Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
23-02-2021
NASA verspreidt eerste videobeelden na landing Marsverkenner
NASA verspreidt eerste videobeelden na landing Marsverkenner
Enkele dagen geleden landde de NASA-robot Perseverance op Mars. Geen simpele klus, want voordat de robot er kon landen moest deze “7 minutes of terror” doorstaan. Vandaag heeft het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap NASA de beelden van deze landing vrijgegeven.
De Marsrobot is uitgerust met in totaal 19 camera’s waarvan drie camera’s beelden van de landing moesten maken. Eentje stopte met werken, maar de overige twee slaagden er gelukkig wel in om de landing te filmen. “Deze beelden komen het dichtst bij Mars zonder een ruimtepak aan te moeten trekken."
Video
Het resultaat ziet er ietwat surrealistisch uit, alsof het om een of andere filmscène gaat. In werkelijkheid wordt de oppervlakte van Mars getoond. De iets meer dan drie minuten durende video begint met het uitklappen van het gigantische supersonische valscherm en toont dan, vanuit meerdere hoeken, hoe de robotjeep naar het Marsoppervlak afdaalt en daarbij het hitteschild afwerpt.
Zodra de robot zo'n 20 meter verwijderd is van de rode planeet, gaat het er plots wat ruiger aan toe. Zo zien we het gruis opwaaien door de stuwraketten. Uiteindelijk is te zien hoe de Perseverance zich via een katrolsysteem van de landingsmodule naar de grond liet zakken, gevolgd door de landing zelf. “Landing bevestigd”, luidt het dan, waarna gejubel bij de vluchtleiding losbarst.
Er is ondertussen ook een filmpje waarop een camera een panoramisch overzicht van 360 graden van de landinsplaats in de Jezerokrater maakt.
Hoewel de robot ook is uitgerust met een microfoon, kon er helaas geen audiomateriaal van de landing worden verzameld. Zodra Perseverance was geland, werd er wél geluid opgenomen door een tweede microfoon. “Je hoort hoe de wind klinkt op Mars", aldus een van de ingenieurs.
Missie
Volgens de ingenieurs verkeert de Marsverkenner in goede gezondheid. De Perseverance zal onder andere bodemstalen nemen op Mars, die vervolgens onderzocht worden op mogelijk leven, zowel nu als in het verleden.
These four screenshots taken from the NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover video that was shared to Twitter shows the rover landing on the Red Planet on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021.
(NASA)
NASA's composite image produced from photos captured on Feb. 20, 2021, shows the the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. Two days after its historic landing.
Bijna 14 kilogram zware meteoriet aangetroffen in Zweden
Twee geologen hebben in Zweden een bijna 14 kilo zware ijzermeteoriet aangetroffen. Het Naturhistoriska riksmuseet, het natuurhistorisch museum van Stockholm, zegt dat het vermoedelijk om het grootste stuk gaat van de meteorieteninslag van 7 november.
De vondst gebeurde in de buurt van de stad Enköping, zowat 65 km ten noordwesten van de hoofdstad, en de meteoriet werd intussen overgedragen aan het museum. Volgens het museum is het de eerste keer in meer dan 60 jaar dat een neergestorte meteoriet gevonden werd in Zweden.
Op 7 november hadden vele Zweden een vuurbal gespot die de hemel zowat drie seconden had verlicht. Astronoom Eric Stempels, van de universiteit van Uppsala berekende toen al waar de meteoriet ongeveer neergestort moet zijn.
De afgelopen weken werden al kleinere fragmenten van deze ijzermeteoriet gevonden. Het stuk dat nu werd gevonden is goed 30 centimeter lang en is waarschijnlijk het grootste reststuk van het hemellichaam. Toen het onze atmosfeer binnenkwam moet dat, volgens Stempels, zowat negen ton zwaar geweest zijn.
Vermoed wordt dat in de buurt nog meer kleinere onderdelen van de meteoriet liggen.
60 Year Mission: What We’ve Learned So Far About Mars
60 Year Mission: What We’ve Learned So Far About Mars
Over the past 60 years, both the United States and the USSR have launched various missions to observe and explore the planet Mars. These have included fly-by missions by spacecraft, and also landers and rovers sent from Earth.In recent years, ground missions by NASA have yielded an incredible trove of knowledge about the Martian system.
The following presentation by PBS chronicles some of the pivotal pieces photographic evidence gathered by these missions, and charts the trajectory of our learning curve of the habitat and origins of Mars. Watch:
In total, there have now been five successful rover missions on the surface of Mars, Sojourner (1997), Opportunity (2004), Spirit (2004), Curiosity (2012), and the latest, Perseverance, landing on February 18th of this year. These missions have enabled scientists to learn about the ancient environment of the Red Planet, including a deeper understanding of its geological and water history.Watch:
Electromagnetic & Frequency Weapons Are Being Used In America
Electromagnetic & Frequency Weapons Are Being Used In America
Electromagnetic & Frequency Weapons Are Being Used In America
Lots going on across this earth and nobody is being arrested but US Citizens, Veterans, Preppers, and people who stand for the Constitution- Whose in Jail?? Which Hundreds of Politicians and others of Public Office and Corrupted Service?
Just when is anything supposed to show indications of a change for the better of humanity. Looks like to me it’s just a ‘stall’ so they can get more 5G Towers built for their assault on the people of the North American Continent.
The Dinosaur Deception Exposed And Evolution Debunked. Must See Videos!
The Dinosaur Deception Exposed And Evolution Debunked. Must See Videos!
EVOLUTION AND DINOSAURS DEBUNKED
Do you believe that your father was an ape, your grand-father was a reptile, and your great grand-father was an explosion? For those who don’t believe such pseudo-scientific non-sense (and for those who do), the following presentation lays out the undeniable proof that you are NOT some slowly evolved ape-man and that prehistoric giant reptiles are nothing but a Freemasonic hoax used to bolster this destructive disempowering atheistic nihilistic paradigm they are propagating to the masses.
Evolution and Dinosaurs Debunked along with my other documentaries, The Earth Plane, The History of Flat Earth, and 200 Proofs Earth is Not a Spinning Ball are now available to purchase from Amazon on DVD or you can watch them all free on my YouTube channel.
The Mars Helicopter is Online and Getting Ready to Fly
The Mars Helicopter is Online and Getting Ready to Fly
Earth is the only planet in the solar system with aircraft capable of sustained flight. Suppose the ground-breaking Ingenuity helicopter, currently stowed aboard the similarly spectacular Mars Perseverance rover, accomplishes its planned mission. In that case, Mars will become the second planet to have a powered aircraft fly through its atmosphere.
Ingenuity has sent its first status report since landing on Mars. The signal, which arrived via the iconic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), reports on the state of the batteries of the helicopter as well as the operation of the base station, which, among other things, operates the critically important heaters that keep the electronics within an acceptable temperature range. Thankfully, it’s all good news for now, with the batteries and base station operating as expected.
Artist’s impression of Ingenuity flying above Mars with the Perseverance rover seen in the background. Credit NASA/JPL–Caltech
While Ingenuity still hasn’t performed a flight yet (hopefully, this becomes an outdated statement soon), the helicopter has already overcome some daunting challenges. Perhaps the most perilous portion of Ingenuity’s journey was the interplanetary trip from Earth to Mars as part of the larger Perseverance rover mission. Launched in July of 2020, Perseverance touched down at Jezero Crater on Mars on February 18th. A new high-resolution video of the spectacular sky-crane landing of Perseverance was released by NASA earlier today and is mind-blowing all on its own.
Perseverance is lowered from the ‘sky-crane’ onto the surface of Mars. Note that this is NOT an artist’s impression, but an actually photograph from the February 18th landing. Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech
It is easy to overlook how challenging landing on Mars is. The alarming fact of the matter is that only about half of Mars missions have made it successfully! One of the main reasons for this is the density of the Martian atmosphere. Thankfully, riding strapped to the belly of the rover, Ingenuity survived the perilous descent from space.
One of the most significant obstacles for landing on Mars will continue to present problems for our heroic helicopter now that it is safely on the surface. The atmospheric pressure on the surface of Mars is only about 1% that of Earth. To put that in perspective, the summit of Mount Everest has only one-third the atmospheric pressure of sea level. While this is thought to be at (or sadly in some cases beyond) the limit of what humans can survive, it is well beyond Earthbound helicopters’ range. If you’ve ever wondered why wealthy explorer-types don’t just cheat and take a helicopter to the summit of Everest, that’s why!
Compared to Mars, the air on Everest might as well be pea soup. The ridiculously rarefied air on Mars makes helicopter flight extraordinarily challenging. Ingenuity will spin its two counter-rotating rotors five times faster than Earthly helicopters, about forty times per second. Ingenuity is also light, only about 1.8 kilograms. The rotors are about 1.2 meters in diameter and are relatively oversized to maximize lift.
Mars does give Ingenuity a break in one area, thankfully. Mars has only about one-third of the surface gravity of the Earth. If you were to hold the aircraft while standing on the Earth, it would feel roughly as heavy as a two-liter bottle (with a couple of sips taken out for luck). On Mars, the exact same aircraft would feel like a 20 oz bottle (591 milliliters).
NASA/JPL video about the Ingenuity helicopter mission
The helicopter does not play a critical role in the science mission of Perseverance. It is essentially a technological demonstration or proof-of-concept, and data collected from Ingenuity will be used in engineering future Martian aircraft. It is solar-powered and features electronics that have been miniaturized to keep everything light enough for flight.
Ingenuity is also fully autonomous. Due to the extreme distance of Mars, the helicopter mission controllers can’t fly the aircraft in realtime the way Earthly drone-pilots can use joysticks to maneuver at home. The time it takes for a signal to travel from Earth to Mars is longer than the helicopter’s entire flight-time! Imagine if you were driving a car (on a closed course in your imagination only), and when you turned the wheel, the car ran out of gas before it registered your input!
Ingenuity depicted in front of the Mars Perseverance rover. Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech
If Ingenuity successfully demonstrates powered aerodynamic flight on Mars, it will be a milestone unlike any that has come before. One can only imagine the impact that flying Mars explorers could have on future missions. A future helicopter could be partnered with a larger rover and act as a scout, carefully surveying the terrain and helping the parent rover more efficiently plot a safe and scientifically interesting course. Perhaps a helicopter could pick up samples from a wide area and deliver them to a rover or stationary facility with highly sophisticated scientific instrumentation. Even a standalone helicopter mission could be conceived. There are plenty of cliffs, ice caps, volcanoes, or otherwise inaccessible parts of the Martian landscape that are likely permanently beyond the reach of ground-based rovers or even humans.
The coming weeks will be one of the most exciting periods for fans of space exploration, aviation, or anybody who is stirred by extraordinary accomplishments in engineering and, of course, the ingenuity of the brilliant scientists and engineers that built Ingenuity.
There’s Evidence That Mars Once Had an Atmosphere With Less Oxygen. A Possible Biosignature For Life?
There’s Evidence That Mars Once Had an Atmosphere With Less Oxygen. A Possible Biosignature For Life?
Remote sensing is only useful if scientists have an idea of what they are looking at. That knowledge is especially important for remote sensing applications on other planets, such as Mars, where it is extraordinarily difficult to collect information about an observed object in any other way. To make up for the lack of ability to perform other tests in situ, scientists set up laboratory experiments with different environments and materials and compare the remote sensing data with the observed remote objects.
That is exactly what Jiacheng Liu, a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong, did with remote sensing data from the surface of Mars. What he found gave new weight to a novel theory – that Mars didn’t used to have a significant amount of oxygen in its atmosphere. The fact that it does now prompts the question of where all the oxygen that exists in the atmosphere today came from. One possible answer is the same place it came from on Earth – photosynthetic life.
UT Video discussing the Martian atmosphere.
Mars is commonly called the “red planet” because most of its surface is covered in iron oxide, commonly referred to as rust, which has a red hue. Not all parts of the planets are red though – there are some volcanic rocks that do not contain much iron, and are therefore not subject to the oxidizing reaction that blankets so much of the rest of the planet.
Those same volcanic rocks are also insightful windows into the atmospheric chemistry of Mars that isn’t affected by oxygen. Dr. Liu discovered that the evolution of basalt and other minerals found on Hainan Island in Southwest China were good proxies for the exposed volcanic rock found on Mars.
Remote sensing image showing the clays, including iron-rich ones that have not been oxidized, that were only recently exposed to the Martian atmosphere. Credit: University of Hong Kong
Importantly, that exposed rock on Mars was old, and would have last interacted with the Martian atmosphere billions of years ago. Its structure showed that it was last exposed to an environment that did not contain much oxygen, as the iron contained in the rocks was not yet oxidized.
Such a low oxygen environment was present on Earth as well billions of years ago. Then, approximately 2.5 billion years ago, a switch to an oxygen-rich atmosphere took place called the Great Oxidation Event. Scientists believe the impetus for this transition was multicellular life performing photosynthesis and replenishing oxygen in the atmosphere, as it was also being captured in iron oxide as well.
Image taken by the Viking 1 orbiter in June 1976, showing Mars thin atmosphere and dusty, red surface. Credits: NASA/Viking 1
So far, there has been no such explanation for what caused Mars’ atmosphere to gain so much oxygen. There are non-biological processes that could be responsible for such a transition. But it does open the tantalizing possibility that, long ago, when Mars was warmer and wetter, it underwent an explosion of life that caused it’s atmosphere to change to what it is today. As with so much other science, more data is needed though, as “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
UFO During Sunset Over Cairns, Australia On Feb 22, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
UFO During Sunset Over Cairns, Australia On Feb 22, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Close Up Has Contrast and Shadow Added To Bring Out True Detail of the UFO.
Date of sighting: Feb 22, 2021
Location of sighting: Cairns, Australia
Source: MUFON 113765
Listen to these two eyewitnesses as they get flabbergasted by the UFO that they were witness too in Australia yesterday. The UFO appeared during sunset and I have said that this is the most common time of the day for UFOs to be seen due to the angle of the eyewitness, sun and UFO making a perfect triangle. This UFO is clearly noticing the two men watching it and recording it. However the UFO got frightened and entered into the cloud ceiling to hide. Even aliens feel fear and if they break their own species rules about observing, they too could be punished.
This glowing has sensors so powerful, that the alien pilot could easily see and know that the humans were clearly aware of its presence. This is 100% proof that there is an alien base in the Australia outback, 5-6km below the surface.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states: Wired ball of light in the sky. Observed ball of light initially though it was a hole in the clouds but cloud was moving behind then pulsated then disappear my mate has better footage will try post soon.
Pulsing red light followed by triangle with white lights filmed over Rochester, Washington on 22nd January 2021.
Witness report:
Driving south along school land road along black river in Rochester Washington. noticed red blinking light followed by a triangular object with three white lights and one red light near front center. Objects appeared to be connected and moved Silently above treetops I estimate between 500 and 1000 feet in elevation. Clip of iPhone video attached as well as screen shot. Have observed this object near the same area in the past on several occasions as a pulsing red light with darken object trailing behind.
British engineers are preparing to test the fuel mix that could one day power the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world, Nature reports.
Researchers at the JointEuropean Torus (JET), a fusion reactor at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, UK, began conducting fusion tests involving tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, back in December.
The tokamak, a commonly implemented donut-shaped reactor design, was converted into a one-tenth scale reactor of ITER, the world’s largest planned nuclear fusion research project that began assembly in July 2020. ITER is set to start operations no sooner than 2025.
This summer, researchers at JET will begin experiments involving both tritium and deuterium, a different hydrogen isotope.
The concept is simple, with plasma of both isotopes combining in order to release heat. The heat is the result of helium being produced, bringing temperatures inside the reactor up to 100 million degrees, several times hotter than the Sun’s core. This additional heat then sustains further fusion reactions, as Nature explains.
At least that’s the theory. No fusion reactor has yet managed to produce more energy out of these cascading reactions than what it took to start them.
JET’s initial goals aren’t quite that ambitious as it gears up to find the right fuel mix for the much bigger version at ITER. The researchers are hoping to sustain reactions for at least five seconds to collect all the data they need about how tritium behaves.
“What we are after is physics information that we can use to validate our understanding, and then we can apply that to preparing the future machine,” Joelle Mailloux, co-lead of the experiment at JET, told Nature.
Making matters even more complicated is the fact that bombarding neutrons created by the mixing of tritium and deuterium will make the inner facility quite radioactive. So radioactive, in fact, that humans won’t be able to safely step foot inside for at least 18 months. That means it will have to work the first time.
For now, fusion energy remains an extremely elusive form of generating power. While there is considerably more weight behind efforts to make it a reality than there just ten years ago, on the small startup and international scale alike, practical fusion power has yet to materialize.
But once realized, it could represent an entirely new form of virtually limitless energy — minus the risk of a nuclear meltdown.
Berwyn UFO Incident: Another Flying Saucer Crash Story
Berwyn UFO Incident: Another Flying Saucer Crash Story
The Berwyn UFO or Berwyn Mountain Incident, similar with Rendlesham Forest incident also known as the ‘Welsh Roswell’ is one of the world famous and well-known British UFO crash story to date, which took place in Wales in January 1974.
At that time, there was a huge bang and a brilliant light over the Berwyn Mountains in north east Wales. It was considered possible that an aircraft had crashed, or a meteorite had impacted.
The Ministry of Defence investigation found that there were five other reports of UFOs seen over the United Kingdom on 23 January 1974, when the Berwyn Mountains incident happened.
Three sightings were in the Home Counties, one in Lincolnshire and another in Sussex. However a Ministry of Defence (MoD) investigation insisted there was no UFO.
At 8.30 p.m. on January 23, 1974, a large disc-like object was seen to fall from the skies over Clwyd in Wales. Dozens of witnesses across Lancashire and Cheshire had phoned the police earlier that evening after seeing a strange formation of green lights flying erratically over the skies of the north-west.
At exactly 8.38 p.m., something impacted into the Berwyn Mountains in Clwyd, and the resulting tremor, which measured 3.5 (other source said 4.5) on the Richter Scale, was also felt in Wrexham, Chester, Liverpool, Southport, and even in some areas of Greater Manchester.
Police immediately converged on the Berwyn Mountains, expecting to find a crashed passenger jet, but just what they did find has never been divulged.
Document sent to Russ Kellett from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency regarding Operation Photoflash in connection with the Berwyn Mountains mystery.
A convoy of army trucks passed through Chester that night and made their way to the epicentre of the crash site, then the army threw a cordon around the area. Even the police and crash investigators were warned off. Also, there were reports that the villages in the vicinity were visited by ‘Men in Black’.
A nurse who lived near the scene of the impact told a local newspaper that a flying saucer ‘the size of the Albert Hall’ had smashed into a mountain, throwing debris and bodies for over a mile.
She said she walked up to one of the bodies, and realized it wasn’t human, but before she could describe what she had seen, the military intervened, and two Ministry of Defence officials ordered her to remain silent about the UFO because her comments ‘would constitute a threat to national security and the defence of the realm’.
That nurse has never been seen in the area since, and the news reporter who visited the scene of the alleged crash refused to talk about the incident up until his death in 1979.
In 1980, an electronics engineer named Arthur Adams, who had worked on Concorde, visited the Berwyn UFO crash-site and found strange green coloured pieces of metal embedded in the rocks there.
He took samples of the metal to his laboratory and discovered that a sample the size of a 1-inch cube gave off two kilowatts of electricity, when wired up to a volt meter.
Mr. Adams contacted the Daily Express, and they published a series of articles about the strange find, but the Ministry of Defence stepped in and killed the story.
It was later alleged by “the UFO community” that a UFO crashed, that non-human (extra-terrestrial) bodies were found there and that the British Government covered up the event.
Today, no one knows what crashed in the Welsh Mountains on that winter night in 1974; some think it was an experimental man-made top-secret military aircraft possibly a prototype Stealth bomber; others think it was an alien craft from another world, while skeptic people think it only meteorites.
RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
Source:
36 Unsolved Mysteries of the World by Vikas Khatri
Scientists from Oxford, based on the well-known evolutionary theory, made an assumption about the possible appearance of representatives of alien civilizations and their behavior. This was reported on the pages of the International Journal of Astrobiology.
According to researchers, aliens can get a humanoid appearance through a known process, such as natural selection. Their theory is based on the argument that the strongest form of life survives.
One of the authors of the study in Oxford, Sam Levine, said that the scientists in their study relied on an alternative approach to hypothetical astrobiology.
In other words, they applied evolutionary theory to simulate life in extraterrestrial conditions. The expert calls this a very useful approach, since similar models can also be applied to silicon life forms that do not have DNA or breathe nitrogen.
Thanks to the theory of extraterrestrial natural selection, researchers have created a model of extraterrestrial evolution and studied the possibility of complex life forms on distant exoplanets.
As a result of the study, scientists have come to the conclusion that alien life forms, as well as terrestrial ones, will survive several basic periods, and eventually take on a human form.
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Operation Paperclip: When U.S. Brought Nazi Scientists To America
Operation Paperclip: When U.S. Brought Nazi Scientists To America
Over seventy years ago, shortly after the end of World War II, Allied intelligence agencies launched a concerted treasure hunt for German military and scientific inventions, including rocket and jet-engine technology.
Both sides in the coming cold war benefited greatly by picking through the ruins of Adolf Hitler’s war machine, but the U.S. War Department’s Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) scored a particular triumph with a covert operation known as Project Paperclip, authorized by President Harry Truman in September 1945.
Its aim was simple: “To exploit German scientists for American research and to deny these intellectual resources to the Soviet Union.”
Operation Paperclip team
The range of Germany’s technical achievement astounded Allied scientific intelligence experts accompanying the invading forces in 1945 such as: Supersonic rockets, nerve gas, jet aircraft, guided missiles, stealth technology and hardened armour were just some of the groundbreaking technologies developed in Nazi laboratories, workshops and factories.
Even though the JIOA’s recruitment of German scientists began in Europe on 8 May 1945 after the Allied victory, President Harry Truman did not formally order the execution of Operation Paperclip until August 1945.
President Truman’s original order specifically barred recruitment of anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism or militarism”.
Those restrictions would have rendered ineligible most of the leading scientists the JIOA had identified for recruitment, among them rocket scientists Wernher von Braun, Kurt H. Debus and Arthur Rudolph, and the physician Hubertus Strughold, each earlier classified as a “menace to the security of the Allied Forces”.
Samuel Klaus, the State Department’s JIOA representative, complained that many of the scientists enlisted were “ardent Nazis,” but JIOA Director Bosquet Wev overruled that protest, declaring that “the best interests of the United States have been subjugated to the efforts expended in ‘beating a dead Nazi horse.’”
Furthermore, Wev cautioned, Soviet (Russia) posed a “far greater security threat to this country than any former Nazi affiliations which they may have had or even any Nazi sympathies that they may still have.”
Nazi’s imported scientists under Project Paperclip included:
Arthur Rudolph, director of the Mittelwerk factory at Dora-Nordhausen concentration camp, where 20,000 slave laborers died. A National Socialist since 1931, Rudolph was described in Allied files as “100% Nazi, dangerous type, security threat… Suggest internment.”
The JIOA found “nothing in his records indicating that he was a war criminal or an ardent Nazi or otherwise objectionable.” Rudolph became a U.S. citizen, designed the rocket used in the Apollo Project moon landings—and fled to West Germany in 1984 when his record of war crimes was reopened.
Werner von Braun, Hitler’s technical director at the Peenemunde rocket research center from 1937 to 1945 and developer of the deadly V-2 rocket. He later worked on guided missiles for the U.S. Army, served as director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and became a national celebrity in the 1960s as one of Walt Disney’s “World of Tomorrow” experts. In the 1970s he served as associate director of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Kurt Blome, another Nazi scientist who admitted experimenting on concentration-camp inmates with plague bacilli. Blome was acquitted of war crimes at Nuremberg in 1947 (although most observers accepted the fact of his guilt). Two months after that acquittal Blome was in Maryland, consulting with the U.S. military on germ warfare. The U.S. Army Chemical Corps hired him in 1951 to continue his life’s work and passion.
Walter Schreiber, a Nazi major general who, according to Nuremberg testimony, “assigned doctors to experiment on concentration camp prisoners and had made funds available for such experimentation.” Only Schreiber’s detention in Russia (1945–48) spared him from trial as a war criminal.
He next surfaced at the Air Force School of Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas. Columnist Drew Pearson revealed Schreiber’s crimes in 1952, whereupon the U.S. government arranged passage for Schreiber to join his daughter in Argentina.
Hermann Becker-Freysing, convicted and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment at Nuremberg for conducting experiments on Dachau inmates, including force-feeding of seawater that was chemically treated to make it “drinkable.” Even before his trial Becker-Freysing was paid by the U.S. Air Force to report on his sadistic experiments.
Siegfried Ruff, a codefendant with Becker- Freysing at the Nuremberg “Doctor’s Trial,” where he narrowly escaped conviction on charges of killing 80 inmates in a low-pressure chamber designed to simulate altitudes above 60,000 feet. Like Becker-Freysing, Ruff was sought (and paid) by the U.S. Air Force in the interests of “national security.”
Reinhard Gehlen, while not a scientist, was one of the THIRD REICH’s top intelligence officers who were linked to the torture and murder of countless victims. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruited him in 1950 to coordinate its secret war against Communism in Europe.
Klaus Barbie, the Nazi “Butcher of Lyon” and another prized CIA intelligence asset, whose association with the U.S. intelligence service spared him trial and execution for war crimes.
By 1955 more than 760 German scientists were granted U.S. citizenship, their dossiers “sanitized” to remove any taint of active involvement with Hitler’s genocidal regime.
A 1985 exposé in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists revealed that author Linda Hunt had secured more than 130 files on Project Paperclip immigrants and that she found that everyone “had been changed to eliminate the security threat classification.”
Some conspiracy theories supporters maintain that the postwar scientific looting of Germany also included secrets concerning UFOs (anti-gravity technology) which remain classified to this day.
Source:
The Encyclopedia of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories by Michael Newton
Early Mars is thought to have been Earthlike before solar radiation and cosmic other forces killed its atmosphere. This explains why the rover that has now gone viral in the Twitterverse and just about everywhere else touched down in Jezero Crater, which is thought to have once been a huge lake that could have also been crawling with microbial life. Scientists have now found evidence that Mars went through the same phase as Earth before both planets got their atmospheres — something that has not been proven until now.
“Reduced greenhouse gases such as methane (CH4) and hydrogen (H2) might be the only tenable solution to explain warming of the ancient Martian climate, but direct geological evidence that a reduced atmosphere actually existed on Mars has been lacking,” said Jiancheng Liu, who led a study recently published in Nature Astronomy.
The timing for this discovery was right on. Perseverance has started searching the Red Planet for any potential signs of life, and that life — if it was anything like like as we know it — would have required an atmosphere. But wait. Before you can figure out around when Mars started get an atmosphere, and what it was like with an atmosphere (kind of hard to imagine looking at what is now a space desert), you have to back up further to before it even had an oxidized atmosphere. There is a time that things didn’t rust on Earth or Mars because there was not enough oxygen in the atmosphere to interact with substances rich in iron.
Instead of an oxidized atmosphere, both Earth and Mars once had a reduced atmosphere. This is not the same as the massive reduction in atmosphere the Red Planet experienced after most of its atmosphere was decimated by solar winds and other cosmic forces. A reduced atmosphere is made up of mostly reduced gases like methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide, which are hydrogen-rich rather than oxygen-rich. Humans would not have been able to handle breathing in this poison. However, there are microorganisms that are fueled by methane right here on our planet, so it wouldn’t be impossible for Mars.
What made Mars habitable once was its own greenhouse effect. While greenhouse gases have been demonized on Earth because too much carbon dioxide and other types have been released into the atmosphere from human pollution, the right amount of these atmospheric gases is necessary to warming up a planet just enough so life-forms can thrive.
Rocks on Mars, as seen by Curiosity.
Credit: NASA
Previous studies had assumed that on Mars, this phenomenon happened with reduced gases instead of CO2, meaning the planet must have had a reduced atmosphere. Evidence of this was finally found by Liu and his team when they investigated spacecraft data of weathered Martian rocks that showed signs of having been exposed to such an atmosphere.
“The separation of Fe from Al in Martian palaeosols, which is comparable to trends observed in palaeosols before the Great Oxidation Event on Earth, suggests that the ancient Martian surface was chemically weathered under a reducing greenhouse atmosphere,” Liu said.
An orbiting spacecraft remotely examined rocks on the surface of Mars. This spacecraft was equipped with an instrument capable of infrared spectroscopy, which revealed the chemistry of these primordial rocks. When infrared light hits a target, it interacts with the molecules that make up that object. How the object in question absorbs, reflects or emits this light can give away what its chemical composition is like. What the researchers wanted to know was the composition of the paleosols on Mars, soils that formed eons ago and are physical and chemically unrelated to soils that formed more recently. This is how they identified a chemical sign of weathering caused by a reduced atmosphere.
Mars later underwent an oxidation event much the Earth’s Great Oxidation Event on Earth, though during a different time and possibly for different reasons. Earth’s atmosphere became oxidized because of oxygen was a by-product of processes like photosynthesis in early organisms. Proving that Mars had a reduced atmosphere before its oxidation event happened could mean life was somehow involved in the shift.
As Perseverence surveys Jezero Crater, it may find more to support this discovery ,and maybe even a fossilized microbe.
It's possible that the story of the Men in Black, the mysterious figures that would become the subject of fascination in UFO conspiracy circles and eventually break into mainstream popular culture, can be traced back to one day: June 27, 1947. It's quite possible that it all started with a man, a boy and a dog on a boat.
As the story goes, Harold Dahl was on a conservation mission on the Puget Sound near the eastern shore of Washington’s Maury Island, gathering logs, when he saw six donut-shaped obstacles hovering about a half a mile above his boat. Before long, one of them fell nearly 1,500 feet, followed by raining, metallic debris, some of which hit Dahl’s son, Charles, on his arm, as well as the family dog, who didn’t survive the ordeal. Dahl was able to take some pictures of the aircraft with his camera, which he later showed to his supervisor, Fred Crisman. A skeptical Crisman went back to the scene to look for himself and saw a strange aircraft with his own eyes.
The following morning, Dahl was visited by a man in a black suit. They end up at a local diner, where the man was able to recount in extraordinary detail what Dahl had just experienced. “What I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe,” the man said, according to author Gray Barker’s 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.
Dahl was told not to speak of the incident. If he did, bad things would happen.
The supposed events of Maury Island have continued to fuel conspiracy theories to this day, even though a U.S. government investigation deemed it a hoax after Dahl and Crimson later admitted as much. In particular, the mention of the man in the black suit would evolve into a key obsession for UFO enthusiasts and spread into American popular culture, thanks to a comic-book series and a blockbuster movie trilogy.
In all of their different incarnations, the Men in Black (MIB) usually have one main purpose: to muzzle witnesses of strange, paranormal phenomena. They almost always wear black suits and hats with dark sunglasses, drive black cars and arrive in groups of two or three. Some describe them as one would an FBI agent, while others recall the MIB as having strange appearances, sometimes with supernatural features like glowing eyes and strange complexions.
The cover of Gray Barker's book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.
Mary Evans Picture Library/Everett
So how did we get from Harold Dahl to Will Smith?
"The transformation of the story from a first press report to a folkloric tale to a comic book and now to a film illustrates how the myth is transformed,” wrote Phil Patton in The New York Times around the time the first Men in Black movie was released in 1997. “That process is not unlike the children's game of 'telephone' or what the literary critic Harold Bloom calls 'innovation by misinterpretation.' "
Sticking with the telephone analogy, the first call was made to Kenneth Arnold, a pilot who had his own alleged UFO sighting on June 24, 1947 near Mt. Rainier, Washington. Though it happened three days after the Maury Island incident, it was the first widely reported sighting and it “touched off the saucer sensation,” as was written in a 1949 government report on “Flying Saucers.”
The report states that Dahl and Crimson reached out to a Chicago magazine in an attempt to sell their story, and the magazine editor then contacted Arnold, hoping he could help verify their account. Arnold then “summoned two officers of Army A-2 Intelligence to aid in the investigation of Dahl and Crisman's claim,” according to the report.
In July 1947, two Army A-2 Intelligence officers came to investigate. After leaving in their B-25 the next day, the plane caught fire and crashed, killing both officers and doing nothing to quiet UFO conspiracists.
But the Maury Island story gained little notice in the UFO community until Barker’s 1956 book, in which he wrote of his “file on the Maury Island case” that largely consisted of the writings by Ray Palmer, the Chicago magazine editor referred to in the government’s report. Barker went on to connect the dots between “the man, who wore a black suit” who took Dahl to breakfast and three similarly dressed men who allegedly visited a young UFO enthusiast named Albert K. Bender in 1953.
It was Bender who “almost single-handedly ushered in the plague of the Men in Black—just as Arnold inaugurated the era of the UFO,” Ufologist Nick Redfern wrote in his book The Real Men in Black. But it was Barker’s book that told Bender’s story, thus introducing the concept of the MIB to a much wider audience.
(The telephone-game analogy is still holding.)
Kenneth Arnold, center, looks at a photo of an unidentified flying object they sighted while en route to Seattle, Washington with pilots E.J. Smith and Ralph E. Stevens.
“It still has an important legacy,” said Robert Sheaffer, a UFO researcher. “Before its publication, nobody outside a very narrow group of subscribers to flying-saucer newsletters had ever heard of Bender, or his MIB.”
Barker described Bender’s visitors as: “Three men in black suits with threatening expressions on their faces. Three men who walk in on you and make certain demands. Three men who know that you know what the saucers really are!”
Bender, in his own 1962 book Flying Saucers and the Three Men, described the MIB in much more frightening language.
“They floated about a foot off the floor… They looked like clergymen, but wore hats similar to Homburg style. The faces were not clearly discernible, for the hats partly hid and shaded them… The eyes of all three figures suddenly lit up like flashlight bulbs… They seemed to burn into my very soul as the pains above my eyes became almost unbearable,” wrote Bender.
Barker would go on to write several more books related to the paranormal and UFOs, including 1970’s The Silver Bridge, which helped spread the story of another popular paranormal figure, the creature known as Mothman. But how much of his writing was done in good faith has been called into question by many in the UFO-research community.
“Barker made it clear to me that he did not take the MIB or Mothman very seriously,” says Sheaffer, who corresponded with Barker on occasion. “However, he believed that there was still 'something mysterious' about the whole UFO and paranormal thing.”
Regardless of Barker’s motives, countless MIB encounters have been reported since They Knew Too Much was published nearly 60 years ago, and at least one more movie is on the way.
The oldest-known Australian Aboriginal rock painting was created over 17,000 years ago, a new paper shows. The rock painting showcasing a kangaroo-like animal was discovered among dozens of other paintings and was dated with the aid of ancient wasp nests.
Image credits: Finch et al / Nature (2021).
In 2010, Damien Finch was hiking through Australia’s bushland when he came across something stunning: Aboriginal cave art. He was intrigued and saddened that not much was known about the art and the civilization that made it — not even when they were painted. So he decided to rectify that and started studying them.
“I first saw these paintings up close during a hike in a remote part of the Kimberley in 2010. It is astounding to see so much evidence of ancient human cultural activity in an environment without any of the other signs of human activity that we expect such as roads, power poles, buildings and plastic rubbish! It made me very curious to understand more about the paintings and the culture that created them,” Finch tells me in an email.
In a new study, Finch and colleagues worked with Aboriginal Traditional Owners from the Kimberley region in Western Australia to analyze the rock art specimens.
Dating rock art is really hard. Aboriginal art uses iron oxide pigments and no organic material — which means any radiocarbon analysis isn’t possible. So instead, Finch got creative (and a bit lucky). He found that some of the rocks nearby contained the remains of ancient wasp nests, which can be carbon dated. He found these mud wasp remains both under and above the painted surfaces — so by dating both of these, he could pincer in on the age of the art.
Image credits: Finch et al / Nature (2021).
It’s not the first time the method has been used, Finch says. It was used as early as 1997 when pollen extracted from a wasp nest (not over rock art) was dated, but it was less than 2,000, the researcher says. Now, researchers have adapted the technique and made it more reliable, even for small wasp remnants.
“By studying wasps building nests and then analyzing modern nests back in the laboratory, we determined that they frequently contained charcoal fragments. So we concentrated on methods to date charcoal rather than pollen which was less abundant. Radiocarbon dating has been used to date charcoal for more than 50 years and has been the mainstay of archaeological dating. Our radiocarbon dates on wasp nests built on top of paintings tell us that the painting must be older than the age of the nest. Similarly, if the nest is underneath the painting the age of the nest provides a maximum age for the painting.”
Overall, they found 27 such remains above and below 16 rock paintings. The paintings include a snake, a lizard-like figure, and three macropods (a family of marsupials including kangaroos, wallabies, and quokkas). However, one painting of a kangaroo (or a kangaroo-like creature) was dated to between 17,500–17,100 years ago, making it the oldest dated painted figure in Australia to date.
Image credits: Finch et al / Nature (2021).
Unfortunately, however, not much is known about the people who created this art. Not much archaeological information has been retrieved, but Finch hopes we can learn something from this art.
“I don’t know that we can say too much about a culture as it was 17,000 years ago. We struggle to understand the culture at the time of the pyramids and that was only 5,000 years ago. But now, for the first time, we can combine what we see in the paintings with what we know about the environment as it existed at the same time, around the end of the Last Ice Age. Science can tell us about the prevailing climate and sea-levels as well as the plants and animals available at that time. I am sure future researchers will draw these threads together with what we now know about the age of the rock art to come up with further insights about the lives of these ancient people,” Finch tells ZME Science.
The kangaroo is unlikely to be Australia’s oldest painting — it’s only the oldest one we’ve found so far. Considering that humans reached Australia some 65,000 years ago, the chances are more ancient art is just waiting to be discovered.
In the meantime, this is a sobering reminder of how much we’ve yet to learn about these ancient peoples. Bit by bit, Finch hopes to fill in the gaps.
“It was surprising just how few records existed and how little was known about them in the non-indigenous community. Through our research, we aim to improve this situation.”
Remember Dolly the sheep? On July 5, 1996, Dolly became the first mammal ever born via cloning – it was created using a mammary cell from sheep and the DNA from another, and carried to term by a third. Twenty-five years later, more mammals have been successfully cloned – including monkeys, pigs, cattle, wolves, dogs, cats and others. And humans? Ethics aside, while no one has publicly admitted to it, the possibility is there. However, the most interest recently has been in using cloning to de-extinct extinct mammals whose DNA can be obtained from frozen or preserved carcasses and carried by a similar species. Wooly mammoths and Tasmanian tigers seem to be likely candidates for this, but it hasn’t happened yet. However, the next best thing has. A black-footed ferret – a mammal on the brink of extinction — has beensuccessfully cloned. Is this good or bad news? Is cloning a better solution to preventing extinction than changing the environment to allow the species to repopulate itself? Will this be the ethical debate that finally produces a human clone?
“In November, ViaGen used the 32-year-old Willa cell line to develop cloned embryos. These were implanted into a domestic surrogate mother. Mid gestation, when the pregnancy was deemed safe, the mother was transferred to the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center. On December 10th, “Elizabeth Ann” became the first successfully cloned Black-footed ferret to be born. She is also the first endangered species native to the US to be cloned.”
This week, Revive & Restore – a “wildlife conservation organization promoting the incorporation of biotechnologies into standard conservation practice” – announced the birth of the first cloned black-footed ferret and the successful growth and development of “Elizabeth Ann.” She is the clone of a ferret named Willa who died in 1988 and was frozen because the black-footed ferret was believed to be nearly extinct – wiped out by the poisoning of prairie dogs, their primary source of food. That changed in 1981 when a dog brought a recently-killed specimen to its owner in Wyoming. The surviving group was found, but it nearly became extinct because of canine distemper and sylvatic plague, so the Fish and Wildlife Service captured the remaining 18 ferrets. Unfortunately, they lacked the genetic diversity to save the species.
Enter the late, frozen Willa and Revive & Restore, which sequenced the black-footed ferret genome in 2013. In 2018, Revive & Restore partnered with the commercial cloning company ViaGen Pets & Equine and obtained permission to clone Willa. Using basically the same process that created Dolly, they created embryos, implanted them into a tame domestic ferret surrogate (not a black-footed ferret) and welcomed Elizabeth Ann on 12/10/20. (Pictures here.) While Elizabeth Ann is of a different lineage than the remaining colony, the researchers will not introduce her into the surviving colony, fearing what that might cause, and will instead develop a new line. There are no plans to reintroduce Elizabeth Ann or any future clones back into the wild … yet.
Is it right? What about for species that aren’t cute?
(Not Elizabeth Ann)
Is this the right solution to saving species from extinction or bringing them back from it? One of the researchers says his goal is to bring back the passenger pigeon – birds are more difficult to clone than mammals. While this is the first cloning of an endangered species in the U.S., it has been done before in other countries (mouflon sheep, gaur, banteng, Pyrenean ibex, wild coyotes) but none have survived to adulthood. Revive & Restore co-founder and executive director Ryan Phelan told AP that they see it as a tool, not a sole solution to preventing extinction or propagating de-extinction.
“How can we actually apply some of those advances in science for conservation? Because conservation needs more tools in the toolbox. That’s our whole motivation. Cloning is just one of the tools.”
Sadly, cloning is glamorous technology, while preventing climate change, stopping the destruction of forests, eliminating toxic pollution and other more conventional ‘tools’ require hard work, government funding, big business buy-in and political support.
If you’re not ready for cloning, will you support the alternatives?
NOTE PETER2011:
Is cloning a solution to bring extinct or threatened animals back to life? Personally, this is a solution if it is done in an objective manner without interfering with the DNA of the cloned animal. But in the field of cloning there will also be abuses, because people like to deviate from the rules ...
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Food for Life Found in 3.5 Billion Year Old Rocks in Australia
Food for Life Found in 3.5 Billion Year Old Rocks in Australia
For the first time, biologically-relevant organic molecules have been detected in Archaean fluid inclusions, which most likely served as nutrients for early life on Earth.
A research team including the geobiologist Dr. Helge Mißbach from the University of Cologne has detected organic molecules and gases trapped in 3.5 billion-year-old rocks. A widely accepted hypothesis says that the earliest life forms used small organic molecules as building materials and energy sources. However, the existence of such components in early habitats on Earth was as yet unproven.
3.5 billion year old barite (bottom) with a fossilized microbial mat (top). The barite is part of the Dresser Formation in NW Australia
The current study, published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’, now shows that solutions from archaic hydrothermal vents contained essential components that formed a basis for the earliest life on our planet.
Specifically, the scientists examined about 3.5 billion-year-old barites from the Dresser Formation in Western Australia. The barite thus dates from a time when early life developed on Earth. ‘In the field, the barites are directly associated with fossilized microbial mats, and they smell like rotten eggs when freshly scratched. Thus, we suspected that they contained organic material that might have served as nutrients for early microbial life,’ said Dr. Helge Mißbach of the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy and lead author of the study.
In the fluid inclusions, the team identified organic compounds such as acetic acid and methanethiol, in addition to gases such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. These compounds may have been important substrates for metabolic processes of early microbial life. Furthermore, they are discussed as putative key agents in the origin of life on Earth. ‘The immediate connection between primordial molecules emerging from the subsurface and the microbial organisms – 3.5 billion years ago – somehow surprised us. This finding contributes decisively to our understanding of the still unclear earliest evolutionary history of life on Earth,’ Mißbach concluded.
Contacts and sources:
Jan Voelkel University of Cologne
Dr. Helge Mißbach Arbeitsgruppe Geobiologie Institut für Geologie und Mineralogie University of Cologne
First Black Hole Ever Detected Much More Massive Than First Suspected
First Black Hole Ever Detected Much More Massive Than First Suspected
New observations of the first black hole ever detected have led astronomers to question what they know about the Universe’s most mysterious objects.
Published today in the journal Science, the research shows the system known as Cygnus X-1 contains the most massive stellar-mass black hole ever detected without the use of gravitational waves.
An artist’s impression of the Cygnus X-1 system. This system contains the most massive stellar-mass black hole ever detected without the use of gravitational waves, weighing in at 21 times the mass of the Sun. Credit: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.
Credit: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.
Cygnus X-1 is one of the closest black holes to Earth. It was discovered in 1964 when a pair of Geiger counters were carried on board a sub-orbital rocket launched from New Mexico.
The object was the focus of a famous scientific wager between physicists Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne, with Hawking betting in 1974 that it was not a black hole. Hawking conceded the bet in 1990.
In this latest work, an international team of astronomers used the Very Long Baseline Array—a continent-sized radio telescope made up of 10 dishes spread across the United States—together with a clever technique to measure distances in space.
“If we can view the same object from different locations, we can calculate its distance away from us by measuring how far the object appears to move relative to the background,” said lead researcher, Professor James Miller-Jones from Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).
“If you hold your finger out in front of your eyes and view it with one eye at a time, you’ll notice your finger appears to jump from one spot to another. It’s exactly the same principle.”
Astronomers observed the Cygnus X-1 system from different angles using the orbit of the Earth around the Sun to measure the perceived movement of the system against the background stars. This allowed them to refine the distance to the system and therefore the mass of the black hole.
Credit: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.
“Over six days we observed a full orbit of the black hole and used observations taken of the same system with the same telescope array in 2011,” Professor Miller-Jones said. “This method and our new measurements show the system is further away than previously thought, with a black hole that’s significantly more massive.”
Co-author Professor Ilya Mandel from Monash University and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) said the black hole is so massive it’s actually challenging how astronomers thought they formed.
An artist’s impression of the Cygnus X-1 system. A stellar-mass black hole orbits with a companion star located 7,200 light years from Earth.
Credit: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.
“Stars lose mass to their surrounding environment through stellar winds that blow away from their surface. But to make a black hole this heavy, we need to dial down the amount of mass that bright stars lose during their lifetimes” he said.
“The black hole in the Cygnus X-1 system began life as a star approximately 60 times the mass of the Sun and collapsed tens of thousands of years ago,” he said. “Incredibly, it’s orbiting its companion star—a supergiant—every five and a half days at just one-fifth of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
“These new observations tell us the black hole is more than 20 times the mass of our Sun—a 50 per cent increase on previous estimates.”
Recent observations show the black hole in the Cygnus X-1 system is 21 times the mass of the Sun—a 50 per cent increase on previous estimates. To form such a massive black hole, astronomers had to revise their estimates of how much mass stars lose via stellar winds.
Credit: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.
Xueshan Zhao is a co-author on the paper and a PhD candidate studying at the National Astronomical Observatories—part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) in Beijing.
“Using the updated measurements for the black hole’s mass and its distance away from Earth, I was able to confirm that Cygnus X-1 is spinning incredibly quickly—very close to the speed of light and faster than any other black hole found to date,” she said.
“I’m at the beginning of my research career, so being a part of an international team and helping to refine the properties of the first black hole ever discovered has been a great opportunity.”
Credit: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research
The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia with support and funding from the State Government of Western Australia.
Contacts and sources:
Professor James Miller-Jones, ICRAR / Curtin University
Professor Ilya Mand,l OzGrav / Monash University
Pete Wheeler — International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research
Lauren Sydoruk, Curtin University
Publications:
‘Cygnus X-1 contains a 21-solar mass black hole – implications for massive star winds’, published in Science on February 18th, 2021.
‘Reestimating the Spin Parameter of the Black Hole in Cygnus X-1’, published in The Astrophysical Journal on February 18th, 2021.
‘Wind mass-loss rates of stripped stars inferred from Cygnus X-1’, published in The Astrophysical Journal on February 18th, 2021.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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