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 ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 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...
30-09-2021
UFO Conference ERIE - Oct 9, 2021
UFO Conference ERIE - Oct 9, 2021
UFO Conference
MUFON
Oct 9, 2021 Erie Pennsylvania
Our 6th UFO Conference in Erie Pa We would like to preregister 100 guests by Oct 1st 2021 Register at http://www.mufonpa.com
“A race of Venus came to planet Earth millions of years ago”
“A race of Venus came to planet Earth millions of years ago”
The Ancient Astronaut theory is being taken more and more seriously by science. But who were these beings and where did they come from? According to a new hypothesis, some of these beings could come from Venus.
According to science, Venus is an inhospitable place.
In recent years, the existence of extraterrestrial life in scientific nuclei has been discussed more , reaching the point of questioning whether we have not been visited for thousands of years. A new theory could show that beings from Venus came to Earth long before humans evolved.
Beings of Venus on Earth?
For decades, NASA has shown various aspects of the physical nature of Venus, thanks to space probes.
Spokesmen for exploration missions have stated that its environment is extremely hostile , with air laden with carbon dioxide and infernal barometric pressure . It also has a heat that exceeds 100 degrees Celsius along with dense clouds of sulfuric acid.
In short, on Venus it would be impossible for life to be born. But a declassified archive from 1989, which is practically unknown , could change our perception of that world.
The document relates to the different contacts that have existed between Earth and Venus and how the inhabitants of the latter came thousands of years ago , and continued to come to “meet” the human being.
They even talk about the “selection” of people they have had over the years, highlighting people from the field, the humble, even scientists and government officials.
This declassified document presents, then, a direct contradiction to what NASA has explained about the inhospitable nature of Venus.
Obviously, many people prefer to trust what science has said and forget everything that changes the official version .
However, there is a question … Why was a document that, supposedly, contradictory, was classified and kept hidden for more than 30 years?
Obviously, theorists around the world have started to make statements, blaming NASA and the elites for hiding information about space.
Venusians have been visiting Earth for thousands of years.
“They want to help humanity”
If scientists, the only ones with the ability to study beyond Earth’s borders, have lied to us in the past, why not distrust their information about Venus?
The possibility of life on Venus completely changes general thinking about our Solar System. This is because we have been led to believe that the galaxy is an immense desert with only one oasis; the earth.
Obviously, there is another possibility; that terrestrial technology is not advanced enough to locate life on that planet.
According to this report, we can understand that the civilization of Venus managed to solve all the problems that afflict humanity today. An example of this are wars, crime, corruption and other issues that do so much damage to society in general.
This is due to the development of peaceful collective values that are based on respect, understanding and love. Through their frequent contacts with different personalities on Earth, Venusians came to offer us help in solving all these issues that prevent us from evolving as humanity.
The problem is that this support is always accompanied by a request for the abandonment of weapons of mass destruction. Reason that makes us understand why this document has been classified and, subsequently, hidden.
If there is a developed civilization on Venus and NASA has hidden it or does not know of its existence, it is something that we will probably never know. However, if we manage to make contact with a civilization that supports us in our evolution, would we react correctly?
Mars' surface was carved by fast and furious floods from overflowing craters 3.5 billion years ago – with enough water released in a matter of weeks to completely fill Lake Superior, study finds
Mars' surface was carved by fast and furious floods from overflowing craters 3.5 billion years ago – with enough water released in a matter of weeks to completely fill Lake Superior, study finds
Researchers show how 262 breached lakes on the Red Planet shaped its surface
Water released at huge craters caused the formation of river valleys, they claim
This water eroded the natural Martian sediment to leave the deep river valleys
3.5 billion years ago, water moved around Mars between crater lakes via rivers
Mars' surface was carved by fast and furious floods from overflowing crater lakes 3.5 billion years ago, a new study says.
Researchers in Texas have used satellite images to determine how 262 breached lakes on the Red Planet shaped the Martian surface.
The floods, which probably lasted mere weeks, eroded more than enough sediment to completely fill Lake Superior and Lake Ontario, they say.
Although there's no liquid water on Mars today, about 4.3 billion years ago the Red Planet had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 450 feet (137 meters) deep, according to NASA.
Fast forward to 3.5 billion years ago, and this water was more scarce – channeled around the planet between crater lakes via rivers, much like on Earth today.
Floods at these lakes created river valleys with high walls of jagged rock on either side, much like Earth's own impressive modern-day canyons.
A coloured topographical image showing river valleys on Mars. The outlet canyon Loire Vallis (white line) formed from the overflow of a lake in Parana Basin (outlined in white). Black lines indicate other river valleys formed by processes other than lake overflows. Image is approximately 400 miles (650 kilometres) across
Mars was not always a big dry rusty rock like it is today. Perhaps about 4.3 billion years ago, Mars would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 450 feet (137 meters) deep
RIVER VALLEYS ON MARS
The cratered highlands of Mars have many river valleys that formed in a water-rich environment about 4.5 to 3.7 billion years ago.
Erosion since then has been slow, leaving these old features preserved.
Later, massive outflows of groundwater formed flood channels tens to hundreds of kilometers wide and perhaps over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) long.
River valley networks begin near crater rims and other high ridges and wind through the cratered landscape.
Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
'If we think about how sediment was being moved across the landscape on ancient Mars, lake breach floods were a really important process globally,' said lead author Tim Goudge, an assistant professor at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences, the University of Texas at Austin.
'And this is a bit of a surprising result because they've been thought of as one-off anomalies for so long.'
The researchers think the furious floods were triggered either by the water filling up in the crater lake interior to the point where it started spilling over the edge; or as the lake filled up with water, the pressure from that water on the inside of the crater caused the crater rim to fail, allowing water to flow out.
'In either way, once the water started rushing out of the lake, it would begin rapidly carving an exit breach and canyon, allowing more water to flow out, and continuing so on in a runaway process until it eventually couldn't erode any more,' Professor Goudge told MailOnline.
The researcher also said he thinks more water was available early in Mars' early history, but that it never did completely cover the planet.
On Earth, river erosion – the constant wearing away of the river bed and banks by the force of water – is usually a slow-going process.
Over years and years, coastal land recedes as the force of the water breaks off sediment.
But on Mars, massive floods from overflowing crater lakes had an outsized role in shaping the Martian surface, carving deep chasms and moving vast amounts of sediment.
Crater lakes were common on Mars billions of years ago when the Red Planet had liquid water on its surface. Some craters could hold a small sea's worth of water.
But when the water became too much to hold, it would breach the edge of the crater, causing catastrophic flooding that carved river valleys in its wake.
A 2019 study led by Goudge, published in the in the journal Geology, determined that these events happened rapidly.
Remote sensing images taken by satellites orbiting Mars have allowed scientists to study the remains of breached Martian crater lakes.
The remains of a former crater lake on Mars surrounded by other smaller craters. The large outlet canyon (the spindly blue dent in the upper left) formed during a crater breach event
A global map of Mars showing river valleys around the Red Planet. River valleys formed by crater lake breaches are in white. River valleys that formed gradually over time are in black
MARS IS 'TOO SMALL' TO RETAIN LQUID WATER, SAYS STUDY
Mars once had flowing liquid water, but is now a dry desert landscape - and this could be because it is too small to retain moisture, a 2021 study said.
About half the size of Earth, Mars sits at the very outer edge of the habitable zone where liquid water 'could flow'.
There's 'irrefutable evidence' that Mars once had liquid water, including in the Jezero crater where Perseverance rover is now based, but this study suggests it didn't last long.
Researchers at Washington University in St Louis studied the chemical makeup of Mars meteorites.
These rocks revealed Mars didn't have the necessary chemistry in its structure to hold onto water long-term.
However, the crater lakes and their river valleys have mostly been studied on an individual basis, Goudge said.
This is the first study to investigate how the 262 breached lakes across the Red Planet shaped the Martian surface as a whole.
For the study, the researchers reviewed a preexisting catalog of river valleys on Mars and classifying them into two categories – valleys that got their start at a crater's edge and valleys that formed elsewhere on the landscape.
Valleys that got their start at a crater's edge indicates they formed during a lake breach flood, while valleys that formed elsewhere on the landscape suggests a more gradual formation over time.
From there, the scientists compared the depth, length and volume of the different valley types and found that river valleys formed by crater lake breaches erode nearly a quarter of the Red Planet's river valley volume despite making up only 3 per cent of total valley length.
'This discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that outlet canyons are significantly deeper than other valleys,' said study co-author Alexander Morgan, a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
At 559 feet (170.5 meters), the median depth of a breach river valley is more than twice that of other river valleys created more gradually over time, which have a median depth of about 254 feet (77.5 meters).
In addition, although the chasms appeared in a geologic instant, they may have had a lasting effect on the surrounding landscape.
Floods at Martian lakes created river valleys with high walls of jagged rock on either side, much like the impressive canyons on Earth today. Pictured, the Colorado River as it flows through Marble Canyon prior to entering the infamous Grand Canyon in northern Arizona
The study suggests that the breaches scoured canyons so deep they may have influenced the formation of other nearby river valleys.
The authors said this is a potential alternative explanation for unique Martian river valley topography that is usually attributed to climate.
On Earth, river erosion is a slow and steady process in most cases, but that doesn't mean it will work that way on other worlds, according to Goudge.
'When you fill [the craters] with water, it's a lot of stored energy there to be released,' Goudge said. 'It makes sense that Mars might tip, in this case, toward being shaped by catastrophism more than the Earth.'
The new study has been published today in the journal Nature.
WAS MARS EVER HOME TO LIQUID WATER?
Evidence of water on Mars dates back to the Mariner 9 mission, which arrived in 1971. It revealed clues of water erosion in river beds and canyons as well as weather fronts and fogs.
Viking orbiters that followed caused a revolution in our ideas about water on Mars by showing how floods broke through dams and carved deep valleys.
Mars is currently in the middle of an ice age, and before this study, scientists believed liquid water could not exist on its surface.
In June 2013, Curiosity found powerful evidence that water good enough to drink once flowed on Mars.
In September of the same year, the first scoop of soil analysed by Curiosity revealed that fine materials on the surface of the planet contain two per cent water by weight.
In 2017, Scientists provided the best estimates for water on Mars, claiming it once had more liquid H2O than the Arctic Ocean - and the planet kept these oceans for more than 1.5 billion years.
The findings suggest there was ample time and water for life on Mars to thrive, but over the last 3.7 billion years the red planet has lost 87 per cent of its water - leaving it barren and dry.
Lake Breach Floods Eroded Surface of Early Mars, Study Says
Lake Breach Floods Eroded Surface of Early Mars, Study Says
Massive floods from overflowing crater lakes were responsible for eroding at least 24% of the volume of incised valleys on early Mars, according to new research led by University of Texas at Austin planetary scientists.
Valley networks and paleolake outlet canyons on Mars: (a) distribution of analyzed valley networks (black) and paleolake outlet canyons (white); gray shading indicates the combined latitude (poleward of ±30°) and age (younger than Early Hesperian) mask used for volume calculations; (b and c) examples of the early Martian landscape dissected by both valley networks (black) and paleolake outlet canyons (white); paleolake basin extents shown by semi-transparent white polygons.
Image credit: Goudge et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03860-1.
“If we think about how sediment was being moved across the landscape on ancient Mars, lake breach floods were a really important process globally,” said Dr. Tim Goudge, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin and CIFAR.
“And this is a bit of a surprising result because they’ve been thought of as one-off anomalies for so long.”
Crater lakes were common on Mars billions of years ago when the planet had liquid water on its surface. Some craters could hold a small sea’s worth of water.
But when the water became too much to hold, it would breach the edge of the crater, causing catastrophic flooding that carved river valleys in its wake.
In 2019, Dr. Goudge and colleagues determined that these events happened rapidly.
“Remote sensing images taken by satellites orbiting Mars have allowed scientists to study the remains of breached Martian crater lakes,” he said.
“However, the crater lakes and their river valleys have mostly been studied on an individual basis. This is the first study to investigate how the 262 breached lakes across the Red Planet shaped its surface as a whole.”
The authors classified the Martian river valleys into two categories: (i) valleys that got their start at a crater’s edge, which indicates they formed during a lake breach flood; and (ii) valleys that formed elsewhere on the landscape, which suggests a more gradual formation over time.
From there, they compared the depth, length and volume of the different valley types and found that river valleys formed by crater lake breaches punch far above their weight, eroding away nearly a quarter of the planet’s river valley volume despite making up only 3% of total valley length.
“This discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that outlet canyons are significantly deeper than other valleys,” said Dr. Alexander Morgan, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute.
At 170.5 m (559 feet), the median depth of a breach river valley is more than twice that of other river valleys created more gradually over time, which have a median depth of about 77.5 m (254 feet).
In addition, although the chasms appeared in a geologic instant, they may have had a lasting effect on the surrounding landscape.
The study suggests that the breaches scoured canyons so deep they may have influenced the formation of other nearby river valleys.
“This is a potential alternative explanation for unique Martian river valley topography that is usually attributed to climate,” the scientists said.
Their results are published in the journal Nature.
_____
T.A. Goudge et al. 2021. The importance of lake breach floods for valley incision on early Mars. Nature 597, 645-649; doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03860-1
Astronomers have discovered a highly-irradiated gas giant exoplanet in close-in, highly misaligned orbit around a bright star called TOI-1518.
An artist’s rendition of the ultrahot Jupiter TOI-1518b and its parent star.
Image credit: Sci-News.com.
TOI-1518 is a fast-rotating F-type star located approximately 742 light-years away in the constellation of Cepheus.
Also designated as TIC 427761355 and BD+66 1610, it is almost two times larger and more massive than the Sun.
The newfound planet, TOI-1518b, is an inflated gas giant about 1.9 times the size of Jupiter.
It orbits its parent star once every 1.9 days at a distance of 0.04 AU (astronomical units).
“The new planet falls within the category of ultrahot Jupiters, which have equilibrium temperatures exceeding 2,000 K,” said Yale University astronomer Samuel Cabot and colleagues.
“Many ultrahot Jupiters contain vaporized metals, both neutral and ionized, in their upper atmospheres.”
“These metals and molecules containing them are recognized as strong sources of opacity in the optical and near-ultraviolet regions.”
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has always been a mysterious feature and now it’s getting even stranger with stronger winds. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope collected the data regarding the discovery of the accelerating wind speeds.
Jupiter’s massive storm, which is known as the Great Red Spot, is located in the southern hemisphere of the planet. It was first spotted in 1831 by amateur astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe; however, it could be much older than that. The crimson-colored clouds of the storm rotate in a counter-clockwise direction with speeds that are more powerful than 400 miles per hour (644 kilometers per hour). It has been shrinking in size and turning into a more circular shape rather than an oval. It has a diameter of about 10,000 miles (a little over 16,000 kilometers) which means that Earth could still fit inside of the storm.
By studying Hubble’s “storm reports”, researchers noticed that the wind speed just inside of the storm’s boundaries (this area is called the high-speed ring) accelerated as much as 8% from 2009 to 2020. On the other hand, the wind speeds close to the center of the storm are actually slower.
More specifically, Hubble detected that the wind speeds changed less than 1.6 miles per hour (2.6 kilometers per hour) each year as explained by Amy Simon from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, “We’re talking about such a small change that if you didn’t have eleven years of Hubble data, we wouldn’t know it happened.” “With Hubble we have the precision we need to spot a trend.”
Michael Wong, who is from the University of California, Berkeley, and who led the analysis, noted, “We find that the average wind speed in the Great Red Spot has been slightly increasing over the past decade,” adding, “We have one example where our analysis of the two-dimensional wind map found abrupt changes in 2017 when there was a major convective storm nearby.”
While it’s very interesting that the wind speeds have picked up, experts are uncertain as to what it means for the storm’s future as Wong stated, “That’s hard to diagnose, since Hubble can’t see the bottom of the storm very well. Anything below the cloud tops is invisible in the data.” “But it’s an interesting piece of data that can help us understand what’s fueling the Great Red Spot and how it’s maintaining energy.”
For now, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is continuing to amaze and baffle experts at the same time. A video and images of the wind changes in the Gas Giant’s massive storm can be seen here.
By analyzing images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope from 2009 to 2020, researchers found that the average wind speed just within the boundaries of the Great Red Spot, set off by the outer green circle, have increased by up to 8 percent from 2009 to 2020 and exceed 400 miles per hour. In contrast, the winds near the storm's innermost region, set off by a smaller green ring, are moving significantly more slowly. Both move counterclockwise.
Are NASA, the other space agencies and private space companies wasting their time focusing on finding signs of life on Mars and using this to justify and/or air creating human settlements there? That may be the case if you listen to researchers from the Washington University in St. Louis who say size matters when it comes to life on other planets and Mars is just too small to have it or sustain it because it’s too tiny to have water.
“Mars’ fate was decided from the beginning. There is likely a threshold on the size requirements of rocky planets to retain enough water to enable habitability and plate tectonics, with mass exceeding that of Mars.”
In a university press release announcing the publication of a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kun Wang, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences and senior author of the study explains how his team reached its conclusion about Mars being more like a dried pit than a juicy life-supporting olive. While the non-natural water-filled ‘canals’ that astronomers of the 19th and 20th centuries believed they saw on the Martian surface have been proven to be optical illusions, Martian rocks and Martian meteors found on Earth show solid evidence that the planet once had natural rivers and channels. However, the most recent explorations have found no water on the Martian surface. Wang and his colleagues turned to an unexpected element to resolve this discrepancy – potassium (K).
Did Mars ever look like this?
“This study presents K isotope data from a spectrum of martian lithologies as an isotopic tracer for comparing the inventories of highly and moderately volatile elements and compounds of planetary bodies. Here, we show that meteorites from Mars have systematically heavier K isotopic compositions than the bulk silicate Earth, implying a greater loss of K from Mars than from Earth.”
The team used stable isotopes of potassium (K) to estimate volatile elements and compounds — including water — on planets, satellites and large asteroids. They found that Mars, Earth, the Moon and the asteroid 4-Vesta had large amounts of volatile elements compounds when they were formed, but Mars lost more than Earth, and the Moon and 4-Vesta lost more than both. The evidence pointed to size as the deciding factor for how much water a planet or space rock retained. For the Red Planet, Wang says the key was the Martian meteorites found on Earth.
“Those Martian meteorites have ages varying from several hundred millions to 4 billion years and recorded Mars’ volatile evolution history. Through measuring the isotopes of moderately volatile elements, such as potassium, we can infer the degree of volatile depletion of bulk planets and make comparisons between different solar system bodies.”
Wang points out that those meteorites also dispute a prevailing theory that Mars once had even more water than Earth. As a result, astronomers now have an easy technique for determining if an exoplanet in a star’s habitable “Goldilocks” zone is a good prospect for life.
“The size of an exoplanet is one of the parameters that is easiest to determine. Based on size and mass, we now know whether an exoplanet is a candidate for life, because a first-order determining factor for volatile retention is size.”
Sorry, Mars — you may not even have enough to fill the bottle
Which brings us back to Mars. Although it’s in the Sun’s habitable zone, this study’s results make Mars too small to retain water for life. Should space agencies and companies move on to another planet or Moon? Good luck convincing them to abandon exploring the planet that has captured the imagination of astronomers and science fiction fans for centuries. Venus may be closer, but they can at least see where they’re going on Mars. Even if it doesn’t have enough water, the experience will prepare space travelers for the next longer mission to a better candidate.
According to a new study conducted by Chinese astronomers, there could be as many as a million small asteroids heading towards our planet within the next century. But apparently there’s no need to panic as the impact risk is low and the majority of the asteroids are less than 100 meters in width (328 feet). On the other hand, they if they do impact our planet, they would have more kinetic energy than what is in an atomic bomb.
he current number of known asteroids is 1,113,527 – some measuring as large as hundreds of miles in diameter while the smaller ones are less than 33 feet (10 meters) in width. Most of the known asteroids are located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. In fact, there are an estimated 1.1 to 1.9 million asteroids located there that are bigger than 1 kilometer in diameter (0.6 miles) with millions of smaller space objects.
Professor Gan Qingbo and colleagues at the Space Debris Observation and Data Application Centre at the China National Space Administration stated that the short-term hazardous asteroids (SHA) are very hard to track in space as they explained, “The accurate identification of impact threat targets and early warning capabilities requires more precise algorithms for orbit determination and impact risk assessment.”
The researchers looked through a global asteroid database and focused on the orbits of smaller asteroids and they discovered that over 700 of them could potentially hit our planet in the next century. Five of the asteroids had a one in a thousand chance of impacting our planet, although their constantly changing orbits could affect those probabilities. Then they conducted physical models on asteroid formation and estimated that there could be between 100,000 and a million short-term hazardous asteroids lurking around.
Since a lot of astronomers focus their attention on much larger space objects, they could be ignoring the smaller asteroids that may also be potentially dangerous. For example, a small asteroid measuring just 19 meters (62 feet) exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 but it still caused an extremely powerful explosion that was approximately 30 times stronger than the Hiroshima blast. Furthermore, the shock waves caused damage to over 7,200 buildings but thankfully nobody died.
This is a perfect example of a small asteroid causing significant damage. There is no reason for us to run for cover though as Professor Chen Ping, who is a Guangzhou-based geologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explained that the SHAs are “an interesting topic for academic research and public discussions, but that should be as far as it goes,” and that since they are so small, they would probably just burn up in our atmosphere. Let’s hope he’s right.
Even the Quiet Supermassive Black Holes are Blasting out Neutrinos and Gamma Rays
Even the Quiet Supermassive Black Holes are Blasting out Neutrinos and Gamma Rays
Is there anywhere in the Universe where we can escape from radiation? Certainly not here on Earth. And not in space itself, which is filled with diffuse radiation in the form of gamma rays and neutrinos. Scientists have struggled to explain where all those gamma rays and neutrinos come from. A trio of researchers is proposing a source for all that radiation in a new paper: resting black holes.
Supermassive Black Holes (SMBH) likely reside in the center of every large galaxy like the Milky Way. When those SMBHs are actively accreting matter they can spew out a lot of radiation across the entire spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays. When that happens they’re called active galactic nuclei. But what about SMBHs that are quiet?
A new study says even quiescent SMBHs are emitting gamma rays and neutrinos. The discovery helps explain why the Universe is awash in energetic particles.
Active galaxy nuclei like this one spew out a lot of radiation. Astronomers think some of the Universe’s diffuse radiation comes from more sedate black holes. Credit: NASA/Dana Berry, SkyWorks Digital
Neutrinos are nearly massless subatomic particles and are electrically neutral, which is where they get their name. As a result, their gravitational interaction is near zero, and they don’t interact with the strong nuclear force either. They’re extremely difficult to detect, and they’re passing through your body right now.
Gamma rays, on the other hand, are not difficult to detect. They’re the most energetic photons in the Universe and you definitely don’t want any passing through your body. They’re released in atomic bomb detonations, among other things. Space-based detectors have found gamma rays with voltages in the gigaelectron range. If electron volt ranges aren’t your thing, just think of them as more energetic than visible light by orders of magnitude.
So scientists know a lot about both neutrinos and gamma rays, they just aren’t sure where they all come from. This research might have the answer. “The Universe is filled with a diffuse background of MeV gamma-rays and PeV neutrinos, whose origins are unknown. Here, we propose a scenario that can account for both backgrounds simultaneously,” the authors write.
Scientists think they know where powerful background gamma-rays in the gigaelectron volt (GeV) to teraelectron (TeV) volt ranges come from. They come from AGNs and probably star-forming galaxies. But the source of softer gamma-rays, those in the megaelectron volt (MeV) ranges are unknown. Same with many neutrinos.
This paper shows that low luminosity galactic nuclei could account for both the neutrinos and the gamma rays.
Computer simulation of plasma near a black hole. Credit: Hotaka Shiokawa / EHT
A black hole’s enormous mass and gravitational pull draws matter toward it. It forms an accretion disk of swirling matter, and eventually, the matter falls into the black hole. When that happens an enormous amount of gravitational energy is released. That energy heats up gas around the hole and creates plasma. In this case, the low-accreting black hole has insufficient cooling and the plasma’s temperature can reach tens of billions of degrees Celsius.
What happens is the plasma energizes protons to an extreme degree. They can be 10,000 times more energetic than what the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can achieve, and the LHC is our most powerful particle accelerator. As these high-speed protons interact with matter and radiation, they produce neutrinos. This can account for the higher energy range neutrinos detected in space.
A similar mechanism produces gamma-rays. As the electrons reach extremely high temperatures, they become efficient producers of gamma-rays in the MeV range through a process called Comptonization.
This image from the study shows how mellow SMBHs can produce diffuse neutrinos and gamma rays that flood the Universe. Image Credit: Shigeo S. Kimura.
So the high-temperature plasma around quiet black holes can produce neutrinos and gamma-rays. Even though these types of black holes are dim and difficult to see, there are a lot of them. It’s reasonable to think they could account for background radiation in the form of gamma-rays and neutrinos.
But this is just a proposed mechanism. There’s no conclusive proof yet. Where will that come from?
Most of our gamma-ray detectors aren’t tuned to the MeV frequency. They’re tuned to higher energy levels. What’s needed is what the authors call a “multimessenger” detector. That’s a detector that detects both gamma-rays and neutrinos at the same time, in the right energy ranges. Proposed missions like e-ASTROGAM, the All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory (AMEGO), and the Gamma-Ray and AntiMatter Survey (GRAMS) should help.
Dozens of Robots Competed to Race Through Underground Caves
Dozens of Robots Competed to Race Through Underground Caves
America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is well known for its challenges. It held a series of autonomous driving competitions back in the early 2000s that directly led to today’s self-driving cars. Now that Grand Challenge has evolved into a new one – the Subterranean (SubT) challenge, which took place last week. This new one also happens to be directly applicable to technologies that would be useful in space exploration.
Ostensibly, DARPA’s SubT challenge is to develop a robotic system capable of identifying and, and even potentially helping, victims of a natural disaster or other catastrophe. The contest was broken into two overarching categories, and each category tackled three different types of terrain. The two categories were the Systems track, which utilized physical robots, and the Virtual track, which concentrated on developing algorithms for searching a given area.
Video recap of Day 1 of the Cave Circuit Challenge. Credit – DARPAtv YouTube Channel
Video recap of Day 3 of the Cave Circuit Challenge. Credit – DARPAtv YouTube Channel
The robots or algorithms for each category were then subject to three different terrains they had to master: a Tunnel Circuit, an Urban Circuit, and a Cave Circuit. The Tunnel Circuit competition took place in August of 2019 in some abandoned mining tunnels around Pittsburgh, while the Urban Circuit was held in February 2020 at an abandoned power plant in Washington State.
Covid-19 threw a wrench into plans for the Cave Circuit, which was initially scheduled to take place in the fall of 2020. Due to the pandemic, the competition, which was planned to take place in the Louisville Mega Cavern in Kentucky, was rescheduled to September of this year.
Unique “rollocopter” design from CoSTAR, a NASA-sponsored team, utilizes the capabilities of both a quadcopter and a two-wheeled rover. Credit – NASA / JPL-Caltech
The goal in all three terrains, and for each category, is the same – find and identify as many targets of interest (i.e., potential victims) as possible and flag them for follow-up by first responders. Accomplishing this is not as easy as it sounds and requires coordination by many robots scouting around the environment and talking to one another.
Teams from all over the world took place in the competition. Some were funded by DARPA itself, while others were entirely self-funded. Ultimately, DARPA-funded CERBERUS won the systems competition. Team CERBERUS is a collaboration between various universities, including the University of Nevada, Reno, ETH Zurich, and UC Berkeley. Their score of 23 tied another DARPA-funded team (CSIRO Data61) but they ultimately took home the $2 prize offered for winning the competition. The Virtual Competition was led by Dynamo, a self-funded effort that took home the $750,000 prize for winning its virtual competition.
Testing of the challenge robots has been ongoing for almost two years. Credit – NASA / JPL-Caltech
Over the past two years, the technologies used in the systems have advanced dramatically. CoSTAR, a team, partially run by roboticists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was particularly happy about new AI and navigation systems that could be used in entirely different environments.
Those environments include lunar or Martian caves that could offer the most habitable places in those inhospitable locations. If the original Autonomous Driving Grand Challenge is anything to go by, these new cave exploration technologies might be ready when they are needed for those lunar or Maritan exploration missions.
In a few billion years the Sun will end its life as a white dwarf. As the Sun runs out of hydrogen to fuse for energy it will collapse under its own weight. Gravity will compress the Sun until it’s roughly the size of Earth, at which point a bit of quantum physics will kick in. Electrons from the Sun’s atoms will push back against gravity, creating what is known as degeneracy pressure. Once a star reaches this state it will cool over time, and the once brilliant star will eventually fade into the dark.
Most stars in the universe will end as a white dwarf. Only the largest stars will explode as supernovae and become neutron stars or black holes. There are lots of white dwarfs in the Milky Way, but many of them can be difficult to study.
For one thing, white dwarfs don’t produce energy in their cores as regular stars do. They cool and fade as they age, so we tend to see the youngest and brightest white dwarfs. Observations of white dwarfs are also biased toward those with the smallest mass. That’s because the more massive a white dwarf is, the smaller it is. The reason for this has to do with the balance between electron degeneracy pressure and gravity. In a white dwarf, the electrons act as a sort of quantum gas. The more massive the white dwarf, the more tightly its gravity can squeeze the electrons, hence a smaller volume.
The most massive white dwarf is a bit larger than the Moon. Credit: Giuseppe Parisi
Fortunately, we’re getting better at studying smaller and cooler white dwarfs, as a recent study shows. The team used data from the Gaia spacecraft to find white dwarfs within 20 parsecs of Earth. In addition to known white dwarfs, the team identified about 100 white dwarfs that had never been cataloged. They then looked at the spectrum of these white dwarfs using ISIS spectrograph and polarimeter on the William Herschel Telescope. Since the spectrum of a white dwarf is affected by its magnetic field, the team was able to measure the strength of their magnetic fields.
They found an interesting result. There is a correlation between the age of a white dwarf and its magnetic field. The older a white dwarf is, the more likely it has a strong magnetic field. In other words, white dwarfs tend to become more magnetic as they age. This suggests that white dwarf magnetic fields are created through the cooling process of the star.
We aren’t sure how the cooling process magnetizes white dwarfs. The magnetic fields of larger and younger white dwarfs might be explained by a dynamo mechanism, similar to the process that generates Earth’s magnetic field. But the magnetic fields of old white dwarfs are often much larger than we think can be produced by a dynamo. So something strange is going on, and it will take more research to solve this mystery.
China gives Dark Fleet Antarctica Bases to Earth Alliance to build future Space Fleets
China gives Dark Fleet Antarctica Bases to Earth Alliance to build future Space Fleets
On September 24, Dr. Michael Salla received a new update about recent developments in Antarctica concerning former Dark Fleet bases taken over by China, and how these were being turned over to the Earth Alliance as a result of the Jupiter Agreements.
The update was released by Val Nek, from the Galactic Federation of Worlds, through Megan Rose who again relayed the information.
The video below is an audio version of an article published on Sept 27, 2021, and narrated by the author Dr. Michael Salla.
Update 2: Michael Salla - Interesting synchronicity.
Today I received Ben Fulford's latest update. His sources are telling him a major East/West agreement has just been reached involving China, which has joined a massive tech project to improve the planet.
That corroborates the update just received from Val Nek about China joining the Earth Alliance, and now working for common purposes for planetary defense, building a planetary starfleet, mass producing and releasing advanced healing technologies, etc.
This kind of independent corroboration is always helpful when trying to substantiate events taking place behind the scenes.
“Abandon Earth”: The Alleged Message Received by Voyager 2
“Abandon Earth”: The Alleged Message Received by Voyager 2
An alleged alien binary code message was downloaded by a US NCO, and appears to contain a shocking warning to humanity.
The famous American researcher Linda Moulton Howe translated some of these binary codes thanks to the support of a US Army sergeant.
Linda Moulton Howe and Dr. Horace Drew independently confirmed this, and the symbols translated by the sergeant named ‘CJ’ are, in fact, a message written in binary code that can be translated via a standard ASCII table.
Linda Moulton Howe is a renowned American investigative journalist and documentarian, known for her work as a ufologist and advocate for a variety of conspiracy theories.
But what this article brings us is: did aliens capture NASA’s Voyager 2 space probe and send coded messages to Earth through it?
Recall that Voyager 2 was one of the first space probes made for the exploration of the outer Solar System, and it is still in operation.
It was launched on August 20, 1977 by NASA aboard the Titan-Centaur rocket, just before its sister probe, Voyager 1, in an orbit that would eventually take it to visit the main planets of the Solar System.
But during its journey through the solar system, the probe was allegedly tampered with, and it suddenly changed the encoding of messages sent to Earth.
The anomaly began on April 22, 2010 and among the most disturbing hypotheses, they relate it to an extraterrestrial sabotage.
CJ’s message reads as follows:
Continuing protection of humanity 49.27n 11.5e. Exposing Hidden Knowledge to ALL Citizens’ Advancement Imperative for Planetary Survival Orion Attention 1,350.3 39,170 Avoid Sending (Signals) or Messages
NASA expert Kevin Baines, who is leading the mission, said that “it appeared that someone had taken control of the spacecraft and reprogrammed the probe, so we may not yet know the whole truth.”
Later, Kevin Baines reported that the probe was located about 15 billion kilometers from Earth and suddenly began sending data in a language that none of the experts could understand.
This can only happen in one case: “someone has changed the probe’s communication system”, and if so, we would be talking about another civilization that is navigating the cosmos.
From an analysis performed by the reception of Voyager 2’s encrypted signals, it was observed with amazement that the binary code of the probe’s communication system was changed from 0 to 1.
NASA noted that the rest of the probe’s onboard system had not undergone any modifications – reboot, reprogramming, and reboot – and therefore work continues as usual.
But what seems to have changed is the communication system … that has sent a message to Earth that supposedly says: “Leave Earth.”
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter is proving to be invaluable yet again— this time capturing a stunning photo of a Maritan 'road' that the Perseverance rover may soon travel. Of all the planets in our Solar System, Mars has regularly stood out as one of the most fascinating. It's relatively close to Earth, there's evidence of the planet being habitable billions of years ago, and scientists are on a mission to determine if life ever existed there. From remote-controlled robots to future human-led missions, it's safe to say that Mars exploration is in full force right now.
Perseverance and Ingenuity are two of NASA's most valuable tools for researching the Red Planet. Perseverance is the fifth NASA rover to ever land on Mars, whereas Ingenuity is the organization's first helicopter. Together, the robotic duo works with each other to make discoveries not previously possible. Ingenuity can scout potential areas of interest from above, determine if Perseverance can/should continue ahead, and the two repeat this process over and over again.
As part of this ongoing collaboration, NASA just shared a gorgeous new photo Ingenuity captured during its 12th Mars flight on August 16, 2021. The above image showcases the South Séítah region of Mars' Jzero Crater. Similar to so many other Mars pictures, it highlights the continually fascinating Martian surface. The ground below Ingenuity is littered with rocks, small hills, and intricate patterns in the sand/dust covering the ground. As is often the case with photos captured by Ingenuity, it's an impressive sight to behold.
Why This Photo Is So Useful For NASA
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech
As stunning as it is on its own, this photo becomes even more impressive with an understanding of the South Séítah region. Previous orbiter images have led scientists to believe that South Séítah could be "a treasure trove of complex geology" with potential answers about whether or not ancient life ever existed on the planet. Commenting on the photo, Ken Farley (a project scientist on the Perseverance team) said, "From a science perspective, these images of South Seítah are the most valuable Ingenuity has taken to date... Sedimentary layers in rocks are not readily apparent in the image, and there may be areas that could be difficult to negotiate with the rover. There is work to do by our science and rover driving teams to understand better how to respond to the new data."
All of this also acts as a reminder of how useful Ingenuity really is for this kind of exploring. If NASA decides to explore South Séítah with Perseverance, it now has a much better idea of what to expect. If the team looks at the photo and determines Perseverance's time is better spent in the Artuby Ridge right now, that prevents the team from making an unnecessary trip. As Farley puts it, "It's a win-win."
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter captured this image of the Perseverance rover during its 11th flight on the Red Planet, on Aug. 5, 2021.
‘ONZE' OORTWOLK TELT MOGELIJK MEER INTERSTELLAIRE BEZOEKERS DAN INHEEMSE OBJECTEN
‘ONZE' OORTWOLK TELT MOGELIJK MEER INTERSTELLAIRE BEZOEKERS DAN INHEEMSE OBJECTEN
Vivian Lammerse
Interstellaire kometen zoals 2I/Borisov zijn mogelijk niet zo zeldzaam als we denken.
In 2019 gebeurde er in onze kosmische achtertuin iets ongelofelijks. Astronomen ontdekten dat een interstellaire komeet ons zonnestelsel was binnengedrongen. De ijzige bal – 2I/Borisov genaamd – haastte zich met een slordige 177.000 kilometer per uur voort. Het was de eerste en tot nu toe nog de enige komeet afkomstig uit een ander sterrenstelsel die we hebben gezien. Maar wat als dergelijke interstellaire bezoekers ons vaker op een bezoekje trakteren dan we denken?
Oortwolk In een nieuwe studie komen onderzoekers met een gewaagde hypothese. Ze presenteren nieuwe berekeningen die aantonen dat de Oortwolk – een veronderstelde wolk van vele miljarden komeetachtige objecten rondom het zonnestelsel – meer interstellaire bezoekers herbergt dan inheemse objecten die tot ons eigen zonnestelsel behoren. De berekeningen, gemaakt op basis van conclusies over 2I/Borisov, bevatten aanzienlijke onzekerheden, zo benadrukt onderzoeker Amir Siraj. “Maar zelfs na deze in overweging te hebben genomen, prevaleren interstellaire bezoekers boven inheemse objecten.”
Meer over de Oortwolk
Het bestaan van de Oortwolk werd in 1950 geopperd door de Nederlandse sterrenkundige Jan Hendrik Oort. Deze wolk zou namelijk de steeds nieuwe kometen met langgerekte banen in ons zonnestelsel verklaren. Verstoringen van kometen in deze wolk – bijvoorbeeld door toedoen van sterren die ons zonnestelsel passeren – zouden ervoor zorgen dat sommige ervan de Oortwolk uitgekegeld worden, in een elliptische baan rond de zon belanden en daarbij en passant het binnenste van ons zonnestelsel aan doen.
Het is een opmerkelijke theorie. Want tot nu toe werd juist het omgekeerde verondersteld. “Vóór de detectie van de eerste interstellaire komeet, hadden we geen idee hoeveel interstellaire objecten er in ons zonnestelsel zijn,” zegt Siraj. “Maar de theorie over de vorming van planetaire systemen suggereert dat er minder bezoekers zouden moeten zijn dan permanente bewoners. Nu merken we dat er aanzienlijk meer bezoekers zouden kunnen zijn.”
Een voorbeeldje Hoe de onderzoekers tot dit idee zijn gekomen? “Laten we zeggen dat ik een dag lang naar een spoorlijn van een kilometer lang kijk en één auto zie oversteken,” schetst Siraj. “Ik kan dan stellen dat het aantal auto’s dat die dag de spoorlijn heeft overgestoken, één per dag per kilometer is. Maar als ik reden heb om aan te nemen dat deze waarneming geen eenmalige gebeurtenis was – bijvoorbeeld doordat er spoorbomen geplaatst zijn – dan kan ik een stap verder gaan en statische conclusies trekken over het aantal auto’s dat het betreffende stuk spoor oversteken.”
Vraag Een prangende vraag is dan echter; als er zoveel interstellaire kometen zijn, waarom hebben we er dan tot nu toe nog maar één gezien? “We beschikken nog niet over de nodige technologie om ze te detecteren,” betoogt Siraj. “Bedenk je dat de Oortwolk een gebied omspant dat zo’n 300 miljard tot 160 biljoen kilometer verwijderd is van de zon. En in tegenstelling tot sterren produceren objecten in de Oortwolk niet hun eigen licht. Die twee factoren maken het puin in de buitenste regionen van ons zonnestelsel ongelofelijk moeilijk waar te nemen.”
Planetoïden De theorie kan gevolgen hebben voor de manier waarop we naar planetoïden kijken. “Als we een blik op gegevens over planetoïden werpen, kunnen we ons afvragen of sommige misschien interstellair zijn maar nog niet als zodanig herkend zijn,” aldus astrofysicus Matthew Holman, niet betrokken bij het onderzoek. Holman legt uit dat na de ontdekking van een planetoïde, deze niet jaarlijks wordt waargenomen of bestudeerd. “We denken dat het planetoïden zijn, maar dan verliezen we ze uit het oog, zonder er een goede blik op te hebben geworpen,” zegt hij.
Vera C. Rubin-observatorium Waarnemingen met toekomstige, verbeterde technologie zouden de resultaten van het onderzoeksteam kunnen helpen bevestigen. Ze kijken dan ook reikhalzend uit naar de lancering van het Vera C. Rubin-observatorium, dat in 2022 het luchtruim kiest. Deze telescoop gaat onder andere de buitenste regionen van ons zonnestelsel afspeuren, op zoek naar interessante objecten. De verwachting is dat Rubin ongeveer tien keer zoveel planetoïden als momenteel bekend is aan het licht gaat brengen. “We hopen dan ook veel meer interstellaire bezoekers zoals 2I/Borisov te detecteren,” aldus Siraj.
Als er inderdaad een overvloed aan interstellaire objecten in de Oortwolk te vinden zijn, dan zou dit tevens betekenen dat er veel meer puin over is van de vorming van planetenstelsels dan eerder werd gedacht. “Samen met observatiestudies van protoplanetaire schijven en computergestuurde benaderingen van planeetvorming, zou de studie naar interstellaire objecten ons kunnen helpen de geheimen te ontrafelen van hoe ons planetenstelsel – en andere – gevormd zijn,” besluit Siraj.
Omdat ze op het Australische Phillip-eiland geen natuurlijke vijand hebben, bevinden deze vraatzuchtige duizendpoten zich wonderbaarlijk genoeg aan de top van de voedselketen.
Als je aan een duizendpoot denkt, denk je misschien aan die kleine, krioelende beestjes in de zanderige grond. Maar in Australië nemen zelfs deze diertjes bizarre vormen aan. Onderzoekers hebben namelijk ontdekt dat de Cormocephalus coynei, een duizendpoot die leeft op het onbewoonde, Australische Phillip-eiland, niet alleen gigantisch is, maar ook een wat opmerkelijk dieet volgt.
Meer over de Cormocephalus coynei
Cormocephalus coynei is een duizendpootsoort die voorkomt op Phillip- en Nepean-eiland, gelegen ten zuiden van het Australische Norfolkeiland. De soort werd voor het eerst gezien op Phillip-eiland in 1792, maar werd pas in 1984 formeel beschreven. De duizendpoot kan maar liefst 23,5 cm lang worden en is roodbruin en oranje van kleur. Maar het meest opmerkelijke is zijn bizarre gewoonte om op gewervelde dieren te jagen.
In de studie besloten onderzoekers het dieet van de duizendpoot te bestuderen. Want dat deze diertjes een bijzondere eetlust hebben, weten we al langer. Zo staan ze erom bekend om op gekko’s, stinken en vissen te jagen. Maar soms hebben de beestjes zelfs nog grotere honger.
Een gekko is ten prooi gevallen aan een vleesetende duizendpoot.
Afbeelding: D. Terrington (2019)
Zeevogels De onderzoekers kwamen namelijk tot de ontdekking dat de duizendpoten op Phillip-eiland het zelfs op zeevogels hebben voorzien. “Er zijn aanwijzingen dat grote duizendpoten over de hele wereld gewervelde dieren verorberen,” zegt onderzoeksleider Luke Halpin. “Maar dit is de eerste keer dat we ontdekken dat de duizendpoot op zeevogels jaagt.”
Dieet De onderzoekers hebben het opmerkelijke dieet van Cormocephalus coynei nauwkeurig in kaart gebracht. En daaruit blijkt dat het bizarre eetpatroon van deze roofzuchtige duizendpoot voor 48 procent bestaat uit gewervelde dieren en 52 procent uit ongewervelde dieren. 30,5 procent bestaat uit hagedissen, waaronder de inheemse Lord Howe Island Skink en de endemische hagedis Christinus guentheri. Opvallend genoeg bestaat 7,9 procent van het dieet van de duizendpoot uit de zwartvleugelstormvogel (met name de kuikentjes) en 9,6 procent uit zeevissen die door in bomen nestelende zeevogels op de bosbodem zijn gedropt.
Bekijk in deze video hoe een duizendpoot een kuikentje vangt.
Het is een vrij merkwaardige samenstelling voor een duizendpoot. “Het vertegenwoordigt een ongewoon hoog percentage gewervelde dieren in het dieet van een ongewervelde,” constateert Halpin. “We laten zien hoe roofzuchtige geleedpotigen druk uitoefenen op gewervelde populaties.”
Top van voedselketen Maar dat is niet eens het enige. Aangezien geen enkel roofdier op het eiland het op de duizendpoot heeft voorzien, zijn deze langbenige monstertjes de onbetwiste toproofdieren op Philip-eiland. Ze bevinden zich wonderbaarlijk genoeg aan de top van de voedselketen.
Sleutelrol Hoe maf het ook klinkt, volgens de onderzoekers is de vraatzuchtige eetlust van de duizendpoten eigenlijk van vitaal belang voor het ecosysteem op het eiland. Dat komt omdat ze belangrijke voedingsstoffen uit de zee (die de zeevogels meenemen) naar het land brengen. Volgens onderzoeker Rohan Clarke spelen de gigantische duizendpoten dan ook een sleutelrol in de vormgeving van het natuurlijke systeem. “Het benadrukt echt de complexiteit van de natuur,” aldus de Clarke.
De duizendpoten houden dus de dynamiek van het ecosysteem op het eiland in balans. En daar kunnen wij ook een belangrijke les uit trekken. “Het laat zien hoe belangrijk het is om de resterende natuurlijke gebieden te behouden,” benadrukt Clarke. “Op die manier kunnen we voorkomen dat complexe interacties zoals deze – die uiteindelijk het leven op aarde ondersteunen – verder worden verstoord.”
8 Ancient Chinese Inventions the West Had Not Imagined
8 Ancient Chinese Inventions the West Had Not Imagined
According to the statistics provided by the World Economic Forum, nowadays China can boast its position as the world’s second largest spender on scientific research and development, yielding only to the United States.
Yet, surprisingly enough, China is not only a producer but also an inventor of a great many things and even technologies that the US and much older nations use daily.
When numerous tribes were searching for the best lands all across Europe and couldn’t even imagine that the Atlantic Ocean separated them from the other large continents, the Chinese civilization was establishing, developing, and revolutionizing oriental science and technology.
Of course, China can’t be credited with the invention of the mobile phone, Internet or other modern technologies. But what this nation did give to the whole of humanity thousands of years ago advanced different industries and improved different aspects of human life. What’s more, the influence of all those ingenious ancient Chinese inventions can be tracked even to the 21st century.
However, that’s just a tiny part of the enormous heritage that ancient China left for the global future.
Documenting the Chinese Contribution
Dr. Joseph Needham was one of the first and most prominent Western scientists who tried to shed light on Chinese achievements and contributions to the development of our whole world. The British biochemist and historian became captivated by China’s attitude and approach to science and technology after his trip to this country in 1942.
Needham’s admiration for Chinese history, culture and language, as well as his extraordinary intelligence, led him to work on a huge project, now widely known as “ Science and Civilization in China ”.
It comprises 27 published books in 7 volumes on the subject and covers each and every aspect: from mathematics to medicine.
Science and Civilisation in China (Chinese translation) by Joseph Needham.
Joseph Needham enthusiastically described dozens of ancient Chinese inventions which were (and remain) widely used in the Western world that one couldn’t even imagine they actually had come from the Far East.
So, what did this centuries-old, wise, and still mysterious civilization give us for nothing, literally?
Paper, Toilet Paper, Paper Money, and the Menu
The invention of paper allowed the invention of the other three helpful things mentioned here. So, let’s put all four of them into one category – paper invention.
Europeans were buying papyrus from Egypt and using parchment for all those centuries when the Chinese were enjoying real paper. Although it didn’t look quite like the modern paper we are used to writing on, it turned out to be a more convenient and durable material.
Historical records attribute the invention of papermaking to Cai Lun, a eunuch of the emperor’s court. Although it’s officially acknowledged that papermaking was born in AD 105, recent investigations have traced it back to the 2nd century BC.
Some may argue that papyrus had been produced in Egypt since 3000 BC and served its purpose well for many centuries. However, in the 14th-15th centuries Europe also opted for paper. And this choice speaks for itself.
Obviously, if China invented papermaking, it must be the creator of… toilet paper. The first recorded use of it dates back to AD 851, during the Tang dynasty. But it was the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) when the popularity of toilet paper among the imperial court increased.
In the Western world toilet paper became commercially available only in the second half on the 19th century, after it was “reinvented” by Joseph C. Gayetty in 1857.
In the 9th century AD the Chinese started using paper to print money. The first paper bills served as credit or exchange notes. Merchants could receive them for deposing metal coins, without any losses in the value of “cash”.
China has always been a grand trader, welcoming merchants and adventurers from all around the world. The large number of foreigners who couldn’t speak the Chinese language is said to be the reason for inventing… a restaurant menu as early as the times of the Song dynasty (960–1279). The Chinese already had paper, so using it to make menus was a reasonable idea, wasn’t it?
Printing
Despite the availability of much earlier artifacts of printing in the Far East, the Diamond Sutra is considered to be the very first book printed on paper at regular size. According to the records, it was made in AD 868, during the Tang dynasty. At that time woodblock printing was gaining popularity, simplifying the spread of religious texts without modifications.
Early masters put ink on an inscribed wooden block. The ink rolled over the surface of characters carved into the wood. After printing, a reversed picture of the wooden block was left on paper that took the ink easily. A single block could produce about 20,000 copies.
One century later Bi Sheng upgraded this technique by introducing movable type printing. Movable individual characters, carved on clay pieces and hardened with fire, could be attached to an iron plate to print one page of text. It was then broken up and reorganized to print another page.
By the way, Johann Gutenberg used almost the same technology to print the first Bible in the 1450s.
Alcohol
The 2004 research by University of Pennsylvania claimed that the Chinese might have been the first nation to discover fermentation and distillation processes used to create alcohol. The team of scientists studied dried organic materials that they found in ancient jars. The results of a complex analysis allowed them to state that the Chinese drank alcoholic beverages as early as 9,000 years ago.
The legend has it that Yi Di, the wife of Yu the Great, who was the emperor of the mystical dynasty Xia, was the first to prepare an alcoholic drink for her husband. That might have happened around 2000 BC.
So, the history of wine and beer making takes its roots from China, which nowadays is, ironically, not so well known for the production and export of alcohol.
Forks
Surely, chopsticks make an integral part of Chinese exotica. But the finds from the recent excavation of the tomb of Qin Shihuang, the first non-mythical emperor of China (259 BC - 210 BC), prove that the Chinese created forks of quite a modern design many hundreds of years ago. Why the Chinese didn’t and don’t use them is another question.
Nonetheless, the West can thank this nation for their creativity and practicality. At the end of the day, it’s quite difficult for us to imagine our traditional breakfasts and dinners without forks.
Compass
Arab traders are likely to have brought the compass to Europe. Thus, our distant ancestors started using it in navigation to find the right direction in the stormy seas and to discover new lands.
However, the compass is one of the greatest ancient Chinese inventions. It was created around the 3rd century BC and initially used by… fortunetellers. Chinese navigators began to use it in ships not earlier than during the Song dynasty, that is around the 10th century AD.
By the way, unlike the modern compass that points north, the ancient Chinese compass pointed south. The “needle” of the Chinese compass was made from lodestone in the form of a spoon. Lodestone naturally points south, and that gave Chinese sailors an additional strategic advantage: south is always the direction of the sun when it’s midday. So there’s no wonder why smart Chinese navigation became a model for the whole world.
The prototype of our mechanical watches and clocks existed first in China too. Its creator was Buddhist monk Yi Xing. He came up with the first model of the mechanical clock in AD 725, two centuries before the idea of it struck Westerners.
According to his design, dripping water powered a big wheel which made one full revolution in one day – 24 hours.
During the Song dynasty, official Su Song modernized the clock so it could tell not only the time of the day but also the day of the month, the phase of the Moon, and the positions of some stars and planets. Su Song built a clock tower and added a chain-driven mechanism to the sophisticated system of gears and wheels that made the clock turn.
Earthquake Detector
We may know it better as a seismograph, though almost 2,000 years ago it looked more like a beautiful bronze vase. What was its secret?
Inside the vessel there is a pendulum that can be moved by an earth tremor. The swing of the pendulum sets in motion the internal levers inside the vessel. This triggers the release of a small ball held by a dragon that faces the direction of the epicenter of the tremor. This ball falls into the mouth of a frog right below it, hence heralding the danger.
In China earthquakes are frequent, so the stylish device did stand this country in good stead for hundreds of years.
The Western prototype of the modern seismograph was designed in Persia in the 13th century and in France no earlier than in the beginning of the 18th century.
Rockets
China’s recent achievements in space exploration are impressive. Probably, in the 3rd century AD the inventors of rockets couldn’t even dream that their descendants would once see the Earth from the skies. But the memory and historical records about their innovation inspired distant generations to build huge and powerful spacecrafts.
Drawing of an early Mongolian soldier lighting a rocket.
But let’s go back to the ancient times and see how it worked there.
The counter-force, required to set a rocket in motion, was produced by ignited gunpowder, which is actually another Chinese invention. For example, during the Song dynasty, the Chinese stuffed a paper tube with gunpowder and attached this tube to an arrow that they could launch with a bow.
Obviously, such invention was widely used in military. But it also became an integral part of traditional Chinese entertainment – fireworks.
A video was sent to the WBSM Facebook page that we could not help but take a closer look at.
Cam Fortes sent us a video that his brother, Noah recorded on Saturday, September 25. Noah told us that the video was taken around 7:30 p.m. near Buttonwood Park in New Bedford. The flashing lights appear to be hovering over the CVS on Kempton Street.
Over the chorus of Rupert Holmes' "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)," you can hear Noah say that the two flashing lights are moving in sync. The video was less than 10 seconds, but that was enough to intrigue us about these two flashing orange orbs.
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“They almost seemed like they were levitating and just standing still almost,” Fortes said. “I wish I got more footage, but they were just moving in sync. They were orange orbs and they were diagonal from each other. It was honestly quite weird how in sync they were!”
WBSM reached out to Scot Servis, the Airport Manager at New Bedford Regional Airport, for some insight on the video.
"My vote is a drone, but with the green lights either disabled or covered,” Servis said. “If it was a helicopter, you would have heard it. It's moving too slow to be an airplane. Just my two cents."
A drone would make sense as you might not be able to hear it depending on how high it was elevated above you. And the restrictions on lights for drones is not as carefully regulated as a plane or helicopter would be.
This is the second UFO sighting reported to our radio station since Tuesday, September 21. The first one was captured by Jordan Costa and Donna Santos outside of their home in Westport.
LOOK UP: 14 Recent UFO Sightings on the SouthCoast
1. Marion – June 5, 2018, 11:45 a.m.
We actually wrote about this report when it first happened, and you can see our story on it – including video – right here. Crystal, the woman who captured the video, spotted two UFOs over Marion Harbor in broad daylight. At first, she thought they were just a pair of balloons until she noticed they were moving completely in unison. "They never moved independently," she said. "But were moving together to the left, slowly." She said the wind was blowing in the same direction as they were moving, and she watched them until clouds rolled in and she could no longer see the two objects.
2. Buzzards Bay/Bourne – July 20, 2018, 8:20 p.m.
This “orange fireball” with “a very tiny darker colored flame at one end” was seen for about three to five minutes by a couple camping at the Bourne Scenic Park along the Cape Cod Canal. Its movement was described as “slow and silent.” The reporting party told the National UFO Reporting Center they had seen a similar object in the same spot in the past.
3. Middleboro – August 2, 2018, 10:30 p.m.
The town of Middleboro is in the direct flight path to Logan Airport, but this person who reported their sighting to the National UFO Reporting Center says he knows the Logan flight paths and this was not part of them. Initially, the light was amber colored and seemed very high in altitude. However, its brightness was about twice that of the airplanes. The light was solid and not strobing. It appeared to be somewhat cross-shaped, but I wasn’t sure if it might’ve just been light refraction,” he reported. “Within 5-10 seconds the light started losing intensity and the color faded to white. After about another 10 seconds of the light slowly losing its intensity it was nothing more than a pinpoint of light no bigger than a very small star. Within a second it faded to complete darkness and I lost sight of it.” He said the entire event lasted just 15-20 seconds.
4. New Bedford – September 16, 2018, 5 p.m.
The person who shared this report with the National UFO Reporting Center was outside with their niece and mother when they noticed “(a) banner of white spheres in constellation formation flying under (the) half moon.” The sighting lasted less than five minutes but was very strange. “The spheres were arranged in what appeared to be constellations,” the report reads. “Furthermore, they also appeared to be changing, maybe as if there was some sort of message.”
5. Wareham – March 12, 2019, 12:20 a.m.
This white oval sphere was reported over Onset Bay near the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, with three military jets in pursuit. “The object was glowing white when I observed the three military jets flying around it,” reads the report that came into the National UFO Reporting Center. “When the jets approached it seemed to change color and glowed red for a split second then disappeared for what seemed to me a couple of seconds. Reappearing close to the same spot as it disappeared zig, zagging from north to south followed by a rapid acceleration to the West and then totally disappearing from sight.”
6. Rehoboth – April 28, 2019, 2 a.m.
The date on this sighting is listed as “approximate” by the National UFO Reporting Center, but the duration of the event was reportedly more than an hour each night and went on for several weeks. “Looked exactly like a star but much brighter. Wasn’t a plane because it stayed in the same spot for about an hour...Wasn’t a star because it eventually moved,” the report reads. “I thought it may possibly be a satellite at first but it’s been in the same spot for quite a few weeks now. Every time I wake up between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., it’s there, and then after 3:30 a.m., it’s gone. Very strange.” Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center theorized the object spotted could be Jupiter or Saturn.
7. Middleboro – June 3, 2019, 2:26 a.m.
This sighting, which lasted less than 20 minutes, was reported to the National UFO Reporting Center as five bright lights merging into one: “I first saw what it looked like to be a star, a white-looking star, then another joined under it, and another under it. The three stars formed in a line. After about five seconds, they merged into one star. Then the stars looked like it was making an unknown shape. From what I saw, it looked like a teardrop but the tip was very curved. I also noticed some sort of beam shining out of the UFO. I also noticed a minuscule-sized aircraft flying around the light. The small one was flashing green lights. Then it faded into nothing. Came back, then faded once more. After the second fading, the light never came back.”
8. New Bedford – June 8, 2019, 11:34 p.m.
This very quick sighting of an oval-shaped object was nonetheless submitted to the National UFO Reporting Center. “I observed a single, fairly large, blueish oval/pill-shaped object with a lighter blueish tint/halo surrounding it,” the report reads. “It traveled in the clear night sky, in low earth orbit, at very high speeds with no audible sounds. It was slightly slower than a meteorite/shooting star and much much faster than a satellite. It had no visible tail and kept on path heading from West to East and was only in my field of view for about four to five seconds.”
9. Middleboro – July 30, 2019, 3 a.m.
Two different reports came into the National UFO Reporting Center of these “very bright lights in the sky,” which began at 3 a.m. and remained hovering overhead for more than an hour. “It had bright lights, seemed to be pulsating, and moved almost imperceptibly from left to right. The lights appeared to be in a triangular shape. At one point, an extremely bright, perfectly vertical, thin beam of light appeared next to it (think of a flashbulb, but quicker). This happened twice. This thing remained in the sky, in the same spot, for over an hour,” one report read. The other report had a similar description, adding, “The flashes were more like thin beams of extremely bright white light that traveled in perfectly straight vertical lines. They appeared in a flash, in a nanosecond—and these flashes were blinding. I cannot imagine I was the only person who saw this.”
10. Lakeville – September 15, 2019, 8:17 p.m.
The circular object was spotted for less than a minute. “My husband was sitting on the couch, we were watching tv when he noticed a bright light outside usually where the moon would be. It was too early for the moon to be in that position and this light was too bright. We went to our porch and got a closer look and video,” reads the report from the National UFO Reporting Center. “It was a bright whitish-blue circle, could have been octagon shaped. It stayed over the tree line for almost a minute, moved slightly to the right, stopped, and then moved off quickly behind the tree lines. We live on the third floor, so we ran outside to the car and tried to follow, but it was gone.”
11. Fall River – November 23, 2019, 9 p.m.
These objects were seen over multiple nights hovering in the same position over the Somerset area, but only visible at night. “They blended in with the stars. It was like a circle of fuzzy white lights and on top was a red light,” the report reads. “Looked like it could have been drones but the drones would have to be huge, so I really started looking and counted 24+ objects, all were identical.”
12. New Bedford – November 25, 2019, 6:45 p.m.
Described as “four spherical objects emitting red aura flying in a trail formation,” this sighting lasted about seven minutes over the intersection of Route 140 and Route 6. “Two of them were headed west to east over Route 140 parallel with one another. One of them then moved behind the other in a trailing formation moving at approximately 20+ mph. The other two objects I observed were located above a cemetery near Route 140 and Route 6,” the report reads. “They were moving up, down, left, right for a minute or so. One of them dropped altitude really quickly like, 500 feet in less than a second. It then moved back upwards and the both started heading west to east in a trailing formation back over Route 140 and Route 6.” The reporting party did admit they could have been drones.
13. Fall River – December 28, 2019, 6 p.m.
There’s not much to this report, other than it appeared for a duration of about 20 minutes. “The lights were blinking and swirling in circles,” the report reads. “I first thought it was stars but they started to move across the sky.”
14. Carver – February 4, 2020, 2:09 a.m.
The spherical object remained in the sky for well over an hour. “I first noticed its lights and it was suspended over the cranberry bogs. It didn't move very much, it just hung there in silence.” The report went on to state the craft left without making a sound, and that it “moved strangely” and “had lights on all sides.” The reporting party claimed to have snapped 10 photos of the alleged craft, but they were not included with the report.
Encounters with mysterious, glowing balls of light – ones that have the mystifying ability to change into the forms of strange and savage creatures – have been reported on more than a few occasions in Texas. A classic example is the large body of data that surrounds a certain huge area of forest in Texas. As someone who is proud to call the Dallas-Fort Worth area my home, I am all too well aware that many people think and assume that Texas is just one big desert. In reality, however, that’s far from the case. Yes, West Texas is extremely flat and filled with almost endless fields of cotton. And, it’s also true that South Texas has its fair share of harsh and scalding landscapes. However, Central, North, and East Texas are very different: they are dominated by thick forestland that extends for miles and miles…and miles. Indeed, a 2011 Forest Inventory and Analysis report prepared by the Texas Forest Service revealed that Texas’ woods ran to 62.4 million acres, and which cover almost forty percent of the state. And it’s to one particular area of dense woodland that we have to turn our attention to. Its name: the Big Thicket.
(Nick Redfern)
Located in the Piney Woods area of East Texas, the Big Thicket has a most apt moniker: it is a huge, 83,000-acre area of woodland. “Dense” barely begins to describe the massive, forested environment, which is home to numerous wild animals, including alligators and bobcats – as well as to other creatures of a very odd kind, as we’ll soon see. Running through the heart of the Big Thicket is a long, thin, and incredibly sandy old road called Bragg Road. That’s not what the locals call it, though. To them, it is known as Ghost Light Road. Or, just Ghost Road. There is a very good reason for this: for at least three centuries, people have reported seeing weird, small balls of light flitting through the trees late at night. But, we’re not talking about anything quite as down to earth as fireflies. These particular lights vary in size from – approximately – a tennis ball to a beach ball. They also exhibit evidence of intelligence: witnesses describe the lights approaching them, even circling them, in what is occasionally perceived as a playful fashion. Such is the interest that the lights provoke in the people that live there, and in visitors too, a historical marker has been erected at the start of Bragg Road and which details the strange story of the lights.
(Nick Redfern) Nick Redfern and the late Rob Riggs
The late Rob Riggs was a well-known figure in the Bigfoot research field and someone who spent a significant portion of his life living in the Big Thicket area. Riggs collected numerous reports of the mysterious ghost lights, dating back to the 1800s. But, Riggs did far more than that: he also catalogued an astonishing number of reports of what seemed to be Bigfoot and large, black leopards. I say “seemed to be” for a very good reason. While most people who have reported seeing large black cats, and who have had hairy wild-man type encounters in the Big Thicket, the vast majority are content to conclude they encountered animals of the type that very few ever get to encounter. But, not all of them. A small body of individuals have sworn that the large cats and the hairy humanoids – when spotted by the astonished and sometimes terrified onlookers – vanished before their eyes. We’re not talking about them making hasty getaways into the woods. Rather, we are talking about the “animals” – in an instant – changing form from big cat and Bigfoot to a small, brightly-lit globe of light. The ghost lights that have been staple parts of the area for centuries, of course.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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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 73 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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