The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
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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...
This image from the Gemini North telescope in Hawai'i reveals a pair of interacting spiral galaxies — NGC 4568 (bottom) and NGC 4567 (top) — as they begin to clash and merge. The galaxies will eventually form a single elliptical galaxy in around 500 million years. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURAImage processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF's NOIRLab), J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF's NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF's NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NSF's NOIRLab)
An evocative new image captured by the Gemini North telescope in Hawai'i reveals a pair of interacting spiral galaxies—NGC 4568 and NGC 4567—as they begin to clash and merge. These galaxies are entangled by their mutual gravitational field and will eventually combine to form a single elliptical galaxy in around 500 million years. Also visible in the image is the glowing remains of a supernova that was detected in 2020.
Gemini North, one of the twin telescopes of the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF's NOIRLab, has observed the initial stages of a cosmic collision approximately 60 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo. The two stately spiral galaxies, NGC 4568 (bottom) and NGC 4567 (top), are poised to undergo one of the most spectacular events in the universe, a galactic merger. At present, the centers of these galaxies are still 20,000 light-years apart (about the distance from Earth to the center of the Milky Way) and each galaxy still retains its original, pinwheel shape. Those placid conditions, however, will change.
As NGC 4568 and NGC 4567 draw together and coalesce, their dueling gravitational forces will trigger bursts of intense stellar formation and wildly distort their once-majestic structures. Over millions of years, the galaxies will repeatedly swing past each other in ever-tightening loops, drawing out long streamers of stars and gas until their individual structures are so thoroughly mixed that a single, essentially spherical, galaxy emerges from the chaos. By that point, much of the gas and dust (the fuel for star formation) in this system will have been used up or blown away.
A new image captured by the Gemini North telescope in Hawai'i reveals a pair of interacting spiral galaxies — NGC 4568 and NGC 4567 — as they begin to clash and merge. These galaxies are entangled by their mutual gravitational field and will eventually combine to form a single elliptical galaxy in around 500 million years. Also visible in the image is the glowing remains of a supernova that was detected in 2020. Credit: Images and Videos: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/F. Summers (STScI), G. Besla (Columbia University), and R. van der Marel (STScI)Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF's NOIRLab), J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF's NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF's NOIRLab)Music: Stellardrone - A Moment of Stillness
This merger is also a preview of what will happen when the Milky Way and its closest large galactic neighbor the Andromeda Galaxy collide in about 5 billion years.
A bright region in the center of one of NGC 4568's sweeping spiral arms is the fading afterglow of a supernova—known as SN 2020fqv—that was detected in 2020. The new Gemini image was produced from data taken in 2020.
By combining decades of observations and computer modeling, astronomers now have compelling evidence that merging spiral galaxies like these go on to become elliptical galaxies. It is likely that NGC 4568 and NGC 4567 will eventually resemble their more-mature neighbor Messier 89, an elliptical galaxy that also resides in the Virgo Cluster. With its dearth of star-forming gas, Messier 89 now exhibits minimal star formation and is made up primarily of older, low-mass stars and ancient globular clusters.
This image from the Gemini North telescope in Hawai'i reveals a pair of interacting spiral galaxies — NGC 4568 (bottom) and NGC 4567 (top) — as they begin to clash and merge. The galaxies will eventually form a single elliptical galaxy in around 500 million years. Also shown in the image is the glowing remains of a supernova that was detected in 2020. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURAImage processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF's NOIRLab), J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF's NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF's NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NSF's NOIRLab)
Advanced technology on the Gemini North telescope, including the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph North(GMOS-N) and the dry air above the summit of Maunakea, allowed astronomers to capture this spectacular image.
The image was obtained by NOIRLab's Communication, Education & Engagement team, as part of the NOIRLab Legacy Imaging Program.
Nieuw beeld van botsende sterrenstelsels voorspelt het lot van onze Melkweg
Een nieuwe telescopische foto toont twee verstrengelde sterrenstelsels die uiteindelijk over miljoenen jaren zullen samensmelten tot één. De botsing geeft een voorproefje van het uiteindelijke, vergelijkbare lot van ons eigen Melkwegstelsel.
De Gemini North-telescoop, die zich op de top van de Maunakea in Hawaï bevindt, heeft de samenwerkende spiraalstelsels op een afstand van ongeveer zestig miljoen lichtjaar in het sterrenbeeld Maagd waargenomen. Het galactische paar NGC 4567 en NGC 4568, ook wel bekend als de Vlinderstelsels, zijn net begonnen met botsen doordat de zwaartekracht hen naar elkaar toe trekt.
Over 500 miljoen jaar zullen de twee kosmische stelsels volledig samensmelten en samen een elliptisch sterrenstelsel vormen. In dit vroege stadium zijn de twee melkwegcentra nog 20.000 lichtjaar van elkaar verwijderd en heeft elk melkwegstelsel zijn spiraalvorm behouden. Naarmate de sterrenstelsels meer verstrengeld raken, zullen de gravitatiekrachten leiden tot meervoudige gebeurtenissen van intense stervorming. De oorspronkelijke structuren van de sterrenstelsels zullen veranderen en vervormen.
Na verloop van tijd zullen ze om elkaar heen dansen in cirkels die steeds kleiner worden. Deze strakke lusvormige dans zal lange stromen gas en sterren aantrekken en uitrekken, waardoor de twee sterrenstelsels zich vermengen tot iets dat op een bol lijkt.
Het nagloeien van een supernova, voor het eerst waargenomen in 2020, is ook zichtbaar op de nieuwe afbeelding als een heldere vlek in een van de spiraalarmen van sterrenstelsel NGC 4568.
Fusie in de Melkweg
Een soortgelijke galactische fusie zal zich voltrekken wanneer ons Melkwegstelsel uiteindelijk in botsing komt met het Andromedastelsel, onze grootste en dichtstbijzijnde galactische buur. Astronomen van de NASA hebben in 2012 Hubble-gegevens gebruikt om te voorspellen wanneer een frontale botsing tussen de twee spiraalvormige sterrenstelsels zou kunnen plaatsvinden. Volgens schattingen zal dit gebeuren over ongeveer 4 tot 5 miljard jaar.
Op dit moment botst een enorme halo, een grote omhulling van gas, die het Andromedastelsel omringt al tegen de halo van het Melkwegstelsel, volgens onderzoek op basis van gegevens van de Hubble-ruimtetelescoop dat in 2020 is gepubliceerd.
Deze buur, die waarschijnlijk wel 1 triljoen sterren bevat, is qua grootte vergelijkbaar met ons grote melkwegstelsel, en hij staat slechts 2,5 miljoen lichtjaar van ons vandaan. Dat klinkt misschien ongelooflijk ver weg, maar op astronomische schaal is Andromeda daarmee zo dichtbij dat het stelsel zichtbaar is aan onze herfsthemel. Je kunt het zien als een vaag sigaarvormig lichtpuntje, hoog aan de hemel.
Wetenschappers van de NASA zeiden dat het onwaarschijnlijk is dat ons zonnestelsel vernietigd zal worden wanneer de Melkweg en Andromeda samensmelten, maar de zon zou wel eens naar een nieuw deel van het melkwegstelsel geschopt kunnen worden en de nachtelijke hemel van de aarde zou wel een aantal nieuwe spectaculaire uitzichten kunnen krijgen.
GERELATEERDE VIDEO'S, uitgekozen en gepost door peter2011
US is allegedly collecting technology from aliens held in captivity, claims a former Area 51 engineer
US is allegedly collecting technology from aliens held in captivity, claims a former Area 51 engineer
The engineer said that a deal between the US and the UN had allowed the existence of aliens to remain a secret.
Aliens do indeed exist on earth, according to conspiracy theorists. These conspiracy theorists contend that the American administration is aware of the existence of alien life and is concealing this information out of concern for public outcry.
An ex-engineer who claims to have worked at Area 51 has added fuel to this seemingly absurd hypothesis by asserting that the US holds aliens imprisoned.
Engineer Bill Uhouse asserts that the US government is attempting to obtain alien technology from Area 51 using extraterrestrials.
According to Uhouse we’re dealing with an extraterrestrial race when it comes to technology.
Additionally, he stated that a US-UN agreement has allowed for the concealment of the existence of foreigners.
The engineer explained that EBEs were used to identify any aliens that were there (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities). He mentioned that three different classifications were made to keep an eye on the aliens, with The Greys being ranked as little, medium, and tall. the head of Israeli space security on aliens
A few months ago, Haim Eshed, a former head of space security for Israel, asserted that extraterrestrial life exists on earth. Eshed claims that major nations including the USA and Israel are collaborating with extraterrestrials.
He also said that humans and extraterrestrials collaborate in a covert subterranean outpost on Mars.
Astronomers Reveal The Biggest 3D Map of the Milky Way and it’s Ridiculously Stunning
Astronomers Reveal The Biggest 3D Map of the Milky Way and it’s Ridiculously Stunning
The greatest three-dimensional map of the Milky Way has been developed by an international team of scientists, and the results have been published in the journal Science.
Researchers created a 3D map that shows the S-shaped structure of the Milky Way galaxy’s combined star disc, our cosmic address, by calculating the distance from our Sun to hundreds of pulsating stars spread around our galaxy.
“Our map shows that the Milky Way disk is not flat. Instead, it is deformed and twisted in shape,” revealed study co-author Przemek Mróz of the University of Warsaw in Poland.“This is the first time we can use individual objects to display it in three dimensions,” he added.
Much of our present understanding of the spiral shape and structure of our galaxy is based on indirect observations of celestial objects and conclusions based on other distant galaxies in the Universe.
However, as scientists have discovered, the galactic map provided by these restricted observations is insufficient.
The classical Cepheids (giant stars that burn hundreds, if not thousands, of times brighter than our Sun) pulse frequently and are visible through the huge interstellar dust clouds that often cover less luminous interstellar objects, much like numerous distant lighthouses.
Distances to these stars may be estimated precisely owing to periodic fluctuations in brightness.
Dorota Skowron of Warsaw University, in collaboration with scientists from Ohio State University in the United States and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, traced the distance to over 2,400 cepheids along the Milky Way, the majority of which were discovered by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), a project that helped double the number of known galactic classical cepheids.
he researchers were able to create an extremely precise three-dimensional model of the Milky Way by assigning coordinates to each distant pulsing star in reference to our Sun.
As a consequence, a beautiful, never-before-seen map of the Milky Way Galaxy has been created.
The findings of the study have helped astronomers better grasp our cosmic surroundings and precisely depict the form of the galaxy.
And it’s not flat, but it does have an unusual form.
As noted by Space.com, “this new map helped reveal more details on distortions that astronomers had “previously detected in the shape of the Milky Way.”
The map took scientists six years to create, but as participating astronomers disclosed, “it was worth it.”
At a distance of almost 25,000 light-years from the galactic core, we discovered that the galaxy’s disc is not flat. It’s twisted. This bending might have been generated by interactions between the galaxy and nearby galaxies, intergalactic gas, or even dark matter.
“Warping of the galactic disk has been detected before, but this is the first time we can use individual objects to trace its shape in three dimensions,” explained Mróz in a statement.
The quantity of ‘warping’ observed in our galaxy was shockingly pronounced, according to the researchers. “It is not some statistical fact available only to a scientist’s understanding,” Mróz said. “It is apparent by eye.”
Peter Khoury’s case is the first alien abduction where an alien specimen was found on a human body, revealed in a DNA test. He was born in Lebanon in 1964, and in 1973 migrated to Australia where he met his future wife Vivian in 1981, and the couple married later in 1990. They have 2 children.
Peter’s first encounter with a UFO happened when he was only 7 years old. It was the summer of 1971, and he was playing with seven other children when all of them decided to go to a rooftop. As he came there, an egg-shaped UFO was hovering above other children who were standing like a statue.
After some time gap, all the children found themselves on the ground floor with no memory of the incident. The next encounter happened in February 1988, when Peter and Vivian were in Sydney. That time, they saw a strange moving light. But the incident that happened later in July completely changed Peter’s life.
It was around 11 PM, and Peter was staying with his family. That night, his brother Sam invited him to watch a movie in his room. Peter lay in his bedroom, but what happened next was completely frightening.
As he was laying on the bed, he felt a paralysis in his whole body and could move only his eyes.
“While…lying on my bed, I felt something grab my ankles. As I felt this, a strange numbness, tingling and churning sensation crawled up through my body and right up to my head. I was paralyzed, I could not move any part of my body but for the exception of my eyes, which I could move, open or close. My brain was functioning but I could not do anything physically. I tried to call out to family members but I could not force the words out. At this stage I started to panic thinking I would not walk again. I thought I was truly paralyzed.”
Peter Khoury and his wife Vivian
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Peter Khoury and his wife Vivian
As the experience unfolded Peter’s first thought was that this was a form of payback, a punishment for the less than satisfactory life he had led for about six years before he returned to the family fold. He thought, if he survived this, that his community would think, God’s punishing him, God paid him back. What followed — the encounter with the hooded, three- to four-foot-tall creatures with black, wrinkled faces — changed everything.
“The fear was so extreme. I’m gone! I’m dead! It’s real! I was petrified and paralyzed. Irrational fears were crowding in. They were going to kill me. I could be killed. The fear level was extraordinary. I was stressing out, how could I get out of this?
I became aware of some sort of communication, seemingly telepathic, no sound made, and yet I could hear the message in my mind. I was told not to worry and I would not be harmed and to relax. As I moved my eyes and looked to the left side…I made eye contact with two beings who looked so different to the others. These were thin, tall with big black eyes and a narrow chin. They were goldish-yellow in color.
Astonishingly the stress was gone immediately. The whole fear thing washed away as quickly as a light switch on. How could I be so calm after such a level of fear? My heartbeat was no longer racing.[A whole different situation was unfolding.]
Peter said he saw three- to four-foot-tall creatures with black, wrinkled faces around him. He communicated with the aliens telepathically. He heard them saying that they would not harm him and even made eye contact with the two of them. Peter even noticed that one alien was male and another female, wearing masks.
One of them inserted a needle into his head, and he blackout. Peter described him as tall and thin with large black eyes in the golden yellow suit.
After he got consciousness, he found out the creatures had also drugged his family members. Further, he thought that only 10 minutes had passed but in reality, it was 1 to 2 hours.
After this, Peter was totally petrified and had no clue what to do next. He even had surgical marks on his head which could prove his encounter with aliens. He had not much knowledge about alien abductions and struggled to understand them.
Eventually, he understood about the abduction experiences, jumped into, the world of Ufology, and started a group named the UFO Experience Support Association (UFOESA).
He continued helping other victims who claimed to encounter aliens, but his personal experiences did not finish.
On July 23, 1992, he came home after dropping off his wife at the train station. It was around 7 AM, and he was not feeling very well as he had got head injuries during an assault at the job site. So, he decided to go to bed and get some sleep.
Peter felt something alighting on the bed. As he got up, he was shocked to see two strange naked women kneeling near his bed.
He described one had an appearance of Nordic with an elongated face, big blue eyes, and a sharply pointed chin. Another one looked like an Asian. “I got the shock of my life because right on top of me was this female, a blonde female. She was just milky white in color. Her eyes were probably two-three times bigger than human eyes. She had protruding cheekbones and a narrow face that narrowed down to a pointy chin and on the side of the bed on the corner of the bed there was another female an asian looking female and then she the blonde female touches her stomach and points to the sky,” Peter said.
Although no normal communication occurred, the Nordic woman seemed to be in charge, and Khoury got the impression she was giving the Asian-looking woman some sort of instruction.
Artistic view of two alien women: Nordic and Asian
She was 6 feet tall and very strong. She tried to copulate with Peter by pulling him towards her breasts, but he resisted and even bit her which made him cough. Moments later, he looked up again, but both women had vanished.
The coughing stimulated him to go to the bathroom to drink water. After that, he tried urinating and found blonde hair on the genital of that Nordic alien woman. He kept the hair in the plastic bag with a seal.
Prof. John Mack, Peter Khoury, Bill Chalker & Dominique Callimanopulos
Prof. John Mack, Peter Khoury, Bill Chalker & Dominique Callimanopulos
Peter refrained himself telling about it to Vivian for 2 weeks, although she had been very supportive of him for the 1988 abduction.
In 1996, Harvard psychiatrist John Mack did a hypnotic regression on Peter to understand what had happened to him in 1988. Under hypnosis, Peter said that he was taken to a room full of lights. He was on the table with one creature above him but could not find out more than that.
Because of the bizarre and controversial nature of the 1992 episode, Peter was more comfortable describing his 1988 experience.
Because of the 1988 and 1992 experiences, Peter’s case was widely discussed and came into the knowledge of UFO researcher Bill Chalker. He began an investigation into the case and did the world’s first PCR (polymerase Chain Reaction) DNA test on the hair sample.
The test result showed that the hair was biologically close to human genetics but came from an unusual human race, probably a rare Chinese Mongoloid type.
Could Peter Khoury’s July 1988 alien encounter be an example of the well-established phenomenon known as “sleep paralysis”?
John O’Neill, a member of Australian Skeptics, argued that sleep paralysis could explain the paralysis Peter Khoury experienced, hallucination could explain his experience with extraterrestrials, falling asleep could explain his missing time, and “the puncture wound and scab could be from anything — a pimple, an insect bite or anything else in approximately the right location.” O’Neill accepted that Peter’s experience was genuine, as he himself had had a sleep paralysis episode. But his experience was typically vague, like most sleep paralysis episodes — “the feeling of some other entity being in the room, but [I] did not know and could not see what.” That vague description falls far short of the detailed and ordered description Peter Khoury offers of his experience.
Several aspects of Peter’s encounter actually defy this simplistic categorization. First of all, he was not asleep, nor had he reached the state that precedes sleep, the hypnagogic state, that often yields fleeting imagery of a hallucinatory nature. Furthermore, his experience has an ordered sequence of events that were recollected consciously; they were not vague sensory experiences of fragmented sleep. Then there are the physical marks, namely the injury to his head, where he felt the strange needle being stuck in, along with the biopsy-like mark on his leg, which certainly can’t be accounted for as a classic sleep paralysis episode or as a product of the sleep/awake interface that spawns hypnagogic imagery.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
11-08-2022
NASA Releases A Video Of A Massive Comet That Just Crashed Into The Sun
NASA Releases A Video Of A Massive Comet That Just Crashed Into The Sun
The doomed comet was almost certainly a 'Kreutz sungrazer,' a fragment from a giant comet that broke apart many centuries ago," astronomer Tony Phillips wrote for Spaceweather.com.
"A swarm of these fragments orbits the sun, and at least one gets too close every day and disintegrates. Most, measuring less than a few meters across, are too small to see, but occasionally a big one like today's attracts attention."
The comet couldn't resist the intense gravitational pull of the sun, CNET reported.
Taking the above image as a reference, it's safe to say that the sungrazer has evaporated in the face of the sun's high and powerful heat.
More about the comet
Small solar system bodies that begin to heat up and release gas as they pass near the sun are called comets. Comets can range in size from a few hundred meters to tens of kilometers.
According to NASA, "Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbit the Sun. When frozen, they are the size of a small town. When a comet's orbit brings it close to the Sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets.
The dust and gases form a tail that stretches away from the Sun for millions of miles. There are likely billions of comets orbiting our Sun in the Kuiper Belt and even more distant Oort Cloud."
Let's get to know "Kreutz sungrazers"
Characterized by their orbits extremely close to the sun, Kreutz sungrazers are thought to be fragments of a large comet that broke apart a few centuries ago.
Named after the German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, these objects can sometimes be seen around the sun in the daylight. The most recent of these was Comet Ikeya–Seki in 1965, which may have been one of the brightest comets in the last millennium.
The Most Incredible Crop Circle Designs of Great Britain... 2022 Documentary
The Most Incredible Crop Circle Designs of Great Britain... 2022 Documentary
2022 Documentary Crop Circle Reality - This phenomenon stretches far beyond the boundaries of England with over a thousand crop circles spanning the globe.
Although there have been some claimants to come forward to take responsibility for the creation of some crop circles, this documentary seeks out the most incredible crop circle designs and a possible E.T connection to their making. Realities that some may never have been exposed to before in regard to the UFO and crop circle phenomena.
Orbiting high above our heads is a technology that has changed every aspect of our lives.
From the GPS on your phone to the sport you watch on TV, satellites have become a cornerstone of modern life.
But as well as civilian use, they're also the lynchpin to secure military and government communications. So it stands to reason then that any hostile state wishing to cause disruption would target these satellites. Known as anti-satellite (ASATs) weapons, they have been around almost as long as satellites themselves.
HISTORY OF ASATS
When the Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957, the US feared their cold war rivals would develop an orbital network of nuclear-armed satellites. It responded with its first ASAT, an air-launched ballistic missile called Bold Orion.
The Soviets responded with their own ASAT. These were known as co-orbitals which would essentially fly alongside satellites and blow themselves up, taking the satellite with it.
The tech has continued to evolve, with China entering the race in 2007 when it destroyed an old weather satellite with a ballistic missile. Continuing tests(opens in new tab) have led to a dangerous rise in space junk orbiting the Earth, and in April 2022 the US became the first county to announce it was banning the use of missiles against satellites, according to the White House website(opens in new tab).
TYPES OF ASATS
ASATs can be broadly divided into two types, those that use brute force and those that don't. Kinetic energy ASATs physically crash into satellites and can be virtually anything that can reach altitude, from ballistic missiles to drones and other satellites.
A different type of ASAT is the non-kinetic type. They use non-physical attacks such as cyber-attacks(opens in new tab), jamming and even blind satellites with lasers. These attacks can all be carried out from the air, low orbit, or even ground installations.
CREATING SPACE JUNK
Imagine what happens when satellites are destroyed and turn into junk orbiting the Earth. Then picture what happens when that junk crashes into other space vehicles and they too turn into junk.
This nightmare scenario was played out in the 2013 blockbuster movie "Gravity" and pretty much sums up the Kessler Syndrome.
The Kessler Syndrome is what happens when the amount of space debris in orbit reaches a point where it just creates more and more, which can cause havoc for any space program.
It is named after former NASA scientist Donald Kessler, who described the basic idea in his 1978 paper "Collision Frequency of Artificial Satellites: The Creation of a Debris Belt(opens in new tab)". He and co-author Burton Cour-Palais said the likelihood of satellite collisions would increase as more and more spacecraft were launched.
Projects such as the European Space Agency's Clean Space initiative(opens in new tab) are trying to tackle the problem through things such as the robotic salvage of derelict satellites.
In March 2019, India tested this anti-satellite weapon during an operation called Mission Shakti. (Image credit: Getty Images)
A NEW PEACE?
Four countries — the USA, China, Russia and India — have destroyed their own satellites in ASAT tests. But just as the Soviets and USA once sat down to talk about nuclear disarmament, there is a growing movement toward getting rid of ASATs too.
The United States' plan to ban tests on the use of ballistic missiles against satellites was set into motion after the Russian government shot down one of its own satellites and created thousands of pieces of debris orbiting Earth. It left astronauts on the International Space Station needing to take shelter as the shrapnel field passed by.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
You can read more about anti-satellite weapons and the emerging space arms race by reading this article from Harvard International Review(opens in new tab) magazine. Alternatively, you can find out about Russia's anti-satellite test at the Arms Control Association website(opens in new tab).
"Clean Space(opens in new tab)". European Space Agency: Space Safety (2012).
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
Rainwater No Longer Safe to Drink Anywhere on Earth Due to Cancer-Causing Chemicals, Scientists Warn
Rainwater No Longer Safe to Drink Anywhere on Earth Due to Cancer-Causing Chemicals, Scientists Warn
Scientists in Europe have concluded that levels of man-made “forever chemicals” in rainwater have made it “unsafe to drink” around the world—even in the most remote areas of the planet like Antarctica.
Rainwater almost everywhere on Earth has unsafe levels of ‘forever chemicals’, according to new research.
How has this happened and what’s the fallout? 🧵
There is now reportedly no safe spot in the world to escape these cancer-causing chemicals.
In a new study published on August 2 in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology, researchers from Stockholm University and ETH Zurich argue that the amounts of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) considered acceptable for drinking water, surface water and soil in official guidelines have decreased “dramatically” over the past 20 years “due to new insights into their toxicity.”
“There has been an astounding decline in guideline values for PFAS in drinking water in the last 20 years,” explained Ian Cousins, a professor at the Department of Environmental Science, Stockholm University and lead author of the study.
“Based on the latest US guidelines for PFOA in drinking water, rainwater everywhere would be judged unsafe to drink,” Cousins said.
“Although in the industrial world we don’t often drink rainwater, many people around the world expect it to be safe to drink and it supplies many of our drinking water sources.”
Cousins called the decline “astounding.”
In a press release, Cousins said the recommended safe drinking water guideline value for one chemical in particular—the cancer-causing perfluorooctanoic acid—has dropped by 37.5 million times in the United States.
“Forever chemicals” are a large group of human-made chemicals that are known to cause cancer and don’t occur naturally in nature. They can be found in household items including food packaging, electronics, cosmetics, and cookware because they have non-stick or stain-repellent characteristics.
PFAS are referred to as “forever chemicals” because they don’t ever break down in the environment.
Extensive research has been conducted on the effects being exposed to PFAS may have on one’s health
According to some of the findings, scientists say these chemicals could be linked to infertility issues, an increased risk of cancer, developmental delays in children, and more.
However, others claim that no cause and effect can be proven.
While one of the compounds’ manufacturers, 3M, has attempted to phase them out for 20 years, scientists warn that some dangerous PFAS are not significantly decreasing in the atmosphere.
“The extreme persistence and continual global cycling of certain PFAS will lead to the continued exceedance of the above-mentioned guidelines,” warned study co-author and professor Martin
Scheringer claims that because of this, “it makes sense to define a planetary boundary specifically for PFAS and, as we conclude in the paper, this boundary has now been exceeded.”
Companies shouldn’t be permitted to “benefit economically while polluting the drinking water for millions of others, and causing serious health problems,” added Jane Muncke, the managing director of the Food Packaging Forum in Switzerland who was not involved in the study.
“The vast amounts that it will cost to reduce PFAS in drinking water to levels that are safe based on current scientific understanding need to be paid by the industry producing and using these toxic chemicals,” Muncke said.
“The time to act is now.”
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Check out this interesting footage of a huge daytime UFO in the sky above Fort Lupton, Colorado. This was filmed on 6th August 2022!
Witness report:
Thought it was a ballon but it was not moving with the wind and we were experiencing high winds and rain at time of sighting. Was moving slow to the west and had to stop video taping. Then went straight up real high and parked or hovered there for a while and that’s when second time I started filming again. Zoomed in on my video and it looks like a ball of energy. A straight beam would come out of it really weird.
Bob Lazar: Ancient History is Hidden From The Public
Bob Lazar: Ancient History is Hidden From The Public
Bob Lazar was right, the U.S. Military has recovered wreckage from off-world vehicles not made of this earth and one of the recovered wreckage is the UFO that crashed in Roswell in 1947 as well as they found the alien crew from which three aliens didn't survive the crash. The surviving alien was taken to Wright Patterson Air Force Base where it stayed for about nine months before it passed away.
The Roswell UFO crash is perhaps the biggest UFO cover up in history but over the years eyewitnesses told what they had witnessed and all stated that they had seen the surviving alien too.
Read the report Eye-Witnesses’ accounts of the Surviving Alien in which the eyewitnesses tell in detail about the surviving alien that walked away from the crash. All the witnesses stated the same; The being was child-size, four feet, maybe a little more, no hair, and a large head and big eyes shaped like tear-drops, the arms were a bit longer, and the skin was ashy, gray and kind of scaly.
What's more, Bob Lazar said that wreckage were found in an archeological dig, meaning some of these things are ancient. I believe these flying saucers and other craft come from the antediluvian age, or as the world knows it, the age of the lost city of Atlantis.
My guest today, Timothy Alberino says the answer to all these things is found in the Bible and also the ancient book of Enoch, one of the oldest books in the world, which is said to be a historical account of the antediluvian era and a record of a lost civilization.
Paranormal Caught On Camera: The UFO Whisperer! (Jim Martin scene)
Paranormal Caught On Camera: The UFO Whisperer! (Jim Martin scene)
Travel Channel’s Paranormal Caught on Camera aired my UFO footage! The episode is called “Haunted Texas Hotel and More”. (S5/E4) Special thanks to Travel and Paranormal Caught on Camera!
Previously, it was widely considered that moons were lifeless celestial bodies. However, as we now know, these constant companions of the planets can contain more life than we’d ever dared to think. Titan is one of the most magnificent and spectacular natural satellites.
An artist impression of what the lakes might look like on Titan
As many of you are probably aware, the surface of Saturn’s biggest satellite is covered not only by a thick coating of methane hydrate and water ice, but also by numerous rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane. And it’s these intriguing natural structures that folks at Space Daily want to look at in further detail.
Images from the Cassini mission show river networks draining into lakes in Titan’s north polar region.
Image: NASA/JPL/USGS
We’ll look at how these incredible structures form, what part they play in Titan’s natural processes, and what diverse forms the unusual methane lakes on Saturn’s moon take. Watch the video below for more:
US Testing New $150 Million Drone in Middle of the Ocean.
US Testing New $150 Million Drone in Middle of the Ocean.
The US Navy is regularly at work modifying its carrier-based vehicles and replenishing its already fierce arsenal with new drones.
And it’s one of these that will be in the spotlight of today’s video. The MQ-25 Stingray is a tanker drone that could radically change the rules of the game as far as the intense air battles of the future go!
UAV’s will play an important role once they’ve matured. The applications could be limitless and they’ll free up aircrews. The “Loyal Wingman” project is very promising. The “stealth” versions could be invaluable in SEAD missions.
Discussion of unidentified flying objects — or, as they have recently been rebranded, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) — was long relegated to society's fringes. The topic was toxic, and many people avoided serious engagement with it out of fear of being branded a crackpot.
But that has begun to change in the past few years. Prominent scientists now openly push for serious study of UFOs, and the U.S. Navy recently drew up new guidelines that encourage pilots to report curious or confusing sky sights.
Read on for a brief history of UFO sightings, potential explanations for them and cultural attitudes toward the phenomenon.
People have seen intriguing or confounding objects in the sky for as long as we've been looking up.
Over the eons, for example, many different cultures have regarded meteors and comets as supernatural phenomena, or at least processed them through a supernatural lens(opens in new tab). These dramatic sky lights have been deemed manifestations of a deity's displeasure or interpreted as signs that something wonderful, terrible or simply consequential is soon to happen.
Evidence of this view can be found in the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry, which chronicles the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England in 1066 CE. The famous Halley's Comet zoomed through the inner solar system that same year, and the 230-foot-long (70 meters) tapestry depicts it blazing ominously above the head of England's King Harold II.
"We see the new king sat on a throne, with nobles to the left and Archbishop Stigand to the right," the Reading Museum wrote in a description of the tapestry's comet scene(opens in new tab). (Harold was crowned on Jan. 6, 1066.)
"At the far side, he is cheered on by the masses," the description continued. "On the far right, Halley's Comet appears in the sky. People think it an evil omen and grow terrified. News of the comet is brought to Harold. Beneath him, a ghostly fleet of ships appears in the lower border, a hint of the Norman invasion to come."
Harold was killed by William the Conqueror's troops during the decisive Battle of Hastings, on Oct. 14, 1066.
UFOS: THE EARLY YEARS
The UFO phenomenon as we know it today is much more recent, dating to the era of powered flight. This makes a lot of sense; there weren't nearly as many flying objects to be puzzled by in William the Conqueror's day.
UFOs really took off during World War II, when Allied pilots in both the European and Pacific theaters reported seeing puzzling lights or objects in the sky. They called these curiosities "foo fighters," a term better known today as the band fronted by former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl.
Then, in June 1947, American businessman and aviator Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine shiny, mysterious craft zipping through the skies near Washington's Mount Rainier. Some newspaper stories described these UFOs as "flying disks" or "flying saucers," and the latter term soon wormed its way into the public consciousness.
UFO reports surged in the wake of Arnold's sighting, some of them even winding up in the pages of The New York Times(opens in new tab). One of the items the Times picked up was the discovery of some seemingly exotic wreckage on a ranch in Lincoln County, New Mexico in 1947.
In July of that year, a public information officer at the (relatively) nearby Roswell Army Air Field described the debris as a "flying disk," briefly igniting a firestorm of confused interest. Army officials quickly retracted that statement, explaining that the material in question was the remains of a crashed weather balloon, and the "Roswell incident" faded into obscurity.
(It came roaring back three decades later, however, revived by UFO enthusiasts who claimed that the U.S. government had found an alien spacecraft in New Mexico, perhaps even with extraterrestrials inside, and covered the whole thing up. Some conspiracists believe the wreckage was spirited to a hush-hush military site in southern Nevada called Area 51, where study of the aliens and their craft continues to this day.)
The U.S. military, concerned that some of these UFOs might pose a threat to national security, soon began to investigate sightings systematically. The Air Force established Project Sign to this end in 1947, then followed that with the similarly short-lived Project Grudge in 1948. The more well-known Project Blue Book(opens in new tab) got started in 1952 and ran all the way to 1969, examining more than 12,600 UFO reports along the way.
One of the sightings Project Blue Book investigated was that of Betty and Barney Hill, who claimed they were captured and examined by extraterrestrials in rural New Hampshire in September 1961. The couple's account started getting picked up by newspapers in 1965, becoming the first-ever widely publicized alien-abduction story, as History.com noted(opens in new tab).
UFO sightings didn't end when Project Blue Book wrapped up, of course; they've kept on rolling in over the decades.
Some of the most famous ones in the past half-century include that of Travis Walton, an Arizona man whose 1975 alien-abduction claim was dramatized in the 1993 film "Fire in the Sky;" the Rendlesham Forest incident, a string of mysterious observations near England's Royal Air Force Woodbridge station in December 1980; and the Phoenix Lights, which confused many Arizonans in March 1997.
And, in November 2004, several U.S. Navy pilots flying off the coast of San Diego reported seeing bizarre craft zooming through the sky, seemingly maneuvering in ways that exceeded the limits of known technology. Other Navy pilots had similar experiences off the U.S. East Coast a decade later, making a series of intriguing observations from June 2014 to March 2015.
The pilots captured infrared video of some of these encounters using their onboard camera systems. Three of these videos went viral in December 2017 when The New York Times published them as part of a blockbuster story(opens in new tab) about a previously secret military UFO-investigating effort called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP for short.
Politico(opens in new tab) and The Washington Post(opens in new tab) also published deep dives into AATIP, which was first funded at the request of then-Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and appears to have been a driving force in the rebranding of UFOs to UAP, a term with less historical baggage. The program ran from 2007 until a funding phaseout in 2012, though AATIP personnel have said its work continued in an unofficial capacity for a few years after that.
AATIP has a successor, and it was born in the sunlight, comparatively speaking. In the summer of 2020, the Pentagon announced the establishment of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF), whose mission is "to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security."
We've seen some of the task force's work already. In June 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) released a congressionally mandated report outlining what the UAPTF, the FBI and the Office of Naval Intelligence make of 144 recent UFO encounters documented by U.S. government sensors, with a focus on sightings by Navy pilots between November 2004 and March 2021.
The report, a preliminary nine-page assessment that you can read here(opens in new tab), found that 18 of the 144 UFOs moved in odd or unexpected ways.
"Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings," the report states.
UFOs are undeniably real; people often see things in the sky that they can't identify. But that doesn't necessarily mean there's anything exotic going on.
Alien-abduction stories are more complicated, as they tend to involve more psychological components. But some research suggests that at least some such reports may be explained by lucid dreaming, an odd sleep state in which people can control their dreams.
Project Blue Book got to the bottom of the vast majority of the 12,600 sightings it investigated, ascribing most of them to natural phenomena such as clouds, stars and bright planets. The Air Force researchers could not explain 701 of the encounters, but they concluded that none displayed evidence of otherworldly technology or posed a threat to national security.
The 2021 DNI report evinces less certainty, positively identifying just one of the 144 examined UAP. (That lone demystified object was a large, deflating balloon.) The investigators stressed that more data are needed to understand UAP, which likely have multiple explanations. For example, strange and seemingly inexplicable movement patterns "could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing or observer misperception and require additional rigorous analysis," the report states.
Advanced technology developed by foreign adversaries is another potential cause. If foreign tech is indeed behind some of these sightings, UAP would "represent a national security challenge," the report adds.
This possibility has spurred the U.S. military to take the UAP issue more seriously than ever before. In 2019, for example, the Navy formalized its UFO-reporting guidelines, a revision that could remove much of the stigma that has long been associated with sightings, as Politico noted(opens in new tab).
The 2021 DNI assessment does not explicitly mention the alien hypothesis; it's implicitly lumped into a catch-all "other" category of possible explanations. And there are good reasons not to leap to the E.T. conclusion, experts say.
For example, the Navy pilots' sightings in 2004, 2014 and 2015 occurred in coastal waters, which is where you might expect to find advanced reconnaissance craft operated by rival nations, pointed out Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California. (Flights over the U.S. mainland would be much easier to detect.) And some of the encounters apparently occurred shortly after the Navy jets' radar systems were upgraded, suggesting a glitch of some kind might be responsible.
Indeed, it may be telling that imagery of UFOs, no matter what era it was captured in, tends to depict the objects as fuzzy blobs.
"The sightings always recede to the edge of what technology allows you to do," Shostak told Space.com in 2019. "The aliens are kind of keeping pace with technology."
Common sense also argues for relatively mundane, terrestrial explanations, and not just because of Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is usually the best one). For example, if some UFOs are indeed alien spacecraft, what exactly are they up to?
"If the aliens are here, you gotta say they're the best houseguests ever, because they never do anything," Shostak said. "They just buzz around. They don't address climate change; they don't steal our molybdenum."
Still, the E.T. idea should not be dismissed or ridiculed, Shostak and others argue. It's not very scientific to eliminate a hypothesis out of hand, after all, and some UAP encounters are very difficult to explain.
For example, the November 2004 Navy sightings off the California coast were made by four pilots in two different jets, and they saw the bizarre, fast-moving object with their own eyes, two of the aviators told the CBS news program "60 Minutes" in 2021(opens in new tab). That rules out the possibility that an instrument glitch was responsible in that case. And the same UAP was also documented by radar.
"It's not trivial to say what these things are," Shostak said.
There's a growing willingness to entertain all possible explanations, including the alien hypothesis, for such encounters. For example, in July 2021, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb and colleagues announced a venture called the Galileo Project, which will look for evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) using a network of new telescope systems around the world.
Among other aims, the Galileo Project will attempt to determine the true nature of UAP and odd bodies such as 'Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever observed in our own solar system.
'Oumuamua's strangeness led Loeb to suggest that the visitor may be a defunct alien spacecraft. This notion, while still well out of the scientific mainstream, is less outre today than it would have been just a decade or so ago, largely because of the exoplanet revolution.
In recent years, astronomers have learned that roughly 20% of the Milky Way's 200 billion or so stars probably harbor a rocky planet in their "habitable zone," the range of orbital distances in which liquid water could exist on a world's surface. And a world doesn't have to be in the habitable zone to harbor habitable environments. Multiple moons in our own solar system, such as Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus, sport huge oceans beneath their icy shells, after all.
"Given the recently discovered abundance of habitable-zone exoplanets, with potential for extraterrestrial life, the Galileo Project is dedicated to the proposition that humans can no longer ignore the possible existence of ETCs," Loeb said in a July 2021 statement(opens in new tab).
"Science should not reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences that are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry," he added. "We now must 'dare to look through new telescopes,' both literally and figuratively."
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There(opens in new tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
Voyager 1 enters interstellar space in this artist's concept.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Voyager spacecraft have been flying through space for nearly 45 years, so seeing recent headlines that these interstellar pioneers are powering down understandably caused some waves.
But are the Voyager spacecraft really about to be shut down?
To clarify the situation, Astronomy reached out to the mission press officer Calla Cofield who was quick to correct the impression, saying, “nothing new is starting now.” She went on to explain that NASA is following a strategic plan to keep their oldest explorers going for as long as possible.
The Voyager mission estimates the spacecrafts entered interstellar space in 2012 (Voyager 1) and 2018 (Voyager 2).
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Keeping the lights on
The twin Voyager spacecraft left Earth nearly five decades ago; Voyager 2 left our planet Aug. 20, 1977, with Voyager 1 following shortly after on Sept. 5. Both spacecraft are powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) and have a host of instruments collecting and sending scientific data back to Earth. (In Voyager 1’s case it takes about 20 hours and 33 minutes for that data to reach us!)
Now, the RTGs aboard the Voyager spacecraft turn heat into electricity in order to power the probes. That heat comes from the decay of plutonium-238 radioisotopes. However, at this point in their lifetimes, the generators are producing about 40 percent less electricity than when they were first launched.
To keep them running for as long as possible, NASA began aggressively planning which systems to shut off in 2019. But the agency has been tackling the problem of diminishing power for decades now. “After 45 years in flight,” says Cofield, “the power budget is getting to the point where the team has to turn off whatever they can to keep the spacecraft running and doing science.”
NASA lists the instruments that have been powered down on the mission website.
Over the last three years, this has involved turning off the heaters to five of the probes' scientific instruments."Amazingly, all five have continued to operate well below the temperatures they were tested at!” says Cofield.
The Voyager Science Steering Group will make further decisions on maintaining the power budget for the Voyager mission this August. According to Cofield, the creativity and innovation of the engineering team means that, in theory, the plans could stretch the Voyager missions into the 2030s — half a century longer than the probes were originally expected to last. However, that would require the team to turn off even more scientific instruments at some point.
So, at least as it stands now, the Voyager spacecraft aren’t going anywhere (other than interstellar space) any time soon!
Astronomers Capture the Sharpest Image yet of a Monster Galaxy 12.4 Billion Light Years Away
Astronomers Capture the Sharpest Image yet of a Monster Galaxy 12.4 Billion Light Years Away
A team of scientists obtained a magnificent photograph of a faraway galaxy, reminding us all how little we are in the grand scheme of things.
This monster galaxy’ is around 12 billion light-years away from Earth and produces new stars 1,000 times faster than our own Milky Way galaxy.
Scientists utilized the £1.1 billion ALMA Observatory in Chile to capture views of the galaxy with a resolution ten times better than any previous attempt, naming it ‘COSMOS-AzTEC-1.’
The measurements revealed previously unknown information on the structure of this starburst galaxy, which is thought to have originated in the first billion years following the big bang.
Monster galaxies, or starburst galaxies, form stars at a startling pace; 1000 times higher than the star formation in our Galaxy. But why are they so active? To tackle this problem, researchers need to know the environment around the stellar nurseries. Drawing detailed maps of molecular clouds is an important step to scout a cosmic monster.
Tadaki and the team targeted a chimerical galaxy COSMOS-AzTEC-1. This galaxy was first discovered with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawai`i, and later the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) in Mexico found an enormous amount of carbon monoxide gas in the galaxy and revealed its hidden starburst. The LMT observations also measured the distance to the galaxy, and found that it is 12.4 billion light-years.
Monster galaxy COSMOS-AzTEC-1 observed with ALMA. ALMA revealed the distribution of molecular gas (left) and dust particles (right). In addition to the dense cloud in the center, the research team found two dense clouds several thousand light-years away from the center. These dense clouds are dynamically unstable and thought to be the sites of intense star formation.
(Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Tadaki et al.)
Artist’s impression of the monster galaxy COSMOS-AzTEC-1. This galaxy is located 12.4 billion light-years away and is forming stars 1000 times more rapidly than our Milky Way Galaxy. ALMA observations revealed dense gas concentrations in the disk, and intense star formation in those concentrations.
Credit: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Astronomers obtained the most detailed anatomy chart of a monster galaxy located 12.4 billion light-years away. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the team revealed that the molecular clouds in the galaxy are highly unstable, which leads to runaway star formation. Monster galaxies are thought to be the ancestors of the huge elliptical galaxies in today’s Universe, therefore these findings pave the way to understand the formation and evolution of such galaxies.
“One of the best parts of ALMA observations is to see the far-away galaxies with unprecedented resolution,” says Ken-ichi Tadaki, a postdoctoral researcher at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the lead author of the research paper published in the journal Nature.
Researchers have found that COSMOS-AzTEC-1 is rich with the ingredients of stars, but it was still difficult to figure out the nature of the cosmic gas in the galaxy. The team utilized the high resolution and high sensitivity of ALMA to observe this monster galaxy and obtain a detailed map of the distribution and the motion of the gas. Thanks to the most extended ALMA antenna configuration of 16 km, this is the highest resolution molecular gas map of a distant monster galaxy ever made.
“We found that there are two distinct large clouds several thousand light-years away from the center,” explains Tadaki. “In most distant starburst galaxies, stars are actively formed in the center. So it is surprising to find off-center clouds.”
The astronomers further investigated the nature of the gas in COSMOS-AzTEC-1 and found that the clouds throughout the galaxy are very unstable, which is unusual. In a normal situation, the inward gravity and outward pressure are balanced in the clouds. Once gravity overcomes pressure, the gas cloud collapses and forms stars at a rapid pace. Then, stars and supernova explosions at the end of the stellar life cycle blast out gases, which increase the outward pressure. As a result, the gravity and pressure reach a balanced state and star formation continues at a moderate pace. In this way star formation in galaxies is self-regulating. But, in COSMOS-AzTEC-1, the pressure is far weaker than the gravity and hard to balance. Therefore this galaxy shows runaway star formation and has morphed into an unstoppable monster galaxy.
The team estimated that the gas in COSMOS-AzTEC-1 will be completely consumed in 100 million years, which is 10 times faster than in other star forming galaxies.
But why is the gas in COSMOS-AzTEC-1 so unstable? Researchers do not have a definitive answer yet, but galaxy merger is a possible cause. Galaxy collision may have efficiently transported the gas into a small area and ignited intense star formation.
“At this moment, we have no evidence of merger in this galaxy. By observing other similar galaxies with ALMA, we want to unveil the relation between galaxy mergers and monster galaxies,” summarizes Tadaki.
China's ambitious plan to find the first Earth 2.0
China's ambitious plan to find the first Earth 2.0
Despite several high profile missions to find an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star, astronomers have failed to find one. Now the Chinese are launching their own space telescope to hunt for Earth 2.0.
Aleksandr Kukharskiy/Shutterstock
The Kepler Space Telescope made some of the most exciting discoveries in astronomy. Launched in 2009, the telescope observed 13 million stars until 2018, when it was de-activated.
During that time, Kepler discovered over 2600 planets orbiting other stars. Some were entirely unlike anything in our Solar System, forcing astronomers to invent two new classes of planet. One or two of Kepler’s discoveries even orbit in the habitable zone of their parent star, albeit around red dwarf stars that are rather different from our Sun. This was hugely exciting because this temperate region in which liquid water can exist has conditions thought crucial for the existence of life.
But for all that, Kepler ultimately failed. Its mission was to find another Earth, in other words an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star. But in nearly a decade of observations, Kepler found not a single Earth 2.0.
That was partly because Sun-like stars turned out to be noisier than expected and so required longer observation times. But also because in 2013, two of the observatory’s four reaction wheels broke down, making long-term observations impossible. As a result, astronomers have yet to find an alien Earth.
Scanning the Heavens
That could now change thanks to a Chinese mission called Earth 2.0 due to be launched in 2026. This mission will scan the heavens for Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars with instruments designed to cope with the star-noise that Kepler unexpectedly discovered.
The team involves some 300 scientists and engineers from over 40 institutions, most in China. And this week, the collaboration published a detailed description of the mission on the arXiv.
One problem for any space observatory is to cover as a wide a field-of-view as possible while minimizing the cost and weight of the spacecraft. The Chinese team solved this problem by avoiding the cost and weight of a single giant telescope.
Instead, the spacecraft will carry six smaller 30cm telescopes that together will observe a similar area of sky as Kepler, which had a 1.4-meter mirror. These telescopes will look for the characteristic changes in star brightness as a planet passes in front of it.
The spacecraft will also carry a seventh telescope designed to look for microlensing events in which the gravitational field of a star focuses the light from a distant star behind it, temporarily brightening it. By studying the pattern of brightness, astronomers can tell if the star has an orbiting planet.
This seventh instrument will also be able to spot free floating planets, thereby helping to cast some light on these strange, lonely objects.
Data Firehose
The Chinese team’s plan is to launch Earth 2.0 to the L2 Lagrange point, one of several regions of space where the Earth and Moon’s gravitational fields are in balance, and away from Earth’s potential interference. L2 is a popular choice for observatories and home to several past and present, such as the Herschel Space Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope. The Earth 2.0 spacecraft will orbit L2 over the course of 4 years, sending back some 169 Gb of data every day.
That raises the prospect of some mouth-watering discoveries. “Simulations show that the transit survey will be able to detect ∼ 29,000 new planets, including ∼ 4,900 Earth-sized planets,” the team say. That means the mission should detect between and 10 and 20 Earth 2.0s by 2030.
The discovery of the first Earth 2.0 is likely to be one of the defining moments in the history of astronomy. It is likely to create huge interest in the nature of these planets, the make-up of their atmospheres and the potential presence of water. Then there will be the search for biomarkers suggesting the presence of life, molecules like methane and oxygen, and the characteristic light absorption patterns of photosynthesis. Beyond that will be the search for technosignatures that might indicate the presence of a civilization, signals such as industrial pollutants like chlorofluorocarbons and even narrowband radio transmissions.
Of course, Earth 2.0 isn’t the only mission capable of spotting an alien Earth. Several others have the capability, such as ESA’s Plato mission which will also be launched in 2026. But these will have to be luckier than Earth 2.0 to be successful.
That sets the scene for an exciting international race to discover an “other Earth” and the beginning of a new era in the study of potentially habitable planets.
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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.
