by the French Archaeological Mission and the Department of Archaeology of Pakistan. The findings made by Jarrige and his team during their work at Mehrgarh have provided much insight into the lifestyle of the ancient people who lived there.

Mehrgarh’s Extensive Occupation History

Mehrgarh is a classic tell site , a tell being an artificial mound created over time. As the occupants of the site built new structures over the ruins of old ones, the mound gradually increased in height, and, after many generations, forms a tell. A number of these artificial mounds have been excavated at Mehrgarh, and an archaeological sequence has been formed. The sequence has been divided into seven chronological periods – Mehrgarh Period I – VII.

Ruins of Mehrgarh. 

(mhtoori/CC BY SA 4.0 )

The earliest known settlement at Mehrgarh can be found in the site’s northeastern corner, in an area referred to as MR3. In the archaeological sequence, this period is known as Mehrgarh Period I, and has been dated to between 7000 and 5500 BC. During this phase, which corresponds to the Neolithic period, Mehrgarh was a small village that relied on farming and animal husbandry for its survival.

The culture at this point was aceramic, which means that they were not making pottery, which is one of the features distinguishing the Neolithic from preceding ages. Instead, the inhabitants of Mehrgarh were using basket containers lined with bitumen (which made the vessels water-proof). The archaeological evidence also shows that people at that time were using copper ore that was obtained locally, as well as various stone and bone tools.

A 6,000-year-old copper "wheel" amulet from Mehrgarh.

(Abbas dhothar/ CC BY SA 4.0 )

The presence of foreign goods, seashells from distant seashores, and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, suggests that the people of Mehrgarh were already in contact with the outside world.

During the Mehrgarh I Period, the occupants of the site lived in simple mud buildings that had four internal divisions. These houses were free-standing and rectangular in shape, while the mudbricks used for their construction have a long, cigar shape.

The form of these structures is quite similar to those found in 7th millennium BC Mesopotamia, and a connection between the two areas has been proposed. Further evidence supporting the link between Mehrgarh and Mesopotamia include the similarities in crafts, agricultural, and funerary practices.

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7000 BC well in Mehrgarh.

(mhtoori/ CC BY SA 4.0 )

Early Farmers and Dentists

Mehrgarh is also notable for having the earliest archaeological evidence of agriculture in South Asia. The people who lived during the Mehrgarh I Period had access to plant foods such as domesticated and wild six-rowed  barley, domestic einkorn and emmer wheat, and wild Indian jujube ( Zizyphus spp ) and date palms ( Phoenix dactylifera ).

In addition, meat was being consumed at Mehrgarh.  The faunal remains of herded animals, such as sheep, goat, and cattle, as well as those of wild animals, including gazelle, water buffalo, and elephant were found in this archaeological layer. The types of hunted animals suggest that during this period the area of Balochistan was dominated by savannah.

Two other exciting findings were made by archaeologists – the earliest known example of cotton in the Old World and the earliest evidence for the drilling of human teeth in vivo , i.e. in a living person. The former was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in 2002 and the latter was published in Nature in 2006.

An experimental reconstruction of a bow and flint-tipped drill used to bore through molar teeth found at a Neolithic graveyard in Mehrgarh, Pakistan.

( University of Poitiers )

The discovery of the cotton threads was made during the metallurgical study of a copper bead that came from a burial at Mehrgarh. As a result of mineralization, a few cotton threads were preserved, and therefore could be analyzed. With the aid of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and a reflected-light microscope, the researchers were able to study the morphology of the fibers, and concluded that they were from cotton.

As for the discovery of the practice of proto-dentistry in Mehrgarh , the researchers identified a total of 11 drilled permanent crowns in nine individuals. The teeth were studied using light microscopy, SEM, and microtomography, and the results of these analyses showed the presence of conical, cylindrical, or trapezoidal cavities, as well as concentric ridges preserved on some walls.

All these are signs that the teeth had been drilled. In all cases, the researchers observed marginal smoothing of the cavity walls. This led them to the conclusion that the drilling had been done while the individuals were still alive, as they continued to chew with these teeth, hence the marginal smoothing.

Flint drill heads were part of the lithic assemblages of the site, and using experimental archaeology, the researchers found that less than a minute was needed to produce similar holes in human enamel with these tools. The researchers also postulated that the knowledge of drilling may have been first developed by artisans for the production of beads, and was later used to drill human teeth .

Ceramics and Craftworks at Mehrgarh

The next level of occupation is referred to as Mehrgarh Period II, and dates to between 5500 and 4800 BC. By this time, the people of Mehrgarh were producing ceramics . It seems that there was a shift in focus from the area of MR3 to a new one, MR4. During this period, agriculture was firmly established at the site, and the archaeologists found that locally domesticated barley (about 90%) was the main crop, though wheat from the Near East was also available to its inhabitants.

Mehrgarh painted pottery. 3000-2500 BC.

( CC0)

The archaeologists also excavated a number of sun-dried brick buildings. These were large and rectangular and were divided symmetrically into smaller squares or rectangles. The archaeologists were of the opinion that these were not houses like the ones excavated in the Mehrgarh Period I layer, as they did not have doors, and there was a lack of residential remains. Instead, they suggested that these structures were either granaries, or other warehouses that were shared by the entire community.

Other structural remains found at this level indicate that large scale production of craft goods had begun in Mehrgarh. These are standardized rooms surrounded by a large open space where the craftsmen would work. This aspect of life in Neolithic Mehrgarh is also evident in the material culture left behind at the site.

Seated Mother Goddess, 3000–2500 BC. Pakistan (Baluchistan) Mehrgarh style.

( CC0)

The primary product of these craftsmen were beads which are characteristic of the region. This tradition of bead making would last up until the time of the Indus Valley Civilization. During Mehrgarh Period II, craftsmen were making various types of beads. For instance, soft stone beads, such as limestone and steatite, were being made, possibly with stone or copper drills.

For harder types of stone, including agate and jasper, specialized stone drills would have been used. Marine shell ornaments were also being made in Mehrgarh. The beads and shell ornaments show that during the Mehrgarh II Period, there was an increase in the importation of non-local raw materials to the site.

This situation continued into the next period, Mehrgarh Period III, which lasted from around 4800 to 3500 BC, and is considered to be the Early Chalcolithic period. The focus of the settlement, however, shifted once more, this time to the area MR1. Like the preceding period, storage facilities and houses were unearthed by the archaeologists, though these structures were much more elaborate than their Neolithic counterparts. For instance, they had foundations of pebbles embedded in clay, and the buildings’ bricks were made with molds.

Mehrgarh Periods IV – VII lasted from about 3500 to 2500 BC and these levels belong to the Chalcolithic period. The inhabitants of the site shifted to MR1. During these periods, pottery and crafts continued to be manufactured at the site, though it is clear that there were stylistic changes.

Stylistic depictions of the Togau ware found at Mehrgarh shows how the Mehrgarh people moved towards a mass-production model for their pottery ware.

(Arun Reginald/ CC BY SA 4.0 )

Mehrgarh is Abandoned

At the end of the Mehrgarh Period VII, the site was largely abandoned. Around the same time, the Indus Valley Civilization was in its middle stages of development. It has been hypothesized that as a result of climatic changes, the region of Balochistan had become more arid and unsuitable for agriculture. As a consequence, the people of Mehrgarh migrated to the Indus Valley, where environmental conditions were more favorable.

Despite its significance, the site of Mehrgarh is in a sorry state today. While Mehrgarh is currently on UNESCO’s Tentative Heritage List, it has been alleged that the central government has not taken the site seriously. The blame has been placed on the government’s failure to present the site to UNESCO in an effective way.

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Mehrgarh also faces other, more serious, problems. In 2002, the site became an unfortunate victim of a tribal feud between the Raisani and Rind tribes. Rockets fired by both tribes badly damaged the site. Additionally, although the site was under the control of the Raisani, the Rind also had claims over it. Not content with the way things were, the latter decided simply to bulldoze the site.

In addition to local problems, Mehrgarh faces international ones as well. In October 2014, the Italian authorities confiscated antiquities in Rome that were stolen from Mehrgarh. In a 2015 article, it was reported that the objects have not been repatriated yet due to bureaucratic red tape and the lack of interest from Pakistani authorities.

Archaeological Site of Mehrgarh in September 2018.

(mhtoori/ CC BY SA 4.0 )

Although the seizure of the smuggled antiquities in Rome is commendable, it does not address the root of the problem. The illegal trade of antiquities is rampant in Pakistan and is an issue that needs to be addressed if the future of Mehrgarh and other sites is to be guaranteed.

• Top Image: Ruins of Mehrgarh. (M. Thoury et al./ CC BY 4.0 ) Insert: Detail of a female figure made of terracotta from Mehrgarh, circa 3000 BC. (Denis Biette/ CC BY SA 1.0 )

By Wu Mingren

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

28-09-2020 om 00:53 geschreven door peter  

 By Becky Ferreira

ARTIST CONCEPT OF LTT 9779 SYSTEM.

IMAGE: RICARDO RAMIREZ

Imagine a world where a year passes more quickly than a single Earth day. That’s what’s shaking at LTT 9779b, a giant exoplanet whose existence and properties are currently inexplicable given its extreme proximity to its Sun-like star, which it orbits every 19 hours.

Located about 260 light years from Earth, LTT 9779b is the first known example of an Neptune-sized world with this type of “ultrashort” orbital period of less than a day, according to a study published on Monday in Nature Astronomy.

The strange world is also the sole member of an entirely new class of exoplanet called the “ultrahot Neptune.”

“LTT 9779b promises to shed light on the nature of Neptune-type planets, and worlds in general,” said James Jenkins, an astronomer at the University of Chile in Santiago who led the new study, in an email.

Scientists have discovered small rocky exoplanets and large Jupiter-sized exoplanets circling their stars in fewer than 24 hours. But it is unprecedented for a world like LTT 9779b to pop up in this so-called “hot Neptune desert” because this intense environment around stars is expected to blow away their atmospheres, leaving only exposed cores.

The planet was first spotted in 2018 as a weird blip in images of the LTT 9779 star system, captured by the newly launched NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). A small dip in the star’s light hinted at the possible presence of a planet that might be crossing in front of it, an event known as a transit.

Jenkins and his colleagues suspected that the ultrashort period might stem from an instrumental error, or a false positive caused by two stars in a binary system.

“When we received the information from the TESS that there was possible planet dips for this star that were happening every 19 hours and the radius could be smaller than the size of Jupiter, I was a little skeptical about what we could find,” Jenkins recalled.

“I checked through all the test outputs that were produced by the TESS team and this started to look very intriguing, something that could be quite unique,” he added.

Since most ultrashort transits end up being false positives, Jenkins and his colleagues followed up on the TESS detection with the High Accuracy Radial-velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) instrument at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. HARPS can pinpoint the tiny sideways wobble of a star caused by the gravitational pull of a planet orbiting it, thereby backing up observations of transits.

To the team’s delight, the exoplanet really does exist, against all odds and assumptions.

“At this point we were all over the Moon, as this was something special, something that could provide the exoplanet community with many answers to questions we had been searching for over recent years,” Jenkins said. “We went from surprise at the beginning, to tempered excitement, to being ecstatic at the end.”

LTT 9779b appears to have somehow maintained a gassy atmospheric envelope, even in the face of the intense radiation from its star, which keeps the planet at searing temperatures of about 1,700°C (3,100°F].

“[T]heoretical modelling efforts are needed to try to understand why this planet even exists so close to its star, and still carrying an atmosphere,” Jenkins said. “These key questions on the origin of this world will give us a deeper understanding of the formation and evolutionary processes that planets undergo.”

LTT 9779 b is about five times larger than Earth and 28 times as massive, making it hulkier than Neptune but comparably dense. Its outlier status as the only ultrahot Neptune ever discovered can help scientists understand how different types of planets end up in orbital hot seats very close to their stars.

Just a few months ago, scientists announced the discovery of another planet called TOI-849b, with a size comparable to Neptune, that was also in the Neptune desert. However, TOI-849b is unusually dense and retains only a thin shell of an atmosphere, suggesting that it may be the exposed core of a much larger Jupiter-sized planet that was stripped of its skies when it wandered too close to its star.

LTT 9779 b may be undergoing an analogous process, though it appears to be a genuinely Neptune-scale world rather than the burned-out remains of an even larger planet. It’s possible that this oddball was only recently thrust into its ultrashort period, perhaps by gravitational interactions with other planets in more distant reaches of the star system. Given that the LTT 9779 system is only two billion years old, it may be that this exoplanet has a long and tortuous future in which it will ultimately be stripped of its atmosphere, similar to TOI-849b.

For now, though, LTT 9779b is the perfect place to study the evolution and behavior of ultrashort and ultrahot planets. Jenkins and his colleagues hope to learn new details about the composition of the planet’s atmosphere, or if there are any other planets in the system.

“We are already following up the planet from both the ground and space, and these observations surely promise to reveal a lot more about LTT 9779b in the near future,” Jenkins said.

With this observational data, “theoretical researchers can work to try to explain the origins of the planet,” he noted, “with the big question being: 'Why does a planet with an age of two billion years, and that orbits so close to its star that the temperature is over 1,700°Celsius, still have any atmosphere at all? Why hasn't the entire atmosphere been blown off into space long ago’?”

{ https://www.vice.com/en_us }

28-09-2020 om 00:23 geschreven door peter  

ALS ER ALIENS ZIJN OP VENUS - MET HOEVELEN ZIJN ZE DAN?

Caroline Kraaijvanger 

Snelle berekeningen suggereren dat hun aantallen iets tegenvallen.

Het was wereldnieuws vorige week: in de atmosfeer van Venus was fosfine ontdekt. Een gas dat hier op aarde door bacteriën wordt geproduceerd en ook op Venus dus wel eens een spoor van leven zou kunnen zijn.

Andere kijk
De studie heeft onze kijk op Venus voorgoed veranderd. Waar de planeet tot voor kort gezien werd als het onleefbare tweelingzusje van de aarde – dat ongeveer net zo groot is als onze thuisplaneet, maar door een uit de hand gelopen broeikaseffect oppervlaktetemperaturen van zo’n 465 graden Celsius kent – bleek het nu opeens weleens leven te kunnen herbergen. Dat leven zou zich dan hoog in het wolkendek ophouden, waar de temperaturen rond de dertig graden Celsius liggen.

Het onderzoek deed het hart van menig astrobioloog harder kloppen en direct werd er al gefantaseerd over missies naar Venus, waarbij we actief naar die organismen op zoek zouden kunnen gaan. Maar het onderzoek riep ook heel wat vragen op. Want om wat voor organismen zou het dan gaan? En hoeveel waren het er? En zouden we wel in staat zijn om ze te detecteren?

Biomassa
Een eveneens vorige week verschenen studie gaat – met wat snelle berekeningen – op de twee laatste vragen in. Aan de hand van de fosfine-observaties hebben de onderzoekers Manasvi Lingam en Abraham Loeb de biomassa berekend die nodig is om de fosfine die in het wolkendek van Venus gespot is, te produceren. En de berekeningen wijzen uit dat die biomassa enkele malen kleiner is dan de gemiddelde biomassa die we in het wolkendek van de aarde aantreffen.

Volgens de onderzoekers ligt de gemiddelde dichtheid van de biomassa in Venus’ wolkendek rond de 10^-4 microgram per kubieke meter. “We moeten hierbij wel opmerken dat onze schattingen voor de gemiddelde dichtheid van de biomassa enkel geldt voor hypothetische microben die fosfine produceren,” zo schrijven de onderzoekers. De werkelijke biomassa kan dus veel hoger liggen, als er ook nog microben zijn die een andere stofwisseling kennen.

Bemoedigend
Op dit moment kunnen onderzoekers nog niet met zekerheid zeggen dat de fosfine in de atmosfeer van Venus het resultaat is van ijverige microben. Ze kunnen namelijk niet uitsluiten dat er op Venus een niet-biologisch proces speelt dat resulteert in de aanmaak van het gas. Het feit dat de hoeveelheid fosfine volgens dit onderzoek overeenkomt met een beperkte biomassa, is echter bemoedigend. Want afgaand op het feit dat Venus grotendeels onleefbaar is, zou je ook geen enorme biomassa verwachten, zo stellen de onderzoekers.

Detectie
Tegelijkertijd kun je je natuurlijk afvragen of het met zo’n beperkte biomassa niet veel lastiger wordt om dat leven op Venus te detecteren. Ook daar laten Lingam en Loeb zich in hun paper uit. “Het is plausibel dat kleine ruimtevaartuigen die gedurende een paar uren functioneel zijn in staat zijn om biomakers in Venus’ wolkendek te detecteren.”

Vervolgonderzoek is hard nodig. Hieruit zal allereerst moeten blijken of het fosfine-signaal inderdaad in de wat gematigdere regionen van Venus’ atmosfeer zijn oorsprong vindt. Als het bewijs voor leven op Venus zich tijdens die vervolgstudies blijft opstapelen, ligt een missie naar de planeet, met als doel het detecteren van leven, voor de hand. Studies zoals die van Lingam en Loeb kunnen dan helpen om zo’n missie vorm te geven. Nu blijven Lingam en Loeb benadrukken dat hun studie slechts een grove voorzet is; er zijn meer data en observaties nodig om een nauwkeuriger beeld te kunnen krijgen van eventueel leven op Venus. “Maar (onze analyse, red.) wijst er wel op dat missies gericht op het detecteren van leven betekenisvolle resultaten op kunnen leveren, zelfs als de dichtheid van de microben in Venus’ atmosfeer enkele malen lager ligt dan in de atmosfeer van de aarde.” En daarom is het volgens de onderzoekers ook belangrijk om na te gaan denken over wat er vanuit een engineering-oogpunt nodig is om een missie te ontwerpen die het voor eventuele levensvormen op Venus onmogelijk maakt om zich nog langer voor ons verborgen te houden.

Gerelateerde Video's, uitgekozen en gepost door peter2011

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }

28-09-2020 om 00:13 geschreven door peter  

DE AARDE KRIJGT ER IN OKTOBER - TIJDELIJK - EEN MAANTJE BIJ!

De aarde staat op het punt om het object 2020 SO in te vangen. Onduidelijk is nog of het een ruimtesteen of ruimtepuin is.

Het object 2020 SO cirkelt momenteel nog rond de zon. Maar dat gaat veranderen, zo voorspellen astronomen. Zoals het er nu naar uitziet wordt het object ergens in de komende weken door de zwaartekracht van de aarde ingevangen, wat betekent dat het object – net als de maan – rond de aarde gaat cirkelen.

Invangen
We krijgen er in zekere zin dus een maantje bij. Maar hoe gaat dat nu precies in zijn werk? We vroegen het Paul Chodas, directeur van NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). “In feite is er tussen de twee Lagrange-punten (L1 en L2) een soort ‘poort’ waardoor een object dat een heliocentrische baan heeft (oftewel om de zon cirkelt, red.) door de aarde kan worden ingevangen. Voorwaarde is wel dat het object in vergelijking met onze planeet relatief langzaam beweegt. En dat geldt voor 2020 SO.”

Alles wijst er dan ook op dat het object op termijn door de zwaartekracht van de aarde in een baan om de aarde wordt gedwongen. “Het is in feite een samenspel tussen de zwaartekracht van de planeet en de zwaartekracht van de zon,” vertelt Chodas. “Op vergelijkbare wijze heeft Jupiter in het verleden tijdelijk meer dan twaalf kometen ingevangen, waaronder ook de beroemde komeet Shoemaker-Levy 9: de komeet draaide jaren rond Jupiter voor deze uiteindelijk op de planeet klapte.”

Tijdelijk en ongevaarlijk
2020 SO zal straks in een langgerekte baan om de aarde belanden en net als de kometen die Jupiter inving slechts tijdelijk om de aarde cirkelen. “Het object zal uiteindelijk weer vertrekken (…) En als dat gebeurt, gaat het weer rond de zon cirkelen.” Zorgen hoeven we ons niet te maken. “We kennen de baan van het object goed genoeg om met zekerheid te kunnen zeggen dat het niet zal inslaan op onze planeet.”

Rakettrap
Onduidelijk is op dit moment nog wat 2020 SO nu precies is. Het zou een planetoïde kunnen zijn. Maar ook een stuk ruimtepuin. Chodas zet voorlopig in op het laatste. “Ik denk dat het een onderdeel van een raket is.” Hij kan dat zelfs nader specificeren. “Ik vermoed dat het de bovenste rakettrap is waarmee de Surveyor 2 op 20 september 1966 naar de maan werd gestuurd.” Chodas baseert zich op een analyse van de baan en bewegingen van 2020 SO. Daaruit blijkt onder meer dat het object zich eind 1966 in de buurt van de aarde moet hebben bevonden.

De Surveyor 2 moest een zachte landing op de maan maken, maar helaas ging er iets mis, waardoor deze op de maan crashte.

Afbeelding: NASA.

Stralingsdruk en spectrum
Nu is het nog gissen naar de ware aard van 2020 SO, maar daar komt binnenkort verandering in. “We verwachten over een maand wel meer over de aard van het object te kunnen zeggen, omdat we dan de invloed van de stralingsdruk van de zon kunnen gaan zien. Als 2020 SO een rakettrap is, heeft het een beperkte dichtheid en zal het zonlicht er meetbaar tegenaan duwen. Als het een natuurlijk object is, zal het een veel grotere dichtheid hebben en zal het effect van de stralingsdruk verwaarloosbaar zijn.” Daarnaast kan men in december ook uit het spectrum van het object afleiden met wat voor soort object we te maken hebben. “Het object zal de aarde rond 1 december relatief dicht naderen en ook relatief helder worden. Als het spectrum overeenkomt met dat van verf, weten we dat we te maken hebben met een raketonderdeel.”

Of 2020 SO nu een natuurlijk verschijnsel is of niet, maakt eigenlijk niet uit; Chodas verwacht dat we in beide gevallen heel wat kunnen leren in de periode waarin de aarde het object ingevangen houdt. “Als het een natuurlijk object is, leren we dat natuurlijke objecten extreem aardachtige banen kunnen hebben en dat zou heel opwindend nieuws zijn voor de In-Situ Resource Utilization.” Chodas verwijst hiermee naar de ambitie om in de toekomst belangrijke grondstoffen van andere hemellichamen te gaan halen. “Een natuurlijk object in zo’n baan is vrij goed toegankelijk en kan bijvoorbeeld tijdens een missie naar Mars gebruikt worden als een tussenstation waar astronauten bepaalde grondstoffen kunnen verzamelen. En als het object een rakettrap blijkt te zijn, leren we weer iets meer over hoe deze rakettrappen (waarvan we de fysieke kenmerken precies kennen) gedurende meerdere decennia beïnvloed worden door de stralingsdruk van de zon.” Al met al genoeg reden voor astronomen om het object de komende maanden uitgebreid te volgen.

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }

27-09-2020 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

Here’s how we can find out if it’s a sign of life.

A radar mosaic image of Venus.

Image via NASA.

By Paul K. Byrne, North Carolina State University

On September 14, 2020, a new planet was added to the list of potentially habitable worlds in the solar system: Venus.

Phosphine, a toxic gas made up of one phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms (PH3), commonly produced by organic life forms but otherwise difficult to make on rocky planets, was discovered in the middle layer of the Venus atmosphere. This raises the tantalizing possibility that something is alive on our planetary neighbor. With this discovery, Venus joins the exalted ranks of Mars and the icy moons Enceladus and Europa among planetary bodies where life may once have existed, or perhaps might even still do so today.

I’m a planetary scientist and something of a Venus evangelical. This discovery is one of the most exciting made about Venus in a very long time, and opens up a new set of possibilities for further exploration in search of life in the solar system.

Venus as seen in the infrared by the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft. The warm colors are from the hot lower atmosphere glowing through the cooler cloud layers above.

Image via JAXA/ ISAS/ DARTS/ Damia Bouic.

Atmospheric mysteries

First, it’s critical to point out that this detection does not mean that astronomers have found alien life in the clouds of Venus. Far from it, in fact.

Although the discovery team identified phosphine at Venus with two different telescopes, helping to confirm the initial detection, phosphine gas can result from several processes that are unrelated to life, such as lightning, meteor impacts or even volcanic activity.

However, the quantity of phosphine detected in the Venusian clouds seems to be far greater than those processes are capable of generating, allowing the team to rule out numerous inorganic possibilities. But our understanding of the chemistry of Venus’ atmosphere is sorely lacking: Only a handful of missions have plunged through the inhospitable, carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere to take samples among the global layer of sulfuric acid clouds.

So we planetary scientists are faced with two possibilities: Either there is some sort of life in the Venus clouds, generating phosphine, or there is unexplained and unexpected chemistry taking place there. How do we find out which it is?

A model of the Soviet Vega 1 spacecraft at the Udvar-Hazy Center, Dulles International Airport. Vega 1 carried a balloon to Venus on its way to visit Halley’s Comet in 1985.

Image via Daderot/ Wikipedia

First and foremost, we need more information about the abundance of PH3 in the Venus atmosphere, and we can learn something about this from Earth. Just as the discovery team did, existing telescopes capable of detecting phosphine around Venus can be used for follow-up observations, to both definitively confirm the initial finding and figure out if the amount of PH3 in the atmosphere changes with time. In parallel, there is now a huge opportunity to carry out lab work to better understand the types of chemical reactions that might be possible on Venus — for which we have very limited information at present.

Antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two companion galaxies to our own Milky Way galaxy, can be seen as bright smudges in the night sky, in the center of the photograph.

Once more into the breach

But measurements on and from Earth can take us only so far. To really get to the heart of this mystery, we need to go back to Venus. Spacecraft equipped with spectrometers that can detect phosphine from orbit could be dispatched to the second planet with the express purpose of characterizing where, and how much, of this gas is there. Because spacecraft can survive for many years in Venus’ orbit, we could obtain continuous observations with a dedicated orbiter over a much longer period than with telescopes on Earth.

But even orbital data can’t tell us the whole story. To fully get a handle on what’s happening at Venus, we have to actually get into the atmosphere. And that’s where aerial platforms come in. Capable of operating above much of the acidic cloud layer – where the temperature and pressure are almost Earthlike – for potentially months at a time, balloons or flying wings could take detailed atmospheric composition measurements there. These craft could even carry the kinds of instruments being developed to look for life on Europa. At that point, humanity might finally be able to definitively tell if we share our Solar System with Venusian life.

A concept for an aerial platform at Venus. Two connected balloons could take turns to inflate, allowing the balloon to control the altitude at which it floats. An instrument package would then hang from below the balloons.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech

A new dawn for Venus exploration?

Thirty-one years have elapsed since the United States last sent a dedicated mission to Venus. That could soon change as NASA considers two of four missions in the late 2020s targeting Venus. One, called VERITAS, would carry a powerful radar to peer through the thick clouds and return unprecedented high-resolution images of the surface. The other, DAVINCI+, would plunge through the atmosphere, sampling the air as it descended, perhaps even able to sniff any phosphine present. NASA plans to pick at least one mission in April 2021.

I have argued before for a return to Venus, and will continue to do so. Even without this latest scientific discovery, Venus is a compelling exploration target, with tantalizing evidence that the planet once had oceans and perhaps even suffered a hellish fate at the hands of its own volcanic eruptions.

But with the detection of a potential biomarker in Venus’ atmosphere, we now have yet another major reason to return to the world ancient Greek astronomers called Phosphorus – a name for Venus that, it turns out, is wonderfully prescient.

• Paul K. Byrne, Associate Professor of Planetary Science, North Carolina State University
• This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
• Bottom line: On September 14, 2020, Venus was added to the list of potentially habitable worlds in the solar system. Phosphine, a toxic gas commonly produced by organic life forms but otherwise difficult to make on rocky planets, was discovered in the Venus atmosphere. Either there is some sort of life in the Venus clouds, generating phosphine, or there is unexplained and unexpected chemistry taking place there. How do we find out which it is?

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

27-09-2020 om 23:16 geschreven door peter  

In my previous article here at Mysterious Universe – which was on the subject of my new book, The Martians: Evidence of Life on the Red Planet – I made a brief reference to what may very well have been nothing less than life on Mars. And not in the distant past, but just a handful of years ago. I thought that today I would expand on this admittedly strange story as it is – without any shadow of a doubt – undeniably weird. Let us take a careful look at the story and the relevant photo that comes with it. It has become known as the “Face-Hugger photograph.” And there is a very good reason as to why the picture was given that particular name. Taken in July 2015 by NASA’s Curiosity Rover, the photo appears to show nothing less than a strange, multi-legged creature that looks astonishingly like the monstrous face-invading creatures that appeared in the phenomenally successful series of Alien movies. For those who may not know, they starred Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley – and they reaped in an incredible amount of dollars. When the story broke wide open in early August 2015, the headlines were predictably sensational. The U.K.’s Metro newspaper ran with the story and titled their feature as follows: “Crab-like alien ‘facehugger’ is seen crawling out of a cave on Mars.”

It might be very wise to avoid the Martian Face-Huggers!

(NASA)

The same Metro article included the words of Seth Shostak, a skeptic when it comes to the matter of life on Mars, and the Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research; “SETI” standing for “search for extraterrestrial intelligence.” Shostak said of the strange looking thing and other allegedly anomalous photos that reach him from time to time: “Those that send them to me are generally quite excited, as they claim that these frequently resemble something you wouldn’t expect to find on the rusty, dusty surface of the Red Plane. It’s usually some sort of animal, but occasionally even weirder objects such as automobile parts. Maybe they think there are cars on Mars.” On the other side of the coin were the words of Scott Waring who, at UFO Sightings Daily, said that: “It does appear alive. It may be a crab-like animal, or it also may be a plant. This object has many arms and one of them goes to the left of the picture a very long ways. That arm is longer than all others. Plant or animal it really doesn’t matter. The significance of this is that it shows signs that it is alive. That is everything, but not to NASA.”

“The Martians: Evidence of Life on the Red Planet”

(Nick Redfern)

And, that’s pretty much how the online debate went on: for the world of science the face-hugger was nothing but a spectacular example of pareidolia. UFO seekers and conspiracy theorists, however, said otherwise. They suggested that what looked like an eerie, creepy animal was exactly that – an eerie, creepy animal on a faraway world. That it appeared to be in the opening to a small cave and maneuvering up (or, possibly, scuttling down to the ground) the cave wall with its multiple limbs only seemed to add to the theory that NASA had inadvertently captured on camera a genuine Martian animal – and a very hair-raising one, too! In my view, the spidery, crab-like animal is not a case of the eye seeing what it sorely wants to see. And, the story isn’t quite over. In my The Martians book I take a close and careful look at the incredible story of a skilled remote-viewer who, in late 2019, was able to add further – and undeniably astonishing – data to this particular story of the closest things to real-life face-huggers.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

27-09-2020 om 22:38 geschreven door peter  

In 1966 and 1967 there was a sudden flurry of UFO activity around the United States, especially within the Ohio River Valley, and from here a great many weird cases have sprung up, including the Mothman phenomenon and countless UFO reports. A curious report from the era appeared in the book The Mothman Prophecies, by John Keel, and revolves around a usually nondescript man by the name of Tad Jones, of Dunbar, a suburb of Charleston, West Virginia. He was by all accounts a God-fearing man who did not drink or do drugs, and to was known as an honest, hard-working man not prone to fights of fancy or tall tales. Yet, on one January morning in 1966, Jones was driving to work, an appliance store he managed about 10 miles outside of Charleston. It was a route he took every day, and the rive started just like any other, but things were about to take a turn into the surreal, and it would become  a case that blends all manner of strangeness, odd clues, and inexplicable events that have never really been solved.

As he drove along, at around 9 AM Jones came to something blocking the road up ahead. Since the road he was on, Route 64, was a fairly new multi-lane highway he at first assumed that this must be a road construction crew, and so he dutifully slowed down, yet as he crawled closer, he realized that this was far stranger than that. It appeared to be a large sphere with a luster like dull aluminum, but what was even weirder was that it was not sitting upon the road, as he had first thought, but rather hovering several feet over it. The sphere was described as being around 20 feet in diameter, with two antennae-like protrusions jutting out from the top, and four legs and what looked like a propeller attached at the bottom. Jones would say of the sphere:

There were four legs attached to it, with casterlike wheels on the bottom of each one. And there was a small window about nine inches in diameter on the side facing me, but I couldn’t see anything inside the sphere. On the underside there was something like a propeller. It was idling when I first drove up, then it started spinning faster and the whole object began to rise upward. It disappeared into the sky and I drove to my store. I believe what I saw. It was there. I never saw anything like it before, and I haven’t seen anything like it since, but it was there that morning on I-64.

The incident had left him shaken and afraid, and after some time pondering what he had seen, he decided to contact the police, and before long his bizarre experience was being featured all over the local papers. At around this time, Jones woke one morning to find that a slip of paper had been deposited under his front door. Not really thinking much of it at first, he picked up the paper and a glance at it caused his heart to drop. There scrawled upon it in handwriting was a note that read; “We know what you have seen and we know that you have talked. You better keep your mouth shut.” It was all very sinister, indeed, and there was no indication of who had written the note or where it had come from. Jones became paranoid, and began constantly looking over his shoulder.

A local UFO expert by the name of Ralph Jarett soon became aware of Jones story right after having his own strange experience, when a mysterious unidentified phone call had turned out to be just a few minutes of a low beeping, as if in code. Jarett would reach out to Jones and uncover many extra details about the sighting, including the fact that the UFO appeared to have been hovering directly over a major gas line. During his extensive investigation of Jones’ case, Jones would once again receive an ominous note slipped under his door. This time it was written on a piece of torn cardboard with burnt edges, and simply read: “There won’t be another warning.” All of this attracted the attention of the imminent researcher John Keel, who happened to be in the area investigating a UFO flap in the Ohio River Valley and the infamous Mothman sightings that were going on at the time. When Keel began questioning Jones and looking into the case, he would unearth even more strangeness.

Jones would mention to Keel an incident that he hadn’t really thought much of at the time, but which he had become convinced was somehow connected to his sighting. He said that one week after his UFO incident, he had been driving along the same road at around the same time when he had passed a lone man on the side of the road. He pulled over to see if the man needed help, but got no response, merely a wave. The next day, Jones passed the same man again at the same spot at the same time, and he would tell Keel that there had been something unsettling and “off” about him. Jones would describe the mysterious stranger:

He was very tanned or his face was very flushed. He looked normal and was wearing a blue coat and a blue cap with a visor… something like a uniform, I guess. I noticed he was holding a box in his hand. Some kind of instrument. It had a large dial on it, like a clock, and a wire ran from it to his other hand.

Thinking that it may have been a utilities worker, Keel checked with the gas company, but it would turn out that not only had they not had any personnel out there at the time, but that they did not wear the uniform described by Jones and also did not use such an instrument. What mysterious connection does any of this have with Jones’ experience? No one really knows. It would only get even more curious still when Keel went out to the site himself and found a strange series of footprints that looked like the tracks of a huge dog that he estimated must have weighed upwards of 200 pounds. In addition to the “dog tracks” found at the site of the Jones encounter, Keel turned up among them a human print that in some ways struck him as unusual, as well as some other weird things. He describes this as follows:

Aside from the dog tracks, we found a single footprint of what appeared to be a large, naked human foot. This was planted in the center of a muddy section with no other footprints of any kind around it. But a short distance away I came across some old friends… a type of footprint that has appeared at many UFO sites around the country. They look like the type of prints made by ripple-soled shoes, but their spacing is always peculiar. They don’t start anywhere and they don’t lead anywhere. Ripple soles had been in fashion since the early 1960s and had then faded out. But these phantom prints had a ridge around the edges. Years later, when the first men walked on the moon, I realized that the photos of the prints left by their moon-walking shoes were identical to the footprints I had seen over and over again in my travels.

Plaster casts taken of the dog tracks were sent to be analyzed and were found to not be dog tracks at all, and indeed no local wildlife experts could identify them as any animal known to the area. Oddly, Keel claims that the imminent cryptozoologist Ivan Sanderson had told him that very similar dog-like tracks often appeared in places where paranormal activity had occurred, and also said that he would later encounter similar tracks around the country in completely separate cases. What did all of this footprint weirdness have to do with Jones’ encounter, if anything? No one really knows, but Keel was certain that it was all connected somehow. In the end we are left to wonder, what did Tad Jones encounter out there on that road? What is the meaning of the strange tracks, the mysterious stranger on the road, and the sinister notes he received? It is unclear, and it continues to be a weird case surrounded by oddness that we may never fully understand.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

27-09-2020 om 21:58 geschreven door peter  

If you are wondering what the “Australian tektite field” is, its formal title is the “Australasian strewn field.” What it demonstrates is that in ancient times certain portions of our world were effectively torched. Meteoritics and Planetary Science said: “Early workers, including such astute observers as Charles Fenner, George Baker, and Edward Gill, who picked up pristine tektites on the arid and ancient surface of Australia, became convinced that this shower of glass had arrived very recently. Ages around 10,000-20,000 years were usually quoted. As some early radiometric age determinations of tektites gave spuriously old ages, these data fueled the notion that the age of the fall was disconnected to the time of formation of tektites.” And what – you may very well ask – are tektites? This is where things get really interesting. Tektites are small, glassy bodies that are near-identical to the equally glassy trinitite that was found at the detonation site of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in July 1945, just a few weeks before the destruction of the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory state the following on all of this: “Trinitite has also been referred to as atomsite or Alamogordo glass (after a nearby city). Ultimately, it is a glasslike substance that was created from the sand and other materials at the Site during the intense heat of that first atomic test. Relatively recent research (2005) indicates that, upon explosion, the ground was likely pushed down initially, then rebounded, forcing material into the fireball. As indicated in the display, the ground was vaporized before eventually raining down in the form of trinitite droplets. While most trinitite is light green (due to the iron that was present in the sand), other samples contain some of the iron from the tower on which the ‘Gadget’ was detonated, and those look black. Yet other slightly red samples contain copper from the electrical wire used in the experiment.”

Forbes say the following: “It’s often hard to appreciate how quickly energy gets released in something like a nuclear explosion. The shockwave from the initial blast was so powerful it was felt from over 100 miles (160 km) away, with the mushroom cloud reaching 7.5 miles (12 km) in height. The above photo, taken just 16 milliseconds (0.016 seconds) after detonation, shows a blast explosion about 660 feet (200 meters) high, but it’s what happened below, on the ground, that really was surprising. Beneath the explosion location, an enormous crater formed. The landscape was incredibly scarred, and in many place, melted by the nuclear explosion.”

The Smithsonian Magazine provides these words: “No one commented on the glass at the time—its creation was the least of the Gadget’s spectacular effects—but visitors to the site after the war noticed the unusual scattering of glassy mineral that surrounded the shallow bomb crater and began collecting pieces as souvenirs. ‘A lake of green jade,’ Time magazine described it in September 1945. ‘The glass takes strange shapes—lopsided marbles, knobbly sheets a quarter-inch thick, broken, thin-walled bubbles, green, wormlike forms.'”

Perhaps like this?

In 2001, Science Frontiers stated the following: “The extent of the immense Australasian-tektite strewn field implies a hard-to-miss crater about 100 kilometers in diameter. Yet, despite the geological recency of the event and despite much geological surveying, no convincing crater has been discovered…The mystery deepens when one realizes that whatever cataclysm sent the Australian tektites aloft may have been comparable in magnitude to the impact that extinguished the dinosaurs (and other fauna) some 65 million years ago. This much older event has its crater buried below the Yucatan and is further marked by widespread biological extinctions. In contrast, the Australasian-tektite event is not only minus an obvious crater but seems to have had scant effect on the earth’s cargo of sensitive life forms. It was a strangely ‘gentle’ event despite the rocky deluge of tektites. What really happened?”

What, indeed?

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

27-09-2020 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

Dark Outpost: American Whistleblower On UFO Program The Majestic 12

The Majestic 12 is a purported organization that appears in UFO conspiracy theories. The organization is claimed to be the code name of an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to facilitate recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft. The concept originated in a series of supposedly leaked secret government documents first circulated by ufologists in 1984.

Upon examination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declared the documents to be “completely bogus”, and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax. But in our continuing conversation with patriot whistleblower John Carman, he reveals the truth about MJ-12, the UFO cover-up by our government, and a possible connection to the COVID-19 vaccination.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

27-09-2020 om 20:55 geschreven door peter  

Huge UFO Seen Near Earths Moon On Sept 25, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 25, 2020
Location of sighting: Earths Moon

Watch as a glowing UFO was caught near our moon on Sept 25. The UFO displays several different colors and often has a myst around it. UFOs have been seen around our moon for decades. As a matter of fact, if you focus your camera on the outer edge of the moon, you will see UFOs hit the horizon edge ever 30 seconds. To see them they must be huge! Yes, even I have tried and succeeded the first time of recoding the moon. Todays cameras can really zoom in on it well. 
Scott C. Waring 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

27-09-2020 om 20:38 geschreven door peter  

UFOS Caught Over Towers In Malaysia On Sept 26, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 26, 2020

Location of sighting: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  

 

Its obvious that these UFOs were checking out a the newest and most technologically advanced structures in the area. Aliens are highly interested in how and what humans have in technology. Even alien drones with AI (cloud orbs) will buzz aircraft to scan for technology. These UFOs in Malaysia are a great example of tech seeking UFOs scanning humanities latest developments. 

Scott C. Waring 

 

Eyewitness states: 

 I was driving past the iconic Petronas twin towers in Kl, the city I am currently living in and have been living in since 1996. When I stopped at the red light I wound down my windows to take a photo of the twin towers using night mode with a 3 second timer. In 2 shots I reviewed back I saw 2 lights at the top right hand corner of the 2 photos and it looks like a boomerang shaped craft with the yellow orange lights, one side is long while the other side is slightly less visible. In the 2 shots I took it looked like it was moving across d sky from the direction of the twin towers to the right side of the photo. I took a 3rd photo of the twin towers and the two lights were not inside that 3rd photo.. Can someone take a look at the photos and tell me what's going on?

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27-09-2020 om 20:34 geschreven door peter  

Ahistoric moment is on the horizon for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. In just a few weeks, the robotic OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will descend to asteroid Bennu’s boulder-strewn surface, touch down for a few seconds and collect a sample of the asteroid’s rocks and dust – marking the first time NASA has grabbed pieces of an asteroid, which will be returned to Earth for study.

On Oct. 20, the mission will perform the first attempt of its Touch-And-Go (TAG) sample collection event. This series of maneuvers will bring the spacecraft down to site Nightingale, a rocky area 52 ft (16 m) in diameter in Bennu’s northern hemisphere, where the spacecraft’s robotic sampling arm will attempt to collect a sample.

Site Nightingale was selected as the mission’s primary sample site because it holds the greatest amount of unobstructed fine-grained material, but the region is surrounded by building-sized boulders. During the sampling event, the spacecraft, which is the size of a large van, will attempt to touch down in an area that is only the size of a few parking spaces, and just a few steps away from some of these large boulders.

To ensure that the spacecraft touches down on a safe area that avoids the region’s many boulders, the navigation system is equipped with a hazard map of site Nightingale, which delineates areas within the sample site that could potentially harm the spacecraft. 

If the spacecraft’s NFT system detects that it is on course to touch one of these hazardous zones, the spacecraft will autonomously wave off its approach once it reaches an altitude of 16 ft (5 m). This keeps the spacecraft safe and allows for a subsequent sample collection attempt at a future date.

OSIRIS-REx is charged with collecting at least 2 oz. (60 grams) of Bennu’s rocky material to deliver back to Earth – the largest sample return from space since the Apollo program.

The spacecraft is scheduled to depart Bennu in 2021 and it will deliver the collected sample to Earth on Sep. 24, 2023.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

This artist’s concept shows NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending towards asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of the asteroid’s surface.

NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

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27-09-2020 om 20:03 geschreven door peter  

UFOs filmed over Brentwood, California 26-Sep-2020

These triangular-shaped UFO formation was filmed in the sky above Brentwood, California yesterday (26th September 2020).

Witness report:

Triangle shaped w/ 4 witnesses. At around 7pm, my family of 3 plus an Xfinity internet installer witnessed a UFO hover in a position near a star/planet to the right of the moon for about 10 minutes. It appeared out of nowhere. It was triangular in shape, had 2 blinking red lights and one blue/green light that fluctuated but seemed to have a rhythm. We also spotted an occasional white light near it, a couple of which seemed to shoot out like falling stars. The lights were patterned and consistent at first, then starting blinking very quickly and changed color. At that point, the object descended from a celestial location directly downward so fast, it fell from view in about 10 seconds. About 10 minutes later, we saw it ascend at equally high speed until it disappeared from our view. I took 2 videos, but they are crappy as it was dark.

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27-09-2020 om 18:44 geschreven door peter  

American probe is one month away from touchdown on asteroid Bennu

Hopefully it's better at parallel parking than I am.

 by Alexandru Micu  in News, Science, Space, Space flight

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is nearing its objective — the asteroid Bennu.

27-09-2020 om 01:27 geschreven door peter  

Physicists have discovered that rotating black holes might serve as portals for hyperspace travel

• Scientists once thought that traveling into a black hole would kill you.
• But now, physicists have run computer simulations to show that certain types of black holes – large, rotating ones – could serve as portals for hyperspace travel.
• Some physicists believe that you’d arrive at a remote part of the Milky Way or perhaps in another galaxy altogether.
• One of the safest passageways might be the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, called Sagittarius A*.

Following is a transcript of the video.

So, whatever happens beyond that boundary, inside of a black hole, is anyone’s guess. Scientists agree that if you travel far enough into a black hole, gravity will eventually become so strong that it kills anything in its path. But sci-fi films are more optimistic, depicting black holes as portals through space and time or gateways to other dimensions. And it turns out, some scientists now think the sci-fi buffs may be onto something. Black holes might be suitable for hyperspace travel, after all; it just takes the right kind of black hole.

At the center of every black hole is a point of infinite density, called a singularity. It’s what gives black holes their strong gravitational pull. And for decades, scientists thought singularities were all the same, so anything that passed the event horizon would be destroyed the same way: by being stretched and pulled like an infinitely long piece of spaghetti.

But that all changed in the early 1990s when different research teams in Canada and the US discovered a second singularity called a “mass inflation singularity.” It still has a strong gravitational pull, but it would only stretch you by a finite amount, and potentially NOT kill you in the process, meaning, you might survive the trip through a black hole. More specifically, through a large, rotating black hole, which is where these types of singularities exist.

Now, astronomers obviously can’t travel through a black hole yet to test this theory. In fact, the best place to test this is at the supermassive black hole in the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which is 27,000 light years away. Not conveniently close to the least.

Therefore, scientists instead run computer simulations to see what would happen if we did manage to reach an isolated, rotating black hole, and now, for the first time, a team of scientists at UMass Dartmouth and Georgia Gwinnett College has done exactly that.

Lior Burko: “You would feel a slight increase in temperature, but it would not be a dramatic increase. It’s just that you don’t have enough time to respond to the very strong forces. It would just go through you too quickly.”

Narrator: He added that passing through a weak singularity is like quickly running your finger through a candle flame that’s 1,000 degrees Celsius. If you hold your finger in the flame long enough, you’ll get burned, but pass your finger through quickly, and you’ll barely feel a thing. Similarly, if you pass through a weak singularity with the right speed and momentum, and at the right time, you may not feel much at all.

As for what happens once you get through to the other side, no one really knows, but Burko has his own ideas. He says one possibility is that we’d arrive at some other remote part of our galaxy, potentially light years away from any planets or stars, but a second, and perhaps more intriguing, possibility is that we’d arrive in a different galaxy altogether. That’s if you even make it that far.

Scientists say more research is needed before we’re anywhere close to successfully traveling through a black hole. But when we are ready, one of the safest passageways might be the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy called Sagittarius A*, and it might just be our ticket out of the Milky Way.

{ https://www.businessinsider.nl/ }

27-09-2020 om 00:37 geschreven door peter  

Math may be hard, but it sure is handy – even in the world of fairies. Looking for an explanation for the so-called fairy circles – mysterious circles of grass found in Namibia and Western Australia — researchers turned to one of the greatest mathematical minds of modern times, and Alan Turing, speaking from beyond the grave, gave them the answer. Was there any secret Turing couldn’t decode?

“Turing’s concept was that in certain systems, due to random disturbances and a “reaction-diffusion” mechanism, interaction between just two diffusible substances was enough to allow strongly patterned structures to spontaneously emerge.”

Patterns like these

What? Fortunately, most of the press release on a new paper published in the Journal of Ecology is written at a more understandable level. In 1952 (he died in 1954 at the age of 41), Turing published a paper on mathematical biology considered by many to be his masterpiece: “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis.” Morphogenesis is the development of patterns and shapes in biological organisms and Turing used a set of partial differential equations to model catalytic chemical reactions that could create regular patterns in nature. While Turing couldn’t take it any further, many other scientists did, using his work to explain spots and stripes on animals and the growth patterns of feathers and hair follicles. While it was thought that Turing’s pattern theory might help explain the patterns fairy circles formed, no one had accomplished it … until now.

“The data show that the unique gap pattern of the Australian fairy circles, which occur only in a small area east of the town of Newman, emerges from ecohydrological biomass-water feedbacks from the grasses. In fact, the fairy circles – with their large diameters of 4m, clay crusts from weathering and resultant water run-off – are a critical extra source of water for the dryland vegetation. Clumps of grasses increased shading and water infiltration around the nearby roots.”

An international research team led by Göttingen University scientists converged on Newman with a tool that had never been used to study these fairy circles before – one that Turing could only have imagined … drones. Using a drone equipped with a multispectral camera, the researchers mapped Triodia grasses over time in five one-hectare plots and classified them according to how well they grew. (Photos here.)

They found that the areas doing well did so by cooperating to ring a small section in order to capture and hold moisture that normally would have run off. The mounded circle of grass also provided shade for new seedlings. However, the best part was that the photos showed that the grasses knew exactly how big to build the circles for irrigation and growth efficiency, and all of them did it the same way.

Patterns like these

“The intriguing thing is that the grasses are actively engineering their own environment by forming symmetrically spaced gap patterns. The vegetation benefits from the additional runoff water provided by the large fairy circles, and so keeps the arid ecosystem functional even in very harsh, dry conditions.”

The circles of grass reacted with each other, just as Turing’s pattern theory had predicted. No fairies, gods, spirits, dragons or any other mythical beings formerly used to explain the fairy circles were needed – just the mathematical mind of Alan Turing.

Still think math is hard? Turing had an answer for that too.

“Those who can imagine anything, can create the impossible.”
― Alan Turing

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

26-09-2020 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

This week I have a new book out from Red Wheel/Weiser’s New Page Books. Its title: The Martians: Evidence of Life on the Red Planet. The story dates back into the distant past and right up until the present day. And, it’s a highly controversial story, too. For example, the book addresses such issues as the “Face on Mars,” unusual pyramid-like structures on the planet, additional so-called faces, and even what appear to be strange creatures on the surface of Mars. On top of that there are certain, curious monoliths – on Mars and on one of its moons: Phobos. And what about the CIA’s secret remote-viewing of Mars back in 1984? The most important aspect of the latter issue is not just what the CIA found, but why the agency felt there was such a pressing need to uncover the secrets of the Red Planet. Add to the planet’s “Banyan Trees,” and Mars’ own equivalent of Stonehenge (“Marshenge,” of course!), and you begin to see how incredibly weird Mars really is. What about the sensational possibility that an advanced Martian civilization might still exist – albeit in a very precarious situation? All of these questions and issues are guaranteed to provoke debate – and a great deal of controversy.

Many will tell you that Mars is an utterly dead world. No animal life, no plant life. Nothing. That is not the case, though. As I demonstrate, Mars is absolutely teeming with life; both flora and fauna, no less. Some of that life is highly advanced and incredibly old. There’s no denying that the planet guards its incredible and disturbing secrets both diligently and carefully. It has done so for a long time; an amazingly long time. None of that, however, has stopped us from uncovering a wealth of what can only be described as “anomalies” on Mars. The Martians: Evidence of Life on the Red Planet is an in-depth study of the theory that Mars was once a world which teemed with life. Perhaps, even, life that is not at all too dissimilar to ours. Incredibly, the Martians may still be there. Alive. Hiding deep below the surface of a ruined world.

There can be absolutely no doubt whatsoever that it was the discovery of the “Face on Mars” back in the 1970s that energized the interest and controversy that surrounded (and that still continues to surround) the possibility that Mars may once have been a world not too dissimilar to ours – even a world inhabited by beings who resembled us to a staggering degree. Some would put all of that down to nothing stranger than pareidolia. I don’t. Although I don’t see NASA engaged in a huge cover-up of the Martian structures, what I do see is a mistake on its part. That mistake has been to ignore and summarily dismiss the many undeniable oddities away as the results of nothing but pareidolia. The purpose behind all of this lack of interest or involvement by the space agency? Probably NASA’s fear of its reputation being besmirched, and the risk of its staff presented by an over-sensational media as “alien hunters.”

Mars’ “Banyan Trees”

(NASA)

I should stress that while I don’t think NASA is sitting on some sensational secrets on Mars, that certainly cannot be the same for a number of other agencies. I mentioned the CIA earlier. They were not alone, however. During the course of my investigations I found evidence showing that other agencies and shadowy departments have certainly taken a very deep interest in what might have occurred on Mars – and what might still be going on there. Moving on: when it comes to the scientific community, it is almost exclusively unwilling to address the mysteries of Mars in a fashion that just might have a potentially adverse bearing on their lofty, much-cherished reputations. Some, I suspect, are fearful of what they might find if they dare to go looking too closely: what we might call a skewed case of deliberate self-censorship. As a species, we are woefully unaware, and largely ignorant, of a series of incredibly ancient events that revolved around a nightmarish, irreversibly-collapsing Mars. And, of death on an almost incomprehensible scale for the Martians, most of them killed before they could flee their world for ours. But, not all of them. When? Without doubt millennia ago – probably even way back further than that. The secrets of Mars are about to be revealed…

“Marshenge”

(NASA)

RELATED videos, selected and posted by peter2011

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26-09-2020 om 21:44 geschreven door peter