Composite image of Io and Jupiter (Jupiter image from the Cassini spacecraft, Io image from the new research). Sulfur dioxide plumes from Io’s volcanoes are seen in yellow.

Image via ALMA (ESO/ NAOJ/ NRAO)/ I. de Pater et al./ NRAO/ AUI NSF/ S. Dagnello/ NASA/ ESA/ UC Berkeley.

Io, one of the four large Galilean moons of Jupiter, is the most volcanically active body in our solar system, even more so than Earth. It has over 400 active volcanoes and is often described as hellish. Io also has an extremely thin atmosphere, composed mostly of sulfur dioxide (SO2). This little world’s volcanoes regularly spew sulfur dioxide into its atmosphere. Still, scientists weren’t sure whether the atmosphere stems from hot sulfur dioxide coming directly from the volcanoes, or cold sulfur dioxide which accumulates on Io’s surface and freezes before sublimating into the atmosphere. Now they’ve determined it’s both.

• The 2021 lunar calendars are here! Order yours before they’re gone. Makes a great gift!

Using the ALMA telescope in Chile, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have announced that up to half of the sulfur dioxide in Io’s atmosphere comes directly from its volcanoes. The results have been published in two new peer-reviewed papers accepted for publication in The Planetary Science Journal, which you can read here and here.

Astronomer Imke de Pater, who led the study, said in a statement:

It was not known which process drives the dynamics in Io’s atmosphere. Is it volcanic activity, or gas that sublimates from the icy surface when Io is in sunlight? What we show is that, actually, volcanoes do have a large impact on the atmosphere.

The answer, it turns out, is both.

Some of the sulfur dioxide does indeed freeze out onto the surface, the researchers found. This happens when Io passes through Jupiter’s shadow every 42 hours. When Io was being observed by the researchers on March 20, 2018, they noticed that radio emissions from the sulfur dioxide dropped exponentially. This meant that Io’s lower atmosphere, 6-12 miles (10-20 km) in altitude, collapsed and froze onto the surface.

The temperature during this period fell to -270 degrees Fahrenheit (-168 degrees Celsius), cold enough for sulfur dioxide to freeze. Io’s surface is typically about -230 degrees Fahrenheit (-150 degrees Celsius). Cold, but not quite cold enough for the sulfur dioxide to freeze out.

On September 2 and 11, 2018, the sulfur dioxide emissions rose again within 10 minutes after Io emerged from Jupiter’s shadow back into sunlight. De Pater said:

As soon as Io gets into sunlight, the temperature increases, and you get all this SO2 ice subliming into gas, and you reform the atmosphere in about 10 minutes’ time, faster than what models had predicted.

That explains where some of the frozen sulfur dioxide comes from. But the researchers noticed something else as well. ALMA detected abundant sulfur dioxide over the volcanoes, as well as low levels of the gas globally in Io’s atmosphere. This suggested that the more widespread gas was originating from unseen or “stealth” volcanoes. They emit sulfur dioxide, but not other smoke or particles that can be easily seen.

Right now, the researchers think that extra gas is coming from such stealth volcanoes, although they couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that it could be sulfur dioxide that isn’t completely condensing out onto the surface. As de Pater noted:

The SO2 that we see with ALMA when Io is in eclipse is at a very low level, and we can’t say if that is stealth volcanism or caused by SO2 not completely condensing out.

Io, as seen by the Galileo spacecraft on September 19, 1997.

Image via NASA/ JPL/ University of Arizona/ NASA Photojournal.

Earlier observations from the Keck Observatory from last July, however, supported the stealth volcanism scenario. Keck detected abundant sulfur monoxide (SO) over the volcanoes, as well as widespread in the atmosphere. The researchers say that sunlight breaks the sulfur-oxygen bond in the sulfur dioxide that has been ejected hundreds of kilometers above the surface, creating the sulfur monoxide. De Pater said:

But then, when we looked at the SO with Keck, we can only explain the SO emissions, which are widespread on the surface, through this stealth volcanism, because excitation of the SO requires a very high temperature.

By observing Io in its orbit around Jupiter as it moved into and then out of Jupiter’s shadow, the researchers were able to figure out how much of the moon’s sulfur dioxide deposits came from freezing out on the surface and how much came from stealth or other volcanoes. Statia Luszcz-Cook from Columbia University in New York said:

When Io passes into Jupiter’s shadow, and is out of direct sunlight, it is too cold for sulfur dioxide gas, and it condenses onto Io’s surface. During that time, we can only see volcanically-sourced sulfur dioxide. We can, therefore, see exactly how much of the atmosphere is impacted by volcanic activity.

A volcanic eruption on Io, caught by Galileo’s cameras on June 28, 1997.

Image via NASA.

A closer look from Galileo at one of Io’s volcanoes, called Pele, as it was erupting.

Image via NASA/ JPL/ USGS.

By using ALMA, scientists were able to “see,” for the first time, plumes of both sulfur dioxide and sulfur monoxide coming up from Io’s volcanoes. Two of those volcanoes, Karei Patera and Daedalus Patera, were erupting in March, and a third volcano was active in September.

The researchers now calculate that 30% to 50% of Io’s atmosphere is produced directly by active volcanoes.

A third gas, potassium chloride (KCI), was also detected by ALMA, and is a common component of lava. According to Luszcz-Cook:

We see KCI in volcanic regions where we do not see SO2 or SO. This is strong evidence that the magma reservoirs are different under different volcanoes.

Katherine de Kleer at the California Institute of Technology added:

By studying Io’s atmosphere and volcanic activity, we can understand more about the volcanoes, the tidal heating process and Io’s interior.

The volcano Loki Patera, as seen by Voyager 1 in 1979. The dark U-shaped feature is a lava lake about 124 miles (200 km) across.

Image via NASA/ JPL/ USGS/ Planetary Science Institute.

Infrared view of Io’s active volcanoes from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, currently orbiting Jupiter. Wow!

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI/ INAF/ The Planetary Society.

The scientists are eager to learn more about Io’s magma as well, and are planning to observe the moon at additional radio wavelengths. These can probe several inches beneath the surface and provide clues about what Io’s magma is composed of and its temperature. They also want to know more about the temperature of Io’s lower atmosphere. De Pater said:

To measure the temperature of Io’s atmosphere, we need to obtain a higher resolution in our observations, which requires that we observe the moon for a longer period of time. We can only do this when Io is in sunlight, since it does not spend much time in eclipse. During such an observation, Io will rotate by tens of degrees. We will need to apply software that helps us make unsmeared images. We have done this previously with radio images of Jupiter made with ALMA and the Very Large Array.

How can a small moon like Io, way out in the outer solar system, have active volcanoes? Io is volcanically active due to tidal heating. The same side of Io faces Jupiter, just like the same side of the moon always faces Earth. The gravitational pull of Jupiter, as well as the moons Europa and Ganymede, creates tremendous friction and heating inside Io.

Io was last observed up close by NASA’s Galileo mission in the late 1990s/early 2000s. The current Juno orbiter has seen Io from farther away, but its primary mission is to observe Jupiter itself in detail as it orbits the giant planet. It has taken some cool images from a distance though.

Imke de Pater at the University of California, Berkeley, who lead the new study.

Image via UC Berkeley.

The new results help to solve the mystery of how Io’s atmosphere forms and how its volcanoes play a major part in that. But there are still many more questions to be answered – and new ones to be asked – about the solar system’s most active volcanic hotspot.

• Bottom line: Active volcanoes produce almost half of Io’s sulfur atmosphere, according to new observations using ALMA.
• Source: ALMA Observations of Io Going into and Coming out of Eclipse
• Source: High Spatial and Spectral Resolution Observations of the Forbidden 1.707 um Rovibronic SO Emissions on Io: Evidence for Widespread Stealth Volcanism*
• Via UC Berkeley
• Via NRAO

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

09-11-2020 om 02:15 geschreven door peter  

Unpredictable space radio bursts may stem from asteroids around magnetic stars

By Charles Q. Choi

An animation shows the random appearance of fast radio bursts (FRBs) across the sky.

(Image: © NRAO Outreach/T. Jarrett (IPAC/Caltech); B. Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF))

Mysterious repeating bursts of radio waves that fire in random patterns might come from neutron stars blasting asteroids with magnetic winds that travel at nearly the speed of light, a new study finds.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are intense pulses of radio waves that can give off more energy in a few thousandths of a second than the sun does in nearly a century. Scientists only discovered FRBs in 2007, and much remains unknown about their origins because of their brief existence. 

Since fast radio bursts are rare and bright — the're visible across millions or even billions of light-years — researchers have often assumed they originate from cataclysmic events, such as stellar flares or colliding neutron stars. (Neutron stars are corpses of stars that died in catastrophic explosions known as supernovas; the gravity of these stellar remnants is powerful enough to crush protons and electrons together to form neutrons.)

• Related: Scientists detect strange 'fast radio burst' from our own Milky Way

The mystery of fast radio bursts deepened when scientists discovered the first repeating fast radio burst in 2016. When astronomers see repeating patterns in celestial events, they often think celestial mechanics might play a role — say, a planet completing an orbit around its star, or a fast-spinning neutron star known as a pulsar that blasts radio waves from its magnetic poles, flashing like a lighthouse as seen from the perspective of Earth. 

But the radio bursts in the 2016 event, strangely, had random timing.

Asteroids and neutron stars

Now researchers suggest that asteroids orbiting neutron stars might help explain at least some repeating fast radio bursts, even those with random timing. The key to this concept is that strong winds of particles often blow outward not just from live stars like our sun but from dead ones as well, such as pulsars. Since pulsars are highly magnetic, their winds are too, and since pulsars spin rapidly, completing up to hundreds of revolutions per second, their winds can blast out at relativistic speeds — that is, at nearly the speed of light. 

The scientists calculated that an object orbiting a pulsar — perhaps an asteroid — would carve a wake in the pulsar's wind. An electric current would circulate around this wake, and when the pulsar's wind crosses this wake, the researchers calculated, the resulting magnetic disturbances would generate a very narrow and extremely intense beam of radio waves.

The researchers noted that asteroids 0.6 to 6 miles wide (1 to 10 kilometers) orbiting their pulsars at one astronomical unit (AU) or closer would generate fast radio bursts of the intensities detected to date, especially if the pulsars had powerful magnetic fields. (One AU is the average distance between Earth and the sun, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers.)

The scientists noted that asteroids zipping through a pulsar's highly magnetic, superfast winds would continuously generate intense radio beams. But astronomers on Earth would only see these beams as bursts, during the rare instances when the neutron stars, asteroids and telescopes on Earth happened to line up. 

"The short duration of the radio bursts is caused by the short time during which we observers are in the radio beam," study lead author Fabrice Mottez, an astrophysicist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and the Paris Observatory, told Space.com.

Facing the magnetar winds

The researchers also explored what repeating fast radio bursts might look like when created by asteroids flying through the highly magnetic, highly relativistic winds of magnetars, a rare type of neutron star that are the strongest magnets in the cosmos. They found asteroids around magnetars could generate fast radio bursts about a thousand times more powerful than the strongest one seen to date.

If this explanation is correct, the random patterns in repeating fast radio bursts are likely caused by a cluster of asteroids interfering with the neutron star's winds, the scientists noted, rather than a single rock. "In our model, there are a few hundred asteroids, each of them having its own beam," Mottez said. A moon-laden exoplanet around a pulsar or magnetar could also explain the phenomenon, the researchers noted.

Gravitational interactions between asteroids in swarms might lead to irregularities in each of their orbits that would also lead to unevenness in the timing of any bursts that astronomers detected, Mottez said.

In addition, the magnetic fields of pulsar and magnetar winds would fluctuate regularly in time with the rates these neutron stars spin at, which in turn would influence the directions of the radio beams from any orbiting object, potentially making the timing look more random, he added. Another cause of randomness, maybe the most important, would be wind turbulence, he said.

The scientists detailed their findings in a paper accepted on Oct. 7 by the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, which was also posted to the preprint server arXiv.org.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.space.com/ }

09-11-2020 om 01:38 geschreven door peter  

SCIENTISTS THINK THEY'VE FINALLY SOLVED A 99 MILLION-YEAR-OLD FOSSIL MYSTERY

IN 2016, RESEARCHERS ANNOUNCED a landmark discovery made at a site in Myanmar: They had found 99 million-year-old chameleons, preserved in amber.

Fossils preserved in amber offer a far clearer glimpse at the ancient animal world than fossils embedded in rock or individual bones, but that doesn't mean mistakes cannot be made.

Now, a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science reveals the original study's researchers have a confession to make: These are not chameleons.

In fact, they are something else entirely.

Identifying a fossil animal's species is a complex process at best. Especially when you're dealing with 99-million-year-old fossils preserved in amber.

Juan Diego Daza is an assistant professor of biological sciences at Sam Houston State University and was the lead author on the 2016 study. Published in Science Advances, Daza and his colleagues reported the discovery of a dozen amber-bound fossils from Myanmar dating back to mid-Cretaceous period.

Amber is "good for trapping small and elusive animals that you won’t be able to find under other methods of fossilization," Daza tells Inverse. "These animals are so small that their chances of being fossilized with other methods — for example, normal, hard-rock fossils — would be very difficult."

But amber is no snow globe. With its dark, variable orange hue and rounded form, amber visually distorts the things it contains, making it difficult to easily identify details about the animals preserved within. This is made even harder when handling juvenile specimens, the bones of which would not have been fully developed when they were trapped.

Cut back to 2016. Daza and his colleagues were fairly confident that one of the fossils they found — which sported a nifty tongue bone — was an ancient chameleon.

It turns out that they were wrong.

FORENSIC FOSSILS

After publishing the 2016, Daza got a call. Another paleontologist, Susan Evans, had some bad (and good) news: Daza's chameleon was in fact a long-extinct species of amphibian — albanerpetontids, also known by the cute moniker "albies."

"The albanerpetontids — they’re very unusual amphibians," Daza says. "In a way, the body shape is similar to a salamander in the sense that they have four legs. And they have a tail — something that other amphibians that are alive today [don’t have]."

"MAYBE, SOME DAY, SOMEONE WILL DISCOVER ONE IN AN ISOLATED JUNGLE IN BORNEO OR SOMEPLACE IN THE WORLD WHERE NOBODY HAS GONE BEFORE."

With their claws and scales, albies are thought to have closely resembled a reptile — like a chameleon. But it turns out albies also shared another thing in common with the modern reptiles — that strange tongue bone.

"Albanerpetontids share with chameleons a unique bone in between the jaws, that’s basically a bone that supports the tongue. And that is very similar in both groups," Daza says.

To complicate matters, at the time, the majority of albie fossils had been found in Europe or North America, not Asia. Daza was left unsure what they had found, until he got an unexpected breakthrough in 2018.

At the end of 2018, Daza received an email from gemologist Adolf Peretti that would change everything. Peretti had 60 vertebrate fossil samples from Myanmar, and Daza suggested Peretti do a CT scan of the entire collection to better identify key details in the fossils.

The results turned out to be a boon for Daza — Peretti found a well-preserved adult albie specimen in his collection.

Comparing the juvenile in their study to Peretti's adult specimen allowed Daza and his colleagues to make key updates to the 2016 study.

They identified these fossils from Myanmar under a new genus and species: Yaksha perettii, named not only for Peretti, but also Hindu spirits, or yakshas, which are associated with nature.

In other words, Daza and his colleagues might have got the species wrong. But what they have instead discovered is perhaps the oldest example of a projectile tongue discovered in nature.

WAITING GAME

 The albie's fast-moving "ballistic" tongue means it was likely a "sit-and-wait predator," according to Daza.

"They remain steady until a prey approaches and when the prey is in the range of their tongue, they will shoot at the tongue quickly. And, usually, the tongue is sticky at the end. And that allows them to engulf the prey and drag it to their mouths," he says.

But why does a chameleon, a reptile, share such a similar feature to an albie, an amphibian? It's all due to convergent evolution, Daza says.

"It’s a process in biology that we call convergence. It’s basically when two or more groups develop similar traits to perform the similar function," he explains.

"It’s the first amphibian of this group with such a good preservation, so it helped us to understand better the anatomy, and helped us do something that’s almost impossible to do with many fossils: to do a bone-by-bone analysis of each one of the bones that formed the skull," Daza adds.

The researchers also formed a better understanding of the creature's development. For example, it seems like albies don't necessarily have a larval stage, like a tadpole does before it becomes an adult frog.

"If this is a juvenile, and then this is an adult, we suspect, for example, when they hatch from their eggs, they are already almost formed. The lack the larvae stage that other amphibians might have," says Daza.

Albies had a long reign; the species existed for at least 165 million years and reportedly became extinct only two million years ago, leaving behind no living descendants today.

But is there a small chance that the albie may not actually be extinct, but is actually out there, just waiting to be found? It's actually not that far-fetched an idea.

"We don’t know. Maybe, some day, someone will discover one in an isolated jungle in Borneo or someplace in the world where nobody has gone before," Daza says.

Abstract: 

Albanerpetontids are tiny, enigmatic fossil amphibians with a distinctive suite of characteristics, including scales and specialized jaw and neck joints. Here we describe a new genus and species of albanerpetontid, represented by fully articulated and three-dimensional specimens preserved in amber. These specimens preserve skeletal and soft tissues, including an elongated median hyoid element, the tip of which remains embedded in a distal tongue pad. This arrangement is very similar to the long, rapidly projecting tongue of chameleons. Our results thus suggest that albanerpetontids were sit-and-wait ballistic tongue feeders, extending the record of this specialized feeding mode by around 100 million years.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

08-11-2020 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

Lying out in rural Adams County, Ohio, in the United States, upon a plateau overlooking Bush Creek, is a curious mound of earth jutting out of the land, winding about in the unmistakable image of a snake for a full 1348 feet and averaging 3.9 to 4.9 feet in height, and it comes complete with an open-mouthed head and coiled tail, earning it its nickname “The Serpent Mound.” It is what is called an “effigy mound,” a type of earthen mound created in the shape of an animal, and it is the largest known such mound in the world, made all the more mysterious in that it curiously lies along the impact crater of some ancient meteor strike. First excavated in the late 1800s, we know no more about it now than we did then, its origins and purpose unclear, and so the Serpent Mound has managed to attract many mysterious stories to it, one of these being all of the giant skeletons that have apparently been found there.

While the exact origins and age of the mound are somewhat shrouded in mystery, the Serpent Mound is generally accepted to have been built by what is now called the Early Woodland Adena culture, which existed in the area from between 500 B.C. to 200 A.D., with the structure most likely dating to about 300 B.C., but the reasons for its existence have been debated. One idea is that it was created for some sort of mortuary purposes, as although the mound itself does not contain any remains, there are numerous smaller burial mounds peppering the area around it. It is thought that the serpent might have been constructed as a sort of protector of the graves or a beacon to guide lost spirits. This makes sense, as serpents and snakes were often depicted by the Native peoples as having magical or supernatural powers, and were seen as revered animals. Another idea is that it was for some sort of cosmological or astrological use, supported by the fact that the head and the tail of the serpent just happen to align very well with the summer solstice sunset and the winter solstice sunrise, as well as to yearly equinoxes. Another idea put forward by researcher Ross Hamilton in his book Star Mounds: Legacy of a Native American Mystery is that the Serpent Mound is merely one part of a larger “terrestrial zodiac,” linking together with other mounds across the country. However, no one is sure, and the mound remains quite a mystery.

The Serpent Mound

Adding to this is that the location on an impact crater has turned up various gravitational and magnetic anomalies in the area, leading to speculation that the construction was intentionally made here for this reason, and there have long been stories of freak weather patterns and anomalous lights in the area. The Serpent Mound has gone on to be known for UFO sightings and other weirdness, but perhaps the strangest thing here are the instances in which the remains of what appear to be actual giants, individuals allegedly measuring between 7 and 9 feet tall. One such report appears in 1872 in Historical Collections of Noble County Ohio, in which there were stumbled across some strange remains, which would be described:

The remains of three skeletons whose size would indicate they measured in life at least eight feet in height. The remarkable feature of these remains was they had double teeth in front, as well as in back of the mouth and in both upper and lower jaws. Upon exposure to the atmosphere the skeletons crumbled back to mother earth.

This is far from the only such report made from the vicinity of the Serpent Mound, and another was given in 1891 by American anthropologist and professor Frederic Ward Putnam, who was doing a study and excavation of one of the outlying burial mounds when he came across a skeleton of a relatively smaller size, standing at only 6 feet, but this would have been towering in ancient times, and it was also remarkable for its bizarre dental structure, which seems to have featured a double row of teeth. Putnam would write:

Several peculiarities of this skeleton are worthy of notice. It was that of a well-developed man…and probably about 25 or 30 years of age, he never had any wisdom teeth, and a search in the maxillary bone of one side showed that there was no wisdom tooth forming in the jaw. With this exception, he had a fine set of teeth, and still embedded in the premaxillary bone is a partly formed left incisor tooth. No corresponding formation can be seen on the opposite side of the suture, and this is probably a super-numerary tooth, although the small size of the lateral incisors is suggestive of their being persistent first teeth. As is often the case in skulls of this race, the crowns of the incisors are distinctly folded.

Putnam would surmise that this had been merely an adolescent, and that it would have achieved far greater size if it had not died. Putnam would allegedly discover several other skeletons in the area measuring 7 feet tall or taller, and with skulls that were “twice the usual thickness.” In 1894 a local farmer by the name of Warren Cowen also happened across some unusual graves, and an article at the time in The New York Times says of this:

Farmer Warren Cowen of Hilsborough, Ohio, while fox hunting recently discovered several ancient graves. They were situated upon a high point of land in Highland County, Ohio, about a mile from the famous Serpent Mound, where Prof. Putnam of Harvard made interesting discoveries. As soon as the weather permitted, Cowen excavated several of these graves. The graves were made of large limestone slabs, two and a half to three feet in length and a foot wide. These were set on edge about a foot apart. Similar slabs covered the graves. A single one somewhat larger was at the head and another at the foot. The top of the grave was two feet below the present surface.

Upon opening one of the graves a skeleton of upwards of six feet was brought to light. There were a number of stone hatchets, beads, and ornaments of peculiar workmanship near the right arm. Several large flint spear and arrow heads among the ribs gave evidence that the warrior had died in battle. In another grave was the skeleton of a man equally large… Several pipes and pendants were near the shoulders. In other graves, Cowen made equally interesting finds. It seems that the region was populated by a fairly intelligent people, and that the serpent mound was an object of worship. Near the graves is a large field in which broken implements, fragments of pottery, and burned stones give evidence of a prehistoric village.

There would apparently be made at least 17 reports listed in Smithsonian ethnology reports of outsized remains of 7 feet and over found in mounds surrounding Serpent Mound, and it has led to speculation that some race of giant individuals may have called this place at home and been closely in league with the Natives of the area. What are we to think of all of this? It is all certainly a mysterious place, but are there mysteries here that are even stranger than most? What are are we to make of the reports of giant-sized people living here, and is there anything to such reports at all? The mystery remains, and the Serpent Mound of Ohio is certainly an inscrutable feature of the landscape here.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

08-11-2020 om 22:42 geschreven door peter  

There are some strange and supernatural creatures lurking in our midst that I think are interconnected. How and why, I have to admit, I don’t know. But, as I see it, there’s no denying the links. Today, I’ll be addressing the appearances of these paranormal entities. And tomorrow I’ll be focusing on their strange abilities. So, let’s begin. There is one thing that stands out when it comes to such things as the Men in Black, the Women in Black, and the Black Eyed Children. It’s the color of their skin. In many cases it’s deathly white. In fact, in some cases it’s almost as if they have something somewhat similar to albinism. Maybe, they do. And, with that said, let’s have a look at this particular condition. Healthline says: “Albinism is a rare group of genetic disorders that cause the skin, hair, or eyes to have little or no color. Albinism is also associated with vision problems. According to the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, about 1 in 18,000 to 20,000 people in the United States have a form of albinism.” The U.K.’s National Health Service state: “Albinism affects the production of melanin, the pigment that colours skin, hair and eyes. It’s a lifelong condition, but it doesn’t get worse over time. People with albinism have a reduced amount of melanin, or no melanin at all. This can affect their colouring and their eyesight. Albinism is caused by faulty genes that a child inherits from their parents.”

Black-eyed peacock

eSight provides the following: “Ocular albinism is an inherited condition that affects a person’s eyes. People with ocular albinism lack melanin, which gives eyes their blue, green, brown, or hazel color. Melanin also acts like sunscreen to protect the eyes from the sun’s harmful UV rays. It can cause vision problems, such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. Ocular albinism affects the retina, which is the light-sensitive tissue lining the inside of the eye, and the optic nerve that sends signals about what the person sees to the brain. The condition prevents the retina from developing properly, which causes things to look blurry.” eSight also provides this: “Options and support include vision correction, support groups, and low vision aids. Vision correction with glasses can sharpen vision somewhat. Sunglasses, transition lenses, or special filter glasses can relieve hypersensitivity to light, although they may reduce visual acuity when worn indoors.” As for the matter of the Sun and albinism, the Mayo Clinic staff give us this information: “People with albinism have skin that is very sensitive to light and sun exposure. Sunburn is one of the most serious complications associated with albinism because it can increase the risk of developing skin cancer and sun damage-related thickening of the skin.”

Albino wallaby

With that all said, it’s worth noting that those aforementioned strange creatures – the Men in Black, the Women in Black and the Black Eyed Children – appear to exhibit aspects of something not too far removed from albinism. For the most part, all three groups avoid the Sun: nighttime is when they are usually about. Yes, there are some cases in which the BEC, the WIB and the MIB descend on the homes of their targets (or “victims” might be a better word to use) during the day. Interestingly, though, in the daylight-based incidents the W.I.B. almost always wear long wigs (in a “bangs” style) and large, wrap around sunglasses. The MIB sport Fedoras. The sunglasses, too. Sometimes both the men and the women even wear gloves. As for the BEC, they almost always wear hoodies, and with the hood pulled down just about as far as possible. In other words, the clothing and the headgear are almost certainly not forms of fashion. Taking into consideration all of the above – the hats, the hoods, the wigs, the gloves and the glasses – their “fashions” may actually be essential items of vital protection.

Could it be there is an albino-like connection to all of the aforementioned groups? Granted, it’s nothing more than a theory. It is, however, a theory that makes some sense.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

08-11-2020 om 21:48 geschreven door peter  

Solar system may have KICKED OUT an ice giant planet

THE SOLAR system may have once been home to nine planets but an ice giant could have been flung from our star system.

They believe that there was once an icy planet that was kicked out of our solar system and that it had an effect on how some of the planets orbit our sun. When our sun was very young, the planets formed from a swirling disk of gas and dust. It was suggested that the large planets orbited the sun in a different way from their current patterns but gravitational reactions forced them into their current orbits.

Researchers have discovered evidence that there was once another ice giant like Neptune which used to sit between Saturn and Uranus on the edge of the solar system. This would mean there may have been nine planets in the solar system, or 10 if you include Pluto before it was downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2008.

However, the more massive planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, played gravitational tug of war, giving way to the order of the solar system.

{ https://www.express.co.uk/ }

08-11-2020 om 21:20 geschreven door peter  

Researchers from the United States have conducted simulations in regards to our Solar System having an extra planet at one time as well as the orbital patterns of our current planets.

They believe that there was once an icy planet that was kicked out of our solar system and that it had an effect on how some of the planets orbit our sun. When our sun was very young, the planets formed from a swirling disk of gas and dust. It was suggested that the large planets orbited the sun in a different way from their current patterns but gravitational reactions forced them into their current orbits.

The researchers attempted to figure out how the planets’ orbits changed throughout history so they ran 6,000 different simulations and they found that Jupiter and Saturn started off with “eccentric” oval-shaped orbits around the sun. It is believed that when Jupiter was very young, it orbited the sun three times compared to two orbits completed by Saturn, but based on their orbital patterns today it didn’t make a lot of sense. According to the new research, they think that Jupiter probably completed two orbits around the sun for each one made by Saturn.

Additionally, they found that Uranus and Neptune were affected by the gravitational pull of the Kuiper belt as well as by a lost planet – an icy world that was once located between Saturn and Uranus.

Matt Clement, who is a planetary scientist from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington as well as an author of the paper, explained this process further, “We now know that there are thousands of planetary systems in our Milky Way galaxy alone.” “But it turns out that the arrangement of planets in our own Solar System is highly unusual, so we are using models to reverse engineer and replicate its formative processes.” “This is a bit like trying to figure out what happened in a car crash after the fact — how fast were the cars going, in what directions, and so on.”

He went on to say, “This indicates that while our Solar System is a bit of an oddball, it wasn’t always the case,” adding, “What’s more, now that we’ve established the effectiveness of this model, we can use it to help us look at the formation of the terrestrial planets, including our own,” as well as to “inform our ability to look for similar systems elsewhere that could have the potential to host life.”

Their research was published in the journal Icarus and can be read in full here.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

08-11-2020 om 20:20 geschreven door peter  

UFO Over Hurricane Seen From Space Station! Aug 26, 2020, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Aug 26, 2020
Location of sighting: Earths orbit at ISS

NASA Source: 

• https://www.instagram.com/p/CEU6QukJkQy/

I found this on the official NASA Instagram yesterday. A huge glowing object is seen very close to the space station and seems also to be over the hurricane. The object also has a smudge area a little bit above it, which I believe to be the same object, but its still moving. The UFO may have slowed down, but not actually stop at all. So that would explain why the astronaut missed it or why NASA didn't seem to notice it. UFO, reflection, meteor or secret spy spacecraft. You decide, but for me...it looks like a UFO. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

{https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

08-11-2020 om 19:21 geschreven door peter  

NASA's satellite EIT 304 captured a massive alien spacecraft firing a beam at the sun. The images show that two craft appear in space next to the sun on which one craft firing a huge beam at the sun. 

The remarkable event took place on November 1, 2020 and evidence that these kind of alien spacecraft not only flying extremely close to the sun, but they fire huge beams at the sun too. 

Even though the reason is not known, it is said that intelligent aliens might survive by collecting, storing and harnessing the power of the sun. 

Source: 

https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/Theater/ 

SOHO Movie Theater 

Image EIT304 - Resolution 512 

Date: 2020-11-01 Time 01.19

  

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

08-11-2020 om 18:39 geschreven door peter  

Huge UFO sitting over Stonehenge on Halloween night 2020!

This bright formation of lights was filmed hovering in Wiltshire near a Stonehenge. This happened on Halloween night, October 31st 2020.

Witness report: 

Driving back from Devon yesterday we spotted a massive bright light in the sky on the left of the A303. It was orange and very bright artificial lighting. My partner said it may have been multiple lights but I could have sworn it was one solid beam with a bit of a hue around it to the left and right.
We considered drones or spotlights but this didn’t match what it looked like. The light was stationary, below the clouds and unmoving. We filmed for approximately 3 minutes and then it was gone. Just disappeared.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

08-11-2020 om 18:06 geschreven door peter  

A WEIRD, ANCIENT SHRIMP HAS CHANGED SCIENTISTS' UNDERSTANDING OF EVOLUTION

Just a little evolutionary hiccup along the way.

DURING THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD, the world’s oceans were teeming with strange, swimming, segmented creatures.

Over the course of millions of years, these elongated, millipede-like animals would eventually evolve to become modern arthropods: crustaceans like crabs, arachnids like scorpions, and insects like bees and ants.

But some 500 million years ago, these aquatic Cambrian beasts were rather more experimental when it came to their physical traits and body plans than their more familiar descendants. There was the 3-inch-long Opabinia, with 5 eyes balanced on stalks and an elephant trunk-like mouth, and the predatory Radiodonta species, replete with two spine-laden, curving and segmented appendages designed to capture prey.

But there was another creature swimming around Earth's oceans, showcasing both of these strange features, and so much more. Enter the Kylinxia zhangi.

This newly discovered, shrimp-like species is described in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

In the paper, the researchers reveal that rather than just one special feature, this small fossil arthropod possesses a melting pot of physical traits, including five eyes on stalks and curved, spiny hooks extending upward from the front of its body like talons. It appears to have been armored, too. The fossil has a fused head shield, an armored, segmented body, and other claw-like appendages down its shell.

The discovery helps scientists understand how Cambrian arthropods may have been related to each other, and how their legacy lives on in crabs and insects today.

Diying Huang is a co-author on the paper and professor at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He tells Inverse that while modern arthropods may seem like a diverse bunch, they have nothing on their ancient ancestors.

“Modern arthropods are abundant and diverse. They are everywhere and familiar [to] people," he says. “The Cambrian arthropods are also complex, not only the diversity, [but] also the morphology, anatomy, and functional morphology.”

In a nod to its strange physiology, the researchers dubbed the new shrimp Kylinxia zhangi, named after Kylin, a Chinese mythological chimera. And while its mismatched body is curious, it is also a rare sign of a pivotal moment in ancient animal evolution. Kylinxia may be a “transition” species, able to shed light on the evolutionary relationships between the other animals that lived at the same time.

“[These] groups would [have] lived in the Cambrian sea at the same time or similar time,” Huang says. “They could have [the] same ancestor in an earlier time.”

Researchers use a process called phylogenetic analysis to try and reconstruct, on the basis of its strange physiology, Kylinxia's evolutionary pathway among arthropods. The analytic technique pays attention to details like how many segments a creature has, the shape of its head, or how spiky its appendages are. It assumes that similarities between animals are more likely to be based on evolutionary relationships than chance.

The fact that Kylinxia possess spiny, hunting appendages shaped like those of Radiodonta, combined with the fact these are upturned, like another arthropod, Megacheira, and a Megacheira-like body, leads the researchers to believe that Radiodonta and Megacheira inherited their appendages from a common ancestor, rather than evolving independently in each creature.

In other words, it’s the same creepy appendage, just flipped.

Adding Kylinxia to the ancient tree also sheds light on the evolution of modern arthropods. Previous work had suggested that Megacheira, with their spiny appendages, were closely related to Chelicerata, the group that includes modern scorpions and spiders, as well as a group of ancient animals with antennas, which may have evolved into insects, like bees and ants.

The spiny appendages on Megacheira, the mouth pinchers on scorpions and spiders, and antennas on bees are all similarly located on these animals' bodies, leading researchers to believe they may have all evolved from a creature or creatures with similar structure.

But researchers didn’t know what came first. Did the spiny appendages evolve into antennas, which evolved into pinchers? Or were mouthparts first? The discovery of Kylinxia ages the spiny appendages, suggesting they gave rise to both pinchers and antennae along separate lineages, rather than mouthparts arising from antennae, or vice versa.

The undersea world of little Kylinxia, swirling with segmented, many appendage beasts, is very unlike that of the modern oceans. But the diverse morphological and ecological experimentation by early arthropods like it “probably laid the foundation for their later evolutionary successes," the researchers say.

Abstract: 

Resolving the early evolution of euarthropods is one of the most challenging problems in metazoan evolution1,2 . Exceptionally preserved fossils from the Cambrian period have contributed important palaeontological data to deciphering this evolutionary process3,4 . Phylogenetic studies have resolved Radiodonta (also known as anomalocaridids) as the closest group to all euarthropods that have frontalmost appendages on the second head segment (Deuteropoda)5–9 . However, the interrelationships among major Cambrian euarthropod groups remain disputed1,2,4,7 , which impedes our understanding of the evolutionary gap between Radiodonta and Deuteropoda. Here we describe Kylinxia zhangi gen. et. sp. nov., a euarthropod from the early Cambrian Chengjiang biota of China. Kylinxia possesses not only deuteropod characteristics such as a fused head shield, a fully arthrodized trunk and jointed endopodites, but also fve eyes (as in Opabinia) as well as radiodont-like raptorial frontalmost appendages. Our phylogenetic reconstruction recovers Kylinxia as a transitional taxon that bridges Radiodonta and Deuteropoda. The most basal deuteropods are retrieved as a paraphyletic lineage that features plesiomorphic raptorial frontalmost appendages and includes Kylinxia, megacheirans, panchelicerates, ‘great-appendage’ bivalved euarthropods and isoxyids. This phylogenetic topology supports the idea that the radiodont and megacheiran frontalmost appendages are homologous, that the chelicerae of Chelicerata originated from megacheiran great appendages and that the sensorial antennae in Mandibulata derived from ancestral raptorial forms. Kylinxia thus provides important insights into the phylogenetic relationships among early euarthropods, the evolutionary transformations and disparity of frontalmost appendages, and the origin of crucial evolutionary innovations in this clade.

Correction:

• A previous version of this article misstated the length of Opabinia. We regret the error.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

08-11-2020 om 00:40 geschreven door peter  

Scientists already had Psyche classified as a metallic asteroid, but new observations with the Hubble telescope reveal its rusty surface and provide scientists with a unique view into what Earth-like planets are like during their formation.

Artist’s concept of 16 Psyche, a massive asteroid located 230 million miles (370 million km) away from Earth. New ultraviolet observations of the asteroid and its surface revealed that it may be made entirely of nickel and iron, making it the perfect candidate to tell the tale of how Earth-like planets are formed. It is thought to be the core of a failed planet formation.

Image via Maxar/ ASU/ P. Rubin/NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

A team of scientists led by Tracy Becker of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, said on October 26, 2020, that the deepest-ever ultraviolet observations of the asteroid 16 Psyche have revealed a secret: the asteroid may be made entirely of iron and nickel, and its surface may be covered in rust. Psyche was already classified as an M-type asteroid, that is, an asteroid known to contain a significant percentage of metal. It’s one of the most massive objects currently known to be orbiting in the solar system’s asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Generally speaking, metal asteroids are rare, and the study revealed that Psyche may be the most “metal-like” of all known asteroids. Thus Psyche has a story to tell about solid planets like Earth and what happened when they were forming 4 1/2 billion years ago.

These scientists’ paper is slated for publication in the December 2020 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Planetary Science.

• EarthSky 2021 lunar calendars now available! They make great gifts. Order now. Going fast!

At 140 miles (225 km) in diameter, Psyche spans roughly the distance between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and provides plenty of surface for scientists to observe and study. New ultraviolet (UV) observations of the massive asteroid have revealed that Psyche’s surface may be mostly made of iron, but scientists believe further study is required to confirm their findings, as lab models provided conflicting outcomes.

Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, is the lead author on the new study.

Image via SwRI.

Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, is the lead author on the paper. She told EarthSky:

The way that Psyche reflects UV light is very similar to the way iron and metallic meteorites reflect UV light; the UV spectrum of Psyche is similar to that of iron. But we note that in our computer models, we found we could reproduce the spectrum of Psyche with as little as 10% of iron mixed into other materials. So, we can’t conclude definitively just how much iron is on the surface, but it does look like some metals are there.

Scientists also found another way to detect iron on the surface: by looking for rust. After all, where there is iron, there may be rust, or something similar. To find it, Becker’s team focused their efforts on hunting for spectral evidence of iron oxide, which is typically observed on Earth and other bodies as rust. The scientists needed a way to ferret out iron oxide signatures. While unable to scoop up a sample from 230 million miles (370 million km) away, ultraviolet (UV) observations provided the solution. UV light is made up of short wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye but carry high energy, and are capable of damaging living tissue and causing sunburns and skin cancer. But in astronomy, these short wavelengths of light are beneficial and can help scientists understand chemical composition, density, and temperature. For these researchers, UV light was the key to help unveil iron oxide on the surface of Psyche.

Becker said:

Recent laboratory work shows that you can see the iron oxide signatures in the UV better than at other wavelengths, so we wanted to look for those. The UV is also very sensitive to the uppermost layer of the planetary body, so we would be able to see how much of the asteroid’s surface has been [changed over time].

Becker’s team engaged in patient observation of Psyche, taking UV measurements on both sides of the asteroid to get a complete picture of its surface. The team’s patience paid off when they saw evidence of iron oxide. Becker said in a statement:

We were able to identify, for the first time on any asteroid, what we think are iron oxide ultraviolet absorption bands. This is an indication that oxidation is happening on the asteroid, which could be a result of the solar wind hitting the surface.

The Curiosity rover took this self-portrait while crossing Vera Rubin Ridge on Mars, showing off the reddish dirt that covers the surface of the planet. That red hue is due to the heavy presence of iron oxide, or rust particles, that are blown around the surface by Martian winds. The presence of rust on celestial bodies like Mars and Psyche gives scientists clues to the amount of iron that exists on their surfaces.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

Although this is the first time that scientists have observed evidence of iron oxide on an asteroid, it isn’t the first time that rust has been observed in our solar system. Mars – often referred to as the red planet due to its hue – is covered in rust particles, which are blown around on the planet as winds shape its surface. And while the appearance of rust on Psyche doesn’t necessarily mean that the asteroid is corroding, scientists did detect evidence of surface changes.

During observations, Becker’s team noticed that Psyche’s uppermost layers appeared more reflective at deeper UV wavelengths. While Becker said this phenomenon requires further study, she noted that the observed brightening may be the result of further space weathering. She said:

All planetary bodies are exposed to space weathering by the sun, and other processing through small impacts by micrometeorites, that will change their surfaces. Characterizing space weathering is helpful for understanding how long the surface has been exposed to space.

Becker’s team carried out UV emission observations on Psyche using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Before the study, no other previous UV observations of Psyche had been made, in part due to the difficulty of conducting studies using UV light. Becker said:

We cannot observe any objects in the ultraviolet from ground-based telescopes, since our atmosphere blocks UV light. The only way to observe solar system objects in the UV is with space-based telescopes, which are limited. Psyche hadn’t been observed at these wavelengths – mid- and far-UV – of light before. There had been near-UV observations from the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), but these HST observations go farther in the UV than ever before.

Before the new study, scientists already believed Psyche to be the leftover core of a protoplanet that never finished forming. The new observations, and the discovery of iron oxide signatures, have revealed the asteroid to be truly unique, and even more Earth-like than previously believed. Becker said:

We’ve seen meteorites that are mostly metal, but Psyche could be unique in that it might be an asteroid that is completely made of iron and nickel. Earth has a metal core, a mantle and a crust. It’s possible that as a Psyche protoplanet was forming, it was struck by another object in our solar system and lost its mantle and crust.

NASA’s Psyche mission will launch toward the asteroid of the same name in 2022. Scientists hypothesize that this asteroid is actually the leftovers of a failed planet formation. New ultraviolet studies with Hubble have shown that Psyche is even more unique than that, as it may consist entirely of nickel and iron, and that the iron may be rusting.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

The leftovers from this stellar hit-and-run have long sparked interest in Psyche. In 2017, NASA announced a mission to the asteroid, which will be the first such mission to an object not made of rock or ice. Set to launch in 2022, NASA’s orbiter will reach Psyche in 2026, and either confirm or deny scientists’ observations and theories. No matter the outcome, Becker is looking forward to seeing what secrets the mission will reveal. She said:

What makes Psyche and the other asteroids so interesting is that they’re considered to be the building blocks of the solar system. To understand what really makes up a planet and to potentially see the inside of a planet is fascinating. Once we get to Pysche, we’re finally going to understand if that’s the case, even if it doesn’t turn out as we expect. Any time there’s a surprise, it’s always exciting.

Bottom line: New observations of asteroid Psyche with the Hubble Space Telecope have revealed that the asteroid may be made entirely of nickel and iron. Its surface appears to be rusting. The new work provides scientists with a unique view into what Earth-like planets are like during formation.

• Source: HST UV Observations of Asteroid (16) Psyche
• Via SwRI

RELATED BIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

08-11-2020 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

Researchers have found evidence for an ancient microbial ecosystem in a hydrothermal system beneath Mexico’s Chicxulub Crater, thought to be the site of the impact that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Artist’s reconstruction of Chicxulub crater soon after impact, 66 million years ago.

Image via Detlev Van Ravenswaay/ Science Source/ Science.

What was ancient life on Earth like? Scientists revealed on October 30, 2020, that they’ve discovered some important new clues. Interestingly, the evidence lies in Chicxulub (roughly pronounced ‘CHEEK-shu-loob’), a large, circular, buried impact crater thought by many to have formed in the asteroid collision event that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Earlier this year, scientists had discovered that Chicxulub once contained a vast  hydrothermal system –  a hot-water system – of hot mineral-rich water. Now the same team says it has found evidence for a subterranean ecosystem of microbial life, hosted by the crater and its hot water.

After the colossal impact that created the Chicxulub crater, Earth’s surface was pretty much uninhabitable. But the new work shows that impacts like Chicxulub produced niches underground where microbial life could flourish. Cool, yes?

The new peer-reviewed study comes from scientists at the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) in Washington, D.C., and the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston, Texas. It was published online by the journal Astrobiology on October 30, 2020.

• EarthSky lunar calendars are back in stock! We’re guaranteed to sell out – get one while you can. Makes a great gift!

Location of Chicxulub crater via Wikipedia.

Chicxulub, about 119 miles (180 km) in diameter and located beneath the northern edge of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, is one of the best preserved impact craters on Earth. Most craters have, of course, been eroded away by Earth’s water and atmosphere – unlike on airless bodies such as the moon which get to keep their craters – but Chicxulub still remains recognizable to its original form. It is also the best preserved impact crater similar to those from a period of heavy meteorite bombardment 3.8 billion years ago.

Cross-section of the ancient hydrothermal system in Chicxulub Crater. Researchers have found evidence for a thriving microbial ecosystem in the hydrothermal system about 3.8 billion years ago.

Image via Victor O. Leshyk/ Lunar and Planetary Institute/ USRA.

Chicxulub core sample containing the hydrothermal minerals dachiardite and analcime. These minerals helped support a thriving microbial ecosystem.

Image via David A. Kring/ Lunar and Planetary Institute/ USRA.

Many large impacts occurred during this time, which is called the Hadean eon and is the oldest time period in the history of Earth (from 4.6 billion years ago – the beginning of Earth’s existence – to 4 billion years ago). Some of these impacts were even large enough to temporarily vaporize the oceans! The result was a hot, steamy, rock-vapor-filled atmosphere, making Earth’s surface uninhabitable at the time. But what about below the surface? Could life have existed there, in a more protected environment in subsurface hydrothermal systems? According to this new research, it could, and it did.

The scientist who led the new study, David Kring at LPI, put forward a concept called the Impact-Origin of Life Hypothesis. The concept was basically that hot, mineral-rich water could flow through rock fractured by the impact, creating a subsurface hydrothermal system that could support some kinds of microscopic life. The new findings show that such a system persisted for hundreds of thousands – or millions – of years beneath Chicxulub Crater, and may provide valuable clues as to how life first developed on Earth.

So how did the researchers discover this evidence?

David Kring at the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), who led the new study.

Image via USRA.

They obtained rock core samples from the peak ring of the crater, via an expedition supported by the International Ocean Discovery Program and International Continental Scientific Drilling Program. Fifteen thousand kilograms (33,000 pounds) of rock were recovered in total from a 0.8 mile (1.3 km)-deep borehole. When examined, tiny spheres of the mineral pyrite, only 10 millionths of a meter in diameter, were found. Analysis of sulfur isotopes (variations of sulfur with different numbers of neutrons in their atoms) within the mineral showed that the spheres were created by a microbial ecosystem. The microbes had adapted to the hot fluids in the hydrothermal system and flourished.

The microbes fed on chemical reactions that occurred within the system. When sulfate was converted to sulfide, it was preserved as pyrite, which the microbes used for energy. These organisms were similar to thermophilic bacteria (bacteria able to live at high temperatures) and archaea (single-celled microorganisms with a structure similar to bacteria who survive in environments low in oxygen) found today in hydrothermal systems such as those in Yellowstone National Park.

EarthSky reached out to Kring by email for additional comments on the significance of these findings.

Surface outline of Chicxulub Crater as we see it today, beneath the northern edge of the Yucatán Peninsula, México.

Image via Kring et al./ NASA/ Astrobiology.

ES: How did you first come up with the impact origin of life hypothesis?

DK:  The impact origin of life hypothesis emerged from a conjunction of two independent studies. First, our group was trying to locate the impact site that extinguished dinosaurs. When I was studying our discovery samples, I realized that the impact rocks were overprinted by hydrothermal mineralization, indicating the impact generated a hydrothermal system. Second, at the same time, I was studying a period of intense early solar system bombardment that is sometimes called the lunar cataclysm, inner solar system cataclysm, or late heavy bombardment. Some of those impact events were so large that they vaporized Earth’s seas, making it impossible for life to exist on Earth surface. Putting one and two together, I realized those same impact events generated subsurface hydrothermal systems that would be perfect habitats for the early evolution of life. In parallel, biologists determined that the tree of life is rooted in organisms that lived in hydrothermal systems. Thus, it seemed plausible life arose from an impact crater.

ES: Are the sulfur-eating microbes the only ones known so far, or could other types of microbial life have also existed in the hydrothermal system? What about other types of (non-microbial) life?

DK: Sulfate-reducing microbes are the only organisms detected thus far, but other types of organisms may have existed in the hydrothermal system. We are beginning that search now.

ES: Are there any other semi-preserved impact craters that may have had similar hydrothermal systems?

DK: Yes, Haughton in Canada and Rochechouart in France.

Microscopic image of sulfide grains and pyrite spheres in the core sample from Chicxulub Crater.

Image via Kring et al./ Astrobiology.

ES: What further studies are planned for Chicxulub Crater?

DK: We are looking for additional organisms that may have thrived in the subterranean hydrothermal system. We want to define the entire ecosystem and examine how it evolved over several million years.

These findings are fascinating because they support the possibility that meteorite or asteroid impacts during the earliest age of Earth – the Hadean eon – could have helped life get started. And if it happened on Earth, could it have occurred elsewhere, such as on Mars, or the icy moons with subsurface oceans in the outer solar system, or even dwarf planets like Ceres (which, like most bodies in the solar system, is covered in craters, but also is now known to have had a layer of liquid water beneath its surface in its past, and maybe still does)? The possibilities are intriguing to contemplate!

• Read more about the Impact-Origin of Life Hypothesis
• Bottom line: Researchers have discovered evidence for an ancient microbial ecosystem in a hydrothermal system beneath the huge dinosaur-killing Chicxulub impact crater.
• Source: Microbial Sulfur Isotope Fractionation in the Chicxulub Hydrothermal System
• Via USRA

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

07-11-2020 om 23:49 geschreven door peter  

On October 29, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft, after the probe was left flying solo for 7 months while repairs were made to the radio antenna in Australia used to control it.

Artist’s concept showing the positions of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, now both outside the heliosphere, or sphere of our sun’s influence.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

On October 29, 2020, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched from Earth in 1977. The craft is now traveling more than 11.6 billion miles (18.8 billion km) from Earth. It is beyond the heliopause, or boundary region, where the sun’s influence ends and the interstellar medium begins. The 43-year-old space probe was left flying solo for 7 months while repairs were made to the radio antenna that commands it. The only radio antenna that can command the space probe – the Deep Space Station 43 (DSS43) antenna in Canberra, Australia – has been offline since March.

• The 2021 lunar calendars are here! Order yours before they’re gone. Makes a great gift!

Mission operators sent a series of test commands to Voyager 2 using the DSS43 antenna, which established a signal confirming the “call” was received. The spacecraft executed the commands without issue, according to a NASA statement.

Voyager 2 has been traveling through space since its launch in 1977, and is now more than 11.6 billion miles ( 18.8 billion km) from Earth. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space two years ago, in November 2018, when the spacecraft exited the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the sun that surrounds the planets and the Kuiper Belt (the collection of small, icy bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit).

Crews conduct critical upgrades and repairs to the 230-foot-wide (70-meter-wide) radio antenna Deep Space Station 43 in Canberra, Australia. In this photo, one of the antenna’s white feed cones (which house parts of the antenna receivers) is being moved by a crane.

Image via CSIRO/ NASA.

Since DSS43 went offline in mid-March for repairs, mission operators have been able to receive health updates and science data from Voyager 2, but they haven’t been able to send commands to the probe. The recent call to Voyager 2 was a test of new hardware installed on DSS43, which is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, a collection of radio antenna facilities spaced equally around the globe in Canberra; Goldstone, California; and Madrid, Spain.

Among the upgrades to DSS43 are two new radio transmitters. One of them, which is used to talk with Voyager 2, hasn’t been replaced in over 47 years. Engineers have also upgraded heating and cooling equipment, power supply equipment, and other electronics needed to run the new transmitters. NASA said that the successful call to Voyager 2 is just one indication that the dish will be fully back online as planned in February 2021.

Artist’s concept of Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers are identical.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

Although both of the Voyager probes – Voyager 1, launched September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2, launched 16 days before its twin – have left the heliosphere, neither spacecraft has yet left the solar system, and won’t be leaving anytime soon. The boundary of the solar system is considered to be beyond the outer edge of the Oort Cloud, a collection of small objects that are still under the influence of the sun’s gravity. The width of the Oort Cloud is not known precisely, but it is estimated to begin at about 1,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun and to extend to about 100,000 AU (1 AU is the distance from the sun to Earth). It will take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly 30,000 years to fly beyond it.

Both Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 have traveled well beyond their original destinations. The spacecraft were built to last five years and conduct close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn. However, as the mission continued, additional flybys of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, proved possible. As the spacecraft flew across the solar system, remote-control reprogramming was used to give the Voyagers greater capabilities than they possessed when they left Earth. Their two-planet mission became a four-planet mission. Their five-year lifespans have stretched to 43 years, making Voyager 2 NASA’s longest-running mission.

• Bottom line: On October 29, 2020, NASA re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft. The probe had been flying solo since March 2020 while repairs were made to the radio antenna in Australia used to control it.
• Via NASA

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

07-11-2020 om 23:31 geschreven door peter  

“Black hole family portrait” is a fancy way of saying “new catalog.” But it’s a very important and exciting catalog, released October 28, 2020, by gravitational wave astronomers, containing 39 new signals from black hole or neutron star collisions.

Multiple black holes within the heart of a dense globular star cluster, as generated by a computer model. In recent years, the detection of gravitational waves has boosted astronomers’ abilities to understand black holes in multiple systems. Image via Aaron Geller/ Northwestern.

After several months of analysis, scientists working with the LIGO and Virgo collaborations – two large-scale physics experiments and observatories designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves – have released their second catalog of detections. The catalog is known as GWTC-2. It contains 39 new signals from black hole or neutron star collisions – mighty cosmic events during which gravitational waves are released – detected between April 1 and October 1 of 2019. The signals more than triple the number of confirmed detections of gravitational waves, which constitute a brand-new tool for astronomers: a new way of probing the universe. Scientists at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois – who participated in this research – called the newly released work “the most detailed family portrait of black holes to date.” They said it offers new clues as to how black holes form and once again confirmed Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity via multiple tests.

• The 2021 lunar calendars are here! Order yours before they’re gone. Makes a great gift!

LIGO said in a statement:

The new [updated catalog] includes some of the most interesting systems we have seen so far, and enables qualitatively new studies of astrophysical populations and fundamental physics.

The scientists at Northwestern said:

The observations could be a key piece in solving the many mysteries of exactly how binary stars interact. A better understanding of how binary stars evolve has consequences across astronomy, from exoplanets to galaxy formation.

Scientific details are reported in a trio of related papers which became available in preprint on October 28 at arXiv.org. The studies also are being submitted to peer-reviewed journals. You’ll find links to the preprints, and descriptions of the papers, below.

• Read more: What are gravitational waves?

Astrophysicist Christopher Berry, via Northwestern.

LIGO consists of a pair of identical, 4-kilometer (2.5 mile)-long interferometers in the United States, and Virgo, a 3-km (1.8 mile)-long detector in Italy. The instruments can detect gravitational-wave signals from many sources, including colliding black holes and colliding neutron stars.

The papers are summarized as follows:

What these scientists are calling “the populations paper” is titled Population Properties of Compact Objects from the Second LIGO-Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog. The Northwestern statement explained that in this paper:

… the researchers reconstructed the distribution of masses and spins of the black hole population and estimated the merger rate for binary neutron stars. The results will help scientists understand the detailed astrophysical processes which shape how these systems form. This improved understanding of the mass distribution of black holes and knowing that black hole spins can be misaligned suggests there could be multiple ways for binary black holes to form.

The “catalog paper” is titled GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run. The Northwestern statement said:

The ‘catalog paper’ details the detections of black holes and neutron stars from [the first half of the third observing run], bringing the total number of detection candidates for that period to 39. This number vastly exceeds detections from the first two observing runs … Previously announced detections from [this observing run] include a mystery object in the mass gap (GW190814) and the first-of-its-kind intermediate mass black hole (GW190521).

The paper concerned with tests of general relativity is titled Tests of General Relativity with Binary Black Holes from the second LIGO-Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog. The Northwestern statement explained that:

… the authors placed constraints on Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The theory passed with flying colors, and they updated their best measurements on potential modifications.

Christopher Berry of Northwestern is a LIGO Scientific Collaboration member and author on the papers. He commented:

Gravitational-wave astronomy is revolutionary, revealing to us the hidden lives of black holes and neutron stars. In just five years we have gone from not knowing that binary black holes exist to having a catalog of over 40. The third observing run has yielded more discoveries than ever before. Combining them with earlier discoveries paints a beautiful picture of the universe’s rich variety of binaries.

Read more from Northwestern

Read more from LIGO

The 2nd catalog of gravitational wave events, GWTC-2, was published October 28, 2020. Since September 2015, LIGO and Virgo have detected 50 gravitational waves, including the 39 new ones details in the 2nd catalog. This graphic illustrates the current total number and masses of LIGO/Virgo black hole and neutron star merger events (in blue) compared with previously known black holes (in purple). Mergers are indicated by arrows connecting 2 progenitor objects with a final merged object of higher mass.

Image via LIGO-Virgo/ Northwestern/ Frank Elavsky & Aaron Geller.

• Bottom line: Scientists working with the LIGO and Virgo collaborations – two large-scale physics experiments and observatories designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves – have released their second catalog of detections. The new catalog contains 39 new signals from black hole or neutron star collisions.
• Read more: What are black holes?
• Read more: What are neutron stars?
• Via LIGO
• Via Northwestern

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

07-11-2020 om 21:51 geschreven door peter  

Alien shock: President Reagan attempted to warn the world about alien species - claim

PRESIDENT Ronald Reagan subtly attempted to declassify the existence of aliens, a conspiracy theorist has claimed.

07-11-2020 om 21:15 geschreven door peter  

The most “hellish” planet that’s ever been found is believed to rain rocks, has very deep lava seas, and extreme wind speeds.

The planet, which is called K2-141b, is located approximately 200 light-years away from us and was first detected by the Kepler Space Telescope in 2018. Now researchers from McGill and York Universities have predicted the weather conditions and they are extremely hellish to say the least.

K2-141b is considered a “super Earth” and is about five times larger than our planet. It orbits its host star in an exceptionally short amount of time of just 0.3 Earth days. It is located just 665,000 miles from its host star. For comparison, the closest planet to our sun is Mercury and it takes 88 days to complete a full orbit at an average distance of around 36 million miles with a surface temperature that can reach as high as 840 degrees Fahrenheit.

K2-141b has magma oceans that are 60 miles deep.

According to the study, the rocky K2-141b planet has 60-mile deep lava seas, over 3,000 miles per hour wind speeds, and surface temperatures reaching more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It is tidally locked which means that only one side of the planet faces its star at all times. Actually, it is so hot on the dayside that it can vaporize rock. However, temperatures on the night side are completely opposite at -328 degrees Fahrenheit which is cold enough to freeze nitrogen. The extreme change in temperatures is the reason why the wind speeds are at a whopping 3,000 mph. (An artist’s impression of the planet can be seen here.)

Giang Nguyen, who is the lead author of the study, stated that the entire planet is made up of rocks, from its surface, to the ocean, and even the rain. The sodium, silicon monoxide, and silicon dioxide evaporates, rises up into the atmosphere, becomes condensed, and comes back down into the magma ocean as “rain” even though there are rocks falling from the sky. They were able to predict the weather by conducting several computer simulations.

(Not K2-141b)

Professor Nicolas Cowan from McGill University and who is a co-author of the study, said, “All rocky planets­, including Earth, started off as molten worlds but then rapidly cooled and solidified. Lava planets give us a rare glimpse at this stage of planetary evolution.”

Now they have to wait and see whether or not their predictions are correct and they’re hoping that the data collected from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope will give them more information regarding the planet’s extreme weather conditions.

This hellish planet has magma oceans, rock rain and 3,000-mile winds

Their study was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and can be read in full here.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-11-2020 om 20:35 geschreven door peter  

Military Captured Extraterrestrial, Ret. Air Force Tom Carey, 70 Years of Disclosure

Tom Carey has a BS degree in Business Administration from Temple University, a Masters Degree in Anthropology from California State University, Sacramento, and he also received a fellowship to pursue a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Toronto. Tom became interested in UFOs while in high school and rekindled that interest in 1986 when he became the MUFON State Section Director for Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Since 1991, Tom’s research has focused solely on the so-called “Roswell Incident” that occurred near the town of Roswell, New Mexico in July, 1947. Tom also became a Special Investigator for CUFOS [the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies] in 1992 and served on its Board of Directors from 1997 through 2001. Tom has appeared as a guest on a number of radio and television shows concerning the Roswell Incident as well as appearing in several filmed documentaries.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

07-11-2020 om 20:17 geschreven door peter  

Alien Skull And Hat Seen Over Ancient Volcano In Mexico, Oct 8, 2020, TV News Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Oct 8, 2020
Location of sighting: Volcano Popocateptl, Mexico

The eyewitness was watching a local Mexico news cast about the volcano exploding and he noticed something strange...a giant skull wearing a hat appeared over the volcano. I see it too, and I think you might also. This skull may be a sign to anyone who is thinking of climbing the mountain. The mouth of the volcano is a well known entrance to an underground alien base about 6 miles below the surface. Even the ancient Aztecs have stories about the gods entering and leaving through the mouth of the volcano. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

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

07-11-2020 om 19:03 geschreven door peter  

Huge UFO Appears Over Florida, Suddenly Stops...Then Disappears. Nov 5, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Nov 5, 2020
Location of sighting: Levy County, Florida, USA
Source: MUFON

 

Now this is an interesting case. The eyewitness saw this object moving in the sky. It slowed down to a stop and then disappeared. That screams out alien technology. Often UFOs cloak after they travel through our atmosphere from space. They make it appear as a meteor so they go unnoticed on radar and then seconds later they will raise the cloaking shields. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

 

Eyewitness states: 

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

07-11-2020 om 18:59 geschreven door peter