The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
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...
19-10-2021
William Shatner Went To Space and Took Us Along
William Shatner Went To Space and Took Us Along
Screenshot from a video provided by Blue Origin of William Shatner at the window of the New Shepherd capsule. Courtesy Blue Origin.
Much commentary got written about the Blue Origin flight that took actor William Shatner to the edge of space last week. Some of what I’ve read is amazingly generous toward Mr. Shatner’s experience, with people expressing their thanks for his eloquent reactions shortly after disembarking the capsule. Before flight, NASAtweeted “We wish you all the best on your flight into space. You are and always will be our friend. ” And, many others, including Elon Musk, wished him well. Musk, who heads up Blue Origin rival SpaceX, tweeted, “Godspeed Captain.”
Some other commentary was, well, less than gracious. In fact, some downright scathing comments came from people who should know better. Now, granted, some criticism is (rightfully) directed at the “Party On, DØØdz” atmosphere outside the capsule as Mr. Shatner struggled to put his feelings into words. That insistence on the champagne shower during a powerfully personal moment was, in my view, tacky. And, that sort of criticism is on point. There’s a time to party, but there’s also a time to let the emotions and stories flow.
But, criticism is not what I’m really here to talk about. Nor am I going to get into a discussion about what a “real astronaut” is or “where space begins”. What’s important is what his reaction says about his experience “up there.” And, how he brought that experience home to us.
William Shatner’s Experience was Moving
William Shatner has been taking us to space for decades, albeit on TV and in movies. This time, he did it for real. I’ll say it: I felt strikingly moved by his reactions and words. I suspect that if I’d been in that seat, staring entranced out that window, I’d be the same way upon landing: struggling to describe a few minutes that changed my life.
I think anyone who gets that chance is changed. Certainly, other astronauts describe that feeling of a changed point of view. That is the power of the “Overview Effect“. Yes, they were up there to do a job, but that didn’t stop them from taking the time to appreciate our planet and the stars beyond.
I’ve met Mr. Shatner a few times, and he’s always been very polite and smooth, and he can tell a good story. He has stage presence, understandably so after a lifetime of being an actor. He’s got the chops. Knowing that, and watching him search for words to describe what he experienced, the fact that he WAS so not-smooth, not-glib, and not acting—well, that really touched me. And, it did give me some hope that maybe someday, the rest of us will be able to go to space and experience what he did.
Practicing to go to Space
I’ve spent a large part of my productive career under the dome, creating shows for planetarium theaters. And, often enough, I’ve stood in a dome, watching as Earth rises above the horizon or some other cosmic scene we’ve produced unfold overhead. It never gets old, even though I know how it’s done. It almost feels sometimes like I’m practicing to go to space. And, companies like Blue Origin are offering that chance, as I’ve written before. It may be a while before regular folks get to go, so for many of us, seeing Earth from space is still an experience you get in a dome.
Even that experience has given me a small taste of what it might be like to see the real thing. Those of us in the “dome trade” get to do that for our audiences, and watch as THEY gasp in wonder when the stars come on or a planet rises before our eyes. So, we’re part of the way there. Shatner and others who go before us are telling us that there’s something special to learn, out there.
It’s hardly surprising that 1997 was the year in which the Roswell “crashed UFO” affair reached its absolute pinnacle. It was, after all, nothing less than the 50th anniversary of the mysterious event. Just about everyone who was anyone in Ufology was commenting on, or writing about, the case – mostly from the perspective of promoting and championing the alien angle. That was not the case for exactly everyone, however. Certainly, I wasn’t impressed by the E.T. angle. I’m still not impressed today, in 2021. Three years after the 1994 “Mogul Report” was published, the Air Force made a surprising acknowledgement that the reported sightings of strange bodies at Roswell did have a basis in fact, after all. Not only that: so compelled by then was the Air Force to address the bodies issue that it authorized the release of yet another report on Roswell. The last word, lo and behold, was not the last word. The last word was not even anywhere in sight. Entitled The Roswell Report: Case Closed, it did very little – if anything at all – to dampen the ever-present notoriety surrounding the case, however. In fact, the question of why the Air Force had concluded there was a pressing need on its part to explain the reports of unusual bodies found in New Mexico (when it could quite easily have summarily dismissed them as hoaxes or modern-day folklore), arguably only heightened the interest in what did or did not occur.
U.S. Air Force
The Air Force report focused practically all of its 231 pages on the alleged recovery of the strange bodies and asserted that: “‘Aliens’ observed in the New Mexico desert were probably anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research. The ‘unusual’ military activities in the New Mexico desert were high altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations. The reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and ‘crew,’ were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.” There is no doubt (it is, actually, a matter of historical record) that the Air Force conducted a wide array of tests using crash test dummies in New Mexico and that at least some of these tests did occur in the vicinities of both the White Sands Proving Ground and the town of Roswell. But were those same tests responsible – either in part or in whole – for the stories concerning highly unusual-looking bodies recovered by the military during the summer of 1947?
(Nick Redfern)
At the time of its release, the conclusions of the Air Force’s latest (final…?) report provoked a furor of controversy. While there is absolutely no doubt that tests utilizing anthropomorphic dummies were widespread in New Mexico, the Air Force’s report largely and very carefully glosses over the fact that these particular tests did not even commence until the early 1950s. This was an issue not lost on the mainstream media during the Air Force’s press conference at the Pentagon, which accompanied the release of the report in July 1997. A reporter asked, “How do you square the UFO enthusiasts saying that they’re talking about 1947, and you’re talking about dummies used in the 50’s, almost a decade later?” An Air Force spokesman replied, slightly and noticeably awkwardly: “Well, I’m afraid that’s a problem that we have with time compression. I don’t know what they saw in ‘47, but I’m quite sure it probably was Project Mogul. But I think if you find that people talk about things over a period of time, they begin to lose exactly when the date was.” For the record, “time compression” was the 1990s equivalent of what we now know and utterly loathe as, ahem, “alternative facts.”
The Earth didn’t physically stand still in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” but it did spin backwards when Superman reversed time. Those are both fiction, but scientists now have solid evidence that the Earth flipped on its side and then flipped back into place at least once. We’re still here so it didn’t destroy the planet, but the event left physical evidence and a team of researchers finally found and identified it.
“Imagine looking at Earth from space. True polar wander would look like the Earth tipping on its side, and what’s actually happening is that the whole rocky shell of the planet—the solid mantle and crust—is rotating around the liquid outer core.”
There has been news the past few years of the Earth’s magnetic pole moving somewhat rapidly south – it’s now in Siberia – but a new study in Nature Communications, “A Late Cretaceous true polar wander oscillation,” reveals details on true polar wander (TPW), which is the “reorientation of a planet or moon in order to align the body’s greatest nonhydrostatic principal axis of inertia with the spin axis.” On Earth, this happens when the Earth’s mantle and crust rotate around the liquid outer core. Study co-author and Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Principle Investigator Joseph Kirschvink explains in a press release that TPW has been hotly debated in scientific circles because of the lack of physical evidence. He led a team to search for it, estimating that the last time this happened was in the Cretaceous period between about 145.5 and 65.5 million years ago. Co-author Prof. Ross Mitchell at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing knew exactly where to look – in the Apennine Mountains of central Italy.
“These Italian sedimentary rocks turn out to be special and very reliable because the magnetic minerals are actually fossils of bacteria that formed chains of the mineral magnetite.”
Co-author and geobiologist at Dartmouth College explains why these rocks were the perfect ‘images’ of Earth in the Cretaceous period. Many rocks record the direction of the local magnetic field as they form – tiny crystals of the mineral magnetite produced by some bacteria line up like compass needles pointing to the magnetic poles. That direction is preserved when the rock solidifies and identifies where it came from – a rock with a vertical direction came from the pole, horizontal from the Equator. Any angle in between can be used to calculate their place of birth. By checking the magnetic direction of the rocks found in the Apennine over a period of 80 million years, the researchers pinpointed when the Earth flipped over and when it righted itself.
“Kirschvink and colleagues found, as the true polar wander hypothesis predicted, the Italian data indicate an ~12˚ tilt of the planet 84 million years ago. The team also found that Earth appears to have corrected itself—after tipping on its side, Earth reversed course and rotated right back, for a total excursion of nearly 25˚ of arc in about five million years.”
Over a course of just 5 million years, the Earth tilted over 12 degrees and then righted itself back to normal. This era of the Late Cretaceous Period was before the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction caused by the Chicxulub impact, so there were plenty of large dinosaurs around to experience it. how did it affect the T. rexes and their contemporaries? That’s food for another study. However, this research will help find smaller tilts which many research suspect have occurred in more recent times.
Four hundred ancient rock-cut chamber tombs that contained paintings and treasures were discovered by archaeologists in Turkey. The chamber tombs, which date back about 1,800 years, are part of one of the world’s biggest rock-cut chamber tomb necropolises (it was built into the slopes of a canyon). They were located in the ancient city of Blaundos (it can also be spelled Blaundus) which is approximately 110 miles (177 kilometers) east of the Aegean Sea.
Many of the sarcophagi-filled tombs contain more than one deceased person which seems to indicate that several generations of the same family were buried together and that “…the tombs were reopened for each deceased family member, and a burial ceremony was held and closed again,” Birol Can, who is an archaeologist at Uşak University in Turkey and head of the Blaundos Excavation Project, explained to Live Science in an email.
(Not any of the chamber tombs mentioned in this article.)
While grave robbers already took some of the treasures throughout the years, archaeologists did find several important items such as coins and pieces of pottery dating back to the Roman Period. “In addition, the technique of the wall paintings covering the walls, vaults and ceilings of the tombs and the style of the vegetal and figurative scenes depicted on them show Roman characteristics,” Can noted.
The paintings contained geometric, floral, and figurative depictions. “Vines, flowers of various colors, wreaths, garlands, geometric panels are the most frequently used motifs,” Can explained, adding, “In addition to these, mythological figures — such as Hermes (Mercury), Eros (Cupid) [and] Medusa — and animals such as birds and dogs are included in the wide panels.”
Other items found in the chambers included diadems, bracelets, rings, mirrors, hairpins, belts, medical instruments, oil lamps, and drinking cups. While the items give a clue as to the sex, time of burial, occupation, and habits of the individuals, experts are still planning on conducting DNA and chemical analysis on the remains in order to find out more information about the deceased.
(Not any of the chamber tombs mentioned in this article.)
Besides the rock-cut chamber tombs, archaeologists have identified two temples, a theater, a gymnasium, a basilica, city walls and a gate, a public bath, aqueducts, and a shrine that was dedicated to an ancient Roman or Greek hero (this is called a heroon). “Apart from these, we know that there are many religious, public and civil structures still under the ground,” Can revealed.
Pictures of some of the rock chamber tombs and paintings can be seen here.
Restorative work reveals the designs painted on the stone-cut tombs' ceilings.
Unexplained aerial phenomena represent a mystery that has occurred throughout time, and one which remains as difficult to define today as it likely was for ancient observers.
To qualify this statement right here at the outset, by “unexplained aerial phenomena” I don’t necessarily mean only what the United States Air Force began calling unidentified flying objects (UFOs) during the 1950s, based on sightings that Americans and others around the world began to report during and after World War II, and which the Navy is currently tasked with evaluating.
To the contrary, mysterious aerial phenomena have a variety of different possible sources. Whatever these sources may be, the human experience of observing things in the sky that we can’t explain is a time-honored tradition, with historical roots going back to antiquity; but we’ll come back around to that aspect of the mystery shortly.
Modern sightings of odd aerial phenomena, while often having prosaic explanations, nonetheless do appear to sometimes involve structured, technological devices that are apparently under intelligent control. When modern proponents of UFO or UAP studies talk about unexplained aerial phenomena, generally most accept this to be referencing these purported aerial objects, which, although still unexplained, are often taken as possible evidence of extraterrestrial visitation.
This extraterrestrial hypothesis has certain merits, and even since the early days of the “modern” UFO era (beginning sometime between around 1943 and 1947), there have been several studies by both government and civilian groups that have left open the possibility that some of the aerial phenomena in question might belong to extraterrestrials. This has remained a problem for scientists though, who often evoke the ire of UFO proponents for taking the position—and rightly so—that there is not yet enough evidence to support such conclusions.
“That there is simply nothing else these objects could be other than ET is not evidence,” would be a statement along the lines of what many scientists have echoed in recent days. This, even amidst government assessments like the one delivered to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June 2021 by the U.S. Navy’s UAP Task Force, which acknowledged that something which remains unidentified appears to be operating in our skies.
Several kinds of “somethings”, in fact. According to the UAP Task Force’s Preliminary Assessment, there are several categories the Task Force identifies as areas into which observations of what the military terms unexplained aerial phenomena, or UAP, fall. These range from “airborne clutter,” to technological devices that might belong to nations like Russia or China. Natural phenomena like plasmas, the likes of which a study carried out between 1997 and 2000 in the United Kingdom, Project Condign, determined UAP to be were also included in the UAP Task Force report. At no place in the brief document do words like “extraterrestrial,” “alien,” or “interplanetary” appear, although even the New York Times noted the fact that the report was worded vaguely enough that even their omission seemed to leave open for such possibilities.
To summarize, unexplained aerial phenomena have been studied seriously for decades, and we have been able to draw no significant, evidence-based conclusions about their nature and origins. Nonetheless, it appears that something exists in our skies, although it remains open to interpretation as far as determining what kind of phenomenon, or more likely, what varieties of phenomena, they might represent.
Looking further back in time, it seems likely that ancient observers throughout the world probably saw some of these objects too. From historical accounts, we can identify cases where it is likely that ancient recordings of marvels in the sky had simply been celestial phenomena like planetary convergences, the arrivals of comets, supernovae, and other occurrences witnessed by people in earlier cultures.
Modern astronomy software that allows us to calculate where celestial objects would have appeared in the sky at virtually any point throughout history are remarkably useful in unraveling the mystery behind some of these ancient cases. There are, however, also more curious sightings that have been logged since antiquity, which continue to baffle astronomers in search of celestial explanations. The next most likely culprits thereafter are meteorological or atmospheric occurrences, and engravings from the middle ages often depicted “wonders” that are obvious depictions of things like parhelion or “sun dogs”, or possible representations of things like ball lightning which remain little understood today.
An enhanced photo that may depict an anomalous light similar to ball lightning rising over Table Rock in the Linville Gorge Wilderness, North Carolina, taken in 2009 by researcher Bill Fox
(Credit: Bill Fox).
Nonetheless, there are accounts of things from prior to the modern UFO era that appear to describe aircraft or objects that don’t easily fall into known categories of natural phenomena, and yet which can’t be recognized as any known technologies of their period, either. Chief among these are the stories of airships that became prevalent during the 1890s over parts of America, with similar waves of sightings occurring over the United Kingdom, Australia, and other parts of the world in the decades that followed. Although newspaper hoaxes are known to have occurred during those days—the “fake news” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—many researchers find it difficult to imagine that all reports of what people called airships had been concocted by bored writers at the daily papers, who were either looking for laughs or simply desperate for generating attention among their readerships.
If he were alive today, another man of the aforementioned era, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, might have erred to the judgment of the great detective he created: Sherlock Holmes. “Once you eliminate the impossible,” Holmes is quoted saying in The Sign of Four (1890), “whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
Modern scientists would likely deem this statement tantamount to the logic behind supposing that UFOs are ET, “because there just isn’t any better explanation.” Still, there is wisdom in the words of Doyle’s great detective, and although the mystery of unexplained aerial phenomena and its many possible varieties still eludes us, it seems rather difficult to dismiss it completely out of hand… whether some of them are extraterrestrial or not.
What remains is that something is being seen in our skies, and has been for a long time. Unidentified aerial phenomena exist, in other words… and however improbable that might seem to some, there is no extraordinary claim or wild supposition required in recognizing this fundamental fact as being the truth.
UFO Seen At Air Show At Ellington Air Force Base, Oct 2021, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Seen At Air Show At Ellington Air Force Base, Oct 2021, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: October 9, 2021 Location of sighting: Houston, Texas, USA Source: MUFON
This photo is just amazing! It really shows exactly how unique and beautiful UFO are. This photo closeup of the UFO shows some incredible colorations. It has an iridescent color to it. I believe this coloration changes across the surface second to second similar to the surface of a cloud. That way the craft can easily be mistaken for a cloud or blend into its surroundings. Also the fact that this UFO was seen at an air show really compounds all the evidence. UFOs love to investigate the latest and greatest technology...and that tech is air and space technology! That is why the UFO was there!
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
While photographing performing airplanes at the Wings Over Houston Airshow at Ellington Airforce Base on Saturday October 9th, my father noticed a small metallic object at a much higher altitude than the performing aircraft positioned directly overhead. Most of the performing aircraft were at a low altitude usually under 1,000 feet. It was difficult to say how high the object was since there was nothing else around it, but it was extremely high up; at least 12,000 feet if I had to guess, possibly much higher. He pointed it out to myself and two other spectators and we watched the object for about 5 minutes. The object was too far away to make out details, however it was clear it was not an airplane as it seemed to be stationary in the sky. As it was a sunny day with some clouds, the object seemed to be metallic as we could see a clear shine from it in the sun and it appeared to be a rounded. After a few minutes, the object seemed to drift to a different point in the sky and then again became stationary. When moving, the object left no sort of trail and didn’t show any evidence of engines or afterburners. My father took a picture of it with his DSLR camera and after five total minutes of observing the object it moved behind some clouds and we lost sight of it. A week later my father and I were reviewing the pictures we took at the airshow and came across the picture he took of the object. Amazingly we were able to zoom in on the object and get a decently detailed picture of it. The picture shows a disc/oval shaped silver object very clearly.
Based on what we saw and the picture, there is no way it could have been a helicopter, airplane, or drone. My father is an engineer, and I am an engineering college student. Aircraft have been a hobby of ours all my life and we have never seen anything move or look the way this object did. I’ve seen jetliners, metallic WW2 aircraft, and drones at high altitude and have always been able to tell that they are some sort of airplane; this object looked nothing like that.
Guys, this is something very big in Earths orbit. This Triangle UFO is seen in an old NASA index photo. The photo is from the STS61C mission. STS-61-C was the 24th mission of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the seventh mission of Space Shuttle Columbia. It was the first time that Columbia, the first space-rated Space Shuttle orbiter to be constructed, had flown since STS-9. The mission happened in Jan 12 until 18th, 1986. There was seven crew members on that space shuttle...someone must have seen this!
If you look at the thickness of the triangle UFO, you see its really huge. The object has no wings, no solar panels, no visible propulsion whatsoever! And yet...its in Earths orbit. This is 100% proof that aliens have been watching the NASA missions up close and personal since the very beginning.
I just found this interesting UFO video of some kind of a flying saucer making maneuvers in a daytime sky. This was filmed back in June 2021 in unknown location.
What do you think this is? Drone, UFO or just a CGI?
It was previously reported that Earth’s most drought-tolerant microbes wouldn’t have a chance of surviving on Venus based on analysis of its atmosphere (some scientists claimed that there could have been microbial life in the clouds). And now, there’s even more bad news for our sister planet as a recent study claimed that there were probably never any oceans on Venus which means that it more than likely never had any life either.
While the surface temperature on Venus today is around 880 degrees Fahrenheit (471 degrees Celsius), it was believed that it wasn’t always that way. It was previously thought that billions of years of mild weather on Venus could have supported large oceans in ancient times.
According to previous studies, when the planets were very young, Venus was exceptionally hot, but it was believed that it had cooled down enough that it could have supported liquid water – mostly because the clouds were thought to have blocked a lot of the sun’s radiation. And the fact that the sun was in its “faint young” stage, that would have been beneficial as well (its luminosity was only at 70% during that time).
However, a new study has claimed that our sister planet has always been way too hot to support any oceans. A team of scientists led by Martin Turbet, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the Geneva Astronomical Observatory in Switzerland, used a new model to simulate the climate on Venus in ancient times. They found that the clouds were located on whatever hemisphere was facing away from the sun; therefore, they wouldn’t have had any effect in blocking the radiation. In fact, it would have actually warmed the planet up. In short, this means that Venus was never cool enough for any rain to fall, so there wouldn’t have been any lakes, rivers, oceans, or even life.
There may have never been any oceans on Venus.
What is startling is that the same thing could have happened to Earth if the sun would have been any more luminous during ancient times. As a matter of fact, if the young sun would have had a luminosity of 92% instead of 70%, we’d be in the same situation as Venus.
We’re very lucky that our young sun wasn’t any hotter or else we probably wouldn’t be here today. The study was published in the journal Naturewhere it can be read in full.
Mention Planet Nine – the alleged large planet orbiting our Sun at such a great distance that it has never officially been seen – and the conversation quickly turns to Cat Tech astrophysicists and astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown. Brown is responsible for the alleged planet being ‘Nine’ rather than ‘Ten’ or X because it was his lobbying that helped demote Pluto to dwarf planet status. Brown and Batygin’s new cause is the hypothetical Planet Nine, whose existence would explain anomalies among objects in the remote Kuiper Belt. Brown and Batygin believe it’s highly likely Planet Nine exists and in August 2021 published a study about their computer model which points astronomers to a narrow swath of sky in the Taurus constellation to look for it. At that time, Brown and Batygin revealed they would join in the search of Taurus using the Subaru Telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. It’s been two months … time for an update.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Planet Nine has already been imaged in one of the large sky surveys currently underway, but, if not, it will be hard for it to hide from the Vera Rubin Observatory once it starts operations in a few years.”
Keep staring and don’t move!
In an interview with The Daily Galaxy, Michael Brown explains their models made Planet Nine both easier and harder to find – they show that the planet is closer to the Sun that they originally suspected, but smaller than they first thought, only about five times the size of Earth. Although the small gas planet will be faint, they believe it’s visible and Brown thinks it’s already been imaged – quite possibly by his own effort with the Subaru telescope. The challenge is to scan images of large pieces of the sky for long amounts of time to identify minute changes in the locations of faint objects and pinpoint the one on a bizarre track that only a Planet Nine could make.
“My favorite characteristic of the Planet Nine hypothesis is that it is observationally testable. The prospect of one day seeing real images of Planet Nine is absolutely electrifying. Although finding Planet Nine astronomically is a great challenge, I’m very optimistic that we will image it within the next decade.”
Konstantin Batygin is not quite as optimistic as Brown that images of Planet Nine already exist, but he confirms that it can and — in his estimation – will happen by the next decade, especially after the Vera Rubin Observatory is running in 2023. Yale astronomer Malena Rice tells The Daily Galaxy she’s on Brown’s side and may herself have the images in her possession via her use of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) spacecraft.
“Right now is a particularly exciting time for Planet Nine— the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) spacecraft is currently observing the exact part of the sky where recent models have predicted that Planet Nine is most likely to reside. Planet Nine, if it exists, should be in that dataset and should be recoverable; it’s just a matter of figuring out exactly where to look. Fortunately, the computational methods for this search already exist! The discovery of Planet Nine may be right at our fingertips.”
Find the needle and you will find Planet Nine.
“Planet Nine, if it exists, should be in that dataset.” That’s astronomer-talk for finding a planetary needle in a solar system haystack … or a tiny faint Waldo somewhere in an overhead shot of the crowd at a college football game. Throw Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb into the mix on the side of Brown, Batygin and Rice and you have a lot of scientific knowledge supporting the Planet Nine hypothesis.
If Michael Brown finds Planet Nine, will you forgive him for Pluto?
ALL RELATED VIDEO, selected and posted by peter2011
Finally, on my fistful of Roswell articles for is week, I’m going to focus on the matter of certain “Roswell files” that have gone missing and that, potentially, could have provided at least some of the answers as to what happened at Roswell. Or, what didn’t happen. On July 28, 1995, the Government Accountability Office’s report on the Roswell affair surfaced from its National Security and International Affairs Division. The GAO’s report did not provide any smoking-guns – such as old B&W photos of dead bodies and wreckage at the crash-site on the Foster Ranch, New Mexico. The report did, however, provide something interesting and controversial. And it’s something that has been misinterpreted for years. During the course of their search for records to try and better understand what had taken place at Roswell in early July 1947, the GAO learned that the entire outgoing messages from the Roswell Army Air Field generated during the period that the event occurred were missing. Vanished. Gone. And under circumstances that could not be fully determined and proved. Nor could the year in which the files went missing be confirmed. Maybe the late-forties. Maybe the fifties. The seventies? Who knows?
(Nick Redfern)
Also back in 1995, the General Accounting Office (now titled the U.S. Government Accountability Office) said of the still-mysterious event of 1947, in relation to the GAO’s search to find relevant papers: “In addition to unit history reports, we also searched for other government records on the Roswell crash. In this regard, the Chief Archivist for the National Personnel Records Center provided us with documentation indicating that (1) RAAF records such as finance and accounting, supplies, buildings and grounds, and other general administrative matters from March 1945 through December 1949 and (2) RAAF outgoing messages from October 1946 through December 1949 were destroyed.” When the GAO demanded to know the reasons behind this development, they got an answer, as GAO files note:” “According to this official [the Chief Archivist for the National Personnel Records Center], the document disposition form did not properly indicate the authority under which the disposal action was taken. The Center’s Chief Archivist stated that from his personal experience, many of the Air Force organizational records covering this time period were destroyed without entering a citation for the governing disposition authority. Our review of records control forms showing the destruction of other records – including outgoing RAAF messages for 1950 – supports the Chief Archivist’s viewpoint.”
(Nick Redfern)
There’s another angle to all of this, too: if UFO / Roswell researchers wish to maintain that the missing files from 1947 point to a specific cover-up of the Roswell event – and Roswell occurred out of the blue in July of that year – then they have to provide a viable reason as to why documentation dating back as far as March 1945 was pulled too, and why additional documentation remains missing from as late as 1950. Saying that “the outgoing Roswell messages from July 1947 are missing” is absolutely true, and it opens eyes and it catches the attention of ufologists and Roswell disciples everywhere. Noting that, in reality, the files actually cover 1945 to 1950, and also cover general administrative issues at the base, is far less attention-grabbing.
Ironically, the fact that the files that have vanished (files which still cannot be found) span 1945 to 1950, actually adds weight to the idea that Roswell was a military experiment. Just about everyone I spoke with while writing my Body Snatchers in the Desert book told me that the human experimentation began in 1945 and ended in the late 1940s – with a few additional tests having occurred in the early fifties. Pulling 1945-era files for a one-off event that didn’t occur until the summer of 1947 makes zero sense. Pulling certain 1945-era files that might have compromised the handful of pre-Roswell experiments – had they reached the public domain, of course – makes perfect sense. The same goes for the decision to make the 1948-1950 files vanish, too. The fact is that six years of files are missing, not just files from the time of the Roswell crash. This is indicative of a fairly lengthy series of ongoing tests that had to be hidden – not the out-of-the-blue crash of one solitary alien spacecraft midway through 1947.
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes And she’s gone Lucy in the sky with diamonds
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” by the Beatles was written primarily by John Lennon about his son, Julian. That hasn’t stopped the nonstop (54 years and counting) speculation that the song is about LSD (Lucy-Sky-Diamonds) nor did it stop NASA from naming its latest asteroid probe Lucy.NASA’s Lucy – scheduled to launch on October 16, 2021 — will have the Sun in her eyes for a while, but then will head out to visit eight diamonds – seven Trojan asteroids and one between Mars and Jupiter – on a mission scheduled to complete in 2033. Could Paul and Ringo do an update before then?
“The Lucy mission is the first space mission to explore a diverse population of small bodies known as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids . These small bodies are remnants of our early Solar System, now trapped on stable orbits associated with – but not close to – the giant planet Jupiter.” (NASA press release)
Lucy
(NASA depiction)
Lucy is actually named for ‘Lucy’, the 3.2 million-year-old human ancestor whose fossils were discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia. Fear not, Beatles fans – THAT Lucy was named for the song, as Beatles music was played constantly on the speakers at the dig site. NASA chose the name because spaceship Lucy will be exploring the asteroid belt that contains remnants of the birth of the outer planets of the solar system. After launch, Lucy will make two close Earth flybys before heading to outer space. Her first encounter in 2025 will be the small Main Belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, named for one of the discoverers of the Lucy fossil.
The asteroids Lucy will visit
(NASA)
In 2027, Lucy will be in the L4 cloud where she’ll fly by Eurybates and its satellite, Polymele, then Leucus and Orus. Then it’s back to Earth to slingshot out to the L5 cloud where she flies by the Patroclus-Menoetius binary in 2033. With her main mission over, Lucy will continue cycling between the two Trojan clouds every six years. The record number of asteroid visits could only happen because of a “opportunistic trajectory” available right now. Asteroid Eurybates was chosen to visit because it is the largest remnant of a rare massive collision, and it has a neutral-colored C-type spectrum – two things that may be related. The trajectory allows Lucy to see a Crayola box of colors — Eurybates (white), Polymele (pink), Leucus (red), Orus (red) and Patroclus-Menoetius (pink). She will also see asteroids varying in size from 1 km (.6 miles) in diameter to 70 miles (over 100 km).
Lucy’s voyage
(NASA)
If by chance Lucy encounters extraterrestrials on her journey, NASA has equipped her with a plaque containing messages from prominent members of our society, including the Beatles. And if the ETs are familiar with the band’s music, Lucy’s L’TES instrument has a diamond beamsplitter, so Lucy will be in the sky with a diamond.
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds And you’re gone Lucy in the sky with diamonds
ARTIST CONCEPT Lucy's seven targets: the binary asteroid Patroclus/Menoetius, Eurybates, Orus, Leucus, Polymele, and the main belt asteroid DonaldJohanson.
Beyond the asteroid belt are "fossils of planet formation" known as the Trojan asteroids. These primitive bodies share Jupiter's orbit, and may hold clues to the formation and evolution of our solar system. NASA is preparing to explore the Trojan asteroids for the first time with a mission called Lucy, which will launch in 2021 and visit seven asteroids over twelve years. Like the famous hominid fossil for which it is named, the Lucy mission will improve our understanding of the ancient past, and be the first to uncover these fossils of planet formation .
Explore Lucy’s journey to one main-belt asteroid and seven Jupiter Trojans.
Universal Production Music: “Ocean Simulation” & “The Sequencer Paradox” by Laetitia Frenod; “The Chess Game” by David James Elliott & Martin Gratton; “Tale of Time” by Markus Gleissner
This visualization is a view from the Lucy spacecraft as it travels through the solar system, represented in a Jupiter-rotating reference frame. In this reference frame, Jupiter appears fixed in space. This visualization spans from launch through the flyby of the main belt asteroid DonaldJohanson. (Part 1 of 3)
This visualization is a view from the Lucy spacecraft as it travels through the solar system, represented in a Jupiter-rotating reference frame. This visualization depicts the next portion of the mission, which includes flybys of Eurybates, Orus, Leucus, and Polymele. (Part 2 of 3)
This visualization is a view from the Lucy spacecraft as it travels through the solar system, represented in a Jupiter-rotating reference frame. This visualization depicts the final portion of the mission, which includes a flyby of the binary asteroid Patroclus/Menoetius. (Part 3 of 3)
This visualization is a view from the Lucy spacecraft as it travels through the solar system, represented in a Jupiter-rotating reference frame. This is a complete view of the entire mission, combining all three sections (parts 1-3) listed above into one visualization, including all asteroid flybys.
A closer view of the Lucy flyby of the binary asteroid Patroclus/Menoetius, represented in a Jupiter-rotating reference frame.
Most of you know, as does Tony Bragalia, that I’m not a fan of the crashed disk and alien bodies scenarios attributed to Roswell in 1947. First off, I don’t think UFOs or flying saucers have crashed or are crashing all over the place, The idea is ludicrous, if UFOs are, indeed, interplanetary aircraft. Something happened in Roswell but it wasn’t a flying disk accident. That little alien bodies were allegedly spotted by Roswell area residents – and only related after 1978, not in the 1947 time-frame – bodes ill for the authenticity of such observations, but that so many claimed to see such bodies is either a massive sociopathic malfeasance or a delayed delusion that requires psychiatric or sociologic study. I’ve written, professionally about Einstein for a very long time, and I fund a group that studies his life and work [The Einstein Fellowship]. Nowhere do I recall any vibrant interest in UFOs or flying saucers by the great scientist, but I can imagine that he’d have caught wind of the topic and took some slight interest in it. For me, the “interview” with his assistant Shirley Wright, provided in Tony Bragalia’s article, is an authentic occasion of truth-telling by Ms. Wright. Her responses are forthright and without hesitancy or guile as best as I can tell. If she is lying or concocting her account, she’s a damn good hoaxer, something that goes against everything known about her. That Einstein was in Roswell, seeing alien bodies or trying to communicate with a supposed living entity, goes against everything I know about him or Roswell, but there it is. The story is big, no matter which way one comes down on it: the interview, the gist of the interview, and the character of the woman telling about the episode. To discount it out of hand is ignorant. To accept it as a truthful account, on the basis of the interview alone, is just as flawed. That the story needs more confirmation goes without saying, but the matter deserves confirmation, that’s certain. So, let’s have at it, you naysayers and believers too. That’s what “ufology” should be.
A close, dear friend of mine -- a respected UFO notable -- informs me that Ms. Wright, the interviewee in Tony's story was fraught with multiple questionable activities and happenstance, making her not the exemplified person I understood her to be.
I'll provide the info but not the sender to Tony and see if he needs to amend his article.
I'll have more to say on the matter surely...but for now the information puts the validity of Ms. Wright into serious question.
There's been talk elsewhere that Einstein's "post-visit ulcer" was cause and effect, which would be typical of the bogus research that's hampered the field and that we can expect this time.
I wrote this before reading Rich's comment. Sadly, it comes to pass.
Roswell is the "graveyard" for all things UFOs. A little more than 6 years ago, we were a washed with supposed linkages (weak links at that) of the original Roswell Slides owners to Dwight Eisenhower. Laughable to say the least. Sorry Rich, anything coming from one A. Brigalia is suspect off the bat. Would appreciate, if possible, to provide the "lack of candor" info on Ms. Wight. If it pans out, this would be another precautionary tale of snooping about the sand and scrub grass of New Mexico.
Los Angeles UFO sighting: Four lights rise moving erratic, then organize to make formations
Los Angeles UFO sighting: Four lights rise moving erratic, then organize to make formations
These bright unidentified flying objects were filmed in the daytime sky above Los Angeles in California. This happened yesterday (16th October 2021).
Witness report:
I noticed 4 lights rising North East above the horizon at about 30° on a clear day in downtown Los Angeles. I increased the contrast of the video and left it unedited. Myself and the coffee store Manager Emily, both witnessed this and there were many other onlookers, though I don’t believe they were interested at all which we found hilarious. Video cuts off abruptly because of course my phone dies. I’ve never seen anything like this and it’s super interesting. Objects could have possibly been hundreds of miles from the Earth itself. It was very hard to tell. They seemed jellyfish-like in the beginning but extremely too far if they were a balloon it would be impossible to see. Not to mention the interesting formations. If you pause the video towards the end you can see a total of six lights at one point before they go off into the distance.
MYSTERIEUZE RADIOSIGNALEN HINTEN OP HET BESTAAN VAN ONS NOG ONBEKENDE STELLAIRE OBJECTEN
MYSTERIEUZE RADIOSIGNALEN HINTEN OP HET BESTAAN VAN ONS NOG ONBEKENDE STELLAIRE OBJECTEN
Caroline Kraaijvanger
“We hebben zoiets nog nooit gezien,” aldus onderzoeker Ziteng Wang.
Wang maakt deel uit van het onderzoeksteam dat de mysterieuze signalen in 2020 met behulp van het Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (kortweg ASKAP) voor het eerst opving. “Wij speurden in 2020 en 2021 met ASKAP de hemel af om ongebruikelijke, nieuwe objecten te vinden,” stelt onderzoeker Tara Murphy. En dat is dus gelukt. “Toen we naar het hart van de Melkweg keken, ontdekten we ASKAP J173608.2-321635, genoemd naar zijn coördinaten. Het object was uniek, omdat het eerst onzichtbaar was, toen helder werd en vervolgens weer vervaagde om daarna weer op te duiken. Dat was uitzonderlijk.”
Onverklaarbaar En zo opwindend als deze radiosignalen in 2020 leken te zijn, zo frustrerend was vervolgens de zoektocht naar de oorsprong ervan. Want die is nog altijd niet gevonden en daarmee is ASKAP J173608.2-321635 tot op heden onverklaarbaar.
Heel vreemd “De vreemdste eigenschap van dit nieuwe signaal is dat het een heel hoge polarisatie heeft,” vertelt Wang. “Dat betekent dat het licht ervan in slechts één richting oscilleert, maar die richting roteert door de tijd heen. De helderheid van het object varieert ook enorm – wel met een factor 100 – en het signaal lijkt geheel willekeurig te verschijnen en verdwijnen. We hebben zoiets nog nooit gezien.”
En alle mogelijke verklaringen die astronomen tot op heden voor de radiosignalen hebben gedacht, schieten tekort. “Eerst dachten we dat de bron een pulsar was – een snel roterende, dode ster die een enorme dichtheid heeft – of anders een ster die enorme zonnevlammen spuwt. Maar de signalen die dit object afgeeft, komen niet overeen met wat we van dit soort hemelobjecten zouden verwachten.” En dus duurt het mysterie voort.
Waarnemingen Dat mysterie begon in 2020 toen onderzoekers met behulp van ASKAP in een periode van negen maanden zes keer het mysterieuze radiosignaal spotten. Pogingen om de oorsprong ervan in zichtbaar licht te lokaliseren, liepen op niets uit. Hetzelfde geldt voor vervolgwaarnemingen met de Parkes-radiotelescoop; ook die kon de bron van de signalen niet vinden. “Vervolgens probeerden we de veel gevoeligere MeerKAT-radiotelescoop in Zuid-Afrika,” vertelt Murphy. Omdat het signaal met tussenpozen opdook en de telescoop er niet continu naar kan zoeken, werd besloten om deze elke week gedurende 15 minuten in de richting van het hart van onze Melkweg te laten turen. “In de hoop dat we het signaal weer zouden zien.” En de onderzoekers hadden geluk. “Het signaal keerde terug,” stelt Murphy. Maar daarmee was het mysterie nog niet opgelost. Sterker nog; het werd eigenlijk alleen maar groter. “We ontdekten dat het gedrag van de bron radicaal anders was: de bron verdween binnen een dag, terwijl deze tijdens onze eerdere observaties met ASKAP weken op rij zichtbaar was.”
GCRTs En daarmee werd het niet bepaald gemakkelijker om de aard van het object te doorgronden. “De informatie die we hebben, vertoont wel wat parallellen met een andere klasse mysterieuze objecten, bekend als Galactic Centre Radio Transients (GCRTs),” stelt onderzoeker David Kaplan. Ook deze nog niet nader geïdentificeerde objecten brengen met tussenpozen radiogolven voort. “Maar hoewel ons nieuwe object – ASKAP J173608.2-321635 – overeenkomsten vertoont met GCRTs, zijn er ook verschillen. En we begrijpen deze bronnen ook nog niet goed, dus dat draagt allemaal bij aan het mysterie.”
In een poging het mysterie te ontrafelen houden onderzoekers ASKAP J173608.2-321635 de komende tijd goed in de gaten. En als dat niet meer inzicht geeft in de oorsprong van de radiosignalen is er altijd nog het Square Kilometre Array (SKA): een enorme radiotelescoop die de komende jaren in Australië en Zuid-Afrika verrijst (en waar ook Nederland behoorlijk in geïnvesteerd heeft). “Met SKA zullen elke dag kaarten van het heelal worden gemaakt en we verwachten dat deze telescoop ons gaat helpen om mysteries zoals het onze op te lossen,” aldus Murphy. Wie denkt dat astronomen daarna achterover kunnen leunen, heeft het echter mis. Verwacht wordt ook dat de waarnemingen van het Square Kilometre Array tevens weer heel veel nieuwe mysteries zullen aanreiken.
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EEUWENOUD DOCUMENT TREKT HET IDEE DAT COLUMBUS STOMVERBAASD AMERIKA ONTDEKTE, IN TWIJFEL
EEUWENOUD DOCUMENT TREKT HET IDEE DAT COLUMBUS STOMVERBAASD AMERIKA ONTDEKTE, IN TWIJFEL
Vivian Lammerse
Italiaanse scheepslui – nota bene afkomstig uit de thuisstad van Columbus – lijken 150 jaar vóór de beroemde ontdekkingsreiziger voet in Amerika zette, al van het bestaan van het continent af te hebben geweten.
Ontdekkingsreiziger Christoffel Columbus maakte naam door zijn ‘ontdekking’ van Amerika onder de Spaanse vlag in 1492. Het verhaal luidt dat hij onverwacht op het nieuwe continent stuitte, in de veronderstelling dat hij een westelijke route naar Indië had gevonden. Maar wist Columbus echt niet van het continent Amerika af? Een eeuwenoud document suggereert voorzichtig van wel.
Document In 2013 werd er een eeuwenoud document gevonden dat dateert uit 1345. Het document blijkt na analyse van de Milanese monnik Galvano Fiamma. Onderzoeker Paolo Chiesa heeft zich in een nieuwe studie over dit oude document gebogen. En na een grondige inspectie komt de Chiesa tot een verbazingwekkende ontdekking: een uitzonderlijke passage in het document zou namelijk verwijzen naar een gebied dat we tegenwoordig kennen als Noord-Amerika.
Amerika Volgens Chiesa suggereert het oude document dat Italiaanse scheepslui afkomstig uit Genua – nota bene de thuisstad van Columbus – al op de hoogte waren van Amerika. En dat 150 jaar vóór de beroemde ontdekkingsreiziger voet in Amerika zette. “Het gaat hier om de eerste verwijzing naar het Amerikaanse continent, zij het in embryonale vorm,” aldus Chiesa.
Geruchten De onderzoeker laat zien hoe Genua mogelijk een ‘toegangspoort’ voor nieuws zou zijn geweest. Scheepslui die er aan wal kwamen vertelden de verhalen die ze op zee hoorden door. En één van de geruchten die Fiamma ter ore kwam, was over landen in het uiterste noordwesten. “Deze verhalen kregen de zeevaarders te horen in de noordelijke havens van Schotse, Britse, Deense en Noorse zeelieden met met wie ze handelden,” vertelt Chiesa. De geruchten waren echter erg vaag. Hierdoor werden ze niet opgenomen in de cartografie of de wetenschap, zo vermoedt Chiesa, terwijl hij uitlegt waarom Amerika destijds niet als nieuw land werd geclassificeerd.
Het beschreven land In de betreffende passage in het document wordt het land beschreven als ‘rijk aan bomen’. Ook wordt genoemd dat er dieren leven. “Deze details kunnen standaard zijn, kenmerkend voor elk goed land,” legt Chiesa uit. “Maar ze zijn niet triviaal. Het gemeenschappelijke kenmerk van meer noordelijke regio’s is namelijk dat het er guur en het land onvruchtbaar is. Op die manier wordt bijvoorbeeld Groenland beschreven in Galvaneus’ verslag. Ook wordt op een soortgelijke manier IJsland getypeerd door de Duitse kroniekschrijver Adam van Bremen.”
Al met al stelt Chiesa dat we Galvaneus ‘moeten vertrouwen’. De monnik verklaart in het hele document waar hij de mondelinge verhalen heeft gehoord en ondersteunt zijn beweringen met elementen die hij ontleent aan andere verslagen. “Ik zie geen reden om hem niet te geloven,” zegt Chiesa. Volgens de onderzoeker levert het document dan ook ongekend bewijs voor de speculatie dat nieuws over het Amerikaanse continent, anderhalve eeuw vóór Columbus er voet aan wal zette, al in Italië circuleerde.
De bevindingen uit de studie hebben verstrekkende implicaties. Want het eeuwenoude document trekt het idee dat Columbus stomverbaasd Amerika ontdekte, in twijfel. Mogelijk had hij al van het bestaan van het continent afgeweten. Het doet dan ook een prangende vraag rijzen. Want wat had Columbus precies verwacht te vinden toen hij aan zijn legendarische reis begon en in 1492 de oceaan overstak?
The Lucy spacecraft, shown here in an artist's rendering, will fly by six Trojan asteroids near Jupiter.
Credit: NASA
A NASA spacecraft is about to begin its journey to a realm of the outer Solar System that has never before been visited: a set of asteroids orbiting the Sun near Jupiter. The rocks are “the last unexplored but relatively accessible population of small bodies” circling the Sun, says Vishnu Reddy, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
The US$981-million Lucy mission, set to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 16 October, will spend the next 12 years performing gravitational gymnastics to swoop past six of the asteroids, known as Trojans, to snap photos and determine their compositions. Scientists think the Trojans will reveal information about the formation and evolution of the Solar System. The mission’s name reflects their hopes: Lucy is the 3.2-million-year-old hominid fossil unearthed in 1974 in Ethiopia that unlocked secrets of human origins.
Workers prepare the capsule that will protect the Lucy spacecraft during launch.
Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
The Trojans “are very mysterious, which makes them really fun”, says Audrey Martin, a planetary scientist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, who works with the Lucy mission.
The asteroids probably formed in the outermost reaches of the Solar System around 4.6 billion years ago, when Earth, Jupiter and other planets were coalescing from a disk of gas and dust around the newborn Sun. In this scenario, gravitational interactions would have slung the Trojans inwards, where they now orbit as relatively pristine examples of the Solar System's building blocks.
Scientists can study the Trojans to understand what the distant, primordial parts of the Solar System are like, without having to send a mission all the way out there.
From the outer reaches
Since 1991, when the Galileo spacecraft whizzed past the asteroid Gaspra on its way to Jupiter, a number of missions have explored the Solar System’s main asteroid belt, which lies between Mars and Jupiter. But no mission has ever gone to Jupiter’s Trojans, which might be very different from asteroids in the main belt. “Every time we go to new populations, we learn new things,” says Cathy Olkin, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and Lucy’s deputy principal investigator.
More than 7,000 Trojan asteroids travel near Jupiter, in two large swarms that lead and trail the planet as it orbits the Sun. Several other planets, including Mars and Neptune, also have Trojan asteroids that closely follow their orbits; Earth has at least two. But Jupiter has by far the most known Trojans.
This visualization shows how the Lucy spacecraft (blue) will launch from Earth (green) and then loop around the Solar System for 12 years to visit Trojan asteroids in Jupiter's orbit (orange). It will fly by one main-belt asteroid (white dot orbiting between Mars and Jupiter), and visit six Trojans in the swarms around Jupiter (white dots; one of them is a binary asteroid comprised of two large objects).
Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
When the Solar System formed, according to a leading model of planetary formation, the planets were much closer to the Sun than they are today. Gravitational interactions then caused many of them to migrate. Saturn, Uranus and Neptune moved outwards from the Sun, while Jupiter moved slightly inwards. In this chaos, icy bodies from the Solar System’s outermost reaches — the Kuiper Belt, where Pluto and other small objects orbit today — got tossed inwards. Jupiter captured them, and they have remained nearby ever since, essentially unaltered for billions of years. That makes them an important part of understanding the origin and evolution of the Solar System, says Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary-science division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington DC.
Lucy will be the first spacecraft to study Jupiter's Trojan asteroids
Photo: NASA
Rewriting textbooks
Perhaps because of their turbulent origin, the Trojan asteroids — named after characters in Homer’s epic poem the Iliad — have a wide variety of colours, shapes and sizes1. Lucy will visit six of them in an effort to determine why they are so diverse2. The spacecraft’s targets include Eurybates, a 64-kilometre-wide remnant of a massive cosmic collision, and its tiny moon Queta, discovered last year with the Hubble Space Telescope3. Others are the 20-kilometre-long, football-shaped Leucus, and the pair known as Patroclus and Menoetius, which orbit one another and are both around 100 kilometres across. Such binary asteroids are common in the Kuiper Belt, but not, as far as scientists can tell, among Trojans.
After launch, Lucy will make several loops past Earth to gain the gravitational boost needed to head towards its first target, Eurybates, which it won’t reach until 2027. The final flyby, of Patroclus and Menoetius, won’t happen until 2033. “You definitely have to be patient when you’re trying to explore the outer Solar System,” Olkin says.
Powered by two 7.3-metre-wide solar panels, Lucy will whiz past each asteroid at 6 to 9 kilometres per second, taking measurements including the asteroid’s colour, composition, spin and mass4. Whatever the mission finds will almost certainly rewrite textbook entries on the Trojan asteroids, Reddy says. “We might throw all our formation models out the window.”
Mysterious structures in the sky that have puzzled astronomers for decades might finally have an explanation – and it's quite something.
The North Polar Spur and the Fan Region, on opposite sides of the sky, may be connected by a vast system of magnetized filaments. These form a structure resembling a tunnel that circles the Solar System, and many nearby stars besides.
"If we were to look up in the sky," said astronomer Jennifer West of the University of Toronto in Canada, "we would see this tunnel-like structure in just about every direction we looked – that is, if we had eyes that could see radio light."
We've known about the two structures for quite some time – since the 1960s, in fact – but they have been difficult to understand. That's because it's really hard to work out exactly how far away they are; distances have ranged from hundreds to thousands of light-years away.
However, no analysis had ever linked the two structures together. West and her colleagues were able to show that the two regions, and prominent radio loops in the space between them, could be linked, solving many of the puzzling problems associated with both.
Comparison with a real tunnel showing orientation. (Left: Pixabay/wal_172619/J. West; Right: Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory/Villa Elisa telescope/ESA/Planck Collaboration/Stellarium/J. West)
"A few years ago, one of our co-authors, Tom Landecker, told me about a paper from 1965, from the early days of radio astronomy. Based on the crude data available at this time, the authors (Mathewson & Milne), speculated that these polarized radio signals could arise from our view of the Local Arm of the galaxy, from inside it," West explained.
"That paper inspired me to develop this idea and tie my model to the vastly better data that our telescopes give us today."
Using modelling and simulations, the researchers figured out what the radio sky would look like, if the two structures were connected by magnetic filaments, playing with parameters such as distance to determine the best fit.
From this, the team was able to determine that the most likely distance for the structures from the Solar System is around 350 light-years, consistent with some of the closer estimates. This includes an estimate for the distance of the North Polar Spur earlier this year based on Gaia data, which found that almost all of the spur is within 500 light-years.
The entire length of the tunnel modelled by West and her team is around 1,000 light-years.
Light intensity of the North Polar Spur (top) and Fan Region (bottom).
(West et al., arXiv, 2021)
This model is in agreement with a wide range of observational properties of the North Polar Spur and Fan Region, including the shape, the polarization of the electromagnetic radiation (that is, how the wave is twisted), and the brightness.
"When Jennifer first pitched this to me, I thought it was too 'out-there' to be a possible explanation. But she was ultimately able to convince me! Now I'm excited to see how the rest of the astronomy community reacts."
More work is needed to first confirm the findings, and then model the structure in greater detail. But doing so may help to solve an even bigger mystery: the formation and evolution of magnetic fields in galaxies, and how these fields are maintained. It could also, the researchers said, provide context for understanding other magnetic filamentary structures found around the galaxy.
The team is planning to perform more complex modelling; but, they suggest, more sensitive, higher-resolution observations would help reveal hidden details that show how the structure fits into the broader galactic context.
"Magnetic fields don't exist in isolation. They all must connect to each other. So a next step is to better understand how this local magnetic field connects both to the larger-scale galactic magnetic field, and also to the smaller scale magnetic fields of our Sun and Earth," West said.
"I think it's just awesome to imagine that these structures are everywhere, whenever we look up into the night sky."
The research is due to appear in The Astrophysical Journal, and is available on arXiv.
Cover image credit:Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory/Villa Elisa telescope/ESA/Planck Collaboration/Stellarium/J. West
Did Astronauts Photograph an “Alien City” on the Moon?
Did Astronauts Photograph an “Alien City” on the Moon?
Images recovered from NASA archives related to the Apollo 8 mission show a kind of alien city, made up of structures and bases on the Moon.
Thanks to Art Alien TV , the images were published, proving the existence of a series of structures that appear to form an alien city on the Moon .
Some experts say that this could easily have been a “landing site.” However, a scientist working on lunar cartography totally denied its existence .
Is there an alien city on the moon?
The NASA , along with the lunar cartographer, ensures that it is craters and shadows cast by the sun. However, the images appear to be too light.
Independent researchers, who have long been studying extraterrestrial existence and, even more so, its presence on the Moon, are convinced they have found the evidence they needed .
The alien city is made up of a structure more than 3 kilometers high, which were captured during the Apollo 8 mission . Some experts believe it was an alien launch pad.
The “enhanced” images are always presented alongside the images captured by the mission, to show that there was no alteration .
Thus, it is clearly evidenced that there is a kind of alien city on the lunar surface. The only thing left to know is whether these structures are still in operation or are abandoned.
A gigantic cube-shaped UFO appears during a thunderstorm in New Jersey
Another strange case that has come to light recently is that of a strange cube- shaped UFO published on the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON for its acronym in English.
The video was recorded in New Jersey on September 28 during a thunderstorm. The object appears to be hiding behind the clouds during the storm.
In the images, you can see the formation of clouds and the lightning products of the meteorological phenomenon in the night sky.
However, within seconds it is evident that the origin of the rays appears to be a strange cube-shaped structure .
Scott C. Waring, a renowned American ufologist, analyzed the images, suggesting that some extraterrestrial civilizations use lightning to “power” their ships.
Space station astronauts photograph “Flash” over Europa
But there is another recent strange event that could not be explained, and this time it comes from the International Space Station itself .
Astronauts at the station saw a strange blue glow over Europa. According to the French astronaut, Thomas Pesquet, it was a transitory phenomenon.
This happens when there is lightning in the upper atmosphere at altitudes above where it normally occurs.
Until a few years ago, scientists did not believe this was possible, even though other astronauts had claimed to have seen it. Now the question is… Is this a natural phenomenon?
To learn more about these topics, you can watch the Snakedos video that we leave you below.
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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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A close, dear friend of mine -- a respected UFO notable -- informs me that Ms. Wright, the interviewee in Tony's story was fraught with multiple questionable activities and happenstance, making her not the exemplified person I understood her to be.
I'll provide the info but not the sender to Tony and see if he needs to amend his article.
I'll have more to say on the matter surely...but for now the information puts the validity of Ms. Wright into serious question.
RR