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 NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
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...
29-09-2022
Asteroid collision spotted from EARTH: Incredible videos from observatories in South Africa and Hawaii capture the moment NASA's DART spacecraft smashes into Dimorphos from 6.8 million miles away
Asteroid collision spotted from EARTH: Incredible videos from observatories in South Africa and Hawaii capture the moment NASA's DART spacecraft smashes into Dimorphos from 6.8 million miles away
NASA's DART spacecraft has completed its mission to crash into an asteroid, in the first planetary defense test
The ambitious mission aimed to nudge the asteroid from its orbit, but NASA won't know the results for weeks
But videos on social media depict the historic event as captured by telescopes in Hawaii and South Africa
Earth-based telescopes have captured the historic moment NASA's DART spacecraft crashed into an asteroid last night.
DART was launched from California last November – and finally completed its 10-month journey when it hit the asteroid Dimorphos at 7:14pm ET on Monday (00:14 BST Tuesday).
Dimorphos, around 560 feet in diameter, orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos, both of which are around 6.8 million miles away from our planet.
DART hit the space rock at more than 14,000 miles per hour and was destroyed upon impact, while Dimorphos received a 'small nudge' intended to alter its trajectory by a fraction.
The mission aimed to alter the asteroid's orbit, but NASA will not know the results right way, as data is being collected by Earth-based telescopes.
However, videos posted to social media already show the impact event captured by telescopes in Hawaii and South Africa.
The ATLAS telescope, based in Honolulu, Hawaii, shows the asteroid as a ball of light in motion and a plume of ejecta that's emitted as the spacecraft hits.
Similarly, a sped up animation was captured by one of Las Cumbres Observatory's telescopes in South Africa.
Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos pose any danger to Earth. The $325 million (£298 million) mission is merely a rehearsal of what may be required if a space rock does one day threaten our planet.
The ATLAS telescope, based in Honolulu, Hawaii, shows the asteroid as a ball of light in motion and a plume of ejecta that's emitted as the spacecraft hits
Similarly, a sped up animation posted to social media by @astrosnapper was captured by one of Las Cumbres Observatory's telescopes in South Africa
If a large asteroid was to hit Earth, it could wipe out the human race – much like the demise of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Confirmation of impact came seconds after the 19:14 ET (00:14 BST) collision, sparking an applause among the ground team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
'Humanity - 1, Asteroid - 0,' a commentator on the livestream said, noting how incredible it is that humans carried out such an epic mission.
This is one of the first close-up pictures of the asteroid ever taken. The space probe used what is called kinetic impact, which involves sending one or more large, high-speed spacecraft into the path of an approaching near-earth object
The last complete image of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, taken by the DRACO imager on NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission from 7 miles (12 kilometers) from the asteroid and 2 seconds before impact
Confirmation came seconds after the 7:14pm ET collision, sparking an applause among the ground team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
WHAT IS THE NASA DART MISSION?
DART is the world’s first planetary defence test mission.
It comprises a satellite that's crashed into the small moonlet asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger companion asteroid called Didymos.
The satellite was intentionally crashed into the asteroid to slightly change the latter's orbit.
Dimorphos is about 525 feet in diameter, and although it doesn't pose a danger to Earth, NASA wants to measure the asteroid's altered orbit caused by the collision.
Post-impact observations from Earth-based optical telescopes and planetary radars will measure the change in Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos, according to NASA.
This demonstration of planetary defence will inform future missions that could one day save Earth from a deadly asteroid impact.
'Impact success!' NASA tweeted after the DART spacecraft collided with the 170-metre wide (560ft) asteroid, around 6.7 million miles away from Earth.
Scientists believe the impact carved out a crater, hurled streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, altered the asteroid's orbit.
Earth-bound telescopes will now analyse data on Dimorphos to assess whether the mission was successful in altering its orbit around its 'twin' asteroid Didymos.
However, scientists said the mission produced an 'ideal outcome'.
By striking Dimorphos head on, NASA hopes it pushed it into a smaller orbit, shaving 10 minutes off the time it takes to circle Didymos, which is currently 11 hours and 55 minutes.
The space probe used what is called kinetic impact, which involves sending one or more large, high-speed spacecraft into the path of an approaching near-earth object.
Such a mission may evoke memories of a Hollywood disaster movie such as Armageddon, but this is very much real and could save Earth from colliding with a deadly space rock.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated the DART team shortly after the mission was completed, highlighting how the successful test could one day save humanity.
'We are showing that planetary defense is a global endeavor, and it is very possible to save our planet,' Nelson said.
Elon Musk's SpaceX also applauded NASA on the successful mission.
'Congratulations on successfully crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid,' the billionaire entrepreneur's company said in its tweet.
The last image to contain a complete view of asteroid Didymos (top left) and its moonlet, Dimorphos, about 2.5 minutes before the impact of NASA's DART spacecraft, taken by the on board DRACO imager from a distance of 571 miles (920 kilometeres)
The US space agency's staff cheered and clapped in a video shared online as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully smashed into Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium.
'And we have impact. A triumph for humanity in the name of planetary defence,' a member of NASA's team said in a video recorded in the control room as the collision took place.
The asteroid's bread bun shape and rocky surface finally came into clear view in the last few minutes as DART raced toward it.
'Woo hoo,' exclaimed Johns Hopkins mission systems engineer Elena Adams. 'We're seeing Dimorphos, so wonderful, wonderful.'
With an image beaming back to Earth every second, Adams and other ground controllers in Laurel, Maryland, watched with growing excitement as Dimorphos loomed larger and larger in the field of view alongside its bigger companion.
As the craft propelled itself autonomously for the mission's final four hours like a self-guided missile, its imager started to beam down the very first pictures of Dimorphos, before slamming into its surface.
'Impact success!' NASA tweeted after the DART spacecraft collided with the 170-metre wide (560ft) asteroid, around 6.8 million miles away from Earth. SpaceX replied: 'Congratulations on successfully crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid!'
This astonishing image from NASA shows asteroid Dimorphos as seen by the DART spacecraft 11 seconds before impact. DART’s on board DRACO imager captured this image from a distance of 42 miles (68 kilometers). This image was the last to contain all of Dimorphos in the field of view
The closer DART got, the more detailed the asteroid appeared and the last shot was an up-close image of the asteroid's rocky surface - before the screen went black.
In a live question-and-answer session after the crash, senior leaders from NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory said the mission was 'straight down the middle' and nothing went wrong.
Engineers said DART is completely destroyed, but there might be pieces of it in the crater it left during impact - and some of the team said they shed a tear knowing the craft is now gone.
Adams said the craft landed 55 feet from the targeted landing site, but still enough to assume it was a success.
'It was basically a bullseye. I think, as far as we can tell, the first planetary defense test was a success, and we can clap to that,' she said in a post-mission press conference.
'Earthlings should sleep better, and I definitely will.'
Didymos (left corner) and Dimorphos (back, right) are currently making their closest approach to Earth in years, passing at a distance of about 6.7 million miles from our planet. The livestream showed the twin asteroids getting larger as the craft got closer
NASA 's DART spacecraft capture its first look of the asteroid Dimorphos that appeared like a bright dot in the blackness of space
DIMORPHOS AND DIDYMOS
Dimorphos completes an orbit around Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. It was discovered in 1996 by the Spacewatch survey at Kitt Peak.
The asteroid is classified as both a potentially hazardous asteroid and a near-Earth object.
Orbiting Didymos is a 'moonlet' called Dimorphos, which was found in 2003.
A toaster-sized satellite called LICIACube, which already separated from DART a few weeks ago, made a close pass of the site to capture images of the collision and the ejecta - the pulverized rock thrown off by impact.
DART launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last November, which was called NASA's 'Armageddon moment'.
DART 'is something of a replay of Bruce Willis's movie, "Armageddon", although that was totally fictional,' Nelson said in a November interview referring the 1998 film that saw teams travel to an asteroid heading to Earth with the hopes of destroying it before impact.
Didymos and Dimorphos are currently making their closest approach to Earth in years, passing at a distance of about 6.7 million miles from our planet.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching a mission in 2024 that will send a probe to Dimorphos and Didymos to study the pair in greater detail.
An asteroid the size of Dimorphos could cause a continent-wide destruction on Earth, while the impact of one the size of the larger Didymos would be felt worldwide.
NASA emphasized that the asteroids in question pose no threat to our home planet, but were chosen because they can be observed from ground-based telescopes here on Earth.
Andy Rivkin, of JPL's 's applied physics laboratory, and Dart investigation team lead, said Monday that the two asteroids are perfect to test this planetary defense test.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test was launched last November ahead of a year-long journey to crash into the small asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger one called Didymos
'We needed something with a moon that was small enough that we could move it with a strike from a from a spacecraft, but not so small that we wrecked the moon,' Rivkin continued.
'So when you kind of tick off all the possibilities, Didymos ended up as the best choice, and really the only choice, that would provide a mission in this time period.'
Telescopes were also watching and studying from afar, including NASA's new $10 billion James Webb observatory, while DART will also return images to Earth at the rate of one per second as it heads towards its 'deep impact'.
The theory is that if an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth, you would only need to change its velocity by a small amount to alter its path so that it misses us, provided this was done far enough in advance.
Rome-based Virtual Telescope Project has also teamed up with several observatories in South Africa, and will be showing the target asteroid in real-time at the moment of the scheduled impact.
Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a box-shaped space probe, crashed into its target at 7:14pm. This is human's first planetary defense test
Brace for impact: NASA's first ever 'planetary defense' spacecraft – sent to deflect an asteroid 6.8 million miles from Earth – hit Monday, September 26. The graphic above shows how the mission worked
The change in the orbital period will be measured by telescopes on Earth. The minimum change for the mission to be considered a success is 73 seconds.
The DART technique could prove useful for altering the course of an asteroid years or decades before it bears down on Earth with the potential for catastrophe.
NASA considers any near-Earth object 'potentially hazardous' if it comes within 0.05 astronomical units (4.6 million miles) and measures more than 460ft in diameter.
More than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids have been cataloged but none currently pose a danger to our planet.
POTENTIAL METHODS FOR ELIMINATING THE THREAT OF AN ASTEROID
DART is one of many concepts of how to negate the threat of an asteroid that have been suggested over the years.
Multiple bumps
Scientists in California have been firing projectiles at meteorites to simulate the best methods of altering the course of an asteroid so that it wouldn't hit Earth.
According to the results so far, an asteroid like Bennu that is rich in carbon could need several small bumps to charge its course.
'These results indicate multiple successive impacts may be required to deflect rather than disrupt asteroids, particularly carbonaceous asteroids,' researchers said.
Nuke
Another idea, known simply as 'nuke', involves blowing up a nuclear explosive close to the asteroid.
However, this could create smaller but still potentially dangerous fragments of rock that could spin off in all directions, potentially towards Earth.
Ion Beam Deflection
With Ion Beam Deflection, plumes from a space probe's thrusters would be directed towards the asteroid to gently push on its surface over a wide area.
A thruster firing in the opposite direction would be needed to keep the spacecraft at a constant distance from the asteroid.
Gravity tractor
And yet another concept, gravity tractor, would deflect the asteroid without physically contacting it, but instead by using only its gravitational field to transmit a required impulse.
Professor Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh said: 'There have been a few concepts suggested, such as a ‘gravity tractor’ to slowly tow an asteroid away instead of pushing it with a kinetic impactor.
'But the kinetic impactor is definitely the simplest technology to use on the sort of timescale that is most likely to be of concern for this size of asteroid, i.e. years to decades warning time.'
Astronomers watched in awe as binary asteroid Didymos brightened up immediately after the impact of NASA's DART spacecraft on Monday (Sept. 26).
Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi couldn't contain his excitement at the sight as he shared the observations in a livestream via the Virtual Telescope project. A small, dim dot that marked the Didymos-Dimorphos binary asteroid, at that time some 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, began rapidly brightening and within minutes outshined even the brightest of stars in that tiny section of the sky.
"This is exceeding my expectations a lot," Masi said in the stream(opens in new tab). "The object is now nearly 3 magnitudes brighter than earlier, this is tens of times more!"
Binary asteroid Didymos brightens up shortly after the impact of NASA's DART spacecraft. (Image credit: Virtual Telescope Project/Klein Karoo Observatory)
Since Italy was outside of the region with a direct view of Didymos at the time of the collision, Masi viewed the asteroid via a 12-inch (30 centimeters) telescope at South Africa's Klein Karoo Observatory in a feed shared by amateur astronomer Berto Monard.
The two astronomers watched in awe as Didymos not only brightened up, but also grew in size and changed shape as the cloud of debris stirred by DART's impact quickly spread in the surrounding space.
"Soon after the impact, an amount of dust was released like a plume and now this cloud of dust is expanding, sending back light from the sun," Monard explained in the stream. "This is much more than what I could expect. Even the shape is a bit different. It's like a comet. There are particles that are moving away from the asteroid and that's why you have a bigger halo of light."
Masi added that the only other time astronomers could observe such a human-made brightening of a celestial object was in 2005 when NASA's Deep Impact probe intentionally collided with Comet Tempel 1. The goal of that mission, however, wasn't to change the comet's trajectory but to extract some material from its surface to enable scientists to learn more about the composition of these ice balls.
"At that time, I could record a brightness increase, but I have to say that this is by far much more dramatic," Masi commented on his observations of Deep Impact's encounter with the comet.
Telescopes all over the world are currently aiming at the Didymos binary asteroid hoping to learn all they can about the cloud of debris stirred by DART's impact and about the effects the collision had on the orbit of the 560-foot-wide (170 meters) moonlet Dimorphos around the 2,560-foot-wide (780 m) main asteroid Didymos. Altering Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos by at least 73 seconds was the primary purpose of the DART mission.
If last night's impact was successful, the DART experiment could lead to technology that humankind might need one day to protect itself from a space rock on a collision course with Earth.
NASA’s DART mission successfully knocks asteroid off course, Earth can now defend itself
NASA’s DART mission successfully knocks asteroid off course, Earth can now defend itself
Gaurvi Narang-
New Delhi: For the first time, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART has successfully knocked an asteroid off its course, demonstrating its ability to defend the planet from potentially disastrous asteroid impact in the future.
Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact Tuesday — which is humanity’s first test to resist an asteroid’s impact.
IMPACT SUCCESS! Watch from #DARTMIssion’s DRACO Camera, as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully collides with asteroid Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium and poses no threat to Earth. pic.twitter.com/7bXipPkjWD
“We’re embarking on a new era of humankind, an era in which we potentially have the capability to protect ourselves from something like a dangerous, hazardous asteroid impact,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. “What an amazing thing. We’ve never had that capability before.”
While Dimorphos did not pose any actual threat to Earth, the mission aimed to test the “kinetic impactor” method which will verify to what extent it is possible to redirect asteroids that might possibly threaten the planet. Using the force of kinetic energy, this crash, that took place today, might save future generations from any real threats.
As expected, the collision has slightly changed the asteroid’s motion and path in space, and has successfully given the world a viable mitigation strategy.
While further speculation from telescopic observations are underway to clearly determine the complete success of the mission, NASA has confirmed that they expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about one percent or roughly 10 minutes. Over the next few weeks, Dimorphos’ orbital change will be studied along with the debris ejected from the crash.
DART slammed itself into the asteroid which was 9.6 million kilometres away at 22,500 kilometres per hour.
Roughly four years from now, the European Space Agency’s Hera project will conduct detailed surveys of both Dimorphos and asteroid Didymos, with a particular focus on the crater left by DART’s collision and a precise measurement of Dimorphos’ mass, NASA says.
“We are not aware of a single object right now threatening the Earth in the next 100 years. But there eventually will be one. We can deduce that from the geological records of our planet and even data from the Moon. We want to test this technology now so that it is ready in case we ever need it,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the
Science Mission Directorate at NASA, during a press conference on 12 September.
The most destructive celestial impact happened 65 million years ago when an asteroid with a 5 kilometer radius crashed into Earth and gave us what we know today as the Yucatán Peninsula. The impact wiped out numerous plant and animal species including dinosaurs.
In 2019, an asteroid the size of a football field, also passed by Earth closely, and another which was the size of a 747 jet came extremely close in 2021. But all these asteroids were not expected guests, they were cosmic surprises, scientists said.
This first event which could indeed go a long way in preventing something disastrous, was launched in November 2021 and has now attained fruition. The historic was live streamed on NASA TV, which is NASA’s own and also, the space agency’s YouTube channel.
“No, this is not a movie plot,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson tweeted earlier in the day. “We’ve all seen it on movies like ‘Armageddon’, but the real-life stakes are high,” he said in a prerecorded video.
Tonight @NASA will crash an uncrewed spacecraft into an asteroid. On purpose.
Yes, you read that correctly. And no, this is not a movie plot.
The #DARTmission is the world’s first mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards! pic.twitter.com/XCBtdsgVV0
While further scientific studies are currently underway, the impact will also be studied with the help of data gathered from these devices.
The spacecraft has been carrying its own mini photography device, the LICIACube (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids) to capture the event up close, which had been deployed from the spacecraft on 11 September. The device is programmed to record and capture DART’s impact, getting images of the debris ejected from the collision and a view of the newly-formed crater.
The Italy-built cubesat was to observe the crash from about 1,000 kms away and then zoom into the fresh site of debris and collision.
The spacecraft had also been transmitting other images of the asteroid which shall be captured by its Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO) camera.
During the event, the images streamed back to Earth were at a rate of one per second. The boulder-covered surface of the egg-shaped asteroid reminded scientists of Ryugu and Bennu, two other asteroids that have recently been visited by spacecraft. Dimorphos is thought by scientists to be an asteroid rubble pile comprised of weakly-connected rocks.
Dimorphos is relatively unknown
Dimorphos is the size of a football field and does not pose any immediate threat to Earth. Scientists are aware of Dimorphos’ size and history, but still do not understand its chemical composition.
The DART mission not only tests the viability of a device that can offset the impact of a potential threat, but also bridges the gap to create a better understanding of the asteroid itself.
Dimorphos is 520 feet or 160 metre wide and is orbiting the much larger 2,560 feet or 780 metre wide asteroid called Didymos. While Didymos is still better understood in the scientific community, Dimorphos requires further speculation. “We know that it’s a separate body, but we know very little about the shape of the asteroid. We don’t know if Dimorphos is elongated or spherical; we don’t know whether it’s a single rock or a pile of boulders,” said Terik Daly, a deputy instrument scientist on DART’s Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), and a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which manages the DART mission for NASA to Space.com.
It is usually recommended that a 5-10 years buffer or notice period is essential for Earth to prepare itself against a killer asteroid attack. And now that all has gone well with the mission so far, we may just be one step closer to a remarkable feat that shall aid humanity from any possible celestial threats.
SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED A MECHANICAL WOMB THAT CAN GROW LIFE IN THE LAB
SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED A MECHANICAL WOMB THAT CAN GROW LIFE IN THE LAB
We can’t make humans from scratch — yet.
THE DYSTOPIAN UNIVERSE of Blade Runner features replicants, or genetically bioengineered people with sci-fi powers, like super-strength and advanced intelligence, that far outstrip any ordinary individual (albeit with a limited lifespan). Their invention is considered a colossal feat of scientific achievement (and the basis for a pretty messed-up society).
But off of the silver screen, we’ve yet to come close to making any organism — let alone a human — entirely from scratch. Until now.
In a study published last month in the journal Nature, scientists in the U.S., U.K., and Israel successfully created a synthetic mouse embryo without using any eggs or sperm. Instead, they used an assortment of stem cells.
Compared to natural embryos maturing alongside them, these lab-grown counterparts developed similar features seen nearly nine days after fertilization, such as a beating heart, a very early-stage brain, and a gut tube — before they abruptly halted growth.
“Essentially, the big question that we are addressing in the lab is how do we start our lives?” said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, the study’s lead researcher and a stem cell biologist at the University of Cambridge and California Institute of Technology, during a press briefing.
PEEKING INTO THE “BLACK BOX”
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel managed to grow synthetic (left) and natural (right) embryos side-by-side in the lab.Amadei and Handford
When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the fusion sets off a cascade of changes that cause the single cell to multiply, specialize, and organize into distinct cell types, tissues, organs, and other structures that constitute a complete organism.
For the last several decades, scientists have tried recreating models of embryonic development in the lab to learn how the primordial phenomenon proceeds in real time. But this feat has proven extremely challenging. After all, we can’t just peer into a live uterus in the lab to directly observe the microscopic goings-on.
Specifically, researchers don’t know what exactly happens in the womb between around 14 days and a month into development, says Max Wilson, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study.
During this mystery period, the brain gets built and the heart is laid down. “It’s called the ‘black box’ of human development,” he explains.
THIS DEVICE TOOK SEVEN GRUELING YEARS OF ENGINEERING.
Recent efforts to untangle these mysteries have involved coaxing human embryonic stem cells into blastocysts, a thin-walled, hollow ball of dividing cells that gives rise to the embryo during natural development.
This “blastoid” method didn’t exactly bring scientists closer to seeing how cells self-organize and specialize into organs. But in 2021, researchers at the Weizmann Institute
This device took sevof Science in Israel — who also worked on the newNaturestudy —developed a sort of mechanical womb(picturean axolotl tankà laFrank Herbert’s Dune).en grueling years of engineering. It included an incubator, which floated and spun the embryos in vials filled with special nutrient-rich liquid. Meanwhile, a ventilator provided oxygen and carbon dioxide, meticulously controlling the gasses’ flow and pressure.
With this setup, the Weizmann researchers managed to make stem cell-derived synthetic mouse embryos thrive in their artificial mommy for about six days — until they managed to extend it further, according to a study published earlier this month in the journal Cell.
The embryos underwent gastrulation (when an early embryo transforms into a multilayered structure) over the course of eight and a half days, but then stalled for unknown reasons. (A mouse pregnancy lasts for about 20 days.)
But the experiment wasn’t entirely a dud. It set the mammoth task for the latest study: to show it was entirely possible to grow mammalian embryos outside the uterus.
HOW TO GROW A BABY
Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues used embryonic stem cells, along with those that give rise to the placenta and yolk sac, to grow synthetic embryos.Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Moment/Getty Images
Zernicka-Goetz, one of the authors behind the new Nature study, has spent the last decade investigating ways to develop synthetic embryos. She said her lab only initially used embryonic stem cells to mimic early development.
But in 2018, she and her colleagues discovered that if they tossed in two other stem cells that give rise to the placenta (the organ that provides nutrients and removes wastes) and the yolk sac (a structure that provides nourishment during early development), the embryos were better prepared for self-assembly.
Here’s the thing about science: there’s always competition. After their 2018 Nature paper, Zernicka-Goetz’s team was surprised when the Weizmann group came out with an incubator-ventilator system, along with later experiments that forged embryos without sperm or eggs — just as they were attempting.
But science is also about collaboration. The two groups eventually teamed up to see whether combining their techniques could culminate in the life-creating golden ticket.
The results were impressive: Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues watched the artificially wombed cells grow into synthetic “embryoids” without any sort of external modifications or guidance.
THE EMBRYO MODEL DEVELOPED A HEAD AND HEART — PARTS OF THE BODY RESEARCHERS COULD NEVER STUDY IN VITRO.
Compared to the natural mouse embryos that were grown separately, these embryonic mice went through the same stages of development up to eight and half days after fertilization (just like the Weizmann team’s earlier work) which is equivalent to day 14 of human embryonic development.
The embryo model developed a head and heart — parts of the body researchers were never able to study in vitro, said Zernicka-Goetz.
“This is really the first demonstration of the forebrain in any models of embryonic development, and that’s been a Holy Grail for the field,” co-author David Glover, a research professor of biology and biological engineering at Caltech, said during the press briefing.
Zernicka-Goetz’s team also tinkered with a gene called Pax6, which appears to be a key player in brain development and function. After removing Pax6 from the mouse stem cell DNA with the help of CRISPR, Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues observed that the heads of these synthetic embryos didn’t develop correctly, mimicking what’s seen when natural embryos lack this gene.
In humans, rare mutations or deletions of Pax6 can lead to abnormal development of the fetus and death. They can also spur conditions like aniridia (absence of the eye’s colored part, the iris) or Peters anomaly, which hinders the development of eye structures like the cornea.
A CHANCE FOR SYNTHETIC LIFE?
Concocting synthetic embyros from human stem cells could prove a technical (and ethical) challenge.Westend61/Westend61/Getty Images
The detailed glimpse into early embryonic development could be a boon to human health. For instance, it could help scientists grasp why many pregnancies, whether naturally conceived or via assisted reproductive means, fail in the early trimester.
Zernicka-Goetz said the research might also advance regenerative medicine. It could help scientists learn how to make viable, full-functioning replacement organs for a transplant patient using their own stem cells (potentially eliminating the need for lifelong use of immunosuppressants).
Currently, we have a broad sense of organogenesis — or the development of an organ from embryo to birth — but we don’t know all the microscopic steps and cellular interactions that culminate in a fully-fledged, functional organ.
The model system could aid the development of new drugs: It may reveal which medications are safe to take during pregnancy without harming the fetus. Now, researchers can potentially test them out on synthetic embryos, Zernicka-Goetz said.
“This is an advance but at a very early stage of development, a rare event which while superficially looking like an embryo, bears defects which should not be overlooked,” Alfonso Martinez Arias, a developmental biologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain who wasn’t involved in the study, said in a press release.
One glaring challenge: While the synthetic mouse embryos appear identical to their natural counterparts, their stalled development at eight and a half days makes it tough to say whether they’d continue to grow right on course.
“THIS IS VERY STRONG EVIDENCE THAT WE WILL ONE DAY HAVE THIS POWER, AND IT WILL BE POSSIBLE [TO CREATE SYNTHETIC LIFE].”
So despite its enormous potential, fashioning synthetic embryos from stem cells just isn’t possible right now.
“This blockade is not understood and needs to be overcome if one desires to grow mouse synthetic embryos past day eight,” Christophe Galichet, a stem cell biologist at Francis Crick Institute in London who also wasn’t involved in the new work, said in the same press release.
Since humans and mice don’t exactly share all the same characteristics when it comes to embryonic development, the next step is to eventually concoct synthetic embryos from human stem cells.
That likely will prove complicated, more so ethically than technique-wise. But Wilson thinks this research marks a major scientific milestone and tool to add to humanity’s technological toolbox.
“This is very strong evidence that we will one day have this power, and it will be possible [to create synthetic life],” Wilson says. “Whether we decide to do that or not because of ethics or even the potential upsides — that’s a question for society at large.”
Ruimterots meteen na inslag NASA-satelliet helderder dan alle sterren errond
De DART-missie van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA was een succes. Zoals gepland sloeg gisterochtend rond 1.15 uur onze tijd de DART-satelliet in op maanrots Dimorphos, die zich op dat moment op 11 miljoen kilometer van de aarde bevond. Meteen daarna lichtte de grotere rots Didymos, waarrond Dimorphos roteert, helderder op dan alle sterren errond.
“Dit overtreft al mijn verwachtingen”, zei de Italiaanse astronoom Gianluca Masi in zijn livestream van de impact. “Het object is nu bijna drie magnituden helderder dan eerder, dat is tien keer meer!” Masi volgde de DART-missie via een telescoop van het Klein Karoo Obervatory in Zuid-Afrika. Samen met amateur-astronoom Berto Monard zag hij hoe de grootste ruimterots van het Didymos-systeem, Didymos, niet alleen veel helderder werd na de impact van de NASA-satelliet op de kleinste, Dimorphos, maar ook groter.
“Kort na de inslag kwam een hoeveelheid stof vrij als een pluim en nu breidt die stofwolk zich uit en zendt licht van de zon terug”, legde Monard uit tijdens de livestream. “Dit is veel meer dan wat ik had verwacht. Zelfs de vorm is een beetje anders. Het lijkt op een komeet. Er zijn deeltjes die van de asteroïde loskomen en daardoor krijg je een grotere halo.”
Het enige waarmee Masi dit kon vergelijken, was de opzettelijke botsing van NASA’s Deep Impact-sonde op komeet Temple 1 in 2005. Ook toen werd door menselijk toedoen een hemellichaam opgelicht. “Maar ik moet zeggen dat dit veel straffer is”, voegde Masi eraan toe.
Bedoeling van de DART-missie is dat Dimorphos door de klap van de satelliet naar een iets kortere baan rond de rots Didymos is geslagen. Het is nog afwachten of dat ook echt gelukt is.
NASA’s DART mission successfully knocks asteroid off course, Earth can now defend itself
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Jupiter’s Atmosphere is Surprisingly Hot
Jupiter’s Atmosphere is Surprisingly Hot
Jupiter is a big planet, but it’s still a planet. That means it doesn’t heat itself through fancy mechanisms like nuclear fusion. Its interior is heated through its own weight, squeezing the interior through hydrostatic equilibrium, and its surface is heated mostly by the Sun. Since Jupiter only gets about 4% of the light per square meter that Earth gets, you’d expect its upper atmosphere to be pretty cold. Traditional models estimate it should be about -70 degrees Celsius. But recent measurements show the upper atmosphere is over 400 degrees Celsius, and in the polar regions as much as 700 degrees Celsius. In the words of Ruby Rhod from the movie The Fifth Element, “It’s Hot Hot Hot!”
Auroras on Jupiter causing scorching ‘heat wave’ ten times the size of Earth.
With such little sunlight reaching Jupiter, how can its atmosphere be so warm? The team found it has to do with Jupiter’s aurora. On Earth, we have aurora all the time. More popularly known as the northern lights, this glow of the upper atmosphere occurs when ions from the solar wind get caught in Earth’s magnetic field and strike our atmosphere at high speed. Jupiter’s magnetic field is much stronger than Earth’s, and so Jupiter’s aurora can be much more intense. So intense that it can heat Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.
Jovian aurora as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Nichols (University of Leicester)
The team showed that it is the polar region of Jupiter where the atmosphere is most heated, and the heat waves correlate with the cycle of Jupiter’s aurora activity. They also studied how this heat is transferred, so that much of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is hyper-warm. Interestingly, this kind of strong electromagnetic heating is similar to what happens to the Sun’s upper atmosphere.
The Sun is obviously much larger and hotter than Jupiter, with a surface temperature of nearly 5,500 degrees Celsius, but you would still expect the uppermost region of its atmosphere to be cooler than its surface. After all, it’s very cold in space. But observations of the Sun show that its most diffuse upper layer, known as the corona, has a temperature of millions of degrees. This was a long-standing mystery until we finally figured out that solar flares and realignments of the Sun’s magnetic field were heating the corona. It turns out electromagnetism can hold a lot of energy.
Since Jupiter has such a warm upper atmosphere, this could help explain long-lasting weather patterns in its cloud region. After all, storms are powered by a varied temperatures in different regions, such as how the warm tropical ocean on Earth powers hurricanes as the northern hemisphere grows cooler in autumn. Similar temperature variations in Jupiter’s atmosphere could drive the great storms we observe.
Watch a Nicely Stabilized Video of DART Flying Past Didymos and Slamming Into Dimorphos
Watch a Nicely Stabilized Video of DART Flying Past Didymos and Slamming Into Dimorphos
Here’s one of the best videos we’ve seen of the last minutes of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission as it headed towards and slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos. This stabilized version of the last five-and-a-half minutes of images leading up to DART’s intentional collision with the asteroid was produced from NASA’s DART images. It was produced by the YouTube channel Spei’s Space News from Germany.
DART streamed these images from its DRACO camera back to Earth in real time as it approached the asteroid. This replay movie is 10 times faster than reality, except for the last six images, which are shown at the same rate that the spacecraft returned them. DRACO stands for Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation.
Below you can see the real-time views coming in to DART’s mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. The team can be seen cheering, clapping and giving each other high fives as the spacecraft performed its heroic duty, which was to intentionally collide with an asteroid in attempt to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact.
Dimorphos is a small asteroid moonlet, just 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. It orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth, and the impact should change the way Dimorphos orbits Didymos, making the duo the perfect target for this test. NASA says that DART’s impact demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered.
DART launched on November 24, 2021, and after 10 months of flying about 7 million miles (11 million kilometers through space, caught up with Dimorphos. DART weighed 1,260-pounds (570-kilograms) and crashed into the asteroid at roughly 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) per hour, which is expected to have slightly slowed the asteroid’s orbital speed.
The DART team has said they expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1 per cent, or roughly 10 minutes; precisely measuring how much the asteroid was deflected is one of the primary purposes of the full-scale test. Some of the early indications from images taken by both ground-based and space telescopes are that the impact appeared to be larger than expected. More details from the telescopes will be coming out in the coming weeks and months, so it may be some time before we know precisely how much DART’s impact altered Dimorphos’ the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos.
For a number of years, the Admiral Wilson UFO document, which previously used to be considered a hoax, has been in the public domain. But as the UFO disclosure pace fastened, the hoax is seemingly turning into an authentic document that author & researcher Richard Dolan called the “UFO leak of the century.” Moreover, to confirm the authenticity of Wilson’s UFO leak, there are two credible personalities: Standford professor Gary Nolan and former manager of Special Projects for Los Alamos Labs, USN Vet, Oke Shannon (his name is mentioned in the document).
Brief Overview of Wilson-Davis Memo
In 2002, after a meeting with former Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, who had been the head of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs back in the 1990s, Dr. Eric Davis, a former Pentagon physicist supposedly took a transcript of the conversation.
Somehow, these documents found their way into the public domain after they were discovered in the files of the now deceased Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell. These 15 pages of notes describe Admiral Wilson’s discovery of a deeply classified program to study extraterrestrial technology.
During this alleged conversation, Admiral Wilson tells Eric Davis about a series of programs that he discovered hidden deep within the black project’s records of the Pentagon that were actively involved in attempts to reverse engineer a recovered craft that they believed could operate in air, sea, space or perhaps even in other dimensions. The program manager concluded that the craft was not man-made.
Astrophysicist Eric Davis during an interview with New York Post.
The claims have been hotly debated among ufologists but never corroborated. The DIA director at the time, Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson has reportedly denied it all. Numerous national security experts and researchers have also dismissed it as a hoax. (Source)
But one of the other primary individuals cited in the document, astrophysicist Eric Davis has not directly addressed it in public, only fueling suspicions that there might be something to it. And Davis alluded to the possibility of some of the claims contained in the alleged memo as recently as last year in an interview in The New York Times.
Key Witness
Jay Anderson, a founder of Project Unity has recently interviewed Oke Shannon, whose name is mentioned in the documents multiple times. Shannon confirmed that “what was said about him in these notes is accurate, further proving that the conversation between Admiral Wilson and Eric Davis did indeed take place, and they really did discuss the reality that a recovered, non-human vehicle, is being studied in extreme secrecy by a shadowy, quasi-governmental working group that is evading standardized oversight, operating outside of the reservation of government control,” wrote Anderson.
Jay Anderson with Oke Shannon and his wife Linda. Credit: Facebook
Oke Shannon is a US Navy Veteran and a physicist. He was the manager of all Special Projects at Los Alamos National Labs, one of the highest funded and most secretive US Government Research Facilities in the United States.
Below is a transcript of the conversation held between Oke Shannon (OS) and Jay Anderson (JA) discussing the Wilson-Davis Memo: (Source)
JA: I think it’s important that we just get your side of this on the record so I would just like to be able to ask you first of all whether or not you personally know Dr. Eric W Davis.
OS: Yeah! I didn’t work with him day in and day out but I did work with him. I know him fairly well. (Shannon said he got to know Davis through mutual projects and mutual acquaintances.)
JA: Do you personally know Admiral Thomas R Wilson?
OS: Yes I do. Of course, I know of him but I read somewhere that his response was Oke who? and I thought that was kind of funny. I’m sure that my memory of him is stronger than his memory of me because he became a flag officer, and I went off.
JA: Did Admiral Wilson get in contact with you in 2001 or 2002 inquiring into the background and overall trustworthiness of Dr Eric Davis?
OS: Earlier than that. This was in 1999. I got this phone call and it was from Admiral Wilson. He wanted to know was could he trust Eric Davis. I mentioned that YES I believe that Eric Davis was an honorable and conscientious scientist and that he would honor any restrictions the Admiral might put on.
JA: One last question on these notes. I just wanted to kind of get it in a confirmatory statement. So, in these notes that were recovered from Dr. Edgar Mitchell’s estate that are a transcription of an alleged meeting that took place between Admiral Wilson and Dr. Eric Davis. It’s mentioned within the trust a transcript of their conversation that you were difficult to get in touch with at the time you were in poor health due to heart conditions and were not easy to get hold. So this is true in of itself you were struggling with that?
OS: Yeah so it was difficult to get in touch with and I might add to that I’m still difficult to get in touch with.
Credit: Congress.gov
During 2022 US Congress hearings on UFOs, Rep. Mike Gallagher asked Ronald Moultrie, the top Pentagon intelligence official, and Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence, whether they were aware of an unverified 2002 document known as the “Wilson-Davis memo.” (Source)
“There’s nothing we can offer or help out with on your request,” a spokesperson for the federal think tank said. As for Moultrie and Bray, they told Gallagher that they were unfamiliar with the Wilson-Davis document. The fact the document was even broached — and then entered into the official hearing record — was shocking to those who have followed the saga.
However, not many would be satisfied with the Pentagon’s response to Rep. Gallagher on the Wilson-Davis leak. There is another expert named Dr. Gary Nolan, a Stanford Professor who claimed that the documents are “genuine.” He told investigative journalist Ross Coulthart that he knows Eric Davis and that he would not lie. “You know Eric is the kind of character that it’s just impossible for him to lie,” Nolan added.
Nolan asserted that the document was ultimately leaked. “Why would Eric Davis lie about writing something that he never intended to go public in the first place? He was just doing what an intelligence agent does on a regular basis which is write reports of what it is that they’ve been doing,” he said.
Davis, who is now a senior project engineer at the government-funded The Aerospace Corporation, worked on the Pentagon’s secret UFO program AATIP. He also said that some of the materials taken from the found UFOs have so far been unidentifiable. “We couldn’t make [the materials] ourselves,” Davis told the Times. (Source)
The Davis Wilson Notes: Secret reverse-engineering program pertaining to extraterrestrial technology
The Davis Wilson Notes: Secret reverse-engineering program pertaining to extraterrestrial technology
There has been renewed discussion lately regarding the Davis-Wilson notes, which detail a meeting held in 2002 that discussed a deeply secret reverse-engineering program pertaining to extraterrestrial technology.
Richard Dolan discusses the latest developments while also reviewing the notes themselves, his own personal connection to them, the arguments supporting their authenticity, and most importantly the implications.
Sgt. Russell Yokum recorded the sound of a UFO hovering over the Columbia River, St Helens, OR, 1981
Sgt. Russell Yokum recorded the sound of a UFO hovering over the Columbia River, St Helens, OR, 1981
Askins was watching. It was low and looked like it was standing out against the river. There were only a few faint lights in this area at that time.
Askins heard tOn March 17, 1981, Sergeant Russell Yokum of the police department of Saint Helens, Oregon, was on patrol along Highway 30 near the Columbia River. The small town is about 20 miles from Portland. It was very cold that morning.
At around 4:03 a.m., Yokum noticed a bright light moving upriver. It was heading toward Portland International Airport.
Airplanes frequently passed through this area as they made their way to the airport. Yokum immediately thought that the object was an aircraft after seeing it, so he radioed his department. He then drove to Saint Helens to look at it. The light from the courthouse on the other side of the Columbia River was very clear.
Other law enforcement officials, such as Tom McCartney and Ricky Cade of the Oregon State Police, met with Yokum at the courthouse. By this time, Yokum had already been in contact with Donald Askins, who was in Ridgefield, Washington state, near Saint Helens. Askins told Yokum that he had spotted the light and was seeing it now. The light had been stationary over the river, which turned the area into a full-daylight.
Initially, the officers in Saint Helens thought that the light was floating. Askins, however, insisted that it was stationary. It was later revealed that the object was a manmade light that was being used by Sauvie Island.
The fog that night had created the appearance of a bobbing object. After realizing their mistake, the officers decided to look south. They saw the light Askins was watching. It was low and looked like it was standing out against the river. Only faint lights could be seen from this area.
The fog that evening had created the appearance of a bobbing object. After realizing their mistake, the officers decided to look south. They saw the light he sound of the light, which was very loud. The officers then set up a portable tape recorder that was 18 inches from their radio. They also asked Askins to use his CB microphone to transmit the sound to them. He decided to do so by hanging his microphone from the window of his rented home.
The police then went to a nearby bluff, which provided them with an excellent view of the object. The footage recorded by the police, which was presented to the UFO studies center J. Allen Hynek, showed a fascinating and unsettling moment in the lives of people who were trying to understand the unknown.
French kids saw beings move very fast, kids saw UFO as well
French kids saw beings move very fast, kids saw UFO as well
July 1967 – A group of children had been walking in the pasture near the wood at around 3 p.m. When the youngest girl of the group exclaimed that she saw three Chinese men, the other kids ran away. According to the girl, they were small and spoke according to a type of music.
A teenager then went to the area, but she did not see anything. At around 4 p.m., she went back with a group of young people. They were sitting on a rock, which is about ten meters from a dirt road.
Suddenly, they saw a small black creature running across the flat part of the rock. Although it had a normal head, it shone and looked like it was covered in something. It moved at a speed of about 1.13 meters per second and passed 25 meters from the witnesses at 4 p.m., during the middle of summer.
The creature ran away into the hedge. The witnesses tried to catch it, but they were not able to catch it. The next day, they saw a circle of 4 meters with burnt grass, and the smell of burnt grass lingered in the area. The circle was more prominent in the center, and there were traces of small feet in the northeast.
The kid initially thought that the creature was burning bush. However, he later realized that it wasn’t. This is a remarkable example of how the brain tries to associate certain things with certain things.
Perseverance used its robotic arm to collect rock cores from an outcrop called Skinner Ridge, which is part of an ancient river delta on Mars.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Since July, NASA’s Perseverance rover has drilled and collected four slim cores of sedimentary rock, formed in what was once a lake on Mars. They are the first of this type of rock to be gathered on another world — and scientists are excited because at least two of the cores probably contain organic compounds.
On Earth, organics, which are carbon-containing molecules, are often associated with living things, although they can be formed without the involvement of organisms.
Adding to the buzz over the rock samples, Perseverance collected them from an ancient delta in Mars’s Jezero Crater, where a river once deposited layers of sediment — and possibly other matter. River deltas on Earth often teem with living organisms. If life ever existed in Jezero, these cores are probably NASA’s best chance of finding it.
Having the cores is “fantastic”, if scientists ever hope to answer that question, says Tanja Bosak, a geobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
In the coming years, NASA and the European Space Agency plan to send other spacecraft to Jezero to pick up the cores that Perseverance has collected and bring them back to Earth, where scientists will analyse them with advanced laboratory techniques. The samples, which are expected to arrive no earlier than 2033, will be the first ever returned from Mars.
“To undertake the challenge and the expense of a Mars sample-return mission, we need a great suite of rocks to bring back,” Laurie Leshin, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said at a press briefing on 15 September. “We are off to a great start.”
Sedimentary search
Perseverance landed in the 45-kilometre-wide Jezero Crater in February 2021. Its main goal is to look for signs of past life, and its prime destination is the 3.5-billion-year-old river delta, where sediments long ago turned into rock.
Perseverance travelled to the edge of Jezero Crater’s ancient river delta (from right) early this year. Once there, it collected rock cores from sites near Hogwallow Flats. Then it rolled back to an area called Enchanted Lake, where it currently sits.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/USGS
Perseverance spent more than a year making its way to the delta to do its main studies. After landing farther away from the delta than scientists had hoped, it drove around Jezero’s floor, where it surprisingly found ‘igneous’ rocks formed directly from molten magma, or from volcanic activity. Scientists expected the crater floor, once the bottom of a lake, to contain sedimentary rock.
It wasn’t until April 2022, when Perseverance finally arrived at the delta, that scientists found what they had been looking for. In the past few months, the rover has collected two pairs of cores from different types of sedimentary rock that make up the edge of the delta.
One pair comes from a rock outcrop known as Skinner Ridge, which is made of fine-grained sandstone similar to a type of rock seen in many places on Earth. Viewed up close in Perseverance’s sampling tubes, the Skinner Ridge cores appear light-coloured and studded with round grains of dark material. These darker grains were probably carried by the ancient river that once flowed into Jezero from regions that lie perhaps hundreds of kilometres away. So, studying the grains might tell scientists about the history of far-flung areas of Mars.
The other recently collected pair of cores comes from a spot called Wildcat Ridge, which lies just 20 metres from Skinner Ridge. These samples are lighter in colour, and are more homogeneous. They seem to be a mudstone — even more fine-grained than the Skinner Ridge cores. The finer the grains in a rock, the more likely it is to contain evidence of past life. On Earth, small grains tend to settle out in low-energy environments such as the bottom of a pond, where they can preserve decaying organisms or other signs of life that settle there.
The rover examined sedimentary rock at Skinner Ridge (left) and Wildcat Ridge (right) by grinding circular patches. The Skinner Ridge rock contained dark grains, while the Wildcat Ridge patch was lighter in colour and had finer grains.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Wildcat Ridge is also where scientists spotted the organic molecules. Next to the sites from which Perseverance drilled its two cores, the rover ground a 5-centimetre-wide circle into the rock to expose its interior texture. The rover then stretched out its robotic arm and inspected the mineralogy of the rock.
It turned out to be richer in organics than any spot studied by Perseverance so far, said Sunanda Sharma, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And the organics seem to be most concentrated in spots that are also rich in sulfate minerals, which can harbour signs of life. This suggests that organics and sulfate minerals were concentrated as the lake that once filled Jezero was evaporating, Sharma said.
Rolling on
Perseverance has already moved on to another area, known as Enchanted Lake, that it had previously explored. There it will work to collect another pair of samples of fine-grained rock, as well as some of the material lying around on the Martian surface.
Sometime before the end of the year, it will probably place six or more core samples on the ground, where they will serve as a first collection of rocks that could be picked up in the future. Perseverance will keep the rest of its tubes on board — some filled and some empty — and continue exploring Jezero. Ultimately, it will roll up on top of the delta and then continue out of the crater, onto the ancient terrain beyond.
Perseverance’s sidekick, the miniature helicopter Ingenuity, has lasted much longer than its designers ever thought it would. It recently made its 31st flight, having been designed for only five. Ingenuity has been flying along with the rover, helping it to scout paths forwards.
Driekwart van alle uitgestorven landdieren woonde op een eiland. De overgrote meerderheid viel ten prooi aan een ‘invasive alien species’. Via een spelletje geurcluedo met een kleine Kroatische hagedis ontdekte ik waarom eilanddieren zo gevoelig zijn voor aliens.
Daar zat ik dan. In een half afgewerkte hotelkamer op het Kroatische eiland Vis, de vensters afgeschermd met lakens, starend naar een karsthagedis (Latijnse naam: Podarcis melisellensis) die door het spiegelglas geen weet van mij had. Elke beweging noteerde ik. Elke keer ik zijn gevorkte tong zag piepen, turfde ik. Ik zat middenin een gedragsobservatie van een hagedis die ik een dag eerder ving op de rotsen van Mali Barjak, het naburige eiland met een diameter van nog geen 100 m. Die karsthagedis was er één van de meer dan tweehonderd die mijn collega’s en ik te pakken kregen op verschillende Kroatische locaties. In totaal deed ik zo’n vijfhonderdvijftig observaties op die hagedissen. “Waarom zou een mens zich daar in vredesnaam mee bezighouden?” hoor ik je denken. Wel, omdat die kleine eilandhagedis mij kon vertellen waarom zijn achterneef op het Kroatische vasteland wel kon vluchten van de bloeddorstige kleine Indische mangoeste en hij niet.
Een prooidier zonder reukzin heeft een aanzienlijke handicap
De kleine Indische mangoeste is een “invasive alien species” of – in het Nederlands – invasieve exoot. Exoten zijn organismen die afgereisd zijn naar een plaats waar ze oorspronkelijk niet thuis horen. In sommige gevallen brengt die exoot schade toe aan zijn nieuwe omgeving. Dan noemen we de exoot invasief. Onze kleine Indische mangoeste werd met opzet vanuit Azië geëxporteerd naar onder andere Hawaï, Fiji, Japan, Mauritius, en Kroatië. Dit om giftige slangen en rattenplagen te bestrijden. Waar niemand rekening mee had gehouden was dat de mangoeste een alleseter is. Hij lust dus ook wel eens een hagedis, en een vogeltje, ook wel een muisje of een kikker. Eenmaal aangekomen in een nieuwe regio verricht het dier vaak een bloedbad. En omdat de mangoeste nu ook op eigen houtje verder reist, is het niet meer dan logisch dat de kleine Indische mangoeste benoemd is tot één van de gevaarlijkste invasieve exoten op onze planeet.
De kleine Indische mangoeste werd met opzet geïntroduceerd op enkele eilanden en het vasteland van Kroatië.
Credit: J.N. Stuart.
Specifiek op eilanden zaaien invasieve exoten zoals de mangoeste dood en verderf. We zien dit veel minder op het vasteland. Moesten we weten waarin eilanddieren verschillen van hun continentale verwanten zouden we beter begrijpen waarom net zij zo kwetsbaar zijn. Die kennis zou ons toelaten eilanddieren beter te beschermen. Dus ging ik op zoek naar waar het fout loopt bij eilanddieren. Ik focuste op de eerste, meest belangrijke stap in het ontwijken van gevaar: gevaarherkenning. En dat, via één van de oudste zintuigen in het dierenrijk: de reukzin. Een roofdier ruiken geeft drie voordelen t.o.v. eentje zien, horen, en al zeker voelen:
Veel prooidieren ruiken roofdieren al voordat deze te dichtbij komen en ontsnappen onmogelijk is.
Een roofdier is vaak meester in camouflage. Dan is geur het enige wat zijn aanwezigheid verraadt.
Geur blijft gewoonlijk ook een tijdje hangen. Zo kunnen prooien risicovolle plaatsen waar veel passage is door roofdieren identificeren en ontwijken.
Een prooidier zonder reukzin heeft dus een aanzienlijke handicap. Dit is de reden waarom heel diverse dieren hun reukzin gebruiken om roofdieren te ontwijken. Dit gaat van vogels over zoogdieren tot vissen, insecten, en … hagedissen. Maar specifiek hagedissen hebben enkele handige eigenschappen die het gemakkelijk maken om reukzin bij eilanddieren te onderzoeken. Zij kunnen namelijk ruiken via hun tong. Deze merkwaardigheid maakt het voor mij mogelijk om de aandacht die een hagedis voor een bepaalde geur heeft op een gestandaardiseerde manier te achterhalen. Ik tel simpelweg het aantal keren dat de hagedis zijn tong uitsteekt. Als ik daarbovenop ook nog tekenen van angst noteer, weet ik exact wat mijn hagedis van de mangoestegeur vindt. Het is het ideale biologische model voor mijn onderzoek.
Eilandhagedissen zien zich mogelijk genoodzaakt om te besparen op hersenweefsel ten koste van hun reukvermogen
Dus zat ik daar op een Kroatisch eiland, ettelijke uren geurcluedo te spelen met karsthagedissen. Het doel van het spel: vind de moordenaar enkel op basis van zijn geur. Naast mangoestegeur bood ik hagedissen ook gember, een geurloos doekje, en geuren van lokale roofdieren (slangen) waarmee ze wel vertrouwd waren aan. Wat bleek: Eilandhagedissen staken hun tong niet eens uit naar de doekjes en stenen gemarkeerd met mangoeste- en zelfs slangengeur, laat staan dat ze er schrik van hadden. De vastelandshagedissen hadden er nochtans alle moordenaars uit gehaald! Het lijkt er dus op dat eilandhagedissen hun vermogen om roofdieren te ruiken verloren zijn; en daarmee ook één van hun belangrijkste verdedigingsmechanismen.
Een karsthagedis in een observatie-arena achterhaalt welke geur er aan een steen hangt.
Maar waarom gebeurt dit specifiek op eilanden? Via hersenscans achterhaalde ik wat er schort aan het reukvermogen van de eilandhagedissen. En wat blijkt? De hersendelen die instaan voor het verwerken van geurmoleculen zijn veel kleiner in eilandhagedissen vergeleken met vastelandshagedissen. Het is momenteel moeilijk te zeggen hoe dat komt, maar er is wel een hypothese die dit zou kunnen verklaren. De hersenen verbruiken veel energie en eilanden staan bekend voor hun barre omstandigheden. Eilandhagedissen zien zich mogelijk genoodzaakt om te besparen op hersenweefsel ten koste van hun reukvermogen. Hierbij staan ze sterk achter op hagedissen van het vasteland die met hun superieure geurzin beter gewapend zijn tegen invasieve exoten.
Ook al vallen veel karsthagedissen ten prooi aan mangoestes, toch zien we vandaag nog geen grote gevolgen voor het voortbestaan van die soort op Kroatische eilanden. Ik heb dan ook goede hoop voor mijn geschubde vrienden die ik weer uitzette op hun vangstlocatie. Hun grote aantal is waarschijnlijk hetgeen in hun voordeel speelt. Minder courante dieren ondervinden echter ook die barre eilandomstandigheden. Het is dan ook hoogstwaarschijnlijk dat die eilandcondities ook hen beïnvloeden en beperken in hun vermogen om invasieve exoten te ontwijken. Voor die zeldzamere dieren kan de introductie van een invasieve soort dat extra duwtje richting uitroeiing zijn.
We kunnen dus besluiten dat in een geglobaliseerde wereld waar dagelijks miljoenen dieren worden verhuisd via het wegverkeer, de scheep- of luchtvaart, we specifiek moeten inzetten op het voorkomen van de introductie van invasieve exoten op eilanden. Zo kan mijn Mali barjakaanse hagedis met een gerust hartje verder zonnen op zijn rots te midden van de Adriatische zee.
Ahead of the release of a much-anticipated U.S. intelligence report on aerial phenomena, former Canadian defence minister Harjit Sajjan received a briefing on UFOs.
“I expect I am not alone in noting the recent increase in comment regarding Unidentified Flying Objects in the media internationally, particularly in the U.S.,” Sajjan’s then-chief of staff wrote in a May 19, 2021 email to senior defence officials. “I believe it is prudent to request a full briefing for Minister Sajjan from the Canadian perspective on this issue.”
A lieutenant-colonel co-ordinated the effort. An accompanying five-page slide presentation included an overview of cases and procedures, which currently link the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) with air traffic controllers, federal aviation authorities and a civilian researcher in Manitoba. CTVNews.ca acquired the slides and related emails through an access to information request.
It took six weeks of emails before a Department of National Defence spokesperson confirmed the briefing occurred in mid-2021, although they would not provide an exact date. A subsequent access to information request revealed the briefing took place on May 27, 2021.
Sajjan, a former CAF lieutenant-colonel himself, was replaced as defence minister by Anita Anand in an Oct. 2021 cabinet shuffle and now serves as Minister of International Development.
“No, we have no records of subsequent briefs based on currently-available information,” the National Defence spokesperson said. “Minister Anand has not received a brief at this juncture.”
'VITAL INTELLIGENCE SIGHTINGS'
The briefing slides say approximately 1,000 UFO sightings are reported in Canada each year.
Emails and five-page slide deck below show how Sajjan received a briefing on “unidentified aerial phenomena” in May 2021. CTVNews.ca has redacted email addresses and phone numbers for privacy. Click here to see the document full screen.
The most recent case referenced was from May 9, 2021, when the pilot of a Delta Air Lines flight over Saskatchewan asked air traffic controllers “about traffic well above them and moving right to left.” According to a publicly-available report from Transport Canada, the “controller advised that there was no known traffic in the area. The pilot replied that they couldn't figure out what it was either.”
Transport Canada, the federal department that maintains the database, warns such “reports contain preliminary, unconfirmed data which can be subject to change.”
That data is mostly supplied by Nav Canada, a private company that owns and operates Canadian civil air navigation infrastructure such as airport control towers. When Nav Canada personnel receive UFO reports, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are also usually alerted.
“NAV Canada is the responsible agency for managing UAP-related reporting,” the slides prepared for the then-defence minister read. “CAF does not typically investigate sightings of unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating potential threats or distress.”
A Nav Canada spokesperson said the company doesn’t investigate UFO reports, adding that their role is to forward information to federal authorities. They point to a Nav Canada guide to Canadian aviation procedures, which puts “unidentified flying objects” at the front of a list of “vital intelligence sightings” requiring reports. Other examples include “surface warships identified as being non-Canadian or non-American.”
A spokesperson from Transport Canada told CTVNews.ca that UFO reports “have no potential for regulatory enforcement and often fall outside the department’s mandate.”
“Reports of unidentified objects can rarely be followed up on as they are as the title implies, unidentified,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The U.S. government has funded UFO research programs almost continuously since 2007. The public got a rare peek at those efforts on June 25, 2021, when the U.S. intelligence community released an unclassified report on recent military sightings, which included UAP that “appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion.”
From drones to weather phenomena to top-secret technology, many potential explanations are floated for odd observations like these, and officials say they should not be interpreted as proof extraterrestrials are visiting earth. But finding answers requires investigation, and compared to government-funded programs in the U.S., little appears to be happening in Canada.
“As our closest ally and NORAD partner continues to investigate the national security implications of UAP, it would be prudent for Canada to take a similar approach,” the former Conservative cabinet member said in a statement to CTVNews.ca. “Rather than ridicule and silence, it would be wise to take this issue seriously, with the objective of identifying the origins and intent of these UAP.”
'CANADA'S PRE-EMINENT UFOLOGIST'
Declassified records held by Library and Archives Canada reveal military UFO procedures and sightings dating back to the early 1950s. By the 1960s, responsibility was transferred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and scientists at the National Research Council of Canada, which ended their involvement in 1995.
According to the briefing slides obtained by CTVNews.ca, it wasn’t long before a civilian researcher described as “Canada’s pre-eminent ufologist” started receiving UFO reports directly from the military and Transport Canada.
Chris Rutkowski is a Winnipeg-based science writer and University of Manitoba communications professional who has led efforts to document more than 23,000 sightings since 1989 through the annual Canadian UFO Survey. Rutkowski told CTVNews.ca he was asked to provide material for the minister’s briefing as a “civilian advisor,” and that he last received official UFO data in early 2021.
“I have been called both a sceptic and a believer, which probably demonstrates that my position is appropriate,” Rutkowski said in an email. “We are long past the era of UFOs being a subject of ridicule. Well-trained observers have reported sightings of UFOs and UAP and there seems to be a renewed interest by both scientists and the military establishment in taking a closer look at this persistent phenomenon.”
Rutkowski, whose 10th UFO book is scheduled to be released this spring, would like to see a panel or committee formed to gather and examine Canadian cases. Findlay also thinks it’s time for Canada to be more active and open about UFOs.
“We believe the government should adopt a streamlined, whole-of-government approach to standardize the collection of reports across numerous departments and contractors, such as NAV Canada,” Findlay told CTVNews.ca in a rare statement on the subject from a Canadian politician. “Efforts should be undertaken to investigate and make those findings public in a responsible manner.”
UFO procedures remain unchanged in Canada, the Department of National Defence spokesperson told CTVNews.ca. When asked if information on the subject has been provided to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his office, their response was, “not directly, no.”
CTV News was first made aware of Sajjan’s UFO briefing by an anonymous source, who shared documents acquired through Canadian freedom of information laws. CTV News verified those documents by filing a new access to information request with the Department of National Defence.
Edited by CTVNews.ca's Rachel Aiello and Brooklyn Neustaeter
RELATED IMAGES
A donut-shaped UFO was spotted in Rimouski, Que. on Oct. 23, 2017 and photographed by witnesses.
(Source: 2017 Canadian UFO Survey)
Correction
A Department of National Defence spokesperson previously told CTVNews.ca that the briefing occurred in "early June 2021." A subsequent access to information request revealed that the briefing actually took place earlier, on May 27, 2021. This story has been updated accordingly.
BEWIJS VOOR BUITENAARDS LEVEN KAN ZOMAAR AL EENS IN DE BUIK VAN DIT MARSWAGENTJE ZITTEN
BEWIJS VOOR BUITENAARDS LEVEN KAN ZOMAAR AL EENS IN DE BUIK VAN DIT MARSWAGENTJE ZITTEN
Vivian Lammerse
Marsrover Perseverance heeft onlangs een monster verzameld dat organisch materiaal bevat, wat erop kan wijzen dat Mars in een ver verleden bewoonbaar was.
Ondertussen speurt NASA’s Perseverance-rover al enige tijd op Mars naar tekenen van oud, microbieel leven. In zijn zoektocht verzamelt het Marswagentje verschillende monsters. En die blijken beter dan het missieteam had durven hopen, zo laten ze weten. In de buik van Perseverance zit momenteel namelijk een monster opgeborgen dat organisch materiaal bevat. En dit monster zou zomaar eens het antwoord kunnen geven op de vraag of Mars ooit leven herbergde.
Wildcat Ridge Perseverance trof het organisch materiaal aan in een Mars-steen die de naam Wildcat Ridge heeft gekregen. De rots is waarschijnlijk miljarden jaren geleden gevormd toen modder en fijn zand zich vestigden in een verdampend zoutwatermeer. Eind juli schraapte de rover een gedeelte van het oppervlak van Wildcat Ridge weg en analyseerde het met behulp van zijn SHERLOC-instrument. SHERLOC – een afkorting voor Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals – gebruikt een ultraviolette laser om mineralen in gesteente te identificeren. Uit de analyse blijkt dat het monster een klasse organische moleculen bevat die verbonden zijn met sulfaten. En dat is interessant. Sulfaatmineralen kunnen namelijk belangrijke informatie opleveren over de waterige omgevingen waarin ze zijn gevormd.
Meer over organische moleculen Organische moleculen bestaan voornamelijk uit koolstof en bevatten gewoonlijk waterstof- en zuurstofatomen. Ze kunnen ook andere elementen bevatten, zoals stikstof, fosfor en zwavel. De vondst van dergelijke organische moleculen zijn van belang, omdat sommige van deze verbindingen de bouwstenen van leven zijn. De aanwezigheid van deze specifieke moleculen wordt beschouwd als een potentiële biosignatuur – een stof of structuur die een bewijs zou kunnen zijn van voormalig leven. Toch houden wetenschappers een slag om de arm. Sommige organische moleculen kunnen namelijk ook door middel van chemische processen, zonder de aanwezigheid van leven, ontstaan.
Het is niet de eerste keer dat er op Mars organisch materiaal wordt gevonden. Zowel Perseverance als de Curiosity-rover hebben dit al eerder aangetroffen. Toch is de huidige ontdekking een stuk spannender.
Spannender “In een ver verleden werd het zand, de modder en de zouten die nu het Wildcat Ridge-monster vormen, afgezet onder omstandigheden waarin leven mogelijk had kunnen gedijen,” legt onderzoeker Ken Farley uit. “Het feit dat er dus organische stof is gevonden in zo’n sedimentair gesteente, is heel interessant.” Toch moeten we nog even geduld hebben voordat we weten of het monster inderdaad bewijs van buitenaards leven herbergt. “Hoe geavanceerd de instrumenten aan boord van Perseverance ook zijn, verdere conclusies over wat er in het Wildcat Ridge-monster zit, kunnen we pas trekken als het monster op aarde aan een grondige inspectie is onderworpen,” aldus Farley.
Bodem en delta Marsrover Perseverance landde op 18 februari 2021 in de Jezero-krater waar de rover op sporen van (voormalig) leven jaagt. Dat Perseverance hier zoekt, is niet voor niets. Wetenschappers vermoeden namelijk dat het miljarden jaren geleden een met water gevuld kratermeer was. Tijdens Perseverance’ eerste wetenschappelijke campagne onderzocht de rover de bodem van de krater, waar hij zelfs stollingsgesteente aantrof, dat zich diep onder de grond vormt uit magma of tijdens vulkanische activiteit aan het oppervlak. Momenteel bestudeert Perseverance de delta; een oude, waaiervormige structuur die zo’n 3,5 miljoen jaar geleden werd gevormd bij de samenvloeiing van een Mars-rivier en een meer. Hier analyseert hij nu sedimentaire gesteenten. “De delta, met zijn diverse sedimentaire gesteenten, contrasteert prachtig met de stollingsgesteenten die al eerder op de kraterbodem zijn gevonden,” zegt Farley. “Het levert ons een gevarieerde reeks monsters op, die samen meer inzicht zullen verschaffen in de geologische geschiedenis nadat de krater werd gevormd.”
Twaalf monsters Wetenschappers keken erg uit naar het moment waarop Perseverance de delta aan een nadere inspectie zou onderwerpen. Zo vermoedden ze dat de kans reëel is dat hier bewijs van oud microbieel leven te vinden zou zijn. Het Wildcat Ridge-monster laat nu zien dat die kans inderdaad bestaat. Het monster is dan ook een belangrijke aanvulling op de toch al indrukwekkende collectie van Perseverance. Ondertussen heeft de rover al vier monsters in de oude rivierdelta verzameld. Ook heeft de rover al eerder rotsmonsters en één atmosferisch monster verzameld. Dit brengt het totaal aantal wetenschappelijk veelbelovende monsters op twaalf.
Uiteindelijk hopen de onderzoekers alle meegebrachte monsterbuisjes – maar liefst 42 in totaal – te vullen met interessante monsters van Mars. Door deze vervolgens naar de aarde terug te sturen, hopen wetenschappers een aantal prangende wetenschappelijke vragen te beantwoorden – waaronder natuurlijk die ene hoofdvraag: heeft er ooit leven op Mars bestaan? “Over slechts enkele jaren zullen de monsters op aarde arriveren, zodat wetenschappers ze tot in de kleinste details kunnen bestuderen,” zegt onderzoeker Laurie Leshin. “Dit is werkelijk fantastisch. We zullen zoveel leren.”
Meer weten… …over de toekomstige Mars Sample Return-missie, waarin de door Perseverance verzamelde Marsmonsters op aarde zullen worden afgeleverd? Lees dan ook dit eerder verschenen artikel op Scientias.nl!
Researchers have mounted 3D printers onto drones with the aim of creating swarms of robots that could 3D print entire buildings.
The aerial vehicles were specially designed to be able to deposit a cement-like material with enough precision to build tall structures. Groups of them together could do the job even faster.
The idea is that 3D printed shelters could be greener than standard construction methods, and drones could be useful in reaching difficult to access areas.
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Hubble Unveils an Astronomical Explosion
Hubble Unveils an Astronomical Explosion
A shroud of thick gas and dust surrounds a bright young star in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 inspected a young stellar object, over 9,000 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, to help astronomers understand the earliest stages in the lives of massive stars. This object – which is known to astronomers as IRAS 05506+2414 – may be an example of an explosive event caused by the disruption of a massive young star system.
The swirling discs of material surrounding a young star are usually funneled into twin outflows of gas and dust from the star. In the case of IRAS 05506+2414, however, a fan-like spray of material traveling at velocities of up to 217 miles per second (350 km per second) is spreading outwards from the center of this image.
Astronomers turned to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the distance to IRAS 05506+2414. While it is possible to measure the velocity of material speeding outward from the star, astronomers cannot tell how far from Earth the star actually is from a single observation. To determine the star’s distance, they measured how far the outflow travels between successive images. From there they could infer the distance to IRAS 05506+2414. Knowing its distance allows astronomers to determine how bright the star is and how much energy it is emitting, and therefore estimate its mass – all vital information in determining the origin of this bright young star’s unusual outflow.
This Wireless Camera Taps Into Sound Waves to Reveal Deep-Sea Secrets
This Wireless Camera Taps Into Sound Waves to Reveal Deep-Sea Secrets
MIT scientists want to map the entire ocean so we can understand how climate change is forcing it to evolve.
Monisha Ravisetti
This battery-free, underwater device can harness sound waves to capture images of our ocean's deepest, darkest secrets.
Adam Glanzman
MIT scientists presented their prototype of a fascinating underwater camera on Monday. Rather than rely on battery power, this device gets juice from sound waves traveling through the ocean for its deep-sea image escapades. It even works in the darkest of environments.
Then it has the ability to wirelessly transmit all that photo data goodness back through the water to be reconstructed on a computer.
This means that if the model can be scaled up, it could spring humanity a few steps forward on the journey to achieving a massive goal: mapping every corner of Earth's oceans.
Though our beautiful planet's surface consists of a whopping 70% water (reminder, this doesn't account for depth) the research team estimates we've only ever observed less than 5% of the sea. And one reason, they say, for such lack of knowledge is viable underwater cameras are really hard to build due to battery restrictions.
Simply, a workable imager within the sea can't travel too far out from a ship without running out of power. It's also expensive to make a super long-lasting battery, and not time efficient to have to restart an expedition every time the camera at hand must be retrieved and recharged. Thus, the newly proposed sound wave-energized camera holds potential to be a game changer for deep-sea explorers.
According to an outline of the invention, published in the journal Nature Communications, the device can run for weeks on end before someone has to pick it up, allowing it to venture far out into the sea in just one go. It's also about 100,000 times more energy-efficient than other undersea cameras, the team said.
"One of the most exciting applications of this camera, for me personally, is in the context of climate monitoring," Fadel Adib, associate professor in MIT's department of electrical engineering and computer science, said in a statement. "We are building climate models, but we are missing data from over 95 percent of the ocean. This technology could help us build more accurate climate models and better understand how climate change impacts the underwater world."
As proof of principle, the research crew tested their mechanism to create color images of plastic bottles floating in a New Hampshire pond. They also captured images of an African starfish in such high resolution that you can see the tiny tubercles along its arms. Overall, it appears to be a solid pathway toward solving the underwater battery conundrum.
But perhaps even more exciting than the long-term implications of the team's camera is the absolutely remarkable way it works.
Turning sound waves into views
Basically, the team explained, this sound wave-powered camera takes advantage of noise that's already present under the sea. Passing ships, marine life, tides and other such things create sound. But what is sound, exactly?
Sound isn't an intangible force of some sort. Rather, it's the product of waves traveling through a medium and vibrating that medium on a super (super) minute scale. The medium could be air, water -- anything with atoms, really. When air vibrations hit our eardrums, for example, our brain translates the signal into what we consider sound. That's also why stuff sounds warped to us when we're underwater. Nothing is truly "warped," per se. Soundwaves just vibrate water molecules differently.
OK, so the important bit about this mechanism, for the team's new camera, are those vibrations.
The small device is encased in a special material that produces an electric signal every time it's hit by sound waves vibrating through the water. Those vibrations, in essence, vibrate it as well. Then, the vibrations are converted from mechanical energy into electrical energy, and there you have it -- a steadily powered underwater camera.
Further, to keep hardware light -- so the camera doesn't eat away at its power – the team used off-the-shelf imaging sensors and cheap flash instruments that can only capture images in grayscale. From there, they used sort of an old-fashioned way of obtaining a full-color image.
"When we were kids in art class, we were taught that we could make all colors using three basic colors. The same rules follow for color images we see on our computers. We just need red, green and blue -- these three channels -- to construct color images," Waleed Akbar, MIT researcher and co-author of the study, said in a statement.
First, the camera captures the image with a specifically tailored red LED light filter, then again with a blue filter and again with a green one. Put together, you get the full pic. Finally, all the image data is encoded in computer language, aka ones and zeros, and here's the kicker.
It's sent to a receiver back as soundwaves.
The camera receiver basically transmits its own sound waves to the camera, then the camera can either reflect the waves back or absorb them fully. Altogether, this creates a sort of binary code to tell the receiver what the image data really is.
"This whole process, since it just requires a single switch to convert the device from a nonreflective state to a reflective state, consumes five orders of magnitude less power than typical underwater communications systems," MIT researcher Sayed Saad Afzal said in a statement.
As of now, however, the camera only possesses a maximum transmission range of 40 meters from the receiver. But the team said it wants to increase both that range and the device's memory capacity going forward.
Eventually, they said, it could potentially capture real-time photos and perhaps even stream underwater secrets right to a computer.
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Mysterious Cases of Living Fossils, Suspended Animation, and Hibernation
Mysterious Cases of Living Fossils, Suspended Animation, and Hibernation
We all know that fossils, by their very nature, are dead. Of course, nothing can survive the conditions of pressure, depth and time required to petrify wood, see saplings mature into massive trees, transmogrify vegetation into coal or metamorphose mud into solid rock. Still, living creatures seemingly from remotest antiquity keep turning up encased in stone from far beneath Earth's surface, embedded inside solid tree trunks and in other situations defying both reason and the gospel of the Great God Science.
Living Fossils Story #1: Ancient Wormhole Mine
One such case occurred April 22, 1881, when miner Joe Molino was working deep in the Wide West Mine outside Ruby Hill, Nevada. When he wedged loose a protruding hunk of stone from the tunnel wall it landed on his foot. Enraged, he grabbed a sledgehammer and smashed it to bits. Molino was stunned to see his hammer blow had exposed a baseball-sized cavity in the rock. It was half full of motionless white worms.
As a crowd of quizzical miners gathered to view the unusual artifacts the worms began to move. Within an hour they were crawling around on the floor of the tunnel.
Mine operators sent the worms (whose species apparently was never determined) and their solid stone sarcophagus to the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Several weeks later the bureau sent the mine operators a letter declaring they must have been mistaken. Since it clearly is impossible for creatures to have survived under the circumstances described, as far as the bureau was concerned there was no way the incident could have happened.
In 1892 an ore nugget found in an Arizona mine was found to contain a dead beetle from which emerged a live beetle: is that a living fossil or what?
Yet more scientific mystery was brewing in the American West when, sometime in 1892, a large beetle was found encased in a chunk of iron ore in the Longfellow Mine outside Clifton, Arizona. The ore nugget and its dead inhabitant were turned over to El Paso geologist Z. T. White, who placed the insect in a specimen case. Several days later he was shocked to see the creature move. Watching through a magnifying glass White saw a small beetle emerge from the body of the larger, dead one. He placed the small beetle in a jar where it lived for several months. When it died, he presented it, the larger beetle and the lump of ore to the Smithsonian Institution , where they may remain to this day.
Living Fossils Story #3: A Load of Bullfrog
Since the vast majority of fossils are buried, it is predictable that mines are the main source of mysterious zoological artifacts. In 1873, miners at the Black Diamond Coal Mine outside San Francisco found a large frog encased in limestone.
This common (but venerable) bullfrog was apparently blind, and able to slowly move just one leg. After several hours on the surface, it died. The frog and its entombing stone were given to the San Francisco Academy of Sciences, where its survival of what would seem an impossible stretch of time continues to defy understanding.
Yet not all living fossils are found in stone or ore.
Once in 1893 in Ontario, Canada a live toad emerged from deep inside a tree trunk!
In October 1893 workmen at the Brown and Hall Sawmill in Ontario, Canada were using a circular saw to cut a large tree trunk into planks when the blade sliced through a cavity containing (and almost cut in two) a live toad imprisoned squarely in the middle of the tree trunk. The tree was about 200 years old, and the spherical, perfectly smooth hole in which the amphibian was entombed was about 60 feet (18 meters) above the ground. The toad tumbled from its wooden prison and hopped away, seemingly none the worse for its long confinement.
Another report of a live toad in a hole comes from England. In 1829 huge granite blocks that had formed a submerged footing under the docks of Liverpool's George's Basin were being cut into small chunks to be made into steps. During one of the cuts, the stone saw revealed a little hole in the middle of a block, and a toad within it.
Workers gently enlarged the hole to free its occupant, and the amphibian made several futile attempts to get to its feet. Several hours later, after trying one last time to assume its normal crouching position, the toad sank to the pavement and died. Several scientists who later examined the small corpse confessed they were at a loss to explain how the animal could have been found alive under such airless, foodless and waterless conditions. One of these learned men took the dead animal home with him, and it was never seen again. It was not the first or last impossible fossil yielded by Britain.
Living Fossils Story #5: Newt News
In 1818 professional geologist Dr. E.D. Clark, who taught at Caius College in Cambridge, Scotland, was present at the digging of a pit on a friend's property when the workmen hit a layer of animated fossils. As one of the workers was breaking up a large chunk of chalk stone into smaller pieces so they could be removed from the hole he found three newts embedded in the rock. Clarke placed them in the bright sunlight and was stupefied when they began to move. Two of them died later in the day, and for years he exhibited them to his students during his lectures on prehistory. He placed the third newt in a nearby brook, and it "skipped and twisted about as though it had never been torpid," and escaped, he later said. Clarke was never able to identify the species to which the newts belonged.
Upon Clarke's retirement he donated the preserved newts to the university's biology department, where, for decades, other professors displayed them during lectures. During the chaos of the 1940 Nazi bombing blitz these pickled specimens turned up missing. Unless they were blown to atoms by a Luftwaffe bomb, they may remain somewhere within Cambridge University, forgotten and still unexplained.
This is a fossil of a flying dinosaur, a Pterodactylus antiquus, and a close cousin of this species was apparently still alive in France in the 1850s according to newspaper reports at the time.
The most incredible find of a living fossil is that reported by the Illustrated London Times of February 9, 1856. The incident occurred in France during the construction of a railway tunnel between the towns of Nancy and St. Dizier. According to the article, workers were breaking up a huge boulder when a goose-sized monster staggered from a freshly exposed cavity and screeched hoarsely before falling dead. It had a long beak, sharp teeth, four legs joined by membranes, and feet with long hooked talons. Its flesh was oily and glossy black.
The mysterious carcass was taken to a paleontologist who instantly recognized the animal as a Pterodactylus anas, a denizen of the Jurassic Period , which ended 135 million years ago. There is no record of whether the body was preserved and still exists.
Possibilities
Certain animals' ability to live long stretches without sustenance is possible via hibernation to escape the lean, hostile conditions of winter. Because their metabolisms are conditioned to arouse them upon the advent of the warmth and renewed food supplies of springtime, they are seldom in suspended animation for more than four or five months. What might happen if spring never arrived? What if their hibernation dens were to be buried by glaciers and/or metamorphose into rock?
Southern Methodist University professor of biology Dr. John Ubelaker, Ph.D. points out that many organisms possess the ability to lower their metabolisms, and that this function is often triggered by environmental conditions. This permits survival through difficult times.
"This is a common phenomenon among many free-living nematodes that have the ability to form a resting stage--dauer larvae--in order to survive a stressful situation," he says. "In these nematodes the ability to control water and water loss is critical, and several metabolic-biochemical processes operate."
Nematodes that have come to life are perhaps the most incredible living fossils. A colorized electron micrograph of a soybean cyst nematode and egg.
In his 1863 book History of the Supernatural noted British author and scientist William Hewitt recounted a midsummer incident he had personally witnessed several years earlier in which workmen in Nottinghamshire, England were digging a ditch and unearthed what he called "a regular stratum of frogs." The creatures were not only alive, but so animated they all hopped away.
He described the layer of mud that had held the frogs as "stiff as butter," and based on the time of year and his examination of the ground where they were buried, he estimated they had been there at least six months. As he asked his readers, "If these frogs could live six months in this nearly solid casing of viscous mud, why not six or any number of years?"
Ubelaker expands upon this premise:
"An interesting fact of life is that an organism's structure and composition can remain virtually the same even though it continuously takes in nutrients and produces wastes. Often defined as a dynamic equilibrium, life allows concentrations of the mixture of the materials in an organism to remain constant even though individual molecules are constantly shifting back and forth, increasing or decreasing in a short time scale," he says."Remember that an organism at equilibrium is dead. A common classroom comparison is often made with a river and the steady state condition of organisms--the river maintains the same level and shape even though water is constantly flowing through it. Rivers rise and change course, drop to low levels depending on the available water, but at any one point it (and its concentration of materials) remains quite constant. In organisms the structure, proteins, nucleic acid, lipids stay relatively constant even though no one molecule remains in any pool for long."
The erratic and odd sides of the natural world remind us of how much we still have to learn about Mother Earth and the processes that govern her and her multitude of children. There are doubtless many more living relics of the primordial past awaiting exhumation. When they do come to light, they should be studied meticulously in order to ascertain how they survived such extremes of time, temperature and deprivation. The possibility of harmlessly subjecting human beings to suspended animation could solve problems of surviving extended space travel, awaiting the return of loved ones from the stars, outlasting terminal illnesses until cures are discovered, or simply staying alive long enough to meet one's great-great-great-grandchildren. Before we can even start on such grand aspirations, however, we must admit this potentially priceless process exists.
Top image: Frog brooch of amber and bronze on a rock, representative of living fossils.
A radar on Zhurong can penetrate the surface to a depth of 100 metres.
Credit: Xinhua/Shutterstock
China’s Zhurong rover has peered deep under the surface of Mars, finding evidence of two major floods that probably shaped the region the robot has been exploring since it landed in May 2021.
An analysis published in Nature today1 is the first result from Zhurong’s radar imager, which can probe up to 100 metres below the surface. “It is a very interesting paper, and I was particularly impressed by how deep they can see with this radar,” says Svein-Erik Hamran, a planetary scientist at the University of Oslo, who analysed the only previous data from ground-penetrating radar used on the planet, collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover.
The history of Zhurong’s landing site — on Utopia Planitia, vast plains in Mars’s northern hemisphere — has puzzled scientists. Some have theorized that water or ice was once a feature of the landscape. Observations from space have identified sedimentary deposits that suggest the region was once an ancient ocean or submerged by huge floods, and geological features, such as pitted cones, resemble structures formed by water or ice. In May, researchers analysed infrared images of the landing site taken by China’s Mars orbiter, Tianwen-1, and found hydrated minerals that could have formed when groundwater rose through the rock or ice melted.
But the region could have also been covered in lava, concealing some of these hydrological processes in the subsurface. Eruptions from the volcano Elysium Mons to the east of the landing site, or other volcanic activity, could have covered the region in magma, as has been observed in other parts of the Utopia basin. By studying the radar data, researchers hope to understand what happened, and whether water or ice could still be lurking below the rocks. “We want to know what is going on beneath the surface,” says study co-author Liu Yang, a planetary scientist at the National Space Science Center in Beijing.
Below the surface
Zhurong is China’s first rover on the red planet, and it has been exploring the southern part of Utopia Planitia. The rover’s ground-penetrating radar transmits high-frequency radio waves that can penetrate the surface to a depth of between 3 and 10 metres, and low-frequency waves that can reach up to 100 metres underground but offer poorer resolution. The study authors analysed low-frequency data taken between 25 May and 6 September over more than 1,100 metres of terrain as Zhurong travelled south of its landing site. Radar signals reflect off materials under the surface, revealing the size of their grains and their ability to hold an electric charge. Stronger signals typically indicate larger objects.
The radar did not find any evidence of liquid water down to 80 metres, but it did detect two horizontal layers with interesting patterns. In a layer between 10 and 30 metres deep, the team reports, the reflection signals strengthened with increasing depth. The researchers say this is probably due to larger boulders resting at the base of the layer, and smaller rocks settling on top. An older, thicker layer between 30 and 80 metres down showed a similar pattern.
The older layer is probably the result of rapid flooding that carried sediments to the region more than three billion years ago, when there was a lot of water activity on Mars, says co-author Chen Ling, a seismologist at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing.
The upper layer could have been created by another flood some 1.6 billion years ago, when there was lots of glacial activity. Chen says it is unlikely that the upper layer contains intact lava flows, because it has a smaller ability to hold an electric charge than would be expected for intact volcanic rocks. Furthermore, the researchers didn’t see any sudden changes in layering, which would be expected when lava flows meet sedimentary material.
The Jezero crater is a paleolake on Mars. Its outlet canyon, carved by overflow flooding, can be seen in the upper right side of the crater.
(Credit: NASA/Tim Goudge)
Volcanic or sedimentary?
But, Chen says, it is possible that a thin coat of lava once covered the upper layer and it has gradually been broken down into smaller pieces. Radar data alone cannot definitively reveal whether material is sedimentary or volcanic, says Xu Yi, a planetary scientist at Macau University of Science and Technology.
Radar data are good at indicating the layering and geometry of subsurface material, but not so good at pinpointing its composition, including whether the material is ice or rock, says Hamran. Often, researchers rely on other clues, such as rocks peering out from the surface, to build a picture of past events, he says. The authors say they can’t rule out the possibility that the region contains buried saline ice.
More radar results are expected from the mission, including data taken during Zhurong’s continued traverse of Mars, results from the high-frequency radar measurements already made, and Tianwen-1’s orbital radar observations, which penetrate deep into the planet. They could help to clarify details of the terrain. “This is only the first step,” say Ling.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03056-1
References
Li, C. et al.Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05147-5 (2022).
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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