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
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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...
09-04-2022
Dying Star Puffs out six Smoke Rings
Dying Star Puffs out six Smoke Rings
Our Sun’s days are numbered. In about 5 billion years the Sun will expand into a red giant, casting off its outer layers before settling down to become a white dwarf. It’s the inevitable fate of most sunlike stars, and the process is well understood. But as a recent study shows, there are still a few things we have to learn about dying Suns.
This recent study looks at a star known as V Hydrae or V Hya for short. It’s a red giant star about 1,300 light-years away with a mass roughly the same as the Sun. It’s what the Sun might look like in a few billion years. There are, however, a couple of things that make it different from our home star.
For one, it has a companion star. The companion is too faint for us to see, but based on the motion of V Hya, we know it is likely a red dwarf star that orbits V Hya once every 8.5 years. For another, V Hya seems to be dying in an unusual way.
In its current state, V Hya is categorized as a Mira variable star. It varies in brightness by about 1 – 2 magnitudes every 530 days, give or take. This is typical for dying red giant stars. As they fuse heavier elements in their core trying to survive, red giants often enter a period of oscillation, driven by the heating and cooling of the core. What’s more unusual is the fact that it is also a carbon star. This means that carbon fused in its core has been dredged up to the atmosphere of the star. So when astronomers look at V Hya’s spectrum, they see a strong presence of carbon. Basically, the star’s atmosphere is very “sooty.”
These two characteristics combined make V Hya an Asymptomatic Giant Branch star or AGB. About 90% of sunlike stars will enter an AGB period toward the end of their life. Astronomers have generally thought that the AGB epoch is a gradual process of stellar death, where the outer layers of the star are cast off over a period of about 100,000 years. After which, the remaining core collapses into a white dwarf. But V Hya shows this is either partly or sometimes incorrect.
ALMA image of V Hydrae and its smoke rings. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF)
If an AGB gradually cast off its outer layers, then we would expect to see an ever-expanding nebula known as a [planetary nebula](/post/cold-embers/) surrounding most white dwarfs. And we do see many planetary nebulae as the remnants of sunlike stars. But observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) show that V Hydrae isn’t creating such a nebula. Instead, it has been casting off thick rings rich in carbon. The star has ejected six rings over the course of about 2,100 years. The team also observed jets of gas ejected from the star perpendicular to the rings. This suggests that V Hya undergoes an unusually active period every few hundred years, which is very different from the common AGB model.
This period of active bursts is likely short lived compared to the full AGB epoch, so astronomers are fortunate to capture a dying star in this stage. It isn’t known whether most AGB stars experience such active periods, or whether V Hya is particularly unusual. To solve that mystery, it will take more observations of other dying red giant stars.
It’s Been Three Months in Deep Space, and Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument is Still Cooling Down
It’s Been Three Months in Deep Space, and Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument is Still Cooling Down
The James Webb Space Telescope continues to cool down out at its location at Lagrange Point 2, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Since JWST is an infrared telescope, it needs to operate at extremely low temperatures, about 40 k (-223 degrees Celsius, -369.4 degrees Fahrenheit). But one instrument needs to be even colder.
To operate at peak efficiency, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) must be cooled to a chilly 7 K (-266 C). And it will need a little help to reach those frigid temps.
Most of the telescope and its instruments rely on JWST’s massive sunshield as well as passive cooling, taking advantage of the frigid temperatures in deep space. The near-infrared instruments (NIRCam, NIRSpec, FGS-NIRISS) have now reached their target range from 34 to 39 K by cooling passively.
MIRI carries detectors that need to be at less than 7 kelvins to be able to detect longer wavelength photons of infrared light. This temperature is not possible on Webb by passive means alone, so Webb carries an innovative cryocooler, dedicated to the task of cooling MIRI’s detectors so that it can see farther into the infrared than the other instruments.
Previous infrared missions, such as the Spitzer Space Telescope, used a tank of cryogenic liquid helium that acted as a coolant by producing a freezing vapor that cooled the entire telescope assembly. But the vapor was vented to space, and once the supply helium was gone, the ability to cool the telescope was over. Spitzer launched in 2003 and the mission ended in 2020.
But MIRI’s cooler reuses its helium, just like the refrigerator in your kitchen continuously recycles its own coolant.
“Over the last couple weeks, the cryocooler has been circulating cold helium gas past the MIRI optical bench, which will help cool it to about 15 kelvins,” explained Konstantin Penanen and Bret Naylor, cryocooler specialists, NASA JPL, in a JWST blog post. “Soon, the cryocooler is about to experience the most challenging days of its mission. By operating cryogenic valves, the cryocooler will redirect the circulating helium gas and force it through a flow restriction. As the gas expands when exiting the restriction, it becomes colder, and can then bring the MIRI detectors to their cool operating temperature of below 7 kelvins.”
MIRI is inspected in the giant clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in 2012. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn.
This type of recycling cooler also means the lifetime of MIRI instrument, as well as the entire JWST could be even longer than Spitzer’s 16 years. Webb engineers have mentioned a possible 20-year lifetime, or even longer.
Once MIRI reaches the final temperatures, engineers can begin the final phase of commissioning the telescope.
“Getting this instrument cold is one of the last major challenges faced by Webb before the MIRI team can truly relax,” wrote Alistair Glasse, Webb-MIRI Instrument Scientist, UK Astronomy Technology Centre and and Macarena Garcia Marin, MIRI Instrument and Calibration Scientist, ESA. They said the cryogenic cooler will “pull out almost all of the heat left in MIRI’s 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of metal and glass from that tropical launch day morning, three months ago. MIRI will be the last of Webb’s four instruments to open its eyes on the universe.”
Astronauts are Practicing Landing at the Moon's South Pole
Astronauts are Practicing Landing at the Moon's South Pole
The European Space Agency (ESA) is learning how to touch down safely at the South Pole of the Moon, without ever leaving Earth. Actual Moon landings seem to be on the horizon in the next decade via the Artemis program, and astronauts are going to have to learn to handle the unique challenges of landing in the Moon’s polar environment. With low angle sunlight and deep, permanently shadowed craters, the Moon’s South Pole poses difficulties no Apollo mission ever faced. To get hands-on experience with this environment without risking human life, ESA is putting astronauts through their paces on high-tech simulators.
Simulators have long been a part of space exploration. Movie fans probably remember Gary Sinise – playing astronaut Ken Mattingly in the classic 1995 film Apollo 13 – denying himself sleep and rest to run test after test in the simulator, searching for a way to bring the mission’s endangered crew home safe. In real life, NASA used a variety of simulators during the Apollo era to test different aspects of the program.
The most visceral Apollo testbed was the rocket-powered Lunar Lander Research Vehicle (LLRV), designed to simulate landing in a low-gravity environment. The LLRV gave Neil Armstrong and his colleagues valuable practice on Earth before testing the real thing on the Moon. but the LLRV came with its own risks. It crashed several times, forcing Armstrong and other pilots to make use of the built-in ejection seat and parachute to safety. Still, it was better to crash on Earth than on the Moon!
A Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) being tested in 1964. This simulator recreated the low gravity conditions of landing on the Moon, and was used to train Apollo astronauts.
ESA’s new simulator, part of the ‘Human-In-the-Loop’ flight vehicle Engineering study, doesn’t leave the ground or rely on rockets – it’s built onto a large-scale robotic arm, which is able to move and shift at extreme angles to simulate the effects of the commands the astronaut gives the computer. Based at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), the Robotic Motion Simulator is a feat of engineering in its own right.
ESA astronaut Robert Vittori, who has been to space three times before, put the simulator through its paces. “The simulator is an incredible machine, probably one of the best I have experienced,” he said. “This experiment today is for me showing that Europe can play a key role in the future of exploration.”
ESA astronaut Robert Vittori stands in from of the DLR Robotic Motion Simulator.
Vittori tested various scenarios, including overriding the autopilot that was set to land in a field of boulders, and switching to manual control when the computer developed a fault.
The philosophy of ESA’s Human-In-the-Loop program is that hardware engineering and software design choices for spacecraft ought to be made in cooperation with the humans who will be flying the machines. The human-machine interfaces need to be user-friendly and intuitive, so that at critical moments, like landing on the Moon, there are no surprise design flaws or pilot confusion over the controls.
A similar philosophy enabled the success of the early days of spaceflight, when the Mercury astronauts worked closely with the engineering teams building the capsules and systems. Astronaut Wally Schirra, for example, specialized in life support systems and space suit development, while his colleague Scott Carpenter worked with the team building navigational equipment. In the present day, ESA is taking this philosophy to the next level. “We’re establishing a preliminary design and the preliminary requirements for human lunar landing, with astronauts in the loop to improve robustness and reliability of the flight system,” says project manager Luca Ferracina.
ESA has been heavily involved in the Artemis program since the beginning. It designed and built the service module of the Orion capsule, which will take astronauts to lunar orbit, working closely with NASA and other international partners. ESA astronauts will be on board at least three of the Artemis missions to the planned Lunar Gateway space station in the coming decade.
Guys, you gota check out the video I made below, I explain everything. A UFO was seen burning and falling slowly over Alaska at the Lazy mountain area. The object was depending slowly because one eyewitness said the photos were taken 45 seconds apart! Thats slow! Way too slow to be a meteor. If it was space junk, NASA would have alerted the public. Had it been a US hypersonic missile test, the US gov would admit to it, because they want to get in the news and frighten China and Russia with new weapons. However, this is a UFO and I reveal it to you in the video below. The UFO was caught in some of the photos, so...let me show you a close up of it to prove that it was a damaged UFO depending into an entrance on the mountain to enter an underground alien base.
Scott C. Waring
News states:
When Mattias Ahlvin walked out of his house in Palmer to start his car Thursday morning, he saw something unusual in the sky. “I looked up and I saw this strange — I mean, I would just call it a smoke column. It was a dark, gray streak across the sky that was going straight vertical,” he said. Ahlvin pulled out his phone, zoomed in, and snapped a few photos of what he saw. His first thought was that it was a plane, but what surprised him was the direction the streak or plane seemed to be headed. “It looked like it was going straight down,” he said. Law enforcement and a meteorologist with the National Weather Service say that what Ahlvin saw was likely a condensation trail from an airplane that was illuminated by the rising sun. Ahlvin reached out to Alaska State Troopers to share the images of what he saw just in case it was an aircraft in distress, and his wife, Elisabeth, posted the photos to a local Facebook page asking if anyone knew what it was. Others posted similar photos and speculated whether they were looking at a rocket launch, a meteor, a plane crash, a volcano or perhaps a military operation.
Ancient Alien Face Found In Mars Crater, Google Map, UFO Sighting News
Ancient Alien Face Found In Mars Crater, Google Map, UFO Sighting News
Location of discovery: Mars
Coordinates: 44°22'16.95"S 100° 3'31.39"W
I was checking out Google Mars...a free program to download and use, when I found this face. I have never reported on it before and it looks really big. Its hidden inside a crater and has a lot of similarities to the ancient China statues from thousands of years ago. If you know the name of the crater this is in, please tell us in comments. Google Mars ruler which is not extremely reliable, says that the diameter of the crater is 18.9km or 11.7 miles. The face itself is 8.9 miles (13km) by 5.9 miles (9.5 miles). That is one monumental undertaking to make, even making Mount Rushmore look like child's play. This face is highly detailed. No doubt is the face of a very notable historical figure in this species culture.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Alien Craft Seen Entering Side Vent Of Volcano In Mexico, April 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Craft Seen Entering Side Vent Of Volcano In Mexico, April 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 1, 2022
Location of sighting:Volcano Popocateptl, Mexico
Omg! This UFO is trying to disguise itself as a meteor as it enters the side vent of the volcano. Yes, there is a well known side vent in the location that it hit. This UFO really lights up as it enters the side vent, making it appear as if it exploded, but it's actually traveling down the side vent into the underground alien base 6km below the base of the volcano. Look at the incredible speed it has as it enters the volcano. It's just extraordinary that it could move so fast in such a close proximity to hitting the tunnel walls it was traveling through. Only alien technology could make a craft travel so fast, so accurately and with such precision.
Dark Disk Over Tokyo, Japan, Creates Ring Of Light, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Dark Disk Over Tokyo, Japan, Creates Ring Of Light, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 1, 2022
Location of sighting: Tokyo, Japan
A UFO video emerged this week of an unknown object over Tokyo, Japan. The object pulses creating a ring of light around it, almost like lighting and then the UFO disappears.
Such UFOs have been frequently seen around Japan, but most often near Mt Fuji and near the Fukushima nuclear reactor. So aliens do have an extreme interest in Japan.
Awesome Structures Discovered Near Our SUN! April 2022, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Awesome Structures Discovered Near Our SUN! April 2022, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 8, 2022 12:48:41Location of sighting: Earths Sun
Source:Helioviewer.org
This is a great find by Youtuber In2ThinAir. He used NASA/SOHO sun viewer to find some strange anomalies that do have many similarities to what we believe alien ships would look like. One is a spiral-like space station, the other a giant cube. Both of them have high quality detail and have had only light added to make them more visible.
I first started to search for UFOs near the sun about 17 years ago, when I first read about two Russian researchers who stated in a news article that they found many moon size UFOs shooting around our sun at the speed of light, changing directions suddenly, making hard right turns that should be impossible for any natural object in space. The article soon disappeared a few weeks after it was published and as did the two scientists, but...I have been keeping a close eye on objects near our sun. Helioviewer.org it one of the best tools to do so. This is 100% proof that those Russian scientists were right, that moon size UFOs do exist around our sun.
While in restricted airspace, pilots spot an unidentified object performing unusual maneuvers unlike any other military aircraft, in this clip from Season 18, “Alien Air Force.”
This cannibal star system could be a gravitational wave detecting machine.
An artist's rendering of a pulsar surrounded by a glowing disk of matter. In 'black widow' pulsars, that matter comes from a smaller companion star that's slowly being irradiated out of existence.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Every 4 milliseconds, a dead star blasts a powerful beam of radiation toward our planet. Don't worry — Earth will be fine. It's the dead star's tiny companion that's in trouble.
In a new study published March 11 on the pre-print database arXiv(opens in new tab), researchers describe this ill-fated binary star system — a rare class of celestial object known as a black widow pulsar(opens in new tab). Just like the cannibal spider from which this type of system takes its name, the larger member of the pair seems intent on devouring and destroying its smaller companion. (In spiders, females are often larger than males.)
However, there will be no quick decapitation for this black widow; the larger star appears to be killing its partner much more slowly. Over hundreds or thousands of years, the larger star has sucked in matter from the smaller star's vicinity, while simultaneously blasting the small star with strobing beams of energy, which push even more matter away into space.
Someday, it's possible that the larger star could devour the smaller one completely, lead study author Emma van der Wateren, a doctoral student at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), told Live Science. But, before then, scientists hope to put this strange system to work. By monitoring the larger star's remarkably steady pulses for sudden irregularities, the study authors hope this pulsar could help them detect rare ripples in the fabric of space-time(opens in new tab) known as gravitational waves.
"To detect gravitational waves, you need many, many very stable pulsars," van der Wateren said. "And unlike earlier black widow pulsars that have been discovered, this system is very stable."
Cannibal corpses
Scientists discovered star system J0610−2100 about 10,000 light-years from Earth in 2003, when they noticed its periodic pulsing with a radio telescope. Researchers pegged the system for a pulsar — a type of small, dense, collapsed star that rotates extremely quickly.
These dead stars are highly magnetized, blasting beams of electromagnetic radiation out of their poles as they spin. When one of those beams points toward Earth, the effect is like a lighthouse, with the light blinking on and off as the beam strobes past us. If the light blinks once every 10 milliseconds or less (like J0610−2100, which blinks every 3.8 milliseconds), then the star fits into an even rarer category, called a millisecond pulsar.
Many millisecond pulsars share their orbits with sun-like companion stars, which the pulsars slowly devour. As the pulsars gobble up the spinning disks of matter spewed by the companion star, they glow in X-ray radiation that can be spotted across the galaxy.
An illustration of a pulsar gobbling up matter from its companion star. In black widow pulsars, the companion star has been stripped down to one tenth the mass of Earth's sun, or less. (Image credit: NASA Goddard)
And sometimes, a pulsar may take more than its fair share of matter from its companion. If a pulsar's companion star has a mass smaller than one-tenth the mass of Earth's sun, then that star system is called a black widow pulsar.
J0610−2100 was the third black widow pulsar ever detected — and seems to be one of the hungriest. The pulsar's companion star measures just 0.02 solar masses, and completes an orbit around the pulsar every seven hours or so, the study found.
For their new paper, van der Wateren and her colleagues analyzed 16 years' worth of radio telescope data from this cannibal star system. While the system is unmistakably a black widow pulsar, the team was surprised to find that it was missing a few signature quirks.
For example, the star system never showed what's known as a radio eclipse — a nearly universal phenomenon in other black widow pulsars.
"Typically, for a portion of the binary orbit, the radio emissions from the pulsar completely disappear," van der Wateren said. "This occurs when the companion star moves close to the front of the pulsar, and all this irradiated material coming off of the companion eclipses the pulse emission from the pulsar."
Over 16 years, the star system also never showed any timing irregularities — sudden, tiny differences in the timing of a pulsar's pulse compared to astronomers' predictions.
Waves that move the universe
The absence of these two common phenomena is hard to explain, van der Wateren said. It could be that the line of sight on this pulsar is skewed so that radio eclipses just aren't apparent to Earth-based telescopes, or perhaps the pulsar's companion star isn't being irradiated quite as strongly as other known pulsars that show these features. But whatever the case, this black widow system is incredibly stable and predictable — which makes it a perfect candidate for detecting gravitational waves, the researchers said.
These waves (first predicted by Albert Einstein) occur when the universe's most massive objects interact — like when black holes or neutron stars collide. The waves ripple through time and space at light-speed, warping the fabric of the universe as they pass.
Researchers have used a rapidly-spinning double pulsar system to take measurements for 16 years, ultimately proving Einstein right on the way to proving him wrong.
CREDIT:MICHAEL KRAMER/MPIFR
One way that astronomers hope to detect gravitational waves is by monitoring dozens of millisecond pulsars at once using systems called pulsar timing arrays. If every pulsar in the array suddenly experienced a timing irregularity around the same time, that could be evidence that something massive, like a gravitational wave, disrupted their pulses on the way to Earth.
"We have not detected gravitational waves in this way yet," van der Wateren said. "But I think we are coming close.
That's what makes the discovery of highly predictable black widow pulsars like this one so important, van der Wateren added.
Typically too temperamental because of their radio eclipses and timing irregularities, black widow pulsars are rarely good candidates for gravitational wave detection. But J0610−2100 might be an exception — and its mere existence suggests that there could be other suitable exceptions out there too. Like its arachnid namesake, this black widow's cannibal bite may serve a greater purpose in the end.
Scientists Just Found a ‘Significant’ Volume of Water Inside Mars’ Grand Canyon
Scientists Just Found a ‘Significant’ Volume of Water Inside Mars’ Grand Canyon
A depiction of canyons (left), and Mars itself (right).
On December 15, 2021 ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (ESA) published scientific material to declare detection of significant amounts of water at the heart of Mars’ dramatic canyon system, Valles Marineris (Grand Canyon). The newly discovered volume of water is hiding under the surface of Mars, and was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission in its first stage under the guidance of the ESA-Roscosmos project dubbed ExoMars. Gas Orbiter revealed an area with an unusually large amount of hydrogen in the colossal Valles Marineris canyon system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound into water molecules, as much as 40% of the near-surface material in this region appears to be water. Igor Mitrofanov, the Russian Academy of Science’s lead investigator of the Space Research Institute, presented this discovery in the ESA press release.
Mars’ canyon water could be liquid, ice, or a messy mix
“The reservoir is large, not too deep below ground, & could be easily exploitable for future explorers,” read a tweeton the announcement from ExoMars. That sounds basically great! But it’s too soon for Musk to pack up his bags and fly to the site, since much work is left to be done.
A study accompanying the announcement, published in the journal Icarus, shows that neutron detection doesn’t distinguish between ice and water molecules. This means geochemists need to enter the scientific fray to reveal more details. But several features of the canyon, including its topology, have led the researchers to speculate that the water is probably in solid form (ice). But it could also be a mixture of solid and liquid.
( Source : https://interestingengineering.com/ )
Hidden Water in Mars’ Grand Canyon discovered by ExoMars Gas Orbiter
In Italy, a team of scientists is using a highly sophisticated detector to hunt for dark matter.
The team observed an ultra-rare particle interaction that reveals the half-life of a xenon-124 atom to be 18 sextillion years.
The half-life of a process is how long it takes for half of the radioactive nuclei present in a sample to decay.
Scientists have observed an extremely rare particle physics event using a detector that’s hunting for dark matter, the mysterious material that physicists have yet to observe.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, researchers with the XENON Collaboration said they’d observed the radioactive decay of a substance called xenon-124, an isotope of the element xenon — a colorless and odorless noble gas found in tiny amounts in the atmosphere. The event — a “two-neutrino double electron capture” — has eluded scientists for decades.
It happens when “two protons in a nucleus are simultaneously converted into neutrons by the absorption of two electrons from one of the atomic shells and the emission of two electron neutrinos.” After this occurs, the event shoots out a predictable cascade of X-rays and Auger electrons that scientists look for using an ultra-sensitive detector, buried about 5,000 feet beneath Italy’s Gran Sasso mountain where it’s shielded from cosmic rays.
“We have shown that we can observe the rarest events ever recorded,” Ethan Brown, a professor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and co-author of the study, told Newsweek. “The key finding is that an isotope formerly thought to be completely stable has now been shown to decay on an unimaginably long timescale.”
How long is that timescale? The team estimated that xenon-124’s half-life is about 18 sextillion years — or 18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years — which is than one trillion times the age of our universe, according to the team. It’s the slowest process ever measured directly, the team wrote in a statement.
“It’s an amazing to have witnessed this process, and it says that our detector can measure the rarest thing ever recorded,” Brown told The Independent.
We are extremely excited to share with you that we have observed the rarest decay process ever measured! It is the two neutrino double electron capture in Xe-124. The results have been published in @nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1124-4 … #NotOnlyDM #TenTrillionBillionYears #XENON
“We designed the XENON1T experiment to look for dark matter, a new kind of matter that makes up 85 percent of the mass of the universe, but interacts so rarely that it’s never been observed,” Brown said. “This experiment is so sensitive to very rare events that we can make all kinds of other rare physics measurements. One of those is this decay of xenon-124. Although our primary goal was always the discovery of dark matter, we knew there was a good chance we could see this rare decay, so we set out to do so.”
To get that good chance, the team had to expose their detector to a huge amount of xenon atoms by stocking it with 3.2 tons worth of liquid xenon.
“XENON1T is a giant vat of liquid xenon surrounded by light sensors,” Brown said. “When dark matter collides in the xenon, or when a radioactive decay occurs inside, we get a tiny flash of light and a little bunch of charge out of the xenon. We measure these with the light sensors and reconstruct everything we can about the original event that caused the light and charge.”
Although the team didn’t observe dark matter — which is the primary purpose of the detector — the recent observations could help scientists learn more about neutrinos, one of the least understood fundamental particles in the universe.
“It proves that this XENON detector technology we use for dark matter is much more versatile,” graduate student Christian Wittweg, Ph.D student at the University of Münster in Germany, told Gizmodo. “We get all these cool analyses… for free after having built an experiment sensitive enough to hunt for dark matter.”
The team plans to use its newer XENONnT detector to continue hunting for dark matter, the elusive material that’s estimated to comprise about 26.8 percent of all the content in the universe.
Jupiter’s Origin Story: Intriguing New Details on the Gas Giant’s Formation Journey
Jupiter’s Origin Story:Intriguing New Details on the Gas Giant’s Formation Journey
Artist impression based on JunoCam image of Jupiter acquired on July 21, 2021. Enhanced to highlight features, clouds, colors, and the beauty of Jupiter. Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/TanyaOleksuik
Researchers of the University of Zurich (UZH) and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS have investigated Jupiter’s formation history in great detail. Their results suggest that the giant planet migrated far from its origin and collected large amounts of material on its journey.
One of the most important open questions in planetary formation theory is the story of Jupiter’s origin. Using sophisticated computer modeling, researchers of the University of Zurich (UZH) and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS now shed new light on Jupiter’s formation history. Their results were published in journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Zurich and member of the NCCR PlanetS, Ravit Helled.
Credit: Jos Schmid
A curious enrichment of heavy elements
When the Galileo spacecraft released a probe that parachuted into Jupiter’s atmosphere in 1995, it showed among other things that heavy elements (elements heavier than helium) are enriched there. At the same time, recent structure models of Jupiter that are based on gravity field measurements by the Juno spacecraft suggest that Jupiter’s interior is not uniform but has a complex structure.
Since we now know that the interior of Jupiter is not fully mixed, we would expect heavy elements to be in a giant gas planet’s deep interior as heavy elements are mostly accreted during the early stages of the planetary formation,” study co-author, Professor at the University of Zurich and member of the NCCR PlanetS, Ravit Helled begins to explain. “Only in later stages, when the growing planet is sufficiently massive, can it effectively attract large amounts of light element gases like hydrogen and helium. Finding a formation scenario of Jupiter which is consistent with the predicted interior structure as well as with the measured atmospheric enrichment is therefore challenging yet critical for our understanding of giant planets,” Helled says. Of the many theories that have so far been proposed, none could provide a satisfying answer.
Sho Shibata is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich and a member of the NCCR PlanetS.
Credit: Nana Shibata
A long migration
“Our idea was that Jupiter had collected these heavy elements in the late stages of its formation by migrating. In doing so, it would have moved through regions filled with so-called planetesimals – small planetary building blocks that are composed of heavy element materials – and accumulated them in its atmosphere,” study lead-author Sho Shibata, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich and a member of the NCCR PlanetS, explains.
Yet, migration by itself is no guarantee for accreting the necessary material. “Because of complex dynamical interactions, the migrating planet does not necessarily accrete the planetesimals in its path. In many cases, the planet actually scatters them instead – not unlike a shepherding dog scattering sheep,” Shibata points out. The team therefore had to run countless simulations to determine if any migration pathways resulted in sufficient material accretion.
“What we found was that a sufficient number of planetesimals could be captured if Jupiter formed in the outer regions of the solar system – about four times further away from the Sun than where it is located now – and then migrated to its current position. In this scenario, it moved through a region where the conditions favored material accretion – an accretion sweet spot, as we call it,” Sho reports.
A new era in planetary science
Combining the constraints introduced by the Galileo probe and Juno data, the researchers have finally come up with a satisfying explanation. “This shows how complex giant gas planets are and how difficult it is to realistically reproduce their characteristics,” Ravit Helled points out.
“It took us a long time in planetary science to get to a stage where we can finally explore these details with updated theoretical models and numerical simulations. This helps us close gaps in our understanding not only of Jupiter and our solar system, but also of the many observed giant planets orbiting far away stars,” Helled concludes.
Reference: “Enrichment of Jupiter’s Atmosphere by Late Planetesimal Bombardment” by Sho Shibata and Ravit Helled, 24 February 2022, The Astrophysical Journal Letters. DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac54b1
Astronomers have detected a 'galactic space laser' shooting light beams at Earth from 5 billion light years away.
The powerful radio-wave 'laser', called a 'megamaser', was detected by the MeerKAT telescope in the Northern Cape ofSouth Africa.
According to the astronomers, the record-breaking find is the most distant megamaser of its kind ever detected, at about five billion light years from Earth.
Light from the megamaser has therefore travelled 58 thousand billion billion (58 followed by 21 zeros) kilometres to Earth.
A megamaser is a extremely luminous 'maser', which is actually technically quite different from a laser.
A photon from a laser comes in the form of visible light, while a photon from a maser comes in the form of a microwave (hence the 'M' instead of an 'L').
A three-colour optical image of the host galaxy of the hydroxyl megamaser, taken from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) on the Subaru Telescope located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii
The powerful radio-wave laser, called a 'megamaser', was detected by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa (pictured)
WHAT IS A MEGAMASER?
A megamaser is a type of astrophysical maser. A maser is like a laser, except that the photon from a laser comes in the form of visible light, while a photon from a maser comes in the form of a microwave.
A megamaser involves some components within the galaxy (like gas) that are in the right physical condition to cause the amplification of the microwaves.
Megamasers are usually created when two galaxies violently collide in the universe.
Source: NASA
The record-breaking megamaser has been given the name 'Nkalakatha' [pronounced ng-kuh-la-kuh-tah] – an isiZulu word meaning 'big boss'.
The discovery was made by an international team of astronomers led by Dr Marcin Glowacki at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia.
Dr Glowacki said the hydroxyl megamaser – containing one atom of hydrogen and one of oxygen – was detected on the first night of a survey involving more than 3,000 hours of observations by the MeerKAT telescope.
'This is the first hydroxyl megamaser of its kind to be observed by MeerKAT and the most distant seen by any telescope to date,' he said.
'It's impressive that, with just a single night of observations, we've already found a record-breaking megamaser. It shows just how good the telescope is.'
Megamasers are usually created when two galaxies violently collide in the universe, Dr Glowacki explained.
Inside a galaxy merger are hydroxyl molecules, composed of one atom of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen.
When one molecule absorbs a photon at 18cm wavelength, it emits two photons of the same wavelength.
Megamasers are usually created when two galaxies violently collide in the universe. Inside a galaxy merger are hydroxyl molecules, composed of one atom of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. When one molecule absorbs a photon at 18cm wavelength, it emits two photons of the same wavelength. When molecular gas is very dense, typically when two galaxies merge, this emission gets very bright and can be detected by radio telescopes such as the MeerKAT
When molecular gas is very dense, typically when two galaxies merge, this emission gets very bright and can be detected by radio telescopes such as the MeerKAT.
'When galaxies collide, the gas they contain becomes extremely dense and can trigger concentrated beams of light to shoot out,' Dr Glowacki said.
The team is using MeerKAT to observe narrow regions of the sky extremely deeply and will measure atomic hydrogen in galaxies from the distant past to now.
The combination of studying hydroxl masers and hydrogen will help astronomers better understand how the universe has evolved over time.
'We have follow-up observations of the megamaser planned and hope to make many more discoveries,' Dr Glowacki said.
MeerKAT is a precursor instrument for the Square Kilometre Array – a global initiative to build the world's largest radio telescopes in Western Australia and South Africa.
According to Professor Tara Murphy at the University of Sydney's Institute for Astronomy, SKA will be able to make sensitive maps of the sky every day.
'Within the next decade, the transcontinental Square Kilometre Array radio telescope will come online,' Professor Murphy said.
'We expect the power of this telescope will help us solve mysteries... but it will also open vast new swathes of the cosmos to exploration in the radio spectrum.'
SKA WILL BE THE WORLD'S LARGEST RADIO TELESCOPE
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a joint project between Australia and South Africa, will be the world’s largest radio telescope.
More sensitive than any current radio telescope, it will enable scientists to study the universe in more detail than ever before.
The telescope will be located in South Africa and Australia, with the international headquarters located at Jodrell Bank, in the UK.
Nearly 200 mid-frequency dishes (including the existing MeerKAT facility which was officially launched in July 2018) will be located in the Karoo region of South Africa.
Artist's impression of the 3-mile (5km) diameter central core of Square Kilometre Array (SKA) antennas
Around 130,000 low-frequency antennas will be located in Western Australia.
Both sites are far from sources of radio frequency interference which will allow for very sensitive measurements to be undertaken.
The SKA will be made up of 2 instruments, SKA-mid (the dishes) and SKA-low (the antennas).
The signals from the dishes will be transported via optical fibre to a central computer where they will be combined using a technique called interferometry.
Similarly the signal from all of the antennas will also be combined and converted to scientific data that astronomers will use to study the universe.
ASTRONOMERS DETECT GALACTIC LASER COMING FROM DEEP SPACE
ASTRONOMERS DETECT GALACTIC LASER COMING FROM DEEP SPACE
HEY, WHERE'S THAT COMING FROM?!
NASA/FUTURISM
Megamaser
A team of astronomers have discovered a laser — technically a “megamaser” — coming from a whopping five billion light years from Earth, making it the most distant of its kind ever detected, CBS News reports.
That’s 58 thousand billion billion kilometers, if you’re keeping count. In other words, the time it took for the light to arrive here could be greater than the age of the solar system.
No, it’s almost certainly not some ancient alien civilization pointing a gigantic laser pointer at the Earth from across the cosmos. The alternative is pretty epic too, though, because the megamaser is likely the result of two galaxies violently colliding, astronomers suggest.
Big Collision
The discovery could test what we already know about the evolution of galaxies and what happens when they merge with others.
“When galaxies collide, the gas they contain becomes extremely dense and can trigger concentrated beams of light to shoot out,” Marcin Glowacki, lead author of a new study to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, in a statement.
Galactic collisions are some of the most violent events we know of in the Universe, releasing unimaginable amounts of energy in the process.
“The OH megamasers act like bright lights that say: here is a collision of galaxies that is making new stars and feeding massive black holes,” said co-author Jeremy Darling from the University of Colorado in a separate blurb.
Mere Lasers
The finding is an important proof of concept for the South African observatory called MeerKAT, which scientists used to make the discovery.
“This is the first hydroxyl megamaser of its kind to be observed by MeerKAT and the most distant seen by any telescope to date,” Glowacki said. “It’s impressive that, with just a single night of observations, we’ve already found a record-breaking megamaser. It shows just how good the telescope is.”
Scientists are already excited by the prospect of future discoveries just like it.
“MeerKAT will probably double the known number of these rare phenomena,” Darling said. “Galaxies were thought to merge more often in the past, and the newly discovered OH megamasers will allow us to test this hypothesis.”
SPACEX SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES FIRST ALL-PRIVATE MISSION TO THE SPACE STATION
SPACEX SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES FIRST ALL-PRIVATE MISSION TO THE SPACE STATION
IT'S A HISTORIC MOMENT.
AXIOM SPACE
All-Private Launch
It’s a historic moment in the history of spaceflight.
SpaceX has successfully launched the first all-private crew of space tourists to the International Space Station, as part of Axiom Space’s Ax-1 mission.
“Godspeed, Axiom-1,” SpaceX commentators could be heard saying.
Picture Perfect
The launch went by without a hitch, which is to be expected at this point — it’s the sixth successful crewed launch of the spacecraft and the fifth to fly to the space station.
Stage separation was confirmed just under three minutes into flight, “a picture perfect liftoff,” as SpaceX’s commentator called it.
SpaceX’s drone ship managed to safely catch the rocket’s first stage minutes after delivering the payload into the upper atmosphere.
Future of Space Tourism
The trip was organized by SpaceX and Axiom Space, a private space company, which is also hoping to launch its own space station in the upcoming years.
The crew will spend ten days in orbit, and eight on board the orbital outpost.
It’s a watershed moment for the still nascent space tourism industry, a hint of many more launches like it in the future.
Letter from the Defense Intelligence Agency confirming it is releasing 1,574 pages of files
Credit: DIA
Video taken by Navy pilots showing interactions with “unidentified aerial phenomena”.
Credit: AFP
Video of the infamous 'Tic Tac' encounter near the USS Nimitz in 2004
We filed an a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) just days after the existence of the shadowy programme had been made public.
Finally after more than four years, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released more than 1,500 documents.
It includes government commissioned scientific reports and letters to the Pentagon regarding the UFO programme.
The haul includes reports into research on the biological effects of UFO sightings on humans, sets out categorisations for paranormal experiences, and studies into sci-fi-style tech.
The DIA, the Department of Defense's spy arm, said "some portions" of the documents "must be withheld in part" due to privacy and confidentiality concerns.
But the agency added the "DIA has not withheld any reasonably segregable non-exempt portions of the records".
The bombshell Freedom of Information haul includes reports on the DIA's research into the biological effects of UFO sightings on humans.
And this includes burns, heart problems, sleep disturbances - and even bizarre occurrences such as "apparent abduction" and "unaccounted for pregnancy".
The report noted that often these injuries are related to electromagnetic radiation - and links them to "energy related propulsion systems".
And the report - prepared for the DIA - warns that such objects may be a "threat to United States interests".
Humans have been found to have been injured from "exposures to anomalous vehicles, especially airborne and when in close proximity", it reads.
The report added said it had 42 cases from medical files and 300 similar "unpublished" cases where humans had been injured after "anomalous" encounters.
AATIP was a secretive Pentagon programme that ran between 2007 and 2012 to study UFOs.
It was outed by former intelligence official turned whistleblower Luis Elizondo, who headed up the programme, back in 2017.
Bombshell videos of unexplained UFO sightings by US military personnel - investigated by AATIP - were also first published at the time.
The revelations on the programme marked a step change in the way the US talks about UFOs - now more commonly known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs).
And the phenomena has stepped from the fringe into a serious national security concern discussed by lawmakers, defence officials and even former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
One fascinating document included in an Acquisition Threat Support report, sets out how to categorise "anomalous behaviour" - with encounters with "ghosts, yetis, spirits, elves and other mythical/ legendary entities" classed as "AN3".
Seeing a UFO with aliens on board would be "CE3".
Poltergeists, crop circles, spontaneous human combustion, alien abductions and other paranormal events are also categorised.
Studies into advanced technologies such as invisibility cloaks and mind controlled robots are also included in the document cahce.
Other documents obtained include studies into communicating with alien civilisations and plans for deep space exploration and colonization.
Luis Elizondo headed up AATIP for the Pentagon
Credit: Alamy
US Senator Harry Reid was key to setting up AATIP
Credit: AP
Letter from Senator Harry Reid stating that the findings of the programme demand "extraordinary protection"
Credit: DIA
The slew of newly released documents contains letters from Senator Harry Reid - who asks for the project to be classed as top secret - and documents about contractors.
It shows how a contract was awarded to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BLASS) for $12 million - notably the only contractor to bid for the work - to study "advanced aerospace weapon threats from the present out to 40 years in the future".
In one 2009 letter Senator Reid describes how the programme has already identified "several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace technologies" which required "extraordinary protection".
His request for "restricted special access program" for the BLASS work was rejected by DIA officials.
Last year, the Pentagon released its long awaited report into what it knows about a series of mysterious flying objects that have been observed in military airspaces over the last two decades.
The report, released on the website of the Office of the Director for National Intelligence, examined 144 reports of encounters with what the government deemed "unidentified aerial phenomenon."
It comes as the Pentagon is opening a new office to investigate UFOs, their origins and attempts to "capture or exploit" one of the mysterious craft after an amendment to a defence bill tabled in the US Senate.
It will probe whether or not the strange craft that have been reportedly buzzing the US military are unknown technology from Russia and China or potentially something more alien.
The Pentagon UFO programme AATIP ran from 2007 to 2012Credit: Reuters
The files were released by the Defense Intelligence Agency - the spy arm of the Department of Defense
Pentagon geeft ‘X-files’ over ufo's vrij: sprake van “stralingsbrandwonden” bij waarnemers en zelfs van een “onverklaarde zwangerschap”
De Amerikaanse overheid heeft 1.574 pagina’s ufo-onderzoek vrijgegeven op vraag van de Britse tabloid ‘The Sun’. Die spreekt van “X-files in het echte leven”. Blijkt dat ontmoetingen van burgers met ufo’s zouden hebben geleid tot stralingsbrandwonden, schade aan de hersenen en aan het zenuwstelsel, en zelfs een “onverklaarbare zwangerschap”. Ook wetenschapssite ‘Live Science’ bericht over de vrijgegeven documenten.
De documenten werden vrijgegeven in het kader van een Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Het gaat om meer dan 1.500 pagina’s aan verslagen over ufo’s, materiaal afkomstig van het Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), een geheimzinnig programma van het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie dat liep van 2007 tot 2012. Het project werd nooit specifiek geklasseerd als ‘top secret’, maar kwam toch pas in 2017 in de openbaarheid. De voormalige directeur van AATIP, Luis Elizondo, stapte toen op bij het Pentagon en gaf beelden vrij van een ongeïdentificeerd vliegtuig, dat op schijnbaar onmogelijke wijze bewoog.
De Britse tabloid ‘The Sun’ sprong op de zaak en diende al eind 2017 in het kader van een FOIA een verzoek in om alle documenten van AATIP te kunnen inkijken. Gisteren, ruim vier jaar later, honoreerde de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst van Defensie (DIA) het verzoek en gaf meer dan 1.574 pagina’s materiaal vrij aan ‘The Sun’. De tabloid schrijft dat de documenten verslagen bevatten over de biologische effecten van ufowaarnemingen op mensen, studies over geavanceerde technologieën zoals onzichtbaarheidsmantels, en plannen voor verkenning en kolonisatie in de ruimte. De AATIP zei aan ‘The Sun’ dat het sommige vertrouwelijke informatie “gedeeltelijk achterhield” om redenen van privacy.
Een van de meest in het oog springende passages dateert van maart 2010 en gaat over de vermeende verwondingen die menselijke waarnemers zouden hebben opgelopen en die een “bedreiging voor de belangen van de Verenigde Staten zouden kunnen zijn”, zo klinkt het. 42 medische gevallen zijn beschreven, naast 300 gelijkaardige “ongepubliceerde” gevallen van verwondingen na vermeende ontmoetingen met “abnormale voertuigen”, waaronder ufo’s. Sommige waarnemers vertoonden brandwonden of andere symptomen door elektromagnetische straling, die gelinkt wordt aan “energie-gerelateerde voortstuwingssystemen”. Er is ook sprake van schade aan de hersenen en aan het zenuwstelsel, van hartkloppingen, van slaapstoornissen en van hoofdpijn.
Het is niet duidelijk wat voor soort screening de AATIP gebruikte om de vermeende gevallen te onderzoeken, als er al een werd gehanteerd, schrijft ‘Live Science’. ‘The Sun’ heeft de volledige inhoud van de opgevraagde rapporten nog niet bekendgemaakt.
En dan is er nog de oplijsting van vermeende biologische effecten op menselijke ufowaarnemers, weergegeven in een rapport van de civiele non-profitorganisatie Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) over waarnemingen tussen 1873 en 1994. Het gaat dan onder meer over “onverklaarbare zwangerschappen”, “schijnbare ontvoering”, verlamming, en ervaringen van telepathie, teleportatie en levitatie. MUFON wordt vaak bestempeld als controversieel omdat de vrijwilligers “onwetenschappelijk” te werk zouden gaan en zouden focussen op “pseudowetenschap”.
In de conclusie van het verslag staat wel dat er voldoende bewijs is “om een hypothese te ondersteunen dat sommige geavanceerde systemen al in gebruik zijn en ondoorzichtig zijn voor de VS om ze volledig te begrijpen”.
Herbekijk ook:
UFO-onderzoekers kijken reikhalzend uit naar Area 51-rapport
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 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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