The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
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UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
Big discovery! NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed 7 Earth-sized planets orbiting a tiny star only 40 light-years away. Three of them are firmly in the habitable zone.
At a news conference in Washington D.C. today (February 22, 2017), NASA announced that its Spitzer Space Telescopehas observed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in what’s called the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water – key to life as we know it. The discovery sets a new record for greatest number of known planets in a star’s habitable zone. After all, our solar system has only two planets in the habitable zone: Earth and Mars. This exoplanet system – called TRAPPIST-1 – has three.
Because they are located outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as exoplanets.
This illustration shows the possible surface of TRAPPIST-1f, one of the newly discovered planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes have discovered that there are seven Earth-size planets in the system.
Only about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, in the direction to our constellation Aquarius, TRAPPIST-1 – classified as an ultra-cool dwarf. It’s so cool that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun. According to a NASA statement:
The planets also are very close to each other. If a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.
The researchers say that the planets might also be tidally locked to the TRAPPIST-1 star. That means that the same side of the planet is always facing the star, therefore each side is either in perpetual day or night. If that’s true, the planets could have weather patterns totally unlike those on Earth, such as strong winds blowing from the day side to the night side, and extreme temperature changes.
The TRAPPIST-1 star, an ultra-cool dwarf, has seven Earth-size planets orbiting it. This artist’s concept appeared on the cover of the journal Nature on February 23, 2017.
According to the study – published today in the journal Nature – all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. Further observations will hopefully reveal whether any have liquid water on their surfaces. The mass of the seventh and farthest exoplanet hasn’t yet been estimated. Scientists believe it could be an icy, “snowball-like” world.
Michael Gillon, lead author of the paper and the principal investigator of the TRAPPIST exoplanet survey at the University of Liege, Belgium. Gillon said in a statement:
The seven wonders of TRAPPIST-1 are the first Earth-size planets that have been found orbiting this kind of star. It is also the best target yet for studying the atmospheres of potentially habitable, Earth-size worlds.
This artist’s concept shows what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses and orbital distances.
Following up on the Spitzer discovery, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has initiated the screening of four of the planets, including the three inside the habitable zone.
This 360-degree panorama depicts the surface of a newly detected planet, TRAPPIST 1-d, part of a seven planet system some 40 light years away. Explore this artist’s rendering of an alien world by moving the view using your mouse or your mobile device.
Thomas Zurbuchen is associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. He said in a statement:
This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life. Answering the question ‘are we alone’ is a top science priority and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal.
This poster imagines what a trip to TRAPPIST-1e might be like.
Bottom line: NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has observed 7 Earth-sized planets orbiting a tiny star called TRAPPIST-1. Three of them are firmly in the habitable zone.
In the animation in this post, the rhythmic movement of newly discovered planets around the star TOI-178 is represented through a musical harmony, created by attributing a note (in the pentatonic scale) to each of the planets. Hear the music of these planets.
The animation above represents the orbits and movements of the planets in the TOI-178 star system. All but one of these six exoplanets one locked in rare resonance orbits. This star is about 200 light-years away. As the planets orbit the star, they make patterns that repeat themselves rhythmically, with some planets aligning every few orbits. The European Space Agency – which announced the new finding today (January 25, 2021) – said the planets were found in data collected by its Cheops planet-watcher, a telescope in space. Their release said that the finding:
… challenges current theories of planet formation.
The results were published today (January 25, 2021) in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
In the artist’s animation above – which is through the European Southern Observatory – the rhythmic movement of the planets around their central star is represented by a musical harmony:
… created by attributing a note (in the pentatonic scale) to each of the planets. This note plays when a planet completes either one full orbit or one half orbit; when planets align at these points in their orbits, they ring in resonance.
So five of the worlds in the TOI-178 system create a kind of music of the spheres. In the meantime, ESA said, the planets have very different compositions from one another.
This graphic is a representation of the TOI-178 planetary system, as revealed by ESA’s exoplanet watcher Cheops. The system consists of 6 exoplanets, 5 of which are locked in a rare rhythmic dance as they orbit their central star. The 2 inner planets have terrestrial densities (like Earth) and the outer 4 planets are gaseous (with densities like Neptune and Jupiter). The 5 outer planets follow a rhythmic dance as they move in their orbits.
These distant planets aren’t the only objects in space known to follow resonance orbits. Three of Jupiter’s moons – Io, Europa and Ganymede – do something similar. For every orbit of Europa, Ganymede completes two orbits, and Io completes four. Astronomers would say this is a 4:2:1 pattern. ESA explained:
In the TOI-178 system, the resonant motion is much more complex as it involves five planets, following a 18:9:6:4:3 pattern. While the second planet from the star (the first in the pattern) completes 18 orbits, the third planet from the star (second in the pattern) completes nine orbits, and so on.
Three of Jupiter’s Galilean moons exhibit a 3-body resonance. Conjunctions are highlighted by brief color changes. There are two Io-Europa conjunctions (green) and three Io-Ganymede conjunctions (grey) for each Europa-Ganymede conjunction (magenta). This diagram – not to scale – is via Wikimedia Commons.
Astrophysicist Adrien Leleu of the University of Bern, the University of Geneva and the National Center of Competence in Research PlanetS led the research. His team found the relationships between five of six planets orbiting the star TOI-178. Leleu said:
This result surprised us, as previous observations with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) of NASA pointed toward a three-planets system, with two planets orbiting very close together. We therefore observed the system with additional instruments, such as the ground based ESPRESSO spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, but the results were inconclusive.
When Leleu and his colleagues first proposed to investigate the system more closely, they weren’t sure what they’d find. Leleu said:
After analyzing the data from 11 days of observing the system with CHEOPS, it seemed that there were more planets than we had initially thought.
The team had identified at least five planets. They decided to invest another day of precious observation time on the system to confirm. They found that there were indeed five planets present with orbital periods of around 2, 3, 6, 10 and 20 days respectively.
While a system with five planets would have been quite a remarkable finding in itself, Leleu and his colleagues noticed that there might be more to the story: the system appeared to be in harmony. Leleu explained:
Our theory implied that there could be an additional planet in this harmony; however its orbital period needed to be very nearly 15 days.
Adrien Leleu of the Center for Space and Habitability (University of Bern, the University of Geneva and the National Center of Competence in Research PlanetS).
Image via University of Bern.
To check if their theory was in fact true, the team scheduled yet another observation with CHEOPS, at the exact time that this missing planet would pass by, if it existed. But then, an accident threatened to cancel their plans. Co-author Yann Alibert at the University of Bern commented:
Just before the time of the observation, a piece of space debris threatened to collide with the CHEOPS satellite.
Therefore, the control center of the European Space Agency (ESA) initiated an evasive maneuver of the satellite and all observations were interrupted. Another co-author, Nathan Hara of the University of Geneva, said:
But to our great relief, this maneuver was done very efficiently and the satellite could resume observations just in time to capture the mysterious planet passing by. A few days later, the data clearly indicated the presence of the additional planet and thus confirmed that there were indeed six planets in the TOI-178 system.
With that came another surprise: compared to the harmonic, orderly way the planets orbit around their star, their densities appear to be a wild mixture. ESA Project Scientist Kate Isaak said:
It is the first time we observed something like this. In the few systems we know with such a harmony, the density of planets steadily decreases as we move away from the star. In the TOI-178 system, a dense, terrestrial planet like Earth appears to be right next to a very fluffy planet with half the density of Neptune followed by one very similar to Neptune.
Adrien Leleu concluded:
The system therefore turned out to be one that that challenges our understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary systems.
Artist’s concept of the TOI-178 system with the planet in the foreground orbiting most distantly around the star.
Bottom line: The star system TOI-178 now is known to have 6 exoplanets, with all but one locked in rare resonance orbits. As the planets orbit the star, they make patterns that repeat rhythmically, with some planets aligning every few orbits. The European Space Agency announced the finding on January 25, 2021. It said the planets were found in data collected by its orbiting CHEOPS planet-hunter telescope.
At the request of President Joe Biden, a moon rock is now on display in the Oval Office.
Lunar sample 76015,143 is a remnant from a violent asteroid impact on the moon’s surface.
Astronauts collected the sample during Apollo 17, the final mission to the moon.
As President Joe Biden took the oath of office on the steps of the Capitol building on Wednesday, White House staffers busily prepared the Oval Office for his arrival. They added a bust of Caesar Chavez behind the resolute desk, swapped out one set of gold curtains for another, and replaced a portrait of Andrew Jackson with that of Benjamin Franklin, among other changes.
The White House team also added an alien artifact to the shelves of the Oval: a Hacky Sack-sized chunk of the moon.
According to a Washington Post report, Biden selected the lunar sample in hopes that it might "remind Americans of the ambition and accomplishments of earlier generations." The sample is on loan from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the agency says.
“I’m so jazzed, as are a lot of my colleagues,” Noah Petro, a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, tells Popular Mechanics. “The first thing everybody wanted to know was ‘Which sample is it?’”
The answer: Lunar Sample 76015,143.
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Astronauts Harrison “Jack” Schmitt (the only geologist to ever visit the moon) and Eugene Cernan collected sample 76015,143 during Apollo 17, the final crewed mission to the moon. Notably, Apollo 17 took place in December 1972, the same month President Biden lost his first wife, Neilia, and daughter, Naomi, in a car accident.
NASA astronaut Jack Schmitt snapped this image of astronaut Eugene Cernan exploring Station 6, the field location where sample 76015,143 was collected.
NASA
Between 1969 and 1972, Apollo astronauts collected 842 pounds of lunar samples from the surface of the moon. “Every single piece of moon rock that was collected tells us something important about the history of the moon,” Petro says.
Schmitt chipped sample 76015,143 off of a boulder at Station 6, a field site at the base of the North Massif, a mountain on the northern side of the Taurus-Littrow Valley. You can actually watch Schmitt and Cernan traipse across the lunar surface and discuss the sample site on the website Apollo 17 in Real Time. The 3.9 billion-year-old sample, a type of rock called an impact melt breccia, tells the catastrophic tale of the last great asteroid impact on the near side of the moon.
When a meteor or asteroid hits the surface of the moon, it transfers an enormous amount of energy to the lunar surface, which can fracture and melt rock in the moon's crust, Petro explains. "That rock, when it melts, forms in a geologic instant," he says.
According to NASA, sample 76015,143 can be traced to the impact that created the Imbrium Impact Basin, a crater that's 711.5 miles in diameter. (Petro, however, argues the origin of sample 76015 is still up for interpretation.)
In any regard, samples like 76015,143 act as an important time capsule. "Since big impact events ‘reset’ the age of the rock, any date we measure from the sample can tell us when the impact happened," Michelle Thompson, a planetary scientist at Purdue University, tells Popular Mechanics. "By doing this for lots of different rocks, we can understand the bombardment history of the moon."
A lunar roving vehicle parked at Station 6.
NASA
Most of the lunar samples collected during the six Apollo missions are tightly sealed in storage containers at the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Some of the samples were split into small pieces or sliced into thin sections and examined as soon after they arrived on Earth. Others remain untouched, preserved until technological advances can reveal even more about their origin. Scientists opened one sample, also from Apollo 17, just two years ago, months after the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.
“What we learn from these samples is kind of the same stuff that we learn from samples on the Earth,” Petro says. “How did that material form? What is it made of? What kind of rock is it?”
But unlike rocks collected on Earth, lunar rock samples are extremely old. The moon, which researchers estimate to be at least 4.5 billion years old, doesn’t have rock-recycling plate tectonics like Earth does, and there aren’t the same erosive properties that eat away at Earth-bound rock outcrops. This means the lunar surface is home to some of the oldest rocks we can get our gloves on.
These samples also help researchers better understand the harsh environment of space. "If you look at the surface of the rock under a microscope, you can see all of these micro craters, produced by hypervelocity dust particles impacting the surface," Thompson says. "While Earth has an atmosphere to protect us, the moon doesn’t, and it's constantly bombarded with this dust."
President Bill Clinton holds a lunar sample given to him by Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins on the 30th anniversary of the mission.
TIM SLOANGETTY IMAGES
At times, NASA has struggled to keep track of all these samples, many of which have been cleaved apart into tinier pieces and loaned to museums and other research institutions around the world. President Richard Nixon gave several lunar souvenirs away as gifts to foreign dignitaries, who subsequently misplaced them. In 2002, three Johnson Space Center interns brazenly stole $2 million worth of moon rocks. The FBI later recovered the samples when the ringleader of the heist tried to sell them on the internet.
Sample 76015,143 isn’t the first lunar sample that has made its way into the Oval Office. On July 20, 1999, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins presented President Bill Clinton with sample 10057,30, a sizable moon rock they collected during their historic mission to the lunar surface. (A 2.375-inch sliver pulled from the sample’s parent rock, 10057, was sandwiched between two panes of nitrogen-filled glass and fitted into a stained glass window at the Washington National Cathedral in 1974.)
The placement of sample 76015,143 in the Oval Office may signify more than Biden's commitment to science and technology; it may also hint at the direction in which he'll steer NASA.
In 2019, NASA unveiled the Artemis Program, which aims to send the first woman and next man to the moon in 2024. It's a tight deadline, and the program has already experienced a number of delays and cost overruns. Many havequestioned whether the Biden administration will choose to refocus efforts elsewhere in the solar system.
In its press release announcing the placement of sample 76015,143, NASA claimed the sample signifies a "support for America’s current moon to Mars exploration approach."
Sample 76015,143 may be as much of a window into the future as it is into the past.
In symbolic recognition of earlier generations’ ambitions and accomplishments, and support for America’s current Moon to Mars exploration approach, a Moon rock now sits in the Oval Office of the White House. At the request of the incoming Biden Administration, NASA loaned the Moon rock that was put on display in the Oval Office Jan. 20. It is from the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and its display case is inscribed with the following:
Lunar Sample 76015,143
Apollo 17 astronaut Ronald Evans and moonwalkers Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan, the last humans to set foot on the Moon, chipped this sample from a large boulder at the base of the North Massif in the Taurus-Littrow Valley, 3 km (almost 2 miles) from the Lunar Module. This 332 gram piece of the Moon (less than a pound), which was collected in 1972, is a 3.9-billion-year-old sample formed during the last large impact event on the nearside of the Moon, the Imbrium Impact Basin, which is 1,145 km or 711.5 miles in diameter.
The irregular sample surfaces contain tiny craters created as micrometeorite impacts have sand-blasted the rock over millions of years. The flat, sawn sides were created in NASA’s Lunar Curation Laboratory when slices were cut for scientific research. This ongoing research is imperative as we continue to learn about our planet and the Moon, and prepare for future missions to the cislunar orbit and beyond.
News travels fast — at the lickety-split speed of light, potentially. Back in December, great attention was paid to a report that a mysterious radio signal appeared to have come from the vicinity of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth.
Proxima Centauri, which is just 4.2 light-years from us, is known to host two planets. One of those two worlds, Proxima b, is slightly more massive than Earth and might be capable of supporting life as we know it.
The Breakthrough Listen project, part of the Breakthrough Initiatives group, made the recent detection using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, dubbing the signal BLC1 for "Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1."
Breakthrough Initiatives is backed by Yuri Milner, a science and technology investor and philanthropist who founded the organization. Its Breakthrough Listen activity is a $100 million program of astronomical observations and analysis, the most comprehensive ever undertaken in the search for evidence of technological civilizations in the universe.
Space.com recently talked with Breakthrough Initiatives executive director Simon Peter "Pete" Worden about BLC1 and the search for alien "technosignatures" more generally; the protocols for announcing an ET detection; and the latest about the prospects for life on Venus, another study effort being undertaken by Breakthrough Initiatives.
Spoiler alert: Don't be heartbroken in learning how tough "radio-waving" between civilizations truly is!
Space.com: What's the latest on the purported Proxima Centauri signal?
Worden: We're about to submit our papers on the signal. We're virtually certain now that it's interference. I can't get into the details. However, our intent was that this was kind of a pathfinder, so we're happy with the opportunity. It's the first signal that passed our basic test.
Space.com: That basic test comes down to what elements?
Worden: The key thing for us is that we have gone through the "what if" — what if it's this, what if it's that? What are the sources of interference? So we're just about completed with that. An internal review team is looking at our papers, one on the approach we've taken, and the other is on the actual data collected. Then we'll submit them to a journal. But we're virtually certain that it was interference.
The Parkes radio telescope is an icon of Australian science, and one part of the Australia Telescope National Facility. (Image credit: Parkes Radio Telescope/Australia Telescope National Facility)
Space.com: So it was a good test of the procedures that you have set in place?
Worden: Yes, but it's a technical thing too. Ultimately, this underscores that we need to have several different instruments. We're just in the process of bringing online the South African MeerKAT radio telescope, the first phase of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) set of radio dishes. In fact, we're probably going to do some coordinated observations, both with MeerKAT and the Parkes radio telescope in the next couple of months. In general, we're learning what it is that we expect to see in terms of a technosignature.
Space.com: The Parkes telescope in Australia, used to pick up the signal, reportedly has had trouble in the past with interference. Why so?
Worden:That's true of any radio telescope. A big issue a decade ago — whenfast radio bursts[FRBs] were detected, there were two kinds of FRBs. One of them we now understand as a fast radio burst … the other one turned out to be due to microwave interference. There's all sorts of interference that you have to track down. The real answer is that when you see these things you need to very quickly bring a second instrument online.
S. Pete Worden, executive director of Breakthrough Initiatives. (Image credit: S. Pete Worden)
Space.com: The Proxima Centauri signal story first broke in the media. Should there be a look at protocols for handling release of information that, indeed, a technosignture has been discovered?
Worden: The only protocol we have is the "Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence," which was developed by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). So our next task is to set up something, probably very comparable to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams. That hasn't been set up as yet. There are no government protocols for this. Then there's a related issue that has to do with managing the messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence.
Space.com: What lessons learned can you glean from this Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1 incident?
Worden: This was the first red-alert process. It mostly worked OK. We were reasonably pleased. It leaked to the press. There were probably about 20 people on the team. So it's hard to figure out why it wouldn't leak.
S. Pete Worden, executive director of Breakthrough Initiatives, with Knight-Commander of the Luxembourg Legion of Merit. (Image credit: S. Pete Worden)
Obviously, job one is to set up networks to validate that a signal is a technosignature or could be. We're working through that. No matter how interesting an individual signal is, it's still a random signal until it is validated by different instruments, different researchers. So the question is how to get other people quickly on the sky to look at these things. As we have more and more instruments and better and better detectors, we're going to get a lot of things like this. So don't get too excited when there's an alert for a bunch of people to go take a look at things. As for a bottom line, we really want to make the technosignature area a legitimate scientific concern once again. It's now on the way to being that.
Space.com: Lastly, Breakthrough Initiatives is also studying a look at the findings that the upper atmosphere of Venus may be a hot spot for life. What is the status of your study?
Worden: It is going pretty well. Sara Seager, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT, is leading that. We're doing a design study as well as some lab work about what to look for at Venus. We're getting back to Yuri Milner in the next month or two and see if he wants to go forward with some sort of mission. We're looking at small, medium and large missions. We have been working with a number of people, including Rocket Lab and their interest in this area.
Venus in ultraviolet light, as seen by NASA's Pioneer-Venus Orbiter in 1979. Does life lurk within the planet's top cloud layer? (Image credit: NASA)
Space.com: What's your personal take about the life-in-the-Venus-clouds proposition?
Worden: There's something very interesting [at Venus]. I think the only way we're going to figure it out is actually send a probe there. What do you look for? It turns out we can probably send a small probe fairly quickly and fairly cheaply, for tens of millions of dollars. The question is how definitive is the result that it gets. Then the question has to be followed up with a larger thing that gets into the atmosphere of Venus. Ultimately, you want to grab something, put it under a microscope, obtain a detailed chemical analysis and image it. So that's where we are.
Leonard David is author of the recently released book, "Moon Rush: The New Space Race," published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook. This version of the story published on Space.com.
The Wendigo is without doubt a highly dangerous creature, one which is a staple part of the folklore and legend of the Native American tribe known as the Algonquin. The monster is typically described as a tall, crazed and violent thing that roams the forests of the Pacific Northwest, the northernmost states of the U.S., and Canada. It is a large, humanoid beast that dines on human flesh. There is, however, another aspect to the lore surrounding the Wendigo. Namely, that if a person eats human flesh, he or she can shapeshift into a Wendigo. Adding to the legend, the Wendigo has the ability to take control of our minds – always for terrible and horrific reasons. In that sense, as well as a shapeshifting angle, there is what we might term a mind-shifting process, too.
Legends of America state: “The legend lends its name to the disputed modern medical term Wendigo psychosis, which is considered by some psychiatrists to be a syndrome that creates an intense craving for human flesh and a fear of becoming a cannibal. Ironically, this psychosis is said to occur within people living around the Great Lakes of Canada and the United States. Wendigo psychosis usually develops in the winter in individuals who are isolated by heavy snow for long periods. The initial symptoms are poor appetite, nausea, and vomiting. Subsequently, the individual develops a delusion of being transformed into a Wendigo monster. People who have Wendigo psychosis increasingly see others around them a being edible. At the same time, they have an exaggerated fear of becoming cannibals.”
Business Standard say: “Despite their gaunt physiques, Wendigo are described by some as giants, measuring at about 14.8 to 15 feet in height. Whilst there are slight variations as to the physical description of this creature amongst the different Algonquian peoples, it is generally agreed that Wendigo have glowing eyes, long yellowed fangs and long tongues. Most Wendigo are also said to have sallow and yellowish skin, though others say that they are matted with hair or have decaying skin. According to ethno-historian Nathan Carlson, it’s also been said that the wendigo has large, sharp claws and massive eyes like an owl. However, some other people simply describe the wendigo as a skeleton-like figure with ash-toned skin.”
One of the more intriguing theories for what may have provoked the legends of the Wendigo is that they were based upon early, centuries-old reports of Bigfoot encounters. Certainly, there are more than a few reports in which Bigfoot-type beasts have acted violently in the presence of people. There are even reports of people vanishing in the woods and forests of the United States – amid theories that the Bigfoot, when food is scarce, will feed on just about anything. And that includes us. Of the various stories that surround the Wendigo, certainly the most horrific revolves around a Cree Native American named Swift Runner, who lived with his family in an area of forest close to Edmonton, Canada.
As 1878 rolled over into 1879, Swift Runner turned up in the city of St. Albert, Canada. He told a bleak and harrowing story of how all of his family – his wife, his six children, and his mother and brother – had fallen victim to the recent, hostile winter, in which food was beyond scarce and temperatures plunged. As plausible as the story told by Swift Runner to a group of Catholic priests sounded, there was a significant red flag. Swift Runner hardly looked emaciated. In fact, he looked very well fed. That’s because he was: Swift Runner spent the winter devouring his entire family, eating their flesh and gnawing on their bones – as the St. Albert police found to their horror when they traveled to the site of his home in the woods. Suspicions soon began to surface that Swift Runner was possessed by a Wendigo: he began to exhibit bizarre activity, such as howling, growling, and screaming in savage fashion. Tales circulated that, on one occasion, Swift Runner was seen to transform into a savage-looking humanoid, a definitive Wendigo – something caused by his taste for human flesh.
The Wow! signal owes its name to the exclamation written on a paper printout from Ohio State’s Big Ear Radio Telescope in1972 that was evidence of a strange 72-second signal that stunned astronomer Jerry Ehman, and its lasting fame to the fact that it’s never been explained and never been picked up again. A recent paper claimed to have traced the signal to the star 2MASS 19281982-2640123 in the Sagittarius constellation 1800 light-years from Earth, but it’s still a theory. Now, another astronomer has proposed to have identified Wow! as leakage from a power beam propelling an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Time to drop the mic and yell “Wow!”?
“The most observable leakage radiation from an advanced civilization may well be from the use of power beaming to accelerate spacecraft and transfer energy. Power beams are now more credible because we’re building our own: The Starshot project plans launching probes to nearby stars in this century, making power beaming a credible source concept. And power beaming is being developed for military applications, where it is termed ‘directed energy’.”
James Benford, a plasma physicist and CEO of Microwave Sciences, summarizes in Centauri Dreams the paper he’s presented to the journal Astrobiology. He compares the Wow! signal to the powerful laser beams being proposed to power laser sails to nearby stars and to the ‘directed energy’ weapons being developed by militaries to attack and destroy without explosives. In his summary, Benford proposes that leakage – energy that doesn’t directly hit the propelled object – could be powerful enough to be seen by other nearby intelligent species, and shows how it would explain the four parameters of the Wow! signal — the power density received, the signal’s duration, its frequency and its revisit time. The last parameter is the interval until the signal is seen again and Benford explains that it’s the least discussed but possibly the strongest argument for power beam leakage.
“The Wow! observation has never recurred. I take this absence as a clue to its origin.”
Leakage of a highly directed high power beam from around the vehicle would still be powerful, explaining parameter 1. The Big Ear was fixed in orientation, rotating with the Earth, and the duration of the Wow! signal – 38 seconds – matched the duration of a model of a power beam from another star system – 36 seconds, explaining parameter 2. The Wow! Signal was at the 1.42 GHz frequency, a protected radio astronomy bandwidth, so it couldn’t be a transmission from Earth or its satellites – parameter 3. Finally, there’s the recurrence factor.
“The angle of the radiated beam with respect to the light path between the two stars is larger than the width of the beam. Thus, the beam is generally not observable from the target planetary system. If the Wow! was driving a probe to a star, that star was at that time far from the direction of the beam. Earth could accidentally receive the leakage from the beam, since stars move relative to each other. So leakage radiation from star probe launches using the Wow! beam will not be seen again from Earth. This fits the non-observations to date.”
laser sail depiction
Wow! Benford concludes that power beams are the most credible explanation for Wow! because we’re building our own, thus proving they can existence. He also builds a case for treating SETI as a search for these random power beams rather than communications signals – a case that will take a lot more convincing of the astronomy and SETI worlds focused on those types of signals.
It’s not time to drop the mic – but James Benford definitely builds a case for tossing it in the air or spinning it around on its cord (for fans of a certain age).
Banned Disney UFO Documentary: Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland 2021
Banned Disney UFO Documentary: Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland 2021
“Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland” BANNED DISNEY UFO DOCUMENTARY In March of 1995, without warning, Disney aired a family special. the documentary was so controversial that it was pulled from the airwaves and banned from ever being shown again. Robert Urich, the legendary Jim Street in S.W.A.T. (1975), is the host of this voyage around the UFO’s and its mystery.
From New Tomorrowland, in Disneyland, Urich talks about UFO, contacts, evidence of it arrives, abductions, military documents, and other things that surround this controversial thematic. From the 30′s years ahead, the UFOs always have been there very close to us, every day, every time. Exist the aliens?,in truth, they come to planet Earth? Could it be a fiction created by the military?
And the last and most important question: if they exist, would they will be our friends…or our enemies? Written by Chockys
Nog een maatje groter: zwarte gaten kunnen volgens astronomen ‘Stupendously’ zwaar worden
Er zijn zwarte gaten, zware zwarte gaten, superzware zwarte gaten, en vanaf heden zijn er ook belachelijk grote, krankzinnige of kolossale zwarte gaten: ‘Stupendously Large Black Holes‘ werden ze gedoopt, kortweg SLAB’s. Deze exemplaren kunnen volgens onderzoekers wel 100 miljard keer zwaarder zijn dan de zon.
Het is wellicht een van de meest fascinerende verschijnselen in de ruimte: een zwart gat of een gebied in de (astronomische) ruimte waar de zwaartekracht zo sterk is dat het alles in zijn buurt genadeloos opslokt, zelfs de meest heldere sterren. Fascinerend, maar ook ontzettend mysterieus.
Zo mysterieus dat wetenschappers van de Queen Mary University of London in hun recent onderzoek - gepubliceerd in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society - ‘hypothetische’ zwarte gaten omschrijven. “Hoewel er momenteel geen enkel bewijs is gevonden voor het bestaan van SLAB’s, is het geloofwaardig dat ze bestaan”, aldus astronoom en onderzoeker Bernard Carr.
Massa en omvang van
Hoe zit dat dan precies met die massa van zwarte gaten? Zwarte gaten kunnen onderverdeeld worden in verschillende categorieën, afhankelijk van hun massa. Zo zijn er minuscule zwarte gaten. Hun massa varieert van enkele gram tot het gewicht van de maan. Daarnaast zijn er stellaire zwarte gaten met een massa van 5 tot wel 100 zonsmassa’s - een standaardeenheid, gelijk aan de massa van de zon. Planeten zijn overigens veel lichter dan de zon. Zo is een zonsmassa gelijk aan 328.901 maal de massa van de aarde. Middelgrote zwarte gaten hebben een massa van 500 tot 1.000 zonsmassa’s.
Superzware zwarte gaten hebben tot slot een massa tot (vele) miljoenen de massa van de zon. Messier 87 (M87) is daar een - inmiddels wereldberoemd - voorbeeld van. Dit monster is wel 6,5 miljard keer zo zwaar als onze zon en werd op 10 april 2019 als eerste zwarte gat gefotografeerd.
En daar zou het stoppen, zo redeneerden astronomen tot voor kort. Er zou een limiet op de massa van zwarte gaten zitten: ze groeien en trekken materie aan, maar door te groeien wordt hun omgeving ook ‘schoongeblazen’ wat ervoor zorgt dat ze uiteindelijk niet meer groter worden. Althans, dat dacht men.
SLAB’s
Maar nu komen de SLAB’s om de hoek loeren, hypothetische primordiale zwarte gaten die miljarden keren zwaarder dan de zon kunnen zijn. Waar dat idee plotseling vandaan komt? Volgens het recente onderzoek zouden de zwarte gaten toch nog kunnen groeien dankzij ‘Weakly Interacting Massive Particles’ (WIMPs) of hypothetische deeltjes donkere materie - nog zo’n mysterieus gegeven. Deze deeltjes materie reageren niet met licht (waardoor we ze ook niet kunnen waarnemen) wat in het voordeel van de zwarte gaten speelt. Waar andere (kleinere) zwarte gaten groot worden door stervende sterren te verslinden en/of samen te smelten met andere zwarte gaten, groeit een SLAB dankzij de zwarte materie.
GERELATEERDE VIDEO'S, uitgekozen en gepost door peter2011
Ruimtetelescoop CHEOPS onthult uniek planetair systeem: “Eerste keer dat we dit waarnemen”
De Zwitsers-Europese ruimtetelescoop CHEOPS heeft een uniek planetair systeem onthuld, zo heeft het Europese Ruimtevaartburea ESA maandag bekendgemaakt. De vondst stelt trouwens de huidige planeetvormingstheorieën op de proef.
De ontdekking van een toenemend aantal planetenstelsels, die niet op ons eigen zonnestelsel lijken, blijft ons begrip van de vorming en evolutie van planeten verbeteren. "Een indrukwekkend voorbeeld is het planetenstelsel TOI-178, zo'n 200 lichtjaar van ons vandaan in de Beeldhouwer-constellatie", zegt ESA maandag.
Astronomen verwachtten al dat ster TOI-178 twee of meer exoplaneten zou herbergen nadat ze deze hadden geobserveerd met NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Nieuwe, zeer nauwkeurige waarnemingen met de in 2019 gelanceerde CHEOPS laten nu zien dat de ster minstens zes planeten herbergt en dat dit vreemde zonnestelsel een zeer unieke structuur kent.
Een van de bijzondere eigenschappen is dat de planeten - behalve de planeet die het dichtst bij de ster staat - een ritmische dans volgen als deze zich in hun banen bewegen. Dit verschijnsel heet ‘orbitale resonantie’, en houdt in dat er patronen zijn die zich herhalen terwijl de planeten rond de ster draaien, waarbij sommige planeten om de paar draaiingen op één lijn komen te staan.
Een soortgelijke resonantie wordt volgens ESA waargenomen in de banen van drie manen van Jupiter: Io, Europa en Ganymedes. Voor iedere draaiing van Europa maakt Ganymedes twee draaiingen, en Io maakt er vier (dit is dus een 4:2:1 patroon).
Een van de exoplaneten, een dichte, aardse planeet zoals de onze, ligt vlak naast een even grote en pluizige planeet - zoals een kleine Jupiter, en daarnaast ligt een planeet die erg op Neptunus lijkt
Veel complexer
In het TOI-178 systeem is de resonante beweging veel complexer aangezien er vijf planeten bij betrokken zijn, die een 18:9:6:4:3 patroon volgen. Terwijl de tweede planeet van de ster (de eerste van het patroon) 18 draaiingen voltooit, voltooit de derde planeet van de ster (tweede van het patroon) negen draaiingen, enzovoort.
Hoewel de planeten in het TOI-178 systeem op een zeer ordelijke manier rond hun ster draaien, volgen hun dichtheden geen bepaald patroon. Een van de exoplaneten, een dichte, aardse planeet zoals de onze, ligt vlak naast een even grote en pluizige planeet - zoals een kleine Jupiter, en daarnaast ligt een planeet die erg op Neptunus lijkt.
ESA/CHEOPS Mission Consortium/A. Leleu et al.
Onverwacht
"Dit is niet wat we verwacht hadden, en het is de eerste keer dat we zo'n opstelling in een planetenstelsel waarnemen", zegt Adrien Leleu van de Universiteit van Bern en Genève.
"In de weinige systemen die we kennen waar de planeten in dit resonantieritme ronddraaien, nemen de dichtheden van de planeten geleidelijk af naarmate we ons verder van de ster verwijderen, en dat is ook wat we op grond van de theorie verwachten."
Geen catastrofale gebeurtenis
Catastrofale gebeurtenissen zoals reusachtige inslagen zouden de grote variaties in de dichtheden van de planeten kunnen verklaren, maar het TOI-178 systeem zou niet zo evenwichtig zijn als dit het geval zou zijn geweest. "De draaiingen in dit systeem zijn zeer goed geordend, wat ons vertelt dat dit systeem sinds de geboorte vrij rustig geëvolueerd is", zegt Yann Alibert van de Universiteit van Bern.
De ontdekking van de complexe structuur van het TOI-178 systeem stelt zodoende de huidige theorieën over planeetvorming op de proef.
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Pilot Captures Foo Fighter Near His Plane Over Karachi, Pakistan 1-23-2021, UFO Sighting News.
Pilot Captures Foo Fighter Near His Plane Over Karachi, Pakistan 1-23-2021, UFO Sighting News.
Above screenshot has a pakistan png plane added to give you an idea of what he was flying.
Date of sighting: 1-23-2021
Location of sighting: Over Ocean area near Karachi, Pakistan
Source: MUFON, reported today.
Wow, just wow! Guys this is 100% an actual foo fighter. The legendary WWII orbs that would ride along side the planes and follow them over the ocean. This sighting took place along the coast near the city of Karachi, Pakistan. Look carefully at the screenshot above. Do you notice it has a metal ring around it and a brilliant white light coming from its center? That is the most focused Foo fighter photo in the history of UFO research! Absolute proof aliens are still following planes and keeping an eye on humanities activities. Best freaking sighting in several months.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
We were flying at 35000 feet.Operating Captain was just in the process of sitting down on his seat and the aircraft started to turn on the route which enabled him to see this brilliant white round object above and to the right of the aircraft.It could either have been hovering or moving slowly (difficult to tell due relative motion).Cell phone cameras were put in action fat to capture the object.After landing was found out that it had been seen/filmed in different areas as well.
Is there anyone out there? What is the alien agenda? And why has the government gone to such great lengths to stifle the overwhelming evidence that otherworldly creatures exist? Some of our greatest minds ask these questions and more in a quest to unveil the truth behind this massive cover-up–and whether Earth can afford to ignore the extraterrestrial messages much longer.
Enlarge/ Three barrels welded together are lowered onto a pressure dome for SN2 at the South Texas Launch Site this week.
BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—How badly does Elon Musk want to get to Mars? Let me tell you a story. On Sunday, February 23, Musk called an all-hands meeting at the South Texas site where SpaceX is building his Starship spacecraft.
It was 1am.
At an hour when most Americans were throwing down their last shots before closing time, at home in bed, or binge-watching The Office before it leaves Netflix, Musk brought his team together. He wanted to know why the Starship factory wasn’t humming at all hours. Why steel sheets weren’t getting welded into domes and fuel tanks, why tanks were not being stacked into rockets, why things weren’t going as fast as he wanted.
Musk always wants to go fast. He will not live forever, and the money may eventually run dry. He knows this. One day, the window to spread humanity to Mars may close, but Musk doesn’t know when. So he needs to squeeze through before the window shuts.
To really accelerate, his bleary-eyed engineers and technicians responded, they needed enough employees to assign workers to particular stations within the burgeoning factory, allowing each person to specialize. This would require a lot more hands that could build things.
“I said, ‘OK no problem,’” Musk recalls. “I said, ‘You can hire people—just know your reputation is on the line. Don’t bring your brother-in-law who can’t ever get a job. Not that person, OK? You’re going to be responsible for them. Everyone’s got their relatives that they know at the family gathering who, man, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to work with that person. Don’t bring that person. Bring the person who you’d put your reputation on the line for.’”
SpaceX had held a much publicized “career day” in early February, and the company hired several dozen new employees. By contrast, this Starship factory’s scale-up would be all word of mouth. And it would happen immediately.
Musk told his team members they would have a recruitment gathering just 12 hours later, at 1pm that Sunday. They would have another one on Monday at 1pm and then again at 8pm. Long lines of people showed up, family members and friends, mostly local. Cars and trucks jammed the roadside up and down Boca Chica Highway. At 11pm on Monday night, SpaceX was still hiring.
All told, the company added 252 people to its South Texas Launch Site on that Sunday and Monday. It doubled the workforce, just like that, to more than 500 workers. Most of the new hires, even those who had inked contracts at midnight, were told to report for work the next morning. A year ago, perhaps a dozen or so people worked on site. Soon, the Texas factory will probably be SpaceX’s largest location outside of its headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Elon Musk will spend money to go fast, and in South Texas he is proving it. In a matter of weeks, SpaceX has built a small city down here, hard by the Rio Grande River. It is all rather astonishing. And maybe, just maybe, this new Muskville really will serve as a launch pad to the first city on Mars.
Meet the chief engineer
This past weekend, following the hiring spree, I visited the company’s facilities at Musk’s invitation. My tour included a visit to the launch pad. You may have seen the video footage of a Starship prototype known as Serial Number 1 (SN1) blowing apart during a pressurization test. This happened the night before my arrival. Engineers had loaded liquid nitrogen into the vehicle’s fuel tanks to determine their ability to hold very cold liquids at high pressure. The answer: not very well.
Starship SN1 test failure.
Bent, blackened, and charred, steel wreckage was strewn about the site. At first glance, it looked bad. But upon closer inspection, not all seemed lost. The launch tower for the vehicle appeared largely undamaged. The ground systems and fuel tanks that support Starship on the pad were located behind a berm and bore only a few scars from rocket shrapnel.
SN1 was never destined to fly, anyway. The plan for this vehicle, had it survived the pressurization test, was to install a Raptor engine and perform a static test firing. If everything looked just right on this test, Musk might have greenlighted a test with three Raptor engines. But probably not. The attitude of engineers working on the program boiled down to this: it sucks to lose SN1, but the next vehicle in line is already outpacing it. SN2 will soon be ready for tank testing.
Not that Musk felt particularly happy about losing a Starship. On Saturday and Sunday, he huddled with his engineers inside the University of Texas’ Stargate building, at the periphery of the company’s South Texas footprint. A year ago, the few rooms SpaceX leased on the building’s second floor were the only facilities on site aside from a few construction trailers. Now it is merely the front door. SpaceX has taken over the entire building, turning it into a mix of offices and storage.
On Sunday afternoon, I met Musk inside a Stargate conference room where he sat at a long table, wearing an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt and drinking a Diet Coke.
This gallery shows the aftermath of SN1's pressure test failure. This piece flew more than 100 meters, and across Boca Chica Highway.
Eric Berger
Just a shot showing Starhopper's proximity to the launch pad. It survived!
This rocket has ceased to be. It rests in peace. This is an ex-rocket.
A close-up view of Starhopper, just because. We were told that the landing legs were made of the biggest pipe an engineer could order online, and get delivered within 48 hours.
Here's an upper view of hopper. She was a pig. Her walls were made from 13mm-thick steel. SN2 will be made with 4mm thick walls.
Things got a bit hot coming in for a landing.
More views of SN1 here.
Launch stand is mostly good, however.
So is the ground support equipment (although we passed a few chunks of debris that ended up there).
The nearby landing site is unharmed.
A second shard of debris on the other side of the highway.
“Well, I just had a lot of talks with the team about that today,” he said of the SN1 failure. “It’s what you might call the thrust puck—there’s an inverted cone where we mount the three sea-level engines. In fact, it’s drawn on that whiteboard over there.”
He walked up to the whiteboard and pointed to a frowning face. “This is my drawing,” he said with a smirk. Then, with a dry-erase marker in hand, Musk proceeded to lecture about rockets.
“There’s a sad face because we have an inverted cone,” he said. “It’s such a dumb design. It’s one of the dumbest things on the whole rocket because it’s heavy, expensive, and unreliable.”
Basically, the SN1 failure boiled down to bad welds in a weak section of Starship near the engine. When exposed to pressure, the welds burst.
Musk was not happy because he had not heard about this specific issue, in this section of Starship, before the test failure. Do you think Musk addressed that with his team? Yeah, he addressed that.
“We sent out a note to the team that this was badly designed, badly built, and badly checked,” he said. “That’s just a statement of fact. I met with the whole quality team, and I said, ‘Did you think that that thing was good?’ They said, ‘No.’ I told them that, in the future, you treat that rocket like it’s your baby, and you do not send it to the test site unless you think your baby’s going to be OK. They said that they did raise the concern to one of the engineers. But that engineer didn’t do anything. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘then you need to email me directly.’ Now they understand. If you email me directly, and if I buy off on the risk, then it’s OK. What’s not OK is they think that the weld is not good, they don’t tell me, they take it to the pad and blow it up. Now I have been clear. There’s plenty of forgiveness if you pass me the buck. There is no forgiveness if you don’t.”
What you need to understand about Musk is that he is the chief engineer of SpaceX—and that’s not a courtesy title. Musk previously told me that at the very beginning of SpaceX, no great engineers would take the job, and what’s the point of hiring someone to be chief engineer who isn’t great? So he became the chief engineer of SpaceX. Almost every technical rocket decision made at SpaceX comes to him eventually. Especially the hard ones. He has spent many, if not the majority, of his days since December in South Texas. During Christmas, employees there say, he worked all-nighters alongside them to get the dome structure and the welds right for SN1.
Yet Musk has not been spending so much of his time in South Texas just to build a Starship. Rather, he’s trying to build a production line for Starships. He wants to build a lot of them. And fast, always fast.
“Production is at least 1,000 percent harder than making one of something,” he said. “At least 1,000 percent harder.”
Musk should know. He lived through “production hell” at Tesla in 2017 and 2018, building up factories, changing processes, spending many sleepless nights and going through all manner of mental agony. Now, Tesla is making as many as 10,000 cars a week.
He wants to implement a similar system in South Texas. Musk, in fact, aims to reach a point where the company builds a Starship a week by the end of this year. And after that? Maybe they’ll go faster. SpaceX is designing its factory here to build a Starship every 72 hours.
The knuckle seamer
In addition to hiring, SpaceX has rapidly expanded its facilities in South Texas in recent months. The company has built two large windbreaks, which will essentially serve as “high bays” for stacking the Starship vehicle. In just the last six weeks, SpaceX completed construction of two football-field sized tents and is working on a third. Although they are huge, the tents were not quite tall enough for SpaceX’s needs. So the first two are stacked on a single row of sea vans, the intermodal containers used to ship material around the world. Eventually, SpaceX plans to cut windows in the sea vans and make offices. Because the third tent needs to be even higher, it is stacked on a double row of sea vans.
Musk wants a linear flow through the tents, whereby rocket parts come into one end of the factory and move from station to station until large chunks of Starship end up in a high bay for stacking into a vehicle.
The process of building a Starship on site begins with large “barrels.” Each of these is about two meters tall and nine meters in diameter. To make a barrel, a length of 301 full hard stainless steel is unspooled, cut once, and welded along this seam into a cylinder. In an unpressurized state the barrels are cumbersome, as each weighs nearly 1,600kg. To construct the outer skin of Starship, 17 barrels are stacked and welded together, with a nose cone on top. As of Saturday, since manufacturing operations began in Boca Chica about 11 months ago, the company has built 50 barrels. But the process is accelerating. The company can now make two barrels a day, and it aims to reach a production cadence of four barrels a day.
The first of the big new tents, erected in January, is filled with tank domes for the SN2 and SN3 vehicles. Pressurized domes are difficult because they cap off the ends of fuel tanks and must hold chilled rocket propellant—in Starship’s case, methane—and liquid oxygen at high pressures. So they must be made with care. The current process for building a pressure dome takes about a week; 1 or 2 days to tack up and fit steel sheets, 4 days to weld the sheets together, and 1 to 2 days for X-ray inspections and repairs. But in Muskville, taking a week to make a dome is way too slow.
So Musk has challenged his team to find ways to go faster, to cut production time, and to improve weld qualities. He has let his engineers engineer. And they think they’re close to a solution for dome welding with a tool called a “knuckle seamer.” They built a prototype in the second tent.
The knuckle seamer looks something like a giant zipper that articulates over the front and back of a dome, like a taco shell around its filling. On the front, the seam to be welded is designed to line up along the zipper, which clamps down for a precise fit. Then, in about 10 minutes, an automated torch will trace down the length of the curve, providing a precise weld. Following this, the dome is rotated to bring the next seam into view.
Other engineers have built an in-house, shielded machine to X-ray the welds. Presently, an X-ray team shows up, quarantines a work area, the premises are vacated, and then radiation tests look for imperfections. With this new X-ray machine, SpaceX hopes to compress a process that can take a day down to a few hours.
This is all happening so fast. These machines existed only in the minds of engineers four weeks ago. The tent they’ve installed them in for testing was built less than three weeks ago. Musk has always had a knack for hiring brilliant young engineers, and those in the Boca Chica tents were mostly in their 20s, busting their tails for the boss. Willingly. Why? Because Musk empowers them to go fast, do cool things, and, very soon, to see their machines fly.
Absolutely mad
Why the hell does Elon Musk need to build so many Starships, anyway?
Because he’s actually serious about settling Mars. It’s not a joke. It’s not a con for more government money (although Musk won’t turn that down). No, Mars is the raison d’être for SpaceX. And now, in South Texas, Musk is getting close enough to Mars that he can almost taste its red dirt.
Let’s just step back for a moment to acknowledge how nuts this is. Starship is only the upper stage for SpaceX’s Super Heavy rocket, but it is arguably the most novel spacecraft ever built. No one has ever built a fully reusable rocket, and the second stage that goes into space is the hardest part. SpaceX remains a long way from making the interior of Starship habitable for humans on a journey to Mars. But even building a fully reusable vehicle that can lift 150 tons into low Earth orbit would be a marvel. That’s more throw capacity than the Apollo Program’s Saturn V rocket had.
Compare that to NASA and its Space Launch System, the big rocket that the space agency has been developing for a decade and for which Boeing only recently completed a single core stage. This core stage is about 15 meters taller than Starship but lacks its complexity. NASA will, in fact, toss each SLS core stage into the ocean after a single use. And Boeing doesn’t have to make the engines, as the rocket uses 40-year-old space shuttle main engines. Despite this, and with nearly $2 billion in annual funding from NASA, Boeing’s stretch goal for building core stages is one to two per year... some time in the mid-2020s.
SpaceX’s stretch goal is to build one to two Starships a week, this year, and to pare back construction costs to as low as $5 million each.
“That’s fucking insane,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s insane,” Musk replied.
“I mean, it really is.”
“Yeah, it’s nuts.”
“As I look across the aerospace landscape, nobody is doing anything remotely like this,” I said.
“No, it’s absolutely mad, I agree,” Musk said. “The conventional space paradigms do not apply to what we’re doing here. We’re trying to build a massive fleet to make Mars habitable, to make life multi-planetary. I think we need, probably, on the order of 1,000 ships, and each of those ships would have more payload than the Saturn V—and be reusable.”
Musk has thought about this a lot, obviously.
“The point at which one says the goal is to make life multi-planetary, it means that we need to have a self-sustaining city on Mars,” Musk said. “That city has to survive if the resupply ships stop coming from Earth for any reason whatsoever. Doesn’t matter why. If those resupply ships stop coming, does the city die out or not? In order to make something self-sustaining, you can’t be missing anything. You must have all the ingredients. It can’t be like, well this thing is self-sustaining except for this one little thing that we don’t have. It can’t be. That’d be like saying, ‘Well, we went on this long sea voyage, and we had everything except vitamin C.’ OK, great. Now you’re going to get scurvy and die—and painfully, by the way. It’s going to suck. You’re going to die slowly and painfully for lack of vitamin C. So we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the vitamin C there on Mars. Then it’s like, OK, rough order of magnitude, what kind of tonnage do you need to make it self-sustaining? It’s probably not less than a million tons.”
Enlarge/ SpaceX will need to send many, many ships to settle Mars.
SpaceX
That’s not a precise number, of course. It’s a rough estimate. But Mars settlers will need vast quantities of stuff. The settlers will need to build an entire industrial base to mine the Red Planet, and there are many steps in mining. To make consumer products requires a huge infrastructure base to refine and shape materials.
“I’ll probably be long dead before Mars becomes self-sustaining, but I’d like to at least be around to see a bunch of ships land on Mars,” Musk said.
A machine to build a machine
SpaceX engineers and technicians in Boca Chica needed eight months, from last April through November, to build the first Starship prototype, MK1. (It blew its top, too.) But the workers in South Texas only needed a month, from late January to late February, to assemble SN1. And SN2 is following only about two weeks behind SN1.
“The problem with the MK1 stuff was that I didn’t have my eye fully on the ball, because I was still taking care of a lot of Tesla stuff,” Musk said. “Now Tesla, I think, is in a good situation here, so that’s why I’m pretty much camped out in Boca. The MK1 was a failure not because the rocket failed at low pressure, but because we failed to build a production line.”
Now he has built the production system. It’s not finished. It’s not perfect. But it’s starting to pay dividends. The factory is beginning to flow linearly, from one station to another. And after last week’s flurry of hiring, the company has the workers it needs to produce rockets one after another.
“If you’re just trying to make one of something, it can all basically just be made by the engineering team,” he said. “But if you want to actually make something at reasonable volume, you have to build the machine that makes the machine, which mathematically is going to be vastly more complicated than the machine itself. The thing that makes the machine is not going to be simpler than the machine. It’s going to be much more complicated by a lot. Things need to be translated into instructions that the average person can understand. You can’t have somebody with an engineering master’s degree from MIT hand-making every single part. It’s not possible. There just aren’t enough. MIT’s not graduating enough people.”
So Musk is making the machine to make the machine. Musk has brought lessons learned from Tesla’s assembly line so workers do not burn out. They will work three 12-hour days and then have a four-day weekend. Then they’ll work four 12-hour shifts with a three-day weekend. Thus, with four shifts, the Boca Chica site can operate at full capacity 24 hours a day, seven days a week. SpaceX is throwing in hot meals every three to four hours, for free.
The company is building toward a critical test flight later this spring, a hop to about 20km that will prove the Starship vehicle can fly in a controlled manner and safely return to Earth. After this, Musk has set an aspirational goal of flying an orbital mission—maybe with SN5 or SN6, he really doesn’t know—before the end of 2020.
Despite the velocity at which SpaceX is moving, this seems unlikely, because SpaceX has yet to build its Super Heavy rocket. This is the mammoth, reusable first stage that will kick Starship into orbit. It will be powered by as many as 37 Raptor engines. This sure seems like a lot of engines, but the Falcon Heavy has shown the way, flying successfully with 27 Merlin engines of its own.
Enlarge/ If the Falcon Heavy can fly with 27 engines—can 37 be that hard?
SpaceX
“If we’re making tanks for the ship, the booster’s just a longer tank with more engines on the base and no heat shielding,” Musk said. “We’ll bring it back and land it just like the Falcon 9. We’ll make the booster using the same domes and cylinder sections that we do for the ship. If you build a ship line, you’re kind of building the booster line anyway. The only thing that really changes is the aft dome where you’re transferring thrust load into the booster. You’ve got like 31 engines, potentially 37—that thrust dome obviously has to be unique, relative to the rest of the vehicle. It would use the same, or similar legs, as the ship. It’s less complicated in that it doesn’t need any heat shielding, but more complicated on the engine side.”
Let’s be honest: it’s pretty darn complicated. But the one thing SpaceX has shown over the last two decades is an increasing competence in building rockets. When it comes to innovation in rocket science is there anyone better in the world? Probably not.
Just iterate, baby
I’ve spoken with plenty of the earliest engineers who worked at SpaceX, and almost all of them have noted that Musk tackles the hardest engineering problems first. For Mars, there will be so many logistical things to make it all work, from power on the surface to scratching out a living to adapting to its extreme climate. But Musk believes that the initial, hardest step is building a reusable, orbital Starship to get people and tons of stuff to Mars. So he is focused on that.
He knows he won’t get Starship right at first. He employs some of the smartest engineers on this planet, and they’re still, in many ways, fumbling toward solutions for the extremely hard problem of getting a super-large vehicle out of Earth’s gravity well into orbit—then to land it and fly it again. Musk has come to believe the only way to realistically achieve this is through trial and error, by iterating closer and closer to the right design.
The hardest part of any rocket is the engine. And SpaceX is almost there with the Raptor engine iterations. “We’ve done this with Raptor,” he said. “Like, we’re on Raptor engine 23 or something, Maybe 24. It’s lighter, cheaper, better in almost every way than Raptor version one, which sucked and blew up, basically. One of about six or seven Raptors that blew up, I’ve lost count.”
The point is, Raptor is now in a good place. The next step involves building a spaceship with the tanks and plumbing to harness the power of six Raptor engines. The first two Starships have blown up during pressurization tests, but with each new iteration of Starship, Musk and his band of engineers are learning.
“A high production rate solves many ills,” he said. “If you have a high production rate, you have a high iteration rate. For pretty much any technology whatsoever, the progress is a function of how many iterations do you have, and how much progress do you make between each iteration. If you have a high production rate then you have many iterations. You can make progress from one to the next.”
None of this is cheap. Boca Chica is a fairly remote location to ship materials into. And the company has gone really fast, sparing few expenses. How long can it go like this, and how is he paying for all of this? Musk declined to offer specifics.
“We’re just paying for it internally,” he said. Then he paused and added, “Success is not assured.”
It is not. But when it comes to space and automobile production, history has shown that Musk pushes through difficult financial and technical challenges. The Falcon 1 rocket failed three times before it finally reached orbit. Tesla faced bankruptcy on several occasions. Musk has always pulled through. He now flies the most powerful rocket in the world, the Falcon Heavy, and the most cost-efficient (and only) reusable orbital rocket, the Falcon 9. Tesla is the world’s biggest electric car company.
Even so, maybe you think Elon Musk is going to fail in his Mars ambitions. Any reasonable person might. This kind of thing makes the Apollo Program look like child’s play, and the Moon Landing is regarded as perhaps the most significant technical achievement of the 20th century. But should we really be working on a repeat of Apollo half a century after we already did it? Maybe we should reach higher and further.
Walking through those tents in South Texas, amid the bustle of those workstations, surrounded by rolls of stainless steel, it becomes easier to believe that we should and that we can. The place feels the way a US Navy shipyard must have felt in the weeks after Pearl Harbor—insanely busy but also purposeful.
These kids and swarms of recently hired technicians are fighting against impossible odds every day, and they’re determined to win. Don’t tell them it can’t be done. They’re not having any of that in Muskville.
24-year-old Lauren Nevil of Farmington, New York, contacted the Singular Fortean Society earlier this month to report a sighting of strange, white aerial lights seen during a power outage last November.
The outage came as a result of a stormfront with high winds which knocked out power for thousands of residents in western New York on November 15th, 2020.
In an interview with investigator Tobias Wayland, Nevil said she was preparing to go to bed that evening when her mother alerted her to something strange happening outside.
"I remember specifically because I was trying to get to sleep, and it was a windy night, and all the power went out. I live in a townhouse complex. I remember the power going out and my mom came upstairs [calling my name]. I said, ‘What? I’m trying to go to sleep because I have to get up for work the next morning.’ She said, ‘Look outside!’ She was freaking out," said Nevil.
"I looked out my bedroom window, facing towards the parking lot, and I saw all of these strange lights in the sky,” she continued. “My mom was flipping out, and I was like 'What is going on?' She called my sister into my room, and we could see everything because there was no light pollution, so it was clear. It was a clear sky. We didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t know if it was satellites. My sister counted 10 to 15 lights. I’m not sure how long it lasted, maybe about 10 to 15 minutes."
Historical weather data for that evening shows that at the time of the sighting, which Nevil believed took place between 10 and 10:30 p.m., the sky over Farmington was mostly cloudy, meaning that while a small portion of the sky might have been visible, it would have been mostly obscured.
"It was just a bunch [of lights] all clustered together," she explained. "They were bright, [and] they were just sitting there. I think the oddest thing was that they were clustered together in a group—not in any sort of formation. It was very strange."
Weather conditions that evening make it likely that the lights were below the cloud cover, given Nevil's description of events.
"This wasn’t like any star or anything," she said of the lights.
After the three women spent “10 to 15 minutes” observing the stationary lights, they “all just kind of disappeared,” said Nevil.
"[The lights disappeared] kind of like one at a time," she said.
Nevil told Wayland that she had done some research of her own prior to contacting the Singular Fortean Society.
"I’ve looked up websites where people report UFOs, and in the area that I live people have seen stuff, although that’s the first time I’ve ever really seen anything," she said. "I’m kind of freaked out."
Wayland found five reported sightings from Farmington in the case files of the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).
NUFORC's files also showed that the city of Rochester, only 20 miles northwest of Farmington and located directly adjacent to Lake Ontario, has had many dozens of reported UFO sightings going back decades.
This sighting isn’t the only unusual encounter had by Nevil, who said she and her sister have also experienced a string of nighttime visitations by unknown entities.
"When we used to live in our old house, before we moved, my sister and I would sometimes feel like someone was sitting on our bed, like the pressure. It felt like someone was sitting there. That happened every once in a while," she said. "Our beds would shake, too. We don’t know what that was."
Her sister, said Nevil, had even woken up to find "someone was standing over her, leaning over to look at her," although "that hasn’t happened in a long time."
Nevil said that, despite having been in bed when she experienced the paranormal events, she was sure that she was "fully awake” at the times they occurred.
If you could fly two billion miles in the direction of the Pegasus constellation, and knew where to look, you would find a thin, flat object, about the size of a football field and up to ten times more reflective than the average comet. If you watched it for a while, you would notice that it is tumbling as it moves away from the sun, turning end over end roughly every seven hours.
This object passed the Earth in October 2017. As it began its return to interstellar space, the Canadian astronomer Robert Weryk identified it among the images from what was then the world’s most powerful camera, a telescope in Hawaii called Pan-STARRS1. The astronomers in Hawaii called it ‘Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word meaning “first scout from a distant place”.
‘Oumuamua was the subject of great excitement. It was the first object humans have observed travelling through the solar system from interstellar space. But it also became controversial: its shape, the way in which it approached us, and the way it moved away are not consistent with the behaviour of an asteroid or comet. For 11 days, the world’s telescopes searched for meaning from this strange visitor.
A year later, the debate about ‘Oumuamua intensified when one of the world’s foremost astronomers, Avi Loeb, submitted a paper to the Astrophysical Journal Letters. In it, Loeb and his colleague, Shmuel Bailey, argued that ‘Oumuamua’s strange properties indicated that it was “a new class of thin interstellar material, either produced naturally, through a yet unknown process […] or of an artificial origin”. Since then, Loeb has maintained that the most rational, conservative explanation is that ‘Oumuamua was produced by an alien civilisation.
We will almost certainly never see ‘Oumuamua again, because it is heading away from the solar system at 30 kilometres a second. But Loeb says scientists must prepare now for what happens when the next such object arrives, as he believes it will very soon. If he is right, these objects surround us in numbers that are almost unimaginable.
***
Avi Loeb is a fast talker; he has the rapid fluency of someone who has spent decades giving lectures, but there is also an unpractised enthusiasm to his speech. He keeps the accent of his native Israel, though he has lived in the US since 1988, when he took a fellowship at Princeton University. His first interview was with the famous physicist Freeman Dyson, who was also well known for theorising about alien civilisations.
Loeb spent almost a decade as chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, the longest any scientist has held that position. He has made or helped to make a number of major breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe, including different ways of detecting exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than the sun. He has correctly predicted incredible phenomena, such as stars that streak across the depths between galaxies at nearly half a billion miles an hour. He is the founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, part of the Event Horizon Telescope project that in April 2019 presented to the world the first photograph of a black hole.
Practically all of Loeb’s predictions have had the backing of his peers, except one.
In the autumn of 2019, Loeb and a colleague – a senior astronomer at Harvard – attended a seminar on ‘Oumuamua. “After it ended,” Loeb told me, “I left the room together with a colleague of mine who is a conservative, mainstream astronomer, and he said: ‘This object is so weird – I wish it never existed.’”
This is, Loeb says, “a terrible thing to say for a scientist… you should accept with open arms anything that nature gives you”. But he has also found such attitudes to be common. There is, he says, a widespread “taboo” on talking about extraterrestrial intelligence.
Why does Loeb believe that ‘Oumuamua was alien technology?
First, unlike most things in space, ‘Oumuamua was not moving relative to what astronomers call the local standard of rest. Loeb calls this a “very special frame of reference, sort of the galactic parking lot”. It was not that ‘Oumuamua visited us but that the sun and its attendant planets, moving through space at 450,000 miles an hour, moved past it, the sun’s gravity bumping it as a ship’s wake disturbs a piece of flotsam.
But what really excites Loeb is what happened next. ‘Oumuamua “showed an excess push away from the sun, in addition to the sun’s gravitational force acting on it”. This happens with comets, which can speed up as the frozen material on them vaporises, causing them to swerve through space and producing a distinctive “tail”. Based on the change in its speed, Loeb says ‘Oumuamua would have had to lose “about a tenth of its mass. That’s quite a lot… we should have seen a very clear cloud of gas around it.”
But ‘Oumuamua had no tail. Close observation by the Spitzer Space Telescope saw nothing around it; it did not even radiate any heat. And it did not move erratically, as comets do, but accelerated smoothly away from the sun. The most rational explanation for this, Loeb says, is that it was pushed by sunlight itself.
‘Oumuamua’s shape is also distinct from almost everything else we have observed in space. Its brightness varied by a factor of ten every eight hours, suggesting “a very extreme geometry”. The most popular depiction of ‘Oumuamua is of a long, cigar-shaped rock, but research by Sergey Mashchenko, a computational astrophysicist at McMaster University in Canada, suggests a 91 per cent chance that it is disc-shaped.
Each of these factors is highly unlikely for any astronomical object. Taken together, Loeb says, they make ‘Oumuamua “a very rare object, if it’s coming from the same reservoir of objects [asteroids and comets] that we are familiar with”.
For Loeb, the rational answer is to find something that fits the data and is familiar to us.
Astronomers were able to do this in September, when another object, called 2020 SO, was discovered in orbit around the Earth. Just like ‘Oumuamua, 2020 SO appeared to have been pushed from its gravitational course by sunlight. And this time, Nasa confirmed that 2020 SO was artificial. It was a piece of a Centaur rocket, launched from Florida in 1966, that had been recaptured by the Earth’s gravity.
For Loeb, 2020 SO “illustrates the fact that we can identify an object that behaves in a peculiar fashion, that has no cometary tail, and yet it exhibits an extra push. And if ‘Oumuamua, indeed, was that kind of an object, the question is: who produced it?”
***
Loeb’s biggest concern about ‘Oumuamua is not that it has disappeared from sight, but that the response to it “betrays the culture of science”. The Copernican principle, the change in thinking that allowed humanity to begin modern astronomy, states that we are not at the centre of the universe. To pretend, in the face of confounding data, that ‘Oumuamua is just another asteroid is to act as if we are.
Loeb’s sense of scale and probability is informed by a long study of the early universe. In a 2014 paper, he described the likelihood that rocky planets with liquid water provided the chemistry to support life when the universe was as little as ten million years old. In the 13.8 billion years since that time, billions of galaxies – each home to billions of Earth-like planets – have formed. To say that life, intelligence and civilisation have emerged only once in such an expanse of time and space is, he argues, a radical view.
“There is nothing more conservative than saying that if you arrange for the same circumstances, you get the same outcome,” he says. For Loeb, the conservative assumption about humanity is “that we are a middle-of-the-road kind of life that exists everywhere. I don’t think that we are special or unique.”
But if we are not unique, it follows that ‘Oumuamua is not unique, either.
Pan-STARRS began searching for near-Earth objects in early 2014, and discovered ‘Oumuamua in under four years. Applying the Copernican principle, we should assume that we will see another object once every three or four years. But this frequency may change, because our ability to see them is about to increase.
This year, the telescope at the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile will take its first test pictures – astronomers call this “first light” – of the night sky. Even more powerful than Pan-STARRS, this will repeatedly photograph everything visible in the sky using a mirror more than eight metres across and the biggest digital camera in the world.
“We could then find one such object every month,” says Loeb, “because, you know, there should be many more out there.”
The question of how many ‘Oumuamuas are out there is the point at which the inferences become dizzying. If we see one every few years, Loeb infers that “there should be one in every volume roughly the size of the orbit of the Earth around the sun”. This is a vast area in human terms, but in the immensity of space, “it’s pretty small. So it means that there are plenty of them, a quadrillion of them, inside the Oort cloud. Inside the solar system. There are lots of them.”
It is difficult to reconcile the idea that we are surrounded by trillions of pieces of alien technology with scientific conservatism. Humanity’s understanding of itself would be radically changed if we knew that other life had once built such things.
But Loeb believes, as he explains in his compelling and personal new book on ‘Oumuamua, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, that humanity’s understanding of itself should change now. The book is not so much a claim for one object as an argument for a more open-minded approach to science – a combination of humility and wonder that he worries has been supplanted by elitism and “intellectual gymnastics”.
“The crime here,” he tells me, is that a whole branch of astronomy, “a subject that is so appealing to the public, that the scientific community can address with its instruments and methodology, is not being addressed at all.”
But if Loeb is right, we may soon have no choice but to wonder. Next month, on 18 February, the Perseverance rover will land on Mars to search for signs of life. Any evidence, even of ancient microbes, on our celestial neighbour would suggest that life is far more abundant than is generally accepted.
“We might learn much more in the coming year,” says Loeb. “So, let’s wait and see.”
L'étrange espace qui se trouve en dehors de notre système solaire
L'étrange espace qui se trouve en dehors de notre système solaire
Patchen Barss / BBC Future
Espace
CRÉDIT PHOTO,NASA/STSCI/AURA
Loin de l'étreinte protectrice du Soleil, le bord de notre système solaire semble être un endroit froid, vide et sombre. On a longtemps pensé que l'espace qui nous sépare des étoiles les plus proches est une vaste étendue de néant effrayante.
Jusqu'à récemment, c'était un endroit que l'humanité ne pouvait voir que de loin. Les astronomes n'y prêtaient qu'une attention passagère, préférant concentrer leurs télescopes sur les masses lumineuses de nos étoiles et galaxies voisines.
Mais depuis quelques années, deux vaisseaux spatiaux, construits et lancés dans les années 1970, nous renvoient nos premiers aperçus de cette étrange région que nous appelons l'espace interstellaire. Premiers objets fabriqués par l'homme à quitter notre système solaire, ils s'aventurent dans des territoires inexplorés, à des milliards de kilomètres de chez nous. Aucun autre vaisseau spatial n'a encore parcouru une telle distance.
Et ils ont révélé qu'au-delà des limites de notre système solaire se trouve une région invisible d'activité chaotique et moussante.
"Lorsque vous regardez différentes parties du spectre électromagnétique, cette région de l'espace est très différente de l'obscurité que nous percevons avec nos yeux", explique Michele Bannister, astronome à l'université de Canterbury à Christchurch, en Nouvelle-Zélande, qui étudie les confins du système solaire. "Les champs magnétiques se battent, se poussent et s'attachent les uns aux autres. L'image que vous devriez avoir est comme le bassin de plongée sous les chutes du Niagara".
NASA/HUBBLE
Des explosions comme celles des supernovae lancent des rayons cosmiques dans toutes les directions dans l'espace interstellaire
Cependant, au lieu de faire culbuter l'eau, la turbulence est le résultat du vent solaire - un flux constant et puissant de particules chargées, ou plasma, qui est projeté dans toutes les directions depuis le Soleil - lorsqu'il s'écrase sur un cocktail de gaz, de poussière et de rayons cosmiques qui souffle entre les systèmes stellaires, connu sous le nom de "milieu interstellaire".
Au cours du siècle dernier, les scientifiques ont pu se faire une idée de la composition du milieu interstellaire, en grande partie grâce à des observations effectuées à l'aide de radiotélescopes et de télescopes à rayons X. Ils ont révélé qu'il est composé d'atomes d'hydrogène ionisés extrêmement diffus, de poussière et de rayons cosmiques, entrecoupés de nuages moléculaires denses de gaz que l'on pense être le lieu de naissance de nouvelles étoiles.
Mais sa nature exacte, juste à l'extérieur de notre système solaire, est restée en grande partie un mystère, principalement parce que le Soleil, les huit planètes et un lointain disque de débris connu sous le nom de ceinture de Kuiper, sont tous contenus dans une bulle protectrice géante formée par le vent solaire, appelée héliosphère. Lorsque le Soleil et les planètes qui l'entourent se précipitent à travers la galaxie, cette bulle se heurte au milieu interstellaire comme un bouclier invisible, empêchant la majorité des rayons cosmiques nocifs et autres matériaux d'entrer.
Mais ses propriétés vitales rendent également plus difficile l'étude de ce qui se trouve au-delà de la bulle. Il est même difficile de déterminer sa taille et sa forme de l'intérieur.
"C'est comme si vous étiez à l'intérieur de votre maison et que vous vouliez savoir à quoi elle ressemble. Il faut aller dehors et jeter un coup d'œil pour vraiment savoir", explique Elena Provornikova, chercheuse postdoctorale au laboratoire de physique appliquée de l'université Johns Hopkins. "La seule façon d'avoir une idée est de voyager loin du Soleil, de regarder en arrière, et de prendre une image de l'extérieur de l'héliosphère".
Ce n'est pas une tâche facile. Comparé à l'ensemble de la Voie lactée, notre système solaire semble plus petit qu'un grain de riz flottant au milieu du Pacifique. Et pourtant, la limite extérieure de l'héliosphère est encore si lointaine qu'il a fallu plus de 40 ans aux vaisseaux Voyager 1 et Voyager 2 pour l'atteindre en provenance de la Terre.
Voyager 1, qui a emprunté une route plus directe à travers le système solaire, s'est évanoui dans l'espace interstellaire en 2012, avant que Voyager 2 ne le rejoigne en 2018. Actuellement à environ 13 milliards et 11 milliards de kilomètres de la Terre respectivement, ils dérivent maintenant, toujours plus loin dans l'espace au-delà de notre système solaire, en renvoyant plus de données comme ils le font.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH
Le vaisseau spatial Voyager, de la taille d'une voiture, a été lancé en 1977 et renvoie aujourd'hui des données depuis l'espace interstellaire
Ce que ces deux sondes vieillissantes ont révélé sur la frontière entre l'héliosphère et le milieu interstellaire a fourni de nouveaux indices sur la façon dont notre système solaire s'est formé, et comment la vie sur Terre est même possible. Loin d'être une frontière distincte, la limite même de notre système solaire est en fait le siège de champs magnétiques tourbillonnants, de tempêtes de vent stellaire, de tempêtes de particules de haute énergie et de radiations tourbillonnantes.
La taille et la forme de la bulle de l'héliosphère se modifient au fur et à mesure que la production du Soleil change et que nous traversons différentes régions du milieu interstellaire. Lorsque le vent solaire monte ou descend, il modifie la pression exercée sur la bulle vers l'extérieur.
En 2014, l'activité du Soleil a connu une forte hausse, envoyant ce qui équivalait à un ouragan de vent solaire dans l'espace. L'explosion a rapidement balayé Mercure et Vénus à près de 800 km par seconde (497 miles par seconde). Après deux jours et 150 millions de km, il a enveloppé la Terre. Heureusement, le champ magnétique de notre planète nous a protégés de son rayonnement puissant et dommageable.
La rafale a dépassé Mars un jour plus tard et a continué à travers la ceinture d'astéroïdes vers les géantes gazeuses lointaines - Jupiter, Saturne, Uranus et après plus de deux mois, Neptune, qui orbite à près de 4,5 milliards de km du Soleil.
A regarder :
Oubliez tout ce que vous pensiez savoir sur la formation des planètes
Après plus de six mois, le vent a finalement atteint un point situé à plus de 13 milliards de km du Soleil, connu sous le nom de "choc de terminaison". Ici, le champ magnétique du Soleil, qui propulse le vent solaire, devient suffisamment faible pour que le milieu interstellaire puisse le pousser contre lui.
La rafale de vent solaire issue du choc de terminaison se déplace à moins de la moitié de sa vitesse précédente - l'ouragan est alors déclassé en tempête tropicale. Puis, fin 2015, il a dépassé la forme irrégulière de Voyager 2, qui est à peu près de la taille d'une petite voiture. La surcharge de plasma a été détectée par les technologies de détection de Voyager, vieilles de 40 ans, alimentées par une batterie au plutonium se décomposant lentement.
La sonde a renvoyé des données vers la Terre, qui, même à la vitesse de la lumière, a mis 18 heures pour nous atteindre. Les astronomes ne pouvaient recevoir les informations de Voyager que grâce à un réseau massif d'antennes paraboliques de 70 mètres et à une technologie avancée qui n'avait pas été imaginée, et encore moins inventée, lorsque la sonde a quitté la Terre en 1977.
NASA
Le Soleil produit un barrage constant de particules à haute énergie, connu sous le nom de vent solaire, qui peut monter et descendre avec l'activité de notre étoile
La vague de vent solaire a atteint Voyager 2 alors qu'il était encore juste à l'intérieur de notre système solaire. Un peu plus d'un an plus tard, les derniers souffles du vent mourant ont atteint Voyager 1, qui avait traversé l'espace interstellaire en 2012.
Les différentes routes empruntées par les deux sondes signifiaient que l'une se trouvait à environ 30 degrés au-dessus du plan solaire, l'autre à la même hauteur en dessous. Le vent solaire a atteint les sondes dans différentes régions à différents moments, ce qui a fourni des indices utiles sur la nature de l'héliopause.
Les données ont révélé que la limite de turbulence est épaisse de plusieurs millions de kilomètres. Elle couvre des milliards de kilomètres carrés autour de la surface de l'héliosphère.
L'héliosphère est également d'une taille inattendue, ce qui suggère que le milieu interstellaire dans cette partie de la galaxie est moins dense que ce que l'on pensait. Le Soleil se fraye un chemin à travers l'espace interstellaire comme un bateau qui se déplace dans l'eau, créant une "vague de proue" et étirant un sillage derrière lui, éventuellement avec une (ou des) queue(s) de formes similaires à celles des comètes. Les deux voyageurs sont sortis par le "nez" de l'héliosphère, et n'ont donc fourni aucune information sur la queue.
"Selon les estimations des Voyagers, l'héliopause a une épaisseur d'environ une unité astronomique (93 millions de miles, soit la distance moyenne entre la Terre et le Soleil)", explique Mme Provornikova. "Ce n'est pas vraiment une surface. C'est une région avec des processus complexes. Et nous ne savons pas ce qui s'y passe".
Non seulement les vents solaires et interstellaires créent une turbulente lutte à la corde dans la région frontalière, mais les particules semblent échanger leurs charges et leur élan. En conséquence, une partie du milieu interstellaire se transforme en vent solaire, ce qui augmente la poussée de la bulle vers l'extérieur.
Et si une poussée de vent solaire peut fournir des données intéressantes, elle semble avoir un effet étonnamment faible sur la taille et la forme globale de la bulle. Il semble que ce qui se passe en dehors de l'héliosphère importe beaucoup plus que ce qui se passe à l'intérieur. Le vent solaire peut augmenter ou diminuer avec le temps sans avoir l'air d'affecter la bulle de façon dramatique. Mais si cette bulle se déplace dans une région de la galaxie où le vent interstellaire est plus ou moins dense, alors elle va se contracter ou croître.
Mais de nombreuses questions restent sans réponse, y compris celles qui concernent la nature exacte de notre bulle de vent solaire protecteur.
NASA
L'héliosphère du Soleil forme une longue queue lorsqu'il se fraye un chemin à travers le milieu interstellaire lors de son voyage autour de la galaxie
Selon Mme Provornikova, une meilleure compréhension de notre propre héliosphère peut nous permettre de mieux savoir si nous sommes seuls dans l'univers.
"Ce que nous étudions dans notre propre système nous renseignera sur les conditions de développement de la vie dans d'autres systèmes stellaires", dit-elle.
Cela est dû en grande partie au fait qu'en maintenant le milieu interstellaire à distance, le vent solaire empêche également un bombardement de radiations et de particules mortelles de haute énergie - comme les rayons cosmiques - provenant de l'espace lointain. Les rayons cosmiques sont des protons et des noyaux atomiques qui traversent l'espace à une vitesse proche de celle de la lumière. Ils peuvent être générés lorsque les étoiles explosent, lorsque les galaxies s'effondrent en trous noirs et lors d'autres événements cosmiques cataclysmiques. La région située à l'extérieur de notre système solaire est épaisse d'une pluie continue de ces particules subatomiques à grande vitesse, qui seraient assez puissantes pour provoquer un empoisonnement par radiation mortel sur une planète moins abritée.
"Voyager a définitivement dit que 90% de ces radiations sont filtrées par le Soleil", explique Jamie Rankin, chercheur en héliophysique à l'université de Princeton, et première personne à écrire une thèse de doctorat basée sur les données interstellaires des Voyager. "Si le vent solaire ne nous protégeait pas, je ne sais pas si nous serions en vie."
Trois autres sondes de la NASA rejoindront bientôt les Voyagers dans l'espace interstellaire, bien que deux d'entre elles soient déjà à court d'énergie et aient cessé de renvoyer des données. Ces quelques minuscules piqûres dans la frontière géante ne fourniront jamais que des informations limitées par elles-mêmes. Heureusement, des observations plus étendues peuvent être faites plus près de chez nous.
L'International Boundary Explorer (Ibex) de la NASA, un minuscule satellite en orbite autour de la Terre depuis 2008, détecte des particules appelées "atomes neutres énergétiques" qui traversent la frontière interstellaire. Ibex crée des cartes en trois dimensions des interactions qui se produisent tout autour de la bordure de l'héliosphère.
NASA
La mission Ibex a détecté un ruban d'atomes à haute énergie qui sont réfléchis par le champ magnétique galactique depuis le bord de l'héliosphère
On peut considérer les cartes des Ibex comme une sorte de "radar Doppler" et les Voyagers comme des stations météo sur le terrain", dit Rankin. Elle a utilisé les données des Voyagers, des Ibex et d'autres sources pour analyser les petites poussées du vent solaire, et travaille actuellement sur un document basé sur l'explosion beaucoup plus importante qui a commencé en 2014. Déjà, les preuves montrent que l'héliosphère se rétrécissait lorsque Voyager 1 a franchi la frontière, mais qu'elle s'étendait à nouveau lorsque Voyager 2 a traversé.
"C'est une frontière assez dynamique", dit-elle. "C'est assez étonnant que cette découverte ait été saisie dans les cartes 3D d'Ibex, qui nous ont permis de suivre les réactions locales des Voyagers en même temps."
Ibex a révélé à quel point la frontière peut être dynamique. Dès la première année, il a détecté un ruban géant d'atomes énergétiques qui serpentait à travers la frontière et qui changeait au fil du temps, avec des caractéristiques qui apparaissaient et disparaissaient en six mois seulement. Le ruban s'avère être une région au nez de l'héliosphère où les particules du vent solaire rebondissent sur le champ magnétique galactique et sont réfléchies dans le système solaire.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/GSFC
Lorsque Voyager 2 a quitté le système solaire, il a détecté un pic spectaculaire des rayons cosmiques dont l'héliosphère nous protège
Mais il y a un rebondissement dans l'histoire du Voyager. Bien qu'ils aient quitté l'héliosphère, ils sont encore à portée de beaucoup d'autres influences de notre Soleil. La lumière du Soleil, par exemple, serait visible à l'œil nu depuis d'autres étoiles. La gravité de notre étoile s'étend également bien au-delà de l'héliosphère, maintenant en place une sphère lointaine et éparse de glace, de poussière et de débris spatiaux, connue sous le nom de nuage de Oort.
Les objets de Oort sont toujours en orbite autour du Soleil, même s'ils flottent loin dans l'espace interstellaire. Alors que certaines comètes ont des orbites qui s'étendent jusqu'au nuage de Oort, une région de 186 à 930 milliards de miles (300 à 1500 milliards de km) est généralement considérée comme trop éloignée pour que nous puissions y envoyer nos propres sondes.
Ces objets éloignés ont à peine changé depuis le début du système solaire et peuvent être la clé de tout, de la formation des planètes à la probabilité que la vie se développe dans notre univers. Et avec chaque vague de nouvelles données, de nouveaux mystères et de nouvelles questions émergent également.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH
Voyager 1 a traversé l'espace interstellaire en 2012 100 unités astronomiques depuis le Soleil mais il a toujours le vaste nuage de Oort devant lui
Selon Mme Provornikova, il pourrait y avoir une couverture d'hydrogène couvrant une partie ou la totalité de l'héliosphère, dont les effets n'ont pas encore été décryptés. En outre, l'héliosphère semble se transformer en un nuage interstellaire de particules et de poussières, vestiges d'anciens événements cosmiques dont les effets sur la frontière - et sur ceux d'entre nous qui y vivent - n'ont pas été prédits.
"Cela pourrait changer les dimensions de l'héliosphère, elle pourrait changer sa forme", dit Mme Provornikova. "Elle pourrait avoir des températures différentes, des champs magnétiques différents, une ionisation différente et tous ces paramètres différents. C'est très excitant parce que c'est un domaine qui a fait l'objet de nombreuses découvertes, et nous en savons si peu sur cette interaction entre notre étoile et la galaxie locale".
Quoi qu'il arrive, deux assortiments de métal de la taille d'une voiture, boulonnés à de petites boîtes paraboliques - les intrépides sondes Voyager - seront l'avant-garde de notre système solaire, révélant toujours plus de choses sur ce territoire étrange et inexploré alors que nous avançons dans l'espace.
VIDÉOS LIÉES, sélectionnées et publiées par peter2011
Real UFO Appears On Live TV On A Huge Screen And The Presenter Is Stunned
Real UFO Appears On Live TV On A Huge Screen And The Presenter Is Stunned
This is what Argentinians call a real Ovni (UFO) sighting as it appears on Live TV on the news channel. Ovni if you don't know, means UFO. (Please stay at home).
You can hear the news reporter (male) saying Ovni, Ovni. The female news reader is the first one to actually point out the Ovni (which means UFO in Spanish) and she then enthusiastically starts pointing to it. The TV screen is so big, she's literally climbing on the screen pointing at it enthusiastically - so you cannot miss it.
This is the moment when the female news reporter notices the UFO:
The UFO is metallic and it's a sphere. The Ovni is hovering but then it starts to drift or fly away to the left of the screen and what a big screen that it so we get to see this UFO in detail.
If it was a "normal everyday screen" this probably wouldn't of been picked up (maybe) as it would probably be a bit to small to see?
Instinctively she points to it:
But it's a great encounter as it is Live TV in Argentina "on the news" and these are the best ones just like NASA's Live TV but the difference between both is that the NASA cut the Live feed - whereas the camera crew on the news just point and shout Ovni, Ovni.
This is what you'd expect NASA to do and zoom in, have a scientist on stand by to give us a quick analysis of the sight to behold - but instead they cut the feed and make contact on every known channel all by themselves in secrecy and every known frequency is used to get contact with the Alien occupants, hoping for a response. Here is the amazing UFO Ovni for all to see on Live TV:
That's what NASA does, you think the UFO goes away when they cut the feed, no it doesn't. It docks with the ISS as that's where the Live feed is usually and they have a cup of English tea. Maybe they have a scone or a rich tea biscuit. Who knows what they do after the cameras are cut is what I mean. The news crew acted very typical of a surprised people, they acted correct and that's why I know this wasn't scripted. You really see the surprise especially with the woman. I know if it's Live TV then someone could literally have a drone on stand by and fly it in to the shot once it is definitely on the telly right then. The video to the amazing daytime UFO encounter on Live TV over Argentina:
But that's highly unlikely as well, it's just improbable as I don't know of any instances of this ever happening and I've done a lot of research? If you know of a staged UFO sighting on Live TV please share it us here at USF, thank you. NASA should take a lesson from this and at least inspect the strange UFOs or zoom in and talk about the anomaly in the screen, instead of turning the screen off. It's almost like you can hear them say "nothing to see here, move along".
Please be safe in these troubling times. Especially the vulnerable people and the elderly people who are most at risk of the virus. I wish you, our loyal fans and followers a very, very safe time. Be with family and friends, stay at home and let's all get the time to reflect on the situation that's facing all of the world? We will always be a strong human race, no matter what happens. Source
Cette exoplanète « barbe à papa » remet en question les conceptions des astronomes
Cette exoplanète « barbe à papa » remet en question les conceptions des astronomes
Nathalie Mayer / Journaliste
[EN VIDÉO] Interview : les exoplanètes sont-elles habitées ?Il pourrait y avoir au moins 100 milliards de planètes simplement dans notre galaxie. Difficile d’imaginer qu’aucune ne puisse abriter la vie. Le Cnes a interviewé Michel Viso, responsable des programmes d’exobiologie, afin qu’il nous parle des conditions d'apparition de la vie dans l'univers.
En observant notre Système solaire, les astronomes se sont fait une idée de la manière dont les planètes se forment. Ainsi, pensaient-ils, les planètes géantes doivent s'appuyer sur un cœur solide relativement massif. Pensaient-ils... car des observations réalisées sur une exoplanète baptisée Wasp-107b viennent aujourd'hui remettre cette conclusion en question.
Rappelons que Wasp-107b est une planète atypique. Elle a été découverte en 2017, à environ 212 années-lumière de notre Terre, dans la constellation de la Vierge. Elle est presque aussi grande que Jupiter, mais sa masse est largement inférieure. Wasp-107b est ce que les astronomes appellent une planète « barbe à papa ». Et son orbite est par ailleurs proche de son étoile, seize fois plus que notre Terre l'est du Soleil. Elle en fait le tour en 5,7 de nos jours seulement. Si bien qu'elle a du mal à retenir son atmosphère.
Grâce aux données obtenues à l'observatoire Keck (Hawaï), les chercheurs de l'université de Montréal ont pu mesurer avec précision le mouvement d'oscillation de son étoile hôte en raison de l'attraction gravitationnelle de Wasp-107b. Ils ont ainsi établi sa masse à environ le dixième de celle de Jupiter.
Un noyau incroyablement peu massif
Les astronomes ont ensuite effectué une analyse pour déterminer la structure interne de la planète. Leur conclusion : la masse du noyau solide de Wasp-107b ne doit pas dépasser quatre fois celle de la Terre. Ainsi donc, plus de 85 % de la masse de la planète se situerait dans l'épaisse couche de gaz qui entoure ce noyau. C'est étonnant. Car il faut savoir que Neptune, par exemple -- dont la masse se rapproche de celle de Wasp-107b -- ne présente pas plus de 15 % de sa masse dans cette couche de gaz.
Jusqu'ici, les chercheurs pensaient qu'un noyau relativement massif était indispensable à la formation de géantes gazeuses. Une condition sans laquelle la planète ne pourrait pas retenir autant de couches de gaz. Mais cette découverte concernant Wasp-107b laisse penser que les planètes géantes se forment beaucoup plus facilement que ne le pensaient les astronomes. Celle-ci en particulier pourrait s'être formée à distance de son étoile -- où le gaz est suffisamment froid pour faciliter l'accrétion -- avant de migrer jusqu'à sa position actuelle.
Le saviez-vous ?
Les chercheurs ont également découvert une compagne à Wasp-107b : Wasp-107c. Sa masse est le tiers de celle de Jupiter et elle fait le tour de son étoile en trois de nos années. Sur une orbite particulièrement excentrique qui laisse supposer un passé chaotique. Et conforte l’idée d’une migration de Wasp-107b vers son étoile hôte.
D'autres questions restent encore en suspens concernant Wasp-107b. L'atmosphère de ce type de planète, par exemple, devrait être riche en méthane. Or les observations deHubble, réalisées en 2018, semblent montrer le contraire. Les chercheurs comptent désormais analyser de nouveau ces résultats à la lumière de leurs nouvelles conclusions concernant la répartition de la masse de l'exoplanète. Et peut-être découvrir quel mécanisme pourrait expliquer une telle destruction de méthane.
VIDÉOS LIÉES, sélectionnées et publiées par peter2011
A redshift reveals how an object is moving in space and enables astronomers to discover otherwise-invisible planets and the movements of galaxies, and to uncover the beginnings of our universe.
Astronomers use redshifts to measure how the universe is expanding, and thus to determine the distance to our universe’s most distant (and therefore oldest) objects. What is a redshift? It’s often compared to the high-pitched whine of an ambulance siren coming at you, which drops in pitch as the ambulance moves past you and then away from you. That change in the sound of an ambulance is due to what’s called the Doppler effect. It’s a good comparison because both sound and light travel in waves, which are affected by their movement through air and space.
Sound can only move so fast through the air; sound travels at about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) per hour. As an ambulance races forward and blares its siren, the sound waves in front of the ambulance get squished together. Meanwhile, the sound waves behind the ambulance get spread out. This means the frequency of the sound waves is higher ahead of the ambulance (more sound waves will strike a listener’s ear, over a set amount of time) and lower behind it (fewer sound waves will strike a listener’s ear, over a set amount of time). Our brains interpret changes in the frequency of sound waves as changes in pitch.
Like sound, light is also a wave traveling at a fixed speed: 186,000 miles (300,000 km) per second, or some one billion kilometers per hour. Light, therefore, plays by similar rules as sound.
But, in the case of light, we perceive changes in wave frequency as changes in color, not changes in pitch.
As a vehicle moves, sound waves in front of it get squished up while those behind get spread out. This changes the perceived frequency and we hear the pitch change as the vehicle goes by.
Credit: Wikipedia
Similar to sounds from a moving vehicle, as a star moves away from us, the light becomes redder. As it moves towards us, the light becomes bluer.
Image via Wikipedia.
For example, if a lightbulb were to move very rapidly through space, the light would appear blue as it approaches you and then become red after it passes. Measuring such slight changes in the frequency of light lets astronomers measure the speed – and therefore the distance – of everything in the universe! That’s true because the faster an object moves away from us, the farther away it is.
Thus, in our expanding universe, a measurement of speed translates to a measurement of distance.
Here’s a recent example. Astronomers said in early January 2020 that the most distant quasar known at this time – quasar J0313-1806 – has a record-setting redshift of z = 7.64. In accordance with astronomers’ interpretations of redshift, we’re seeing quasar J0313-1806 – a highly luminous galaxy nucleus in the early universe, thought to be powered by a supermassive black hole – just 670 million years after the Big Bang, or more than 13 billion light-years away.
Or consider an even more distant object, not a very bright quasar, but instead just a regular galaxy in the early universe. GN-z11 is a high-redshift galaxy found in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. GN-z11 is currently the oldest and most distant known galaxy in the observable universe, with a redshift of z = 11.09. That redshift corresponds to a distance of 13.4 billion light-years. So we see this object as it existed 13.4 billion years ago, just 400 million years after the Big Bang.
The object in the inset is currently the most distant known galaxy, called GN-z11. Its name is derived from its location in the GOODS-North field of galaxies – captured by the Hubble Space Telescope – and its high cosmological redshift number (GN + z11). It’s thought this galaxy will remain the most distant galaxy known until the James Webb Space Telescope is launched, hopefully in late 2021, and begins observing at even greater distances.
Of course, making these measurements is a bit trickier than just saying “that star looks redder than it should be.” Instead, astronomers make use of markers in the spectrum of starlight. This is the study of spectroscopy. If you shine a flashlight beam through a prism, a rainbow comes out the other side. But if you place a clear container filled with hydrogen gas between the flashlight and the prism, gaps appear in the smooth rainbow of colors, places where the light literally goes missing.
The dark absorption lines of a star at rest (left) get shifted towards red if the star is moving away from Earth (right).
Image via Wikipedia.
The hydrogen atoms are tuned to absorb very specific frequencies of light. When a beam of light consisting of many colors passes through the gas, those frequencies get removed – absorbed – from the beam. The rainbow becomes littered with what astronomers call absorption lines. Replace the hydrogen with helium, and you get a completely different pattern of absorption lines. Every atom and molecule has a distinct absorption fingerprint that allows astronomers to tease out the chemical makeup of distant stars and galaxies.
When we pass starlight through a prism (or similar device suitable for telescopes, such as diffraction gratings), we see a forest of absorption lines from hydrogen, helium, sodium, and so on. However, if that star is hurtling away from us, all those absorption lines undergo a Doppler shift and move toward the red part of the rainbow. This is what we call a redshift. For stars heading toward us, the opposite happens, and the lines are shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum; they are blueshifted (generally, astronomers only use the term redshift to simplify things, and just put a negative sign in front of it if it’s a blueshift).
By measuring how far away the lines are located from where they’re supposed to be in the spectrum, astronomers can calculate the speed of a star or a galaxy relative to Earth, and even how a galaxy rotates: by measuring a different redshift for one side of the galaxy compared to the other, you can see which side is moving away from you and which side is moving toward you.
With this tool, the motion of the universe is revealed and a host of new questions can be investigated.
And galaxies aren’t the only things that can be investigated with redshifts. Astronomers have learned to tease out the subtle tug of a distant planet on its parent star, thus revealing the planet to astronomers. If a star in our Milky Way galaxy has a hidden planet – and if astronomers see that the star sometimes exhibits a slight redshift and other times a slight blueshift – the astronomers infer that star is alternating between moving toward and away from us. They refer to this movement as a “wobble” of the star in space. Something must be pulling on the star, causing it to wobble. By measuring how far the absorption lines shift, an astronomer can determine the mass of the invisible companion and its distance from the star, and come to the conclusion that a planet is in orbit around the star!
As a planet orbits a star, it tugs the star back and forth with tiny movements. Astronomers see the star wobbling as an alternating red and blueshift of its spectrum.
Image via ESO.
In addition to finding other worlds, redshifts also led to one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century. In the 1910s, astronomers at Lowell Observatory and elsewhere noticed that the light from nearly every galaxy was redshifted: most galaxies in the universe were racing away from us! A Belgian scientist, Georges Lemaître, who was also a priest, recognized that the recession velocities of the galaxies could be explained by a startling truth: the universe is expanding! In 1929, American astronomer Edwin Hubble matched up redshifts with distance estimates to the galaxies and uncovered something remarkable: the farther away a galaxy, the faster it’s receding. This relation, the Hubble law, was renamed in 2018 by the International Astronomical Union to the Hubble–Lemaître law.
What came to be known as the cosmological redshift was the first piece of the Big Bang theory, and ultimately a description of the origin of our universe.
The list of the most distant astronomical objects is always changing as astronomers find higher and higher redshifted objects on the brink of the observable universe. Galaxies, quasars and even gamma-ray bursts travel for eons across the cosmos, delivering their faint red light, and revealing a little more of the secrets of the universe.
Edwin Hubble and colleagues found a correlation between distance to a galaxy (horizontal axis) and how quickly it’s moving away from Earth (vertical axis). The movement of galaxies in a nearby cluster adds some “noise” to this plot.
Image via William C. Keel/ Wikipedia.
Bottom line: A redshift reveals how an object in space (star/planet/galaxy) is moving compared to us. It lets astronomers measure a distance for the most distant (and therefore oldest) objects in our universe.
SATURN'S MOON RHEA HAS A MYSTERIOUS MATERIAL ON ITS SURFACE
SATURN'S MOON RHEA HAS A MYSTERIOUS MATERIAL ON ITS SURFACE
A NEW STUDY REVEALS A CURIOUS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SATURN'S MOON RHEA AND ITS NEIGHBOR, TITAN.
THE SECOND LARGEST
planet of the Solar System, Saturn is adorned by icy rings and orbited by a veritable swarm of some 80 moons.
These satellites have their own unique properties, some so unusual and intriguing that they stand out from other lunar bodies found throughout the Solar System, including our own natural companion, the Moon.
One of these strange celestial bodies is Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea. The moon may be a cold, airless object, but it also possesses three narrow, dense rings — a mirror of its host planet. These rings are the first ever discovered around a moon. Rhea's unique features do not end there, however — previous spectroscopy studies had hinted at an unidentifiable substance on the moon's surface.
And now, old Cassini data may resolve this longstanding lunar mystery.
The new findings are detailed in a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
HERE'S THE BACKGROUND
Rhea is the second largest moon in orbit around Saturn — with a radius spanning 475 miles. The moon is tidally locked around Saturn, meaning that one side of Rhea constantly faces the large planet. It completes an entire orbit of the gas giant in 4.5 Earth days.
Rhea is a cold, harsh world. Its temperatures range from -281 degrees Fahrenheit on sunlit areas, to -364 degrees Fahrenheit on its dark side. In keeping with the cool temperatures, the moon is largely made up of water ice.
The mystery of Rhea's surface began decades ago, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew by Rhea as part of its mission to explore Saturn and its moons. Cassini performed a spectrographic analysis, collecting ultraviolet imaging data of the moon and its chemical make-up, confirming that its surface was made up of ice. But the data also showed evidence of an unidentifiable material.
A 3D model of Saturn's moon, Rhea, made by the NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development.
HOW THEY DID IT
Bhalamurugan Sivaraman is an associate professor at the Physical Research Laboratory in India and co-author of the new study. He tells Inverse his team sought to investigate the chemical nature of this mysterious signal. To do that, the team turned back to the original Cassini data.
"We used data from the Cassini archive in order to understand exactly what's going on," Sivaraman says.
The team reanalyzed the data collected by one of Cassini's Rhea flybys, and ran experiments here on Earth to see if they could identify the chemical make-up of the molecules which produced the unknown absorption band.
The team behind the new study analyzed the data collected by Cassini's Rhea flyby, and ran lab experiments to test out different molecules and see which one would have produced the unknown signal.
Cassini detected an unidentifiable wavelength coming from Rhea, which scientists could not previously explain.Elowitz et. al
WHAT THEY FOUND
By running through possible candidates, the researchers eventually hit on the likely culprit: Hydrazine. This is the first time the compound has ever been detected on a moon, according to the study.
"When we did the experiment for hydrazine, it was a match," Sivaraman says.
Hydrazine is an inorganic compound, a colorless liquid with the same pungent smell as ammonia. Here on Earth, it is used in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and as a propellant for spacecraft.
To understand where the hydrazine could've come from, Sivaraman and his colleagues essentially tried to recreate Rhea's surface conditions in the lab.
Curiously, these simulations suggest Rhea's lunar neighbor, Titan, Saturn's largest moon, may be have to do with the presence of hydrazine. Titan may be emitting nitrogen molecules towards Rhea, which would then interact with the radiation on the moon to convert nitrogen into hydrazine, the researchers suggest.
This kind of interaction between two moons is a rarity in our Solar System. But considering how large Titan is, it is likely the moon would exert some influence over its surrounding objects, Sivaraman explains.
The cratered plains of Saturn's moon Rhea are visible in this image obtained by NASA's Cassinispacecraft on Nov. 21, 2009.
Considering this is the first detection of hydrazine on a moon, the team behind the study want to further observe other moons to see if hydrazine forms anywhere else in the Solar System. They also suspect there may be more as-yet unknown chemistry waiting to be discovered, too.
"This particular work helps us identify another molecule, which we didn’t know existed before," Sivaraman says.
"We would like to look for molecules that are being absorbed in other wavelengths as well."
Abstract:
We present the first analysis of far-ultraviolet reflectance spectra of regions on Rhea’s leading and trailing hemispheres collected by the Cassini Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph during targeted flybys. In particular, we aim to explain the unidentified broad absorption feature centred near 184 nm. We have used laboratory measurements of the UV spectroscopy of a set of candidate molecules and found a good fit to Rhea’s spectra with both hydrazine monohydrate and several chlorine-containing molecules. Given the radiation-dominated chemistry on the surface of icy satellites embedded within their planets’ magnetospheres, hydrazine monohydrate is argued to be the most plausible candidate for explaining the absorption feature at 184 nm. Hydrazine was also used as a propellant in Cassini’s thrusters, but the thrusters were not used during icy satellite flybys and thus the signal is believed to not arise from spacecraft fuel. We discuss how hydrazine monohydrate may be chemically produced on icy surfaces.
RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
NASA's cassini spacecraft has discovered oxygen and carbon dioxide on Saturn's moon Rhea. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected a very tenuous atmosphere known as an exosphere, infused with oxygen and carbon dioxide around Saturn's icy moon Rhea. This is the first time a spacecraft has directly captured molecules of an oxygen atmosphere -- albeit a very thin one -- at a world other than Earth.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
