Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
24-06-2022
Mysterious 'blue blobs' reveal a new kind of star system
Mysterious 'blue blobs' reveal a new kind of star system
by Mikayla Mace Kelle for UA News Tucson AZ (SPX)
UArizona astronomers have identified a new class of star system. The collection of mostly young blue stars are seen here using the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys.
University of Arizona astronomers have identified five examples of a new class of stellar system. They're not quite galaxies and only exist in isolation.
The new stellar systems contain only young, blue stars, which are distributed in an irregular pattern and seem to exist in surprising isolation from any potential parent galaxy.
The stellar systems - which astronomers say appear through a telescope as "blue blobs" and are about the size of tiny dwarf galaxies - are located within the relatively nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. The five systems are separated from any potential parent galaxies by over 300,000 light years in some cases, making it challenging to identify their origins.
The astronomers found the new systems after another research group, led by the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy's Elizabeth Adams, compiled a catalog of nearby gas clouds, providing a list of potential sites of new galaxies. Once that catalog was published, several research groups, including one led by UArizona associate astronomy professor David Sand, started looking for stars that could be associated with those gas clouds.
The gas clouds were thought to be associated with our own galaxy, and most of them probably are, but when the first collection of stars, called SECCO1, was discovered, astronomers realized that it was not near the Milky Way at all, but rather in the Virgo cluster, which is much farther away but still very nearby in the scale of the universe.
SECCO1 was one of the very unusual "blue blobs," said Michael Jones, a postdoctoral fellow in the UArizona Steward Observatory and lead author of a study that describes the new stellar systems. Jones presented the findings, which Sand co-authored, during the 240th American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California, Wednesday.
"It's a lesson in the unexpected," Jones said. "When you're looking for things, you're not necessarily going to find the thing you're looking for, but you might find something else very interesting."
The team obtained their observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico and the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Study co-author Michele Bellazzini, with the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy, led the analysis of the data from Very Large Telescope and has submitted a companion paper focusing on that data.
Together, the team learned that most of the stars in each system are very blue and very young and that they contain very little atomic hydrogen gas. This is significant because star formation begins with atomic hydrogen gas, which eventually evolves into dense clouds of molecular hydrogen gas before forming into stars.
"We observed that most of the systems lack atomic gas, but that doesn't mean there isn't molecular gas," Jones said. "In fact, there must be some molecular gas because they are still forming stars. The existence of mostly young stars and little gas signals that these systems must have lost their gas recently."
The combination of blue stars and lack of gas was unexpected, as was a lack of older stars in the systems. Most galaxies have older stars, which astronomers refer to as being "red and dead."
"Stars that are born red are lower mass and therefore live longer than blue stars, which burn fast and die young, so old red stars are usually the last ones left living," Jones said. "And they're dead because they don't have any more gas with which to form new stars. These blue stars are like an oasis in the desert, basically."
The fact that the new stellar systems are abundant in metals hints at how they might have formed.
"To astronomers, metals are any element heavier than helium," Jones said. "This tells us that these stellar systems formed from gas that was stripped from a big galaxy, because how metals are built up is by many repeated episodes of star formation, and you only really get that in a big galaxy."
There are two main ways gas can be stripped from a galaxy. The first is tidal stripping, which occurs when two big galaxies pass by each other and gravitationally tear away gas and stars.
The other is what's known as ram pressure stripping.
"This is like if you belly flop into a swimming pool," Jones said. "When a galaxy belly flops into a cluster that is full of hot gas, then its gas gets forced out behind it. That's the mechanism that we think we're seeing here to create these objects."
The team prefers the ram pressure stripping explanation because in order for the blue blobs to have become as isolated as they are, they must have been moving very quickly, and the speed of tidal stripping is low compared to ram pressure stripping.
Astronomers expect that one day these systems will eventually split off into individual clusters of stars and spread out across the larger galaxy cluster.
What researchers have learned feeds into the larger "story of recycling of gas and stars in the universe," Sand said. "We think that this belly flopping process changes a lot of spiral galaxies into elliptical galaxies on some level, so learning more about the general process teaches us more about galaxy formation."
De blauwe blobs zijn geen lang leven beschoren, maar spectaculair zijn ze wel. Wetenschappers ontdekten maar liefst vijf sterrenstelsels met deze jonge blauwe sterren.
Wetenschappers van de Universiteit van Arizona stellen dat de blauwe sterrenstelsels wezenlijk anders zijn dan de tot nu toe bekende soorten. Ze zitten vol met jonge, blauwe sterren en liggen verrassend ver weg van andere sterrenstelsels.
De geïsoleerde ‘blauwe blobs’, zoals astronomen ze liefkozend noemen, zijn relatief klein. De vijf sterrennevels hebben het formaat van een klein dwergsysteem en liggen in het Virgocluster. Potentiële buren zijn meer dan 300.000 lichtjaren ver weg, waardoor het lastig is om erachter te komen hoe ze zijn ontstaan.
Nederlandse ontdekking De ontdekking werd mede mogelijk gemaakt door het Nederlands instituut voor radioastronomie (ASTRON). Onder leiding van onderzoeker Elizabeth Adams is een schat aan informatie verkregen over gaswolken – de geboorteplaatsen van sterren – in het heelal. Met behulp van deze data is een lijst gemaakt van potentiële nieuwe sterrenstelsels en de locatie daarvan. Nadat deze ASTRON-catalogus was gepubliceerd, gingen verschillende onderzoeksgroepen met de data aan de haal. David Sand, professor astronomie aan de Universiteit van Arizona ging met zijn team bijvoorbeeld op zoek naar bijzondere sterren in deze interstellaire gaswolken.
Sand dacht te kijken naar gaswolken in ons eigen Melkwegstelsel, maar sommige sterrenclusters, zoals SECCO1, bleken helemaal niet hier om de hoek gelokaliseerd te zijn. Tot hun verrassing bevonden de mysterieuze blauwe nevels zich veel verderop in het Virgocluster.
“SECCO1 is een hele aparte blauwe bubbel”, zegt Michael Jones, deskundige op het gebied van jonge sterrenstelsels van de Steward Observatory in Arizona. “In ons vak is het belangrijk om open-minded te zijn. Verwacht het onverwachte. Als je op onderzoek uitgaat, vind je niet altijd waar je naar op zoek was. Soms stuit je juist op iets totaal anders, wat enorm interessant blijkt.” Dat bleek in dit geval zo te zijn.
H1 en H2 Het team analyseerde data van de Hubble en de grote ruimtetelescopen van New Mexico en Chili. Samen kwamen ze tot de conclusie dat de meeste sterren in deze nieuwe stelsels erg jong en erg blauw zijn. Bijzonder is ook dat er bijna geen atomair waterstofgas (H1) aanwezig is in de sterren. Dit is fascinerend, omdat een ster normaal gesproken wordt gevormd onder invloed van atomaire waterstof. Dit wordt langzaam omgezet in dikke wolken moleculair waterstofgas (H2), voordat de ster zijn vorm krijgt. “We zien dat deze stelsels nauwelijks atomaire waterstof bevatten, maar dat betekent niet dat het niet aanwezig is. Dit moet wel, aangezien er nog steeds sterren worden gevormd. Het bestaan van de jonge sterren en het weinige gas betekent dat ze kort geleden hun gas hebben verloren”, aldus Jones.
“Rode sterren hebben een kleinere massa en leven daardoor langer dan blauwe sterren. Die branden hard en gaan snel dood. Rode sterren vervagen, blauwe sterren jakkeren in hoog tempo alle brandstof erdoorheen, zodat ze geen gas hebben voor de vorming van nieuwe sterren. Het zijn een soort oases in de woestijn”, zo legt Jones de verschillen uit tussen de twee stersoorten.
Het lijkt erop dat de blauwe sterrenstelsels hun brandstof, bestaande uit moleculaire gaswolken, hebben afgesnoept van andere sterrenstelsels. Aangezien de dichtstbijzijnde stelsels honderdduizenden lichtjaren verderop liggen, is dat waarschijnlijk met een flinke klap en veel snelheid gepaard gegaan.
Twee manieren om gas te stelen Er zijn twee manieren waarop een sterrenstelsel gas kan stelen van een ander stelsel:
Tidal-stripping: Het strippen door middel van getijdenkrachten gebeurt wanneer twee grote stelsels langs elkaar schuren. Onder invloed van de zwaartekracht worden gaswolken en sterren uitgewisseld.
Ram-pressure-stripping: Hierbij botst een sterrenstelsel op een ander stelsel. Met veel geweld worden gaswolken naar buiten gedwongen. Deze materie sluit dan aan bij het andere stelsel. Het is te vergelijken met een ‘bommetje maken’ in het zwembad.
Bij de blauwe bubbels in het Virgo-cluster lijkt sprake te zijn van een intergalactisch ‘bommetje’. De hoge snelheid waarbij het ene stelsel op het andere invliegt, is kenmerkend voor ram-pressure-stripping. Dit verklaart de enorm geïsoleerde ligging van de stelsels.
A team at the University of Arizona is proposing a concept that just might save us from extinction: a 21st-century version of Noah’s Ark on the moon. This ark wouldn’t contain two of every animal, but rather a repository ofcryogenically frozen reproductive cells from 6.7 million species on our planet.
Consider it a global insurance policy, says Jekan Thanga, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Arizona’s Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, and the project’s mastermind. “As a human civilization, we’re in a fragile state,” he says. And such a shelter could come to fruition in the next three decades, he adds.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, an Earth-bound version of the lunar ark, opened in 2008 and currently contains more than 1 million crop seed samples, including staples like rice, wheat, and barley. It’s a somewhat appropriate analog for the lunar ark, but storing 6.7 million gametes, spores, and seeds isn’t the same on the moon as it is on Earth; there are the added challenges of microgravity, radiation levels roughly 200 times those on Earth, and wildly fluctuating temperatures.
With that in mind, Thanga’s team plans to install the lunar ark inside the moon’s extensive network of over 200 lava tubes just beneath its rocky surface. These tunnel-like structures are an ideal home because they insulate the facility from harsh conditions in much the same way that Svalbard’s storage facility, built deep inside a mountain, provides protection from the elements here on Earth.
The lunar ark sounds like a setting for a sci-fi novel, but Thanga says the possibility for such a shelter is very real—and it could come to fruition in the next three decades.
The team wants to first send a mission called SphereX (not to be confused with NASA’s Earth-orbiting SPHEREx mission) to explore the lunar lava tubes and collect lunar regolith (loose rock and dirt). A team of robots would deploy from a nearby lander, hop or fly into the tubes, and then form a relay, transferring images and data back to the lander. SphereX could teach researchers about the lava tubes’ layout, temperature, and geological makeup, to guide the design process for what would be the first structure built on the moon.
“What we envision is taking one of the existing pits—just the opening into the lava tube—and installing an elevator shaft,” Thanga says. From there, the elevator shafts would function as the entry and exit to a series of 32 cryopreservation modules. These upright cylinders, stacked in 16 rows, would preserve the reproductive cells. Robots or astronauts would be able to check samples in petri dishes in and out, “like a library,” Thanga says.
The storage modules would need cryogenic coolers to maintain the cells at the right temperatures: –292 degrees Fahrenheit for reproductive cells, and –320 degrees Fahrenheit for stem cells. And they would require a spinning apparatus that uses centrifugal force to keep the freezers in motion and prevent the cells from clumping together and building up cold spots. “The setup would be similar to a carousel shelving unit with music CDs packed into a circle,” Thanga says.
Meanwhile, robots connected to a magnetic strip (to simulate Earth’s gravity) could remove the samples from their modules and transport them to an analysis lab, periodically checking to see if the seeds and sex cells are stable.
There’s evidence to suggest that the samples would remain viable despite the radiation and microgravity. In 2010, researchers at the Slovak Academy of Sciences found that flax plants could grow in radioactive soil near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with minimal changes to the plant’s proteins. And this June, scientists in Japan produced 168 healthy mice offspring from sperm cells that had been in storage aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for nearly six years.
Thanga says that private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, which continue to drive down the cost of space launches, further bolster the likelihood of establishing a lunar ark. With some back-of-the-envelope calculations, Thanga estimates it would take 250 rocket launches to carry 50 specimens each of the 6.7 million species his team wants to preserve on the lunar ark. To put that into context, it took 40 launches to build out the ISS, the most expensive structure ever created.
Thanga’s team is currently planning an experiment that will send two cryopreservation pouches into space. Each will contain 500 samples from one animal species—50 individual samples are the bare minimum to prevent inbreeding in the short-term, while 500 individuals are required to prevent genetic drift. Ideally, the system will demonstrate successful cryopreservation for five to seven days in-orbit before returning to Earth to see if the samples survived.
Moon Construction 101
UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/ UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Building out the lunar ark will be an expensive endeavor, considering it costs about $700 to put a one-pound payload into Earth’s orbit, according to NASA. That’s why scientists want to avoid lugging cement into space; instead looking for ways to use moon rocks, says Sven G. Bilén, Ph.D., professor of engineering design, electrical engineering, and aerospace engineering at Pennsylvania State University.
“The regolith that’s on the moon is a very, very challenging regolith to work with, because it’s essentially these tiny little razor blades, they’re very jagged and sharp, they’ve never had a geological process to form them,” says Bilén, who is not involved in the lunar ark project. So, building this kind of complex would likely require an entire moon-rock mining operation, as well as a processing center where operators could melt the rocks down into a flowable cement.
In this age of exploration a lot of attention has been paid to what lies out beyond our planet and what swims about in the darkest depths of our unexplored seas, but an area that seems to get significantly less attention is the world that lies locked down in the never-ending black night below us. Here caves and caverns stretch out and meander over vast distances, sometimes harboring new discoveries beyond our wildest dreams. Yet the most bizarre and baffling supposed accounts of the deep places of the earth are those concerning strange, unknown civilizations long gone, who are claimed to have dwelled within the earth and that remain lost and unconfirmed.
One of the most seemingly absurd claims of such an underground civilization was detailed in a 1956 bestselling book called The Third Eye, which is an allegedly autobiographical account by a man named Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, outlining his experiences at Chakpori Lamasery, in Tibet. Among the wealth of strangeness in the book, such as Rampa’s operation to drill a hole in his head to release mysterious mental powers, the titular Third Eye, and the strange discovery of his own mummified body from a previous incarnation, there is his curious account of finding a vast subterranean world crafted by inscrutable entities under the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Here beneath the palace of the Dali Llama, he joined a priest to explore a system of caves whose walls were adorned with strange symbols and drawings by unknown hands. Following one tunnel down into the darkness, Rampa claimed to have come across a vast cavern with an underground lake and a ceiling so high he could not discern its height as the light did not reach all the way up the soaring chasm above.
Here the walls held mysterious geometric diagrams and diagrams, as well as pictures of giants and machines the likes of which he had never imagined, along with inscrutable writing in some puzzling alien language. They then took a side passageway that wound off and purportedly came to an area with a “black house,” within which were ensconced three sarcophagi apparently made of a smooth black stone similar to obsidian and which were covered with an array of strange symbols and what looked to be a star map of some kind. Within these were the bodies of strange giant beings, which the priest who had accompanied him explained as being the bodies of ancient “gods,” who had come to their world eons before. Rampa would say of these bodies:
I looked again, fascinated and awed. Three gold figures, nude, lay before us. Two male and one female. Every line, every mark faithfully reproduced by the gold. But the size! The female was quite ten feet long as she lay, and the larger of the two males was not under fifteen feet. Their heads were large and somewhat conical at the top. The jaws were narrow, with a small, thin-lipped mouth. The nose was long and thin, while the eyes were straight and deeply recessed. No dead figures, these-they looked asleep.
Things got perhaps even more bizarre yet as they continued their journey through the complex spider web of dank caverns, tunnels, and passageways. Within the oppressive gloom here below the earth Rampa claimed that they came across fantastical creatures the likes of which he had never seen skittering about, as well as a brightly lit room hidden behind a sliding wall panel, which held an array of strange dormant machines with inscrutable purposes he could not fathom. When this tour was finished, Rampa claimed that he had then gained the new ability to look through time, and that he saw visions of the ancient ages when these enigmatic giants he has seen had ruled the earth. As incredible as all of this talk of an ancient race of subterranean giants sounds, it is impossible to verify any of this, no evidence has ever been brought forward other than this account, and there has actually been much debate as to Rampa’s true identity or whether this was all a hoax. We may never know.
Tales of ancient races of enormous stature inhabiting the deep dark places of our world are actually rather numerous, and another tale of subterranean giants comes from the state of Missouri, in the United States. In 1885, the New York Times ran a truly astounding story of an ancient underground city that had been found at a depth of 360 feet during the digging of a shaft for a coal mine near Moberly in Randolph County, Missouri. Two men, a David Coates and Mr. George Keating, then delved down into the depths of the shaft to explore what had been discovered down below, and they would later claim that they had come across an immense underground city which was described as follows:
A hard and thick stratum of lava arches in the buried city, the streets of which are regularly laid out and enclosed by walls of stone, which is cut and dressed in a fairly good, although rude style of masonry. A hall 30 by 100 feet was discovered with stone benches and tools of all descriptions for mechanical service. Further search disclosed statues and images made of a composition closely resembling bronze, lacking luster. A stone fountain was found, situated in a wide court or street, and from it a stream of perfectly pure water was flowing, which was found to be strongly impregnated with lime.
This is already a fairly bizarre thing to find underground in Missouri, but within the nearly impenetrable murk of these corridors the two men claimed to have found the actual remains of the city’s denizens, which had apparently been there in the dark undisturbed for millennia, and were described as being true giants far larger than a normal human being. The bizarre remains were described:
The bones of the leg measured, the femur four and one-half feet, the tibia four feet and three inches, showing that when alive the figure was three times the size of an ordinary man, and possessed of a wonderful muscular power and quickness. The head bones had separated in two places, the sagittal and the coronal suturis having been destroyed. The implements found embrace bronze and flint knives, stone and granite hammers, metallic saws of rude workmanship, but proved metal, and others of similar character, they are no so highly polished, nor so accurately made as those now finished by our best mechanics, but they show skill and an evidence of an advanced civilization that are positively wonderful.
Frustratingly, the article mentions that a follow-up excursion would be launched, but then there is no other word on the alleged discovery. Unbelievably, this ancient underground city of giants in North America was just sort of forgotten in the mists of time. Why should this be? Of course there is the very real possibility that this was a fictionalized fake news story, which were unfortunately rather common in the day, but there have been rumors that the phenomenal discovery was covered-up, perhaps by the Smithsonian. This would be yet another conspiracy painting the Smithsonian as a shadowy organization bent on obfuscating and burying bizarre archeological finds, and if so what happened to those gargantuan bones? No one knows, it was never mentioned again, and the lost underground city of Missouri remains just another weird historical oddity.
The idea of such underground giants can be perhaps best be linked to the Hollow Earth Theory, which more or less states that within our planet rather than layers of rock, crusts, and magma is a lush world full of life and even with its own miniature sun, all of which sits deep within the hollow crust that we walk upon. The idea can trace its roots back to the 17th century, when Edmund Halley proposed in 1692 that the earth consisted of a series of spherical shells that all orbited one another around a hollow core, an idea which he concocted in an effort to explain various mysterious discrepancies in compass readings. Within each of these shells, he theorized, could be areas that were capable of harboring life and even civilization.
The idea caught on, and underwent a sort of evolution, undergoing various additions and iterations until it was no longer a series of layered shells, but simply one vast world lying within a hollow space below us. Indeed, in those days the theory gained such popularity that it was accepted as fact by many, and was even believed by those within the scientific community of the time. The idea that there were two major entrances to this underground realm, located at the North and South Poles, was pursued by some expeditions, the most famous being that of a John Cleves Symmes, Jr. in 1822, who remained a vocal, outspoken proponent of the concept and was thoroughly convinced of the theory's validity up to his death. Although eventually the concept of a Hollow Earth fell out of favor, it has nevertheless been held onto by stubborn believers all the way up to the present day, and there are a surprising number of books and websites devoted to trying to gain credence for it.
Although there are many offshoots of the basic core theory of a hollow Earth, an interesting common detail of many of these ideas is that the animals and people who dwell there are larger than those who inhabit the earth above. The giant people of these civilizations are often described as being the ancestors of ancient peoples, and as being highly advanced, with the technology to tunnel up through the ground where their dwellings and evidence of their existence can be detected by us. According to Hollow Earth “truthers,” these stories of ancient subterranean civilizations and giants can be seen as evidence of their far-out ideology.
64 Radio Telescopes Come Together to act as a Single Giant Observatory
64 Radio Telescopes Come Together to act as a Single Giant Observatory
Located in the Northern Cape of South Africa, the MeerKAT telescope consists of 64 powerful radio antennas dedicated to probing the mysteries of the Universe. This facility is a precursor to the futureSquare Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO), which will consist of MeerKAT and the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) in South Africa and the Australian SKA Pathfinder(ASKAP) and Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Australia. A primary aim of the SKAO is to understand the matter content of the Universe and what mechanisms are driving its evolution and expansion.
The best way to do this is to observe the structure of the Universe on the largest of scales, where astronomers can observe the distribution of galaxies, the nature of gravity, and the role of dark matter and dark energy. To this end, an international team of astronomers has combined the power of MeetKAT’s 64 radio telescopes to detect faint signatures of neutral hydrogen gas across cosmological scales. The resulting accuracy and sensitivity provide a demonstration of what the SKAO will be able to achieve in the near future.
A ‘radio color’ view of the sky above the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope. Credit: Natasha Hurley-Walker (ICRAR/Curtin), GLEAM Team; ICRAR/Dr. John Goldsmith/Celestial Visions
Radio telescopes are immensely valuable when it comes to cosmology, which is the study of the origin, evolution, and future of the Universe. In particular, radio telescopes can detect radiation at wavelengths of 21 cm, a part of the radio spectrum generated by neutral hydrogen. As the most abundant element in the Universe today, analyzing it in three dimensions allows astronomers to map the total distribution of matter in the Universe. It also permeated the cosmos a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies were only beginning to form.
Because of the lack of visible light in this period, astronomers know it as the “Cosmic Dark Ages,” which was dispelled about 1 billion years after the Big Bang by the earliest galaxies. The study of neutral hydrogen at 21cm wavelength will, therefore, allow astronomers to pierce the veil of the “Dark Ages” and watch as the galaxies we observe today first come together. To accomplish this feat, astronomers need radio antennas that combine immense power and sensitivity that can consistently monitor large sections of the night sky over time.
This is the purpose behind the SKAO, a next-generation array headquartered at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, England. While it is still under construction, observatories like MeerKAT are known as “precursor facilities” that guide the SKAO’s design. By combining its 64 arrays into a single-dish mode, MeerKAT will henceforth operate as an interferometer, where different arrays combine light from distant sources, acting as one giant telescope that can produce images with much higher resolution. As Cunnington explained in a recent release from the University of Manchester:
“However, the interferometer will not be sensitive enough to the largest scales most interesting for cosmologists studying the Universe. Therefore, we instead use the array as a collection of 64 individual telescopes which allows them to map the giant volumes of sky required for cosmology.”
Composite image of the SKA combining all elements in South Africa and Australia.
Credit: SKAO
As they indicate in their paper, the new single-dish mode allowed the international team to create radio intensity maps on a clustering of galaxies recently studied by the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey – an optical survey of galaxies performed by the Anglo-Australian Telescope between 2006 and 2011. By combining the data, they found a strong statistical correlation between the radio maps and the positions of the galaxies surveyed, which demonstrated the MeerKAT’s ability to detect the large-scale cosmic structure and trace the overall matter of the Universe.
In addition to being the first instance where such detections were made using a multi-dish array (operating as individual telescopes), these findings also represent an important milestone in the development of the SKAO. As Cunnington revealed:
“This detection was made with just a small amount of pilot survey data. It’s encouraging to imagine what will be achieved as MeerKAT continues to make increasingly larger observations. For many years I have worked towards forecasting the future capability of the SKAO. To now reach a stage where we are developing the tools we will need and demonstrating their success with real data is incredibly exciting. This only marks the beginning of what we hope will be a continuous showcase of results which advances our understanding of the Universe.”
Dark Triangle Over Fort Myers, Florida June 18, 2022, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Dark Triangle Over Fort Myers, Florida June 18, 2022, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: June 18, 2022
Location of sighting: Fort Myers, Florida, USA
A dark triangle craft was seen a few days ago near the ocean area of Fort Myers, Florida. The area is right along side the Gulf of Mexico where many UFOs have been seen over the past few decades. The water is dark and deep, perfect for aliens to have a base below the ocean floor. The circle in the center of the craft is the hump or clear area of the pilot. Undeniable proof that aliens exist and are watching us closely.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Please share the video on social media sites, it really helps me out. Thanks, SCW.
Eyewitness states:
Noticed a UFO in the sky. It did not have any characteristics of a plane, drone, or balloon. The UFO was flying directly over my apartment complex and was turning bright red/orange and then darkened and then was red/orange again. No sound was heard from the object and I have never seen an object like this one in the sky. After being shocked with what I saw, I almost forgot to try and record the UFO. I grabbed my phone and quickly recorded to the best of my ability while the UFO was flying across the sky.
Triangle Over Las Vegas, Nevada On June 10, 2022, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Triangle Over Las Vegas, Nevada On June 10, 2022, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: June 10, 2022
Location of sighting: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA Source: MUFON
Hey all this just in. An eyewitness in Las Vegas caught sighting of a whitish UFO over the city. Similar white UFOs have been seen coming and going from Nellis Air Force Base, where Charles Hall spoke about working with the Tall White aliens. Tall Whites were given a part of US land on the USAF area. The alien base is located behind the old firing range (Area S4)...the same location where I recorded a silver disk on the runway on Google Earth map. This is 100% proof that the Tall White base exists.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
PLEASE SHARE THE VIDEO ON SOCIAL MEDIA SITES, THANKS.
Eyewitness states:
Long Description of Sighting Report - Case 123030 Looked out if my hotel window and saw a glowing triangle shaped object traverse across the sky for more than 30 mins.
Two fighter jets chasing a UFO over Mount Desert Island in Maine
Two fighter jets chasing a UFO over Mount Desert Island in Maine
Fighter jets chasing UFO over Mount Desert Island In Maine on June 20, 2022.
In this short clip we can see two fighter jets chasing a tic tac UFO just before the camera goes out of focus and the object and jets enter the clouds.
I asked the witness if there was an air show and he replied "There was no air show, I heard the planes and looked up, my daughter saw them first."
Two Fighter Jets Spotted Chasing A UFO Over Mount Desert Island In Maine 20-Jun-2022
Two Fighter Jets Spotted Chasing A UFO Over Mount Desert Island In Maine 20-Jun-2022
This UFO sighting video was filmed in Mount Desert Island in Hancock County, Maine. This is the largest island off the coast of Maine. This happened on 20th June 2022.
Data Sonification: Sounds from Around the Milky Way
Data Sonification: Sounds from Around the Milky Way
A new project using sonification turns astronomical images from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other telescopes into sound. This allows users to "listen" to the center of the Milky Way as observed in X-ray, optical, and infrared light. As the cursor moves across the image, sounds represent the position and brightness of the sources. Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; IR: Spitzer NASA/JPL-Caltech
The center of our Milky Way galaxy is too distant for us to visit in person, but we can still explore it. Telescopes give us a chance to see what the Galactic Center looks like in different types of light. By translating the inherently digital data (in the form of ones and zeroes) captured by telescopes in space into images, astronomers create visual representations that would otherwise be invisible to us.
But what about experiencing these data with other senses like hearing? Sonification is the process that translates data into sound, and a new project brings the center of the Milky Way to listeners for the first time. The translation begins on the left side of the image and moves to the right, with the sounds representing the position and brightness of the sources. The light of objects located towards the top of the image are heard as higher pitches while the intensity of the light controls the volume. Stars and compact sources are converted to individual notes while extended clouds of gas and dust produce an evolving drone. The crescendo happens when we reach the bright region to the lower right of the image. This is where the 4-million-solar-mass supermassive black hole at the center of the Galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (A-star), resides, and where the clouds of gas and dust are the brightest.
Users can listen to data from this region, roughly 400 light years across, either as "solos" from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope, or together as an ensemble in which each telescope plays a different instrument. Each image reveals different phenomena happening in this region about 26,000 light years from Earth. The Hubble image outlines energetic regions where stars are being born, while Spitzer's infrared image shows glowing clouds of dust containing complex structures. X-rays from Chandra reveal gas heated to millions of degrees from stellar explosions and outflows from Sagittarius A*.
In addition to the Galactic Center, this project has also produced sonified versions of the remains of a supernova called Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, and the "Pillars of Creation" located in Messier 16.
Sound plays a valuable role in our understanding of the world and cosmos around us. Explore how scientists are using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other instruments around the world and in space to study the cosmos through sound at the Universe of Sound website.
This sonification of the Galactic Center, Cas A, and M16 was led by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC) as part of the NASA's Universe of Learning (UoL) program. NASA's Science Activation program strives to enable NASA science experts and to incorporate NASA science content into the learning environment effectively and efficiently for learners of all ages. The collaboration was driven by visualization scientist Kimberly Arcand (CXC), astrophysicist Matt Russo and musician Andrew Santaguida (both of the SYSTEMS Sound project.)
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science from Cambridge Massachusetts and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts. NASA's Universe of Learning materials are based upon work supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AC65A to the Space Telescope Science Institute, working in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Sonoma State University.
Ever wondered what the music of the spheres would sound like? Hubble brings us cosmic sights, but these astronomical marvels can be experienced with other senses as well. Through data sonification, the same digital data that gets translated into images is transformed into sound.
Elements of the image, like brightness and position, are assigned pitches and volumes. Each translation below begins on the left side of the image and moves to the right. No sound can travel in space, but sonifications provide a new way of experiencing and conceptualizing data. Sonifications allow the audience, including blind and visually impaired communities, to “listen” to astronomical images and explore their data.
NGC 1300
The majestic barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300’s arms hold blue clusters of young stars, pink clouds of star formation, and dark lanes of dust. NGC 1300 is considered to be prototypical of barred spiral galaxies. Barred spirals differ from normal spiral galaxies in that the arms of the galaxy do not spiral all the way into the center, but are connected to the two ends of a straight bar of stars containing the nucleus at its center. In this image, blue and red supergiant stars, star clusters, and star-forming regions are well resolved by Hubble across the spiral arms, and dust lanes trace out fine structures in the disk and bar. Numerous more distant galaxies are visible in the background, and are seen even through the densest regions of NGC 1300.
To represent this image with sound, scientists assigned louder volume to brighter light. Light farther from the center is pitched higher as a counterclockwise radar scans across the galaxy. NGC 1300 resides nearly 70 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.
Credits: Image: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: P. Knezek (WIYN); Sonification: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
Studied by scientists for decades, the black hole in Messier 87 (M87) gained celebrity status after the first release from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project in 2019. This sonification does not feature the EHT data, but rather looks at data from other telescopes that observed M87 on much wider scales at roughly the same time. This image of a jet emerging from the nucleus of M87 contains three panels that feature: X-rays from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, visible light from Hubble, and radio waves from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile. The brightest region of the image is where the black hole is found, and the structure ejecting from it is the jet, produced by material falling onto the black hole. The sonification scans across the three-tiered image, with each wavelength mapped to a different range of audible tones. Radio waves are mapped to the lowest tones, visible data to medium tones, and X-rays to the highest tones. The brightest part of the image corresponds to the loudest portion of the sonification, which is where astronomers find the 6.5-billion solar mass black hole.
Credits: X-ray (Chandra): NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical (Hubble): NASA/ESA/STScI; Radio (ALMA): ESO/NAOJ/NRAO; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
Welcome to one of the most active galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood, NGC 1569. This starburst galaxy creates stars at a rate 100 times faster than in our own galaxy, the Milky Way! Scientists represented information in this Hubble image with sound to create a beautiful sonification with a bottom to top scan. Brighter light is higher pitched and louder. The three color channels used to process this image are each given their own pitch range, with red representing lower pitches, green in medium pitches, and blue in high pitches.
Credits: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), and A. Aloisi (STScI/ESA); Sonification: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
Stretching over 100,000 light-years across, the galaxy dubbed Hoag’s Object is slightly larger than our own home galaxy, the Milky Way. The blue ring is dominated by clusters of young, massive stars, while the yellow nucleus consists of mostly older stars. In this sonification, a clockwise radar scan transforms data in the image into sound. Bright light is represented with louder volume, and light farther from the center is higher-pitched.
Credits: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: Ray A. Lucas (STScI/AURA); Sonification: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
In this Hubble image, a super-hot, massive star is blowing an enormous bubble into space. Fittingly named the Bubble Nebula, this beautiful cosmic object is roughly seven light-years across and resides 7,100 light-years from Earth.
Scanned from top to bottom, color is mapped to pitch in this sonification of the nebula. The bright blue of the bubble can be heard as higher pitches; the red and orange regions’ lower pitches are heard most clearly at the beginning on the left and in the top half of the bubble in the middle. Brightness controls the volume and stars are represented by chimes
Credits: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Sonification: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
This spectacular Hubble image of the Butterfly Nebula shows a colorful view of star death. The "wings" of the butterfly are regions of gas heated to more than 36,000° F (about 20,000° C) that are tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour (966,000 kph)!
Vertical position is mapped to pitch – meaning that light towards the top of the image is higher pitched. The nebula is played on strings and synthetic tones, while stars are represented by digital harp. Brightness controls the volume, and the tilted hourglass orientation of the nebula produces an overall rising motion, with the prominent iron-rich jet producing a quick rise near the center.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team; Sonification: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
About 5,000 light-years from Earth, the stunning nebula NGC 2392 formed after the demise of a star like our Sun. The fuzzy outer region of this nebula is a disk of material embellished with a ring of comet-shaped objects, with their tails streaming away from the central, dying star. The inner nebula's bright central region that resembles a ball of twine is really a bubble of material being blown into space by the central star's intense "wind" of high-speed material.
In this sonification, the image is scanned clockwise like a radar. The radius is mapped to pitch, so light farther from the center is higher pitched. The outline of the nebula’s shell can be heard in the rising and falling of pitch, punctuated by its spokes. Brightness controls the volume.
Credits: NASA, Andrew Fruchter and the ERO Team (Sylvia Baggett [STScI], Richard Hook [ST-ECF], Zoltan Levay [STScI]);Sonification: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
The Crab Nebula is the expanding remnant of a supernova that occurred in 1054 A.D. Modern telescopes have captured its enduring engine powered by a quickly spinning neutron star that formed when a massive star collapsed. The combination of rapid rotation and a strong magnetic field generates jets of matter and anti-matter flowing away from its poles, and winds outward from its equator.
For the translation of these data into sound, which pans left to right, each wavelength of light has been paired with a different family of instruments. X-rays from Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue and white) are brass, optical light data from Hubble Space Telescope (purple) are strings, and infrared data from Spitzer (pink) can be heard in the woodwinds. In each case, light received towards the top of the image is played as higher pitched notes and brighter light is played louder.
Credits: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand; Sonification: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
The center of our Milky Way galaxy houses a massive black hole surrounded by a dense nest of stars and bright clouds. This image combines observations from the Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer space observatories, and shows energetic regions of starbirth, hundreds of thousands of stars, glowing dust clouds, and intense activity near the galactic core.
The light of objects located towards the top of the image is pitched higher, while the intensity of the light controls the volume. Stars and compact sources are converted to individual notes while extended clouds of gas and dust produce an evolving drone. A crescendo happens at the lower right of the image. This is where the 4-million-solar-mass supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy resides, and where the clouds of gas and dust are the brightest. For more information on this sonification, visit the Chandra Observatory's sonification page
Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand, M. Russo & A. Santaguida
Another few Weeks of Observations Could Tell us if the Wow! Signal Repeats
Another few Weeks of Observations Could Tell us if the Wow! Signal Repeats
In the decades-long search for extraterrestrial intelligence, there has never been confirmed evidence of an alien signal. There have, however, been a few tantalizing mysteries. Perhaps the greatest of these is known as the Wow Signal.
Observed on 15 August 1977 by the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio University, the signal was a strong, continuous, narrow band radio signal lasting at least 72 seconds. Our knowledge of the signal is limited given the design of Big Ear. Rather than being able to track radio signals like most modern radio telescopes, Big Ear was set to a particular elevation and relied on Earth’s rotation to scan across the sky. The reason the Wow Signal lasts 72 seconds is because that’s how long it took the source to sweep across Big Ear’s observation range.
Big Ear was also a passive telescope. Astronomers simply set it up, and it would run on its own, recording the strength of signals as it goes. Because of this, the signal was only discovered days after the event when recorded observations were reviewed. By the time astronomers could go back to observe the source, the event was long over.
An aerial view of the Big Ear telescope. Credit: Bigear.org / NAAPO
But despite having just one observation, the Wow Signal is considered the strongest candidate for an extraterrestrial signal. Several natural origins have been proposed, but all of them are a bit lacking. The most basic idea is that the signal was of terrestrial origin, perhaps a plane passing overhead, or a radio signal scattered off space debris. But a plane wouldn’t be in range for more than 72 seconds, and there is no record of such a flight. A scattered signal is possible, but the strength of the signal would be unusual, and the frequency of the Wow Signal is within a range where transmissions are restricted.
Several years ago it was proposed that the signal might have been caused by comets that were near the observed area of the sky, but this has since been disproven. While two comets were close to the source location, they weren’t really within the observed range. And comets aren’t likely to emit such a strong narrowband signal.
One interesting aspect of the signal is that its frequency was very close to that of the so-called 21-centimeter line. This is a faint radio emission caused by neutral hydrogen in the universe. Because hydrogen is the most common element in the cosmos, any radio astronomers in the universe would make observations at that frequency. If you wanted to get the attention of alien astronomers, a strong signal near that frequency would be a good way to do it.
Plot of signal strength vs time of the Wow! signal on August 15, 1977. Credit: Maksim Rossomakhin
Given the tantalizing nature of the Wow Signal, there have been several attempts at repeat observations. Several radio telescopes have been aimed at the source over the years, but to no luck. Every observation in that area since has turned up nothing. So what’s an astronomer to do? Well, one way to tackle the problem is to look at what your observations exclude. That’s the idea behind a recent paper on the arxiv.
In this work, the authors argue that the source could be some kind of stochastic repeater. Most repeating sources are periodic. Things like variable stars or fast radio bursts can have a predictable variability. Astronomers have considered this idea, and have made observations that rule out a source with a regular periodicity. A stochastic repeater is a bit different. Rather than having a measurable period, stochastic repeaters repeat somewhat randomly. A good example would be earthquakes. We know where they generally happen, know they will happen again, but predicting exactly when is nigh on impossible. Astrophysical processes can be stochastic in a similar way.
Applying Bayesian statistics to a likely outcome. Credit: Wikipedia
On the face of it, this seems like a silly idea. We’ve never seen the Wow Signal repeat, and we’ve proved it can’t be repeating periodically, but maybe it’s been repeating non-randomly such that we’ve never observed it. It sounds like the authors are arguing that it must be a non-random repeater because we’ve never observed it repeat. But the idea isn’t as silly as it sounds. The authors look at when an unobserved burst might have occurred, and apply Bayesian statistics to calculate when a future burst might occur.
Bayesian statistics is subtle but powerful. It’s more than just calculating the odds of a likely event. It looks at the pattern of events to predict specific outcomes. It takes into account not just how often something has occurred, but how those events changed over time. So, knowing of one burst event, and knowing when other burst events haven’t occurred, the authors calculate the times at which future events are most likely. This is good to know since we can now specifically observe the regions during the most likely event periods. If the Wow Signal was a stochastic repeater, then we’ll likely catch a new event. If we don’t see another event, we can rule out stochastic repeaters as a likely cause.
Mysterious hole on the ocean floor off California's coast
Mysterious hole on the ocean floor off California's coast
On the sea bottom off the coast of central California lies a vast field of mysterious pockmarks.
The field spans about 1,300 square kilometers and there are approximately 5,200 of these strange pits, which on average measure about 175 meters and 5 m deep.
No one knows how these mystery holes appeared, but they likely made their first appearance 400,000 years ago, according to research.
Here Greg Bishop relates the stories behind some of the most famous individuals claiming to have had ongoing communications with alien entities. They include George Adamski, George Van Tassel, Orfeo Angelucci, George Hunt Williamson, Ruth Norman, Allen Noonan, and Paulina Peavy. The conversation also explores the psychic abilities of Ted Owens and Uri Geller, ostensibly associated with UFOs. The sociological and psychological dimensions of this movement are explored.
Sanxingdui Excavation Pits Reveal Sophisticated Ancient Civilization
Sanxingdui Excavation Pits Reveal Sophisticated Ancient Civilization
An advanced 3,000-year-old Chinese culture, whose existence was not known about until the 1980s, has been further revealed by recent excavations. Apparently, the existence of the highly developed southwest Chinese Sanxingdui civilization, in Sichuan province, was omitted from official records, despite hundreds of years of flourishing development! On Monday last, at the Sanxingdui ruins, Chinese archaeologists reported that they have unearthed a treasure trove of artifacts across six sacrificial pits, as reported by the Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
Unprecedented Finds from the Sanxingdui Civilization Site
Since October 2020, the number of artifacts and relics recovered from the Sanxingdui site have reached an astounding total of 13,000.
In the latest Sanxingdui excavations, an area of 1,834 square meters (19,741 square feet) was explored in the sacrificial pit area. The entire sacrificial pit area covers an area of almost 13,000 square meters (139,931 square feet)!
The latest major find was a bronze box decorated with jade. The box had a turtle-back shaped top made of bronze and jade, with turquoise jade embellishments. It also had four dragon-head handles and a few streamers and was likely wrapped in silk and offered as burial sacrifice.
The Sanxingdui bronze chest was described as an “unprecedented discovery” by Li Haichao, a professor at Sichuan University, who is in charge of one of the excavation teams. He added that while the functionality of the vessel remains in doubt “we can assume that ancient people treasured it.”
The latest major find at the Sanxingdui site was a bronze box decorated with jade. The box had a turtle-back shaped top made of bronze and jade, with turquoise jade embellishments. It was likely wrapped in silk and offered as burial sacrifice.
All in all, archaeologists have found 3,155 relatively intact relics at the sacrificial pit site, including 1,238 pieces of bronzeware, 543 gold, and 565 jade artifacts.
A stunning crowned, bronze statue with a snake’s body was also found. According to Ran Honglin, director of the Sanxingdui cultural relics and archaeology research institute, the snake body statue was the most important recent find of all, writes the Global Times .
The bronze statue consists of three distinct sections, with the snake’s body occupying the middle. The figure’s hands are propped up on a bronze drinking vessel called a lei, sitting on a square pedestal. Overall, it is an image of a man with characteristics specific to the Shu kingdom, particularly the protruding eyes. On his head, a vermilion painted zun can be seen, which is the name of another kind of Chinese bronze drinking vessel. Strangely enough, the man’s nose is a pig’s nose.
Such a complex and well-imagined artifact can only point to a vivid imagination and visions of a mystical world by the Sanxingdui people, according to associate professor Zhao Hao from Peking University. He was in charge of the excavations at pit #8, where the pig-nosed bronze statue was found, according to the South China Morning Post .
Among the other recent significant finds, a bronze altar depicting a sacrificial scene that is nearly a meter (3.3 feet) tall was also found in one of the pits. This altar also provides new evidence of the immortal world perspective of the Sanxingdui Shu people. The altar was divided into three sections: the bottom part is a platform featuring beautiful hollow patterns. A muscular person is sitting in the center of each of the three sections from top to bottom.
These nearly 3,000-year-old Sanxingdui bronze heads with gold foil masks look like modern art and say a lot about the advanced metallurgy skills of the Shu people of Sanxingdui.
The Astounding Craftsmanship of Almost-forgotten Sanxingdui
The quality and craftsmanship of the finds at the Sanxingdui ruins indicate a high degree of cultural advancement and sophistication, adding to the mystery and intrigue of this virtually “unknown” civilization.
Sanxingdui, literally meaning Three Star Mound, was accidentally discovered in 1986. And multiple artifact dating has revealed that this civilization existed nearly 3,300 years ago!
The Sanxingdui civilization is viewed to be the same as the ancient kingdom of Shu. In the last two years, Ancient Origins has reported more than once on the finds emerging from this almost-lost Chinese civilization. To date, researchers have remarked on incredible metallurgy skills of the Shu people.
In a recent round of carbon dating on 200 relics, most of the pits were found to be from 1131 to 1012 BC, probably from the late Shang dynasty which lasted from the 16th to the 11th century BC. However, pit number 5 and 6 at the Sanxingdui site were dated to after the Shang dynasty period.
"We had never seen something like these, and we even don't know how to describe their patterns or shapes in short words," Honglin said. "It's also confusing for us to speculate how they were used before further studies. But these artifacts feature a mixture of typical local styles of cultural relics as well as those from the Central China Plains at that time. It demonstrates through close communications, the ancient Shu culture became a key part in early Chinese civilization."
Honglin has also pointed out that these relics are significant for comprehending the diverse nature of Chinese culture and unity in its early days. Full Chinese unification only happened in the Han dynasty (from 202 BC onwards).
The latest round of discoveries at Sanxingdui proves that China was a melting pot of civilizations. For example, the zun drinking vessel motif found on one of the recently unearthed artifacts at Sanxingdui was virtually unknown in the Shu kingdom but dominant in China’s Zhongyuan Central Plains region. Clearly, the zun was a motif borrowed from another civilization as is common in melting pot periods.
Sanxingdui field excavation work is slated for completion in October 2022. However, before that date many more artifacts will be found, telling us more about the roots of the monolithic Chinese civilization we know today.
Top image: Just one of the stunning metal-crafted artifacts recently found in a small portion of the sacrificial pits area at the Sanxingdui site in southwestern China, which had been almost lost to time until the 1980s.
Romania’s Enigmatic Trovants: Living Rocks That Grow and Move!
A spectacular example of the mysterious “living and moving” trovants of Romania, a rare and complex geological formation.
Source: Nicu Buculei / CC BY-SA 3.0
Romania’s Enigmatic Trovants: Living Rocks That Grow and Move!
Roughly six million years ago, paleo-earthquakes created a type of geological phenomenon called trovants. They are also known as the stones of Costesti, after their most famous location in Romania, or the “living stones.” Romania’s rare trovants were formed under highly complex circumstances involving seismic shifts, sand sediment in rivers and rain, and lots of time. And the locals of Costesti, Romania consider them to be alive! Having witnessed them grow, expand, and move over generations the Romanians have turned the trovants into local legends and myths. For geologists, trovants have long been a captivating mystery.
What are Trovants?
Trovants are made up of a hard stone center surrounded by sandstone and vary in size from extremely small and pebble-like trovants to stones weighing several tons. Although most trovants are made from sandstone originally, geologists have also found some made from gravel or gritstone. Trovants are an incredibly exciting and unique type of rock formation found within specific areas of Romania.
How are Trovants Formed?
The name trovant is a synonym from the German word “ Sandsteinkonkretionen” meaning “cemented sand,” which explains how these rocks are made. Trovants can only be formed when sand accrues with sandstone deposits around a hard stone core and is cemented by water that has a high concentration of calcium carbonate . This mixture melds together to make these truly fascinating rocks known by locals as the “growing stones.”
What makes them so exciting is that the locals have witnessed them grow and multiply over the years. Due to the elements it takes for these rocks to be formed, they go through an unusual process that makes the rocks appear to grow and move.
These trovants or living and moving geological formations are located near Ulmet in the Buzăului Mountains of Romania.
Do These Strange Geological Formations Really Grow?
The answer is yes, for all intents and purpose they do grow, but trovants grow in a very specific, unique way.
When there is unusually heavy rainfall in the areas trovants are found, they tend to absorb minerals in the rain. Along with the formation of the sand and sandstone deposits already present as the shell of the rock, a chemical reaction begins putting immense pressure on the inside of the trovant.
This pressure from a chemical reaction expands the trovant outwards from its core towards its outer crust, making the rock itself grow. On the surface of the rocks, small deposits are pushed outwards adding to the rockface, leading to their name “the growing stones.”
Overall, trovant growth is a rather slow process and the rate of growth is only around 4-5 centimeters (1.6-2 inches) in 1,000 years.
But over the millions of years the rocks have been “growing” some truly beautiful and particularly interesting formations have been created.
Bubbles or Boulders: What do Trovants Look Like?
Trovants tend to be spherical due to the seismic activity they have experienced and rather smooth individually, not unlike rocks that are shaped by erosion. However, trovants are different because the opposite process is what gives the rocks their unique appearance. The trovants look like bubbles some of them with platforms that look like they are growing from a root system. These trovants tend to be fixed in place.
Over the years geologists have cut open numerous trovants to see what they are made of and found that not unlike tree rings, these geological formations also have multiple ringed, elliptical layers inside. This is because the rocks effectively grow through bubbling outwards when rained on. And under those conditions they pick up further deposits of sand from their area and continue to “grow” slowly over years. This explains the layers the geologists noticed within the trovants they cut open.
Trovants on the move in Romania’s Trovants Museum Natural Reserve?
One other interesting thing about trovants is that they move. I’m sure you have heard of the moving rocks of Death Valley. No? Well, you should look into it if you like mysterious rocks.
Trovants also move, albeit super slowly, but they do travel to some extent. Because these rocks are picking up surrounding sand when it rains, they are effectively changing the landscape and creating a path for themselves that allows them to dislodge and move small distances over significant periods of time.
Tourism and protection
Due to the fascinating nature of trovants they have become a tourist attraction within Romania. To give protection to these rocks “The Trovants Museum Natural Reserve” was created in 2004.
The rocks are so unique that they have come under the protection of UNESCO and have a foundation to protect them from the issues tourism can cause to public archaeological and geological sites. In the past, the locals often sold the smaller trovants to tourists, which in the long term could cause a problem to the trovant landscape.
Although found in over 20 places in Romania some trovants have only been discovered after the sand has been taken from the area for building tombs and making souvenirs.
Conclusion
So trovants aren’t technically alive, this isn’t some horror movie waiting to happen. However, these rocks do change over exceptionally long periods of time.
Although not strictly alive, trovants have some characteristics of something that is living. Although not sentient, these rocks do grow and move.
It is not surprising that they have become the stuff of myth to the locals over the centuries. They are the closest thing to living we can consider rock to be and have been around much longer than any human on the planet, thus having encountered more “life” than all of us!
Top image:A spectacular example of the mysterious “living and moving” trovants of Romania, a rare and complex geological formation.
290 miljoen jaar oude fossielen van bomen gevonden in Brazilië
Wetenschappers hebben in de zuidelijke Braziliaanse deelstaat Paraná fossielen van bomen gevonden die naar schatting 290 miljoen jaar oud zijn. Het gaat om een bos van 164 fossielen van een uitgestorven soort lycofyten, die zich voortplanten via sporen.
Het gefossiliseerde bos werd eind 2018 per ongeluk ontdekt, bij een geologisch onderzoek voor de aanleg van een weg naar een fabriek. Daarna startten wetenschappers van de universiteiten van Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul (zuidelijke Braziliaanse deelstaat) en de universiteit van Californië in Davis (VS) een onderzoek. De resultaten van dit onderzoek verschenen in februari in het vaktijdschrift “Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology”.
Volgens Thammy Mottin, geoloog van de universiteit van Paraná, is het “de belangrijkste ontdekking in het zuidelijke halfrond” wat de hoeveelheid en de staat van de fossielen betreft. Eerder deden wetenschappers al gelijkaardige ontdekkingen in het zuidelijke halfrond, met name in Rio Grande do Sul en in Argentijns Patagonië, maar daar ging het om kleinere vondsten.
De fossielen zijn “een venster naar het verleden” voor het bestuderen van de evolutie van planten. “Deze planten, waarvan de leeftijd op 290 miljoen jaar is geschat, zijn zeer primitieve levensvormen in de geschiedenis”, aldus Mottin. “Het bos, dat groeide in de buurt van waar nu de plaats Ortigueira ligt, toont hoe de eerste planten zich hebben verspreid, hoe ze verdeeld waren in de ruimte en hoe hun interacties waren met andere levensvormen”.
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21-06-2022
Could We Use Mars as a Base for Asteroid Mining?
Could We Use Mars as a Base for Asteroid Mining?
The earliest mention of asteroid mining might be in a story from 1898 titled “Edison’s Conquest of Mars,” by Garrett Serviss. In that story, Martians attack Earth, killing tens of thousands and destroying New York City. Earth retaliates and sends an armada to Mars. While travelling, the armada comes across an asteroid that the Martians are mining. The asteroid is a rubble pile of gold nuggets.
A conversation breaks out among the crew.
“Phew! Won’t we be rich?” exclaimed a voice.
“How are we going to dig it and get it back to earth?” asked another.
“Carry it in your pockets,” said one.
“No need of staking claims here,” remarked another. “There is enough for everybody.”
Their conversation was a prescient hint of things to come.
The idea to mine asteroids incubated in the background until more modern times, when the realities of the space-faring age brought the idea into focus.
Starting in the 2000s, asteroid mining—or at least its potential—gained momentum. Private companies were starting to send spacecraft into Earth orbit, though it was tentative at first. People started to wonder about mining asteroids. Who owned them? How could it be done?
Japan’s Hayabusa brought a sample of asteroid Itokawa back to Earth in 2010. Wealthy people formed companies with the intent to mine asteroids. In 2015, the US Congress passed the Space Act that gave US companies the right to mine asteroids and other bodies in space, though it stopped short of claiming sovereignty over any bodies in space.
Companies popped up and talked about mining asteroids. They calculated the value of asteroids and started developing robotic explorers to operate on asteroids. One company called the Asteroid Mining Corporation worked with a Japanese University to develop the Space Capable Asteroid Robotic Explorers (SCAR-E).
An illustration of SCAR-E, the Space Capable Asteroid Robotic Explorers being developed by AMC and Tohoku University. Image Credit: AMC/Tohoku University.
The initial fervour of the past couple of decades has died down, but the idea is still there. And as our knowledge of asteroids grows and our space-flight capabilities advance, the idea of asteroid mining will never disappear.
There are a number of reasons why asteroid mining is desirable. The materials in asteroids represent an enormous financial value, which always attracts capitalist activities. Some materials needed for our modern technological devices are in short supply on Earth but are available on asteroids. And mining on Earth carries an environmental burden that mining on dead asteroids doesn’t.
One day asteroid mining might be possible, profitable, or even necessary. We’re not there yet, but scientists are still thinking ahead about how it could work, even though there are a whole host of obstacles in the way. We’re accustomed to spacecraft being launched on far-flung missions into the Solar System. But space travel is complicated, risky, and expensive. Even sampling asteroids is challenging.
Artist concept of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it readies itself to touch the surface of asteroid Bennu. Asteroid sampling is only in its infancy, so asteroid mining is barely past conception. Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
How can asteroid mining be brought out of the realm of science fiction and into reality?
In a new paper, a trio of researchers suggest that some of the obstacles could be overcome by using Mars orbit as a base of operations.
NEO asteroids are not the target. Their number and their value are limited. At some point in our asteroid-mining, space-faring future, we’ll want to develop the asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. There’s nearly-immeasurable wealth and resources there. The asteroid Davida alone may be worth 27 quintillion US dollars. One calculation says there’s $100 billion dollars in mineral wealth for every person on Earth in the main asteroid belt.
This poster shows 42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter (orbits not to scale). The images in the outermost circle of this infographic were captured with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The asteroid sample features 39 objects larger than 100 kilometres in diameter, including 20 larger than 200 kilometres. The poster highlights a few of the objects, including Ceres (the largest asteroid in the belt), Urania (the smallest one imaged), Kalliope (the densest imaged) and Lutetia, which was visited by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission. Image Credit: ESO
The main obstacle, according to the paper, is the energy required to reach the main belt and rendezvous with asteroids. In spaceflight that energy is quantified as Delta V, where V is velocity and Delta is change. Launching and maneuvering require changes in delta-v, and those changes require energy. “Most MBAs are energetically too hard to reach with present technology from low Earth orbit. An alternative is to use Mars orbit as a base from which to conduct MBA research, prospecting, and mining.”
Even the easiest-to-reach MBA is difficult to reach from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) because of the delta-v. The Near-Earth Asteroids are much easier to reach in comparison. It requires “… a minimum delta-v ~7 km s-1 to rendezvous from low Earth orbit (LEO) with the easiest to reach MBA, compared with ~4 km s-1 needed for the easiest to reach near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) from low Earth orbit.”
It follows that reaching MBAs is easier if you start from Mars orbit. The delta-v will be far lower. The difference between ~7 km s-1 and ~4 km s-1 might not sound like much, but the fuel requirements scale exponentially with delta-v.
The team wrote some code that allows them to find the delta-v needed to reach and rendezvous with any asteroid in the main belt from either Earth or Mars orbit. For Mars, they use Phobos’ orbit, which is about 9,000 km (5,600 miles) above the planet, and for Earth they used LEO. “We used PARC (Python Asteroid Rendezvous Code) to investigate whether Phobos-like orbits around Mars at altitudes of ~9000 km are more energetically favourable and useful locations from which to dispatch missions to MBAs.”
The short answer is “Yes they are.”
This figure from the paper compares the delta-v needed to reach asteroids from LEO (top) to the delta-v needed to reach asteroids from Mars Phobos Orbit (bottom.) Image Credit: Taylor et al. 2022.
The available mass in the MAB and the MC (Mars Crosser) asteroid populations dwarfs that of the NEO asteroids. So in terms of large-scale delta-v needed to reach more resources, the Phobos Mars Orbit idea wins again. “Most known MBAs + MCs are bigger than the largest NEO, (1036) Ganymed, at ~50 km diameter. Therefore, the accessible mass of MBAs + MCs increases more quickly than an equivalent number of NEOs at a given delta-v requirement.”
This figure from the study shows the distribution of accessible asteroid mass in MBAs + MCs and NEOs from LEO and PMO. Image Credit: Taylor et al. 2022.
In the figure above, the large asteroids Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta skew the results a little. They require a large delta-v to reach, though it’s still lower from PMO than from LEO. “But operationally it is the low delta-v tails that are of particular interest,” the authors write.
The authors point out that for a particular delta-v, more MAB material is accessible from PMO. In fact, it’s not even close. “We find that PMO provides access to ~7 x 1015 tonnes of material within ?v -1,” they write. Over 99.9% of that material is in MABs and MCs, while the insignificant remainder is in LEOs. On the other hand, “From LEO, only ~3 x 106 tonnes of material are accessible within ?v -1 and are entirely found in NEOs.”
Of course, there’s more to mining MBAs from Mars Phobos Orbit than just the ?v required to get there. The effort to even get equipment to MPO requires fuel and resources and time. The authors acknowledge that, and emphasize that their study is focused on reaching asteroid resources from an already established base. There are all kinds of other variables depending on the mass of the equipment sent to asteroids, where and how it’ll be processed, what will be done with the waste, and where the extracted resources will go.
The Asteroid Psyche is an m-type asteroid, meaning it contains higher proportions of metals like iron and nickel than other classes of asteroids. Its varied surface suggests a dynamic history, which could include metallic eruptions, asteroid-shaking impacts, and a lost rocky mantle. NASA’s Psyche mission should reach Psyche in 2026. Data from that mission will tell us more about the mineral value of asteroids in the MAB. Image Credit: Screenshot courtesy of NASA
One team of researchers can’t answer all these questions. Their paper simply shows how it takes fewer resources to reach the bulk of the Solar System’s asteroidal material from MPO than it does from LEO. Whether or not asteroid mining ever makes sense depends on a whole bunch of factors.
That’s where the Phobos delta-v penalty comes in. It’s the price a spacecraft pays to maneuver in and out of orbit around Mars. The planet’s gravity well extracts its own price.
“Whether the Phobos delta-v penalty is economically disadvantageous depends on the masses to be moved, both of raw and beneficiated (refined) ore, and of mining and processing equipment,” the authors explain. “If the beneficiating equipment is massive then the simplified raw material gathering spacecraft that will undertake the Phobos to asteroid journey may be of significantly lower mass.”
Mining the MAB wouldn’t happen in a vacuum (sorry.) Facilities on Mars would likely be part of the endeavour. Maybe the structural materials in the asteroids, like iron, would be used to manufacture other facilities in the MAB or in Mars orbit. But none of these considerations changes the raw fact that more MAB material is within reach from MPO than from LEO. “We find that there is a far larger population of known asteroids accessible to current technology from Phobos orbit than from low Earth orbit, by a factor of 300 in number and a factor 109 in mass for a delta-v of 4 km s-1,” the paper concludes.
Phobos itself could play an advantageous role, according to the authors.
“Phobos is a convenient site for emplacing massive ore-refining equipment. Phobos has properties that aid in extracting ore from raw asteroid material, as it provides some gravity, an inertial platform, and radiation shielding. Phobos may then serve as a useful forward operating base for the exploration and mining of the Main Belt.”
The ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter captured this image of the Martian moon Phobos. The authors of a new study suggest Phobos could be a base of operations for mining in the asteroid belt. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
If this idea ever comes to fruition, then it’s likely that Mars itself will be a part of it. “The presence of large-scale operations in Mars orbit may also lead to routine access to Mars’ surface,” they write.
The rest is left to our imaginations. Would human beings lead the mining operation? If so, then Mars could act as a kind of lifeboat in case of problems. Evacuating a damaged mining spacecraft and landing on Mars, where we can extract oxygen, fuel, and water, and store food and other supplies, seems like a natural emergency backup plan.
Or maybe there’d be very little need for flesh and blood humans. Maybe robots could do most of the work. Robotic technology is growing in leaps and bounds and there’s no reason to think it won’t keep advancing.
Asteroid mining is really in-situ resource utilization writ large. If humanity is ever going to expand out into the Solar System, the resources in the MAB will play a role. Only time will reveal exactly what that role is.
Newly Found Black Hole Eats One Earth Per Second! - Mr. Scientific Must Video
Newly Found Black Hole Eats One Earth Per Second! - Mr. Scientific Must Video
Astronomers have detected the fastest-growing black hole. The new supermassive black hole is known as J1144. J1144 is 3 billion times more massive than the sun, it swallows up an Earth-size chunk of matter every second
Sagittarius A* is located at the center of our galaxy, it has a diameter of 44 million kilometers. J1144 is not only 500 times bigger than Sagittarius A*, but also 7,000 times brighter than our entire galaxy.
Astronomers believe that something catastrophic happened long time ago. Perhaps two big galaxies crashed into each other merging the Black holes located at their center. Also funneling a whole lot of material towards it.
New Linda Moulton Howe: Tall White Aliens Are Our Allies & Hybrid Greys & Blonde Nordics
New Linda Moulton Howe: Tall White Aliens Are Our Allies & Hybrid Greys & Blonde Nordics
TOPICS: Which E.T.s Claim They Are Closest Genetically to Human Descendants? US Space Force – USS Curtis LeMay – USS Hoyt Vandenberg, “tip of the spear” – USS Roscoe Hillenkoetter – Tall Nordics near Sirius A & Sirius B – Tall White Pales live near 82 G Eridani where numerous earth-like planets reside Inside US Space Force source details interactions with humans Linda’s brother Jim Moulton fallen ill, but recovering at home Highly placed source:
Original greys are very ancient race spanning millions of years Blonde Nordics are oldest race from Sirius B system Tall whites or “tall pales” working with us from “Creech Air Force Base” near Las Vegas, – Working on Security Access Protocols Hybrid greys “Our true allies are the tall whites” “Nordic types claim we humans are their closest descendants” “..directly related” “These 3 et species occupy the majority” “I don’t believe we originated from Earth” “Alliances exist…Eliminating the Trantalod insect..species”
“AI biological cloned Grey are…abducting humans and other species” “Temporal technology..used by Trantaloid species” USS Hoyt Vandenberg stationed in Procyon system USS Roscoe Hillenkoetter investigating radio signal source We have had teleportation since 1971 The main purpose of Apollo was to investigate alien sites
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.