Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
07-10-2022
NASA had Been Designing Lunar Bases for Decades Before Armstrong First Set Foot on the Moon
NASA had Been Designing Lunar Bases for Decades Before Armstrong First Set Foot on the Moon
It’s only natural to look at the Moon and wonder what it would be like to live there. Thanks to Buzz Aldrin who landed there in 1969, we know it’s a magnificent desolation. Even before the Apollo missions science fiction writers and scientists knew how desolate the place was. But, as far back as the late 19th Century, they also saw it as a natural outpost. So did NASA, the former Soviet Union, and their respective militaries. And, that led to people on both sides drawing up elaborate plans for Moon bases.
Illustration of NASA astronauts on the lunar South Pole. Mission ideas we see today have at least some heritage from the early days of the Space Age.
Credit: NASA
Likely these were for strategic uses, but there were also positive scientific reasons to build these outposts. A recent historical treatise published in Acta Aeronautica looked at some of those plans. The ideas behind them, particularly on the U.S. side, were pretty strong. Planners wanted to show the U.S. was absolutely capable of creating the technology to get to the Moon first.
The Military Gets Involved in Lunar Bases
After it was created in 1958, NASA set out to design lunar bases. There were already some interesting proposals floating around the space exploration sector from the U.S. Air Force and the Army. The Air Force’s idea was Project LUMAN in 1958. It comprised a three-part aim of getting military astronauts on the Moon by 1964. The first step was called Man In Space Soonest (MISS). The idea was to get people into space, preferably before the Soviets did. Once the U.S. accomplished that, the plan was to implement LUREC (Lunar Reconnaissance). That would send an orbiter to the Moon. Then, the Manned Lunar Landing and Return phase would start up and eventually put people on the Moon by the 1964 deadline.
Interestingly, Neil Armstrong figured prominently as part of the group of astronauts who would be involved. But, the program as described by the Air Force got canceled and came back to life as Project Mercury. As we all know, Armstrong eventually did fly to space and become the first person to set foot on the Moon.
Neil Armstrong on the Moon in 1969. Credit: NASA
Not to be left out of the Moon race, the U.S. Army came up with Project Horizon. It was a 1959 feasibility study for a lunar military base. German-U.S. rocket man Wernher von Braun was part of the short-lived project. He went on to be the first director at NASA, and the ideas in the Army study lived on in Project Apollo. That included the development of the Saturn V rocket that took The project led to the development of the Saturn I7 which evolved into the eventual Saturn V.
Bombing the Moon, Looking for Water, and Lunar Mining
Probably one of the more bizarre ideas (that thankfully didn’t materialize) was a secret plan from the Air Force to send a nuclear bomb to the Moon and set it off. The planners had what they suggested were good scientific grounding for such an experiment but, it literally didn’t fly.
Mission planners who weren’t planning to nuke the Moon did come up with good plans for long-term habitation. They designed living modules that would be buried under the lunar regolith. The underground cities would protect the lunar visitors from radiation, meteorite bombardment, and other surface hazards. In addition, the mission teams thought long and hard about utilizing natural resources to extract water, oxygen, and other materials for use by the inhabitants.
Much of that In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) is part of modern-day mission planning not just for future lunar bases. Mars mission infrastructure benefits from it, too. Many early ideas about lunar mining form part of what NASA hopes will be lunar bases within the decade and Mars habitats in the far future.
Still Looking to the Moon
The history of lunar base mission planning contains many more projects that never made it past the drawing boards in their original form. But, they weren’t totally discarded. They are a reflection of a period in history when the “best and brightest” in two countries faced challenges as they looked toward space.
Nearly 55 years have passed since Neil Armstrong first walked on the Moon. The mission plans he followed may have been born in the first half of the 20th Century, but they set the groundwork for the Apollo missions and beyond. And, the ideas in those plans still echo through to modern scenarios.
Today, we watch the Artemis program slowly make its way through huge challenges, and the Gateway project take shape. New generations of planners are involved: scientists, astronauts, engineers, and others create new and improved lunar settlement plans. And, they aren’t just U.S. plans. China has its eye set on eventual human settlements, for example. Underlying all those scenarios are some of the basic principles first set out by 20th Century planners and well-informed science fiction writers who brought the idea of lunar bases to the public. The dream of lunar bases is still alive.
NASA Shoots Moon From Space Station, 1st Ever! Oct 6, 2022, 12 min video, UFO Sighting News.
NASA Shoots Moon From Space Station, 1st Ever! Oct 6, 2022, 12 min video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Oct 6, 2022 Location of sighting: Space Station live cam
Caught this today. This unedited raw footage in the video below. NASA astronauts onboard the space station not only tracked the moon, but zoomed in more and more until it filled the screen of the live cam. Wow or wow! I love astronomy! I have Never seen NASA at Space Station live cam do this before...just wanted to share it with you all, added JFK speech because he was responsible for us going to the moon. 🚀 I also see some dark spots pass between the moon and the space station. Maybe they are UFOs, satellites or just alien creatures that have adapted to living in space. Not joking there, they do exist. I just wanted to share a something that NASA has never ever done before...and hopefully...you too will appreciate it as much as I did.
Actual 8-Second Footage Of UFO Landing At Holloman Air Force Base
Actual 8-Second Footage Of UFO Landing At Holloman Air Force Base
Due to the increasing number of reported sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by military aircrews, the US Senate Select Committee for Intelligence has renamed these phenomena as “unidentified aerospace-underwater phenomena.” This clarifies the scope of the agency’s investigations. For instance, the incident involving the Holloman Air Force Base occurred in May 1971.
Due to the nature of the incident, the government only released 8 seconds of the footage that it had captured during the incident to Robert Emenegger, a film maker. The base where the incident occurred is located in New Mexico. It is about six miles southwest of Alamogordo, and is known for being one of the US Air Force’s facilities in the state.
Robert Emenegger
In 1971, Emenegger and Allan Sandler were invited by the government to discuss the possibility of a UFO sighting at the Norton Air Force Base in California. The two were then tasked with creating a documentary about the incident.
No official explanation has been given as to why the government allowed the release of secret footage of the incident for the purpose of a documentary film. It’s believed that the Nixon administration wanted to show its scientific capabilities during the 1972 presidential election.
According to Emenegger, the Air Force officials who invited him to their base promised him that they would get the real footage of the incident. The footage showed the extraterrestrial visitors emerging from the craft that approached the base. Despite his skepticism, the Air Force still gave him the footage as authentic.
Paul Shartle, a military official, claimed in a 1988 television broadcast that he saw three disc-shaped objects in the 16mm film. One of them landed on the surface of the surface, while the others flew away.
Two of the objects landed on the surface of the ground, while the third one flew away. Although one of the objects appeared to be in trouble, it managed to land on multiple pods. It also had a sliding door that was extended, and three extraterrestrials emerged from the craft. They were reportedly human-sized, and they wore tight-fitting clothes that looked like they were wearing communication devices.
The government allowed Emenegger and his production team to access top-secret files at the Department of Defense. They were also able to take help from some of the military officials who were involved in the UFO phenomenon. Some of these include William Coleman, a colonel from Project Blue Book, and George Weinbrenner, the head of the Foreign Technology division at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
According to Emenegger, the aliens appeared to be human-sized and had vertical slits in their eyes. They also reportedly had thin and slitlike mouths. The Air Force was supposed to provide him with a film of the incident, but it was denied due to the “Watergate Scandal.” Despite this, Emenegger and Sandler were still asked to describe the incident as a hypothetical event.
Holloman High Speed Test Track
After months of research and production, Emenegger felt cheated when the government decided not to allow him to use real footage from the incident. In 1974, he released his documentary, which was nominated for a Golden Globe award. The film was praised for its innovative use of data provided by the Department of Defense. Emenegger was also forced to add an animated version of the alleged incident that happened at the Air Force’s Wright Patterson Base.
According to Emenegger, the alleged footage was not completely missing from the original film. He noted that some of the frames used during the reconstruction process were taken from the footage that was provided by the Air Force. The viewers were able to see a bright disc moving in the distance as it flew toward the Holloman region.
VIDEO:
Robert Emenegger on using actual footage from a UFO landing at Holloman AFB for his 1974 documentary
In 2017, Grant Cameron, a UFO researcher, held an interview with Emenegger in his hotel room during the Alien Cosmic Expo in Toronto. He discussed the film “The Incident” and its alleged footage of an alien landing at the Holloman Air Force Base.
During the interview, Emenegger revealed that he was able to provide a key story that proved that the government was not covering up the incident.
In 1973, Pentagon approached Emenegger and Alan Sandler, two film producers based in Los Angeles. They asked them to make a documentary about the alleged alien landing. Emenegger, who was a skeptic at that time, was asked what he thought about the incident. He then said that the Air Force had provided him with footage of the alleged alien ship landing. After Emenegger provided the security manager of the base with the footage, he was allowed to use it in his documentary.
After seeing the documentary, Cameron noted that there were eight seconds of the alleged footage from the air force base in the film. He then contacted Emenegger to discuss the matter.
Video:
Holloman Air Force Base UFO landing
Emenegger noted that the footage did not show anything. However, he was allowed to use the small portion to imply that the incident happened. The classified portion of the footage was then removed.
The film was then re-released in 1979 with additional footage and new information. Film director Jacques Vallée added several minutes of narration. He also talked about the ancient astronaut theory.
NASA's Perseverance Rover Investigates Geologically Rich Mars Terrain
NASA's Perseverance Rover Investigates Geologically Rich Mars Terrain
Perseverance Workspace at ‘Skinner Ridge’: NASA’s Perseverance rover puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Composed of multiple images, this mosaic shows layered sedimentary rocks in the face of a cliff in the delta, as well as one of the locations where the rover abraded a circular patch to analyze a rock’s composition.
The latest findings provide greater detail on a region of the Red Planet that has a watery past and is yielding promising samples for the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return campaign.
NASA’s Perseverance rover is well into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples from features within an area long considered by scientists to be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12.
“We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. “These first two science campaigns have yielded an amazing diversity of samples to bring back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.”
Two Perseverance Sampling Locations in Jezero’s Delta: NASA’s Perseverance rover collected rock samples for possible return to Earth in the future from two locations seen in this image of Mars’ Jezero Crater: “Wildcat Ridge” (lower left) and “Skinner Ridge” (upper right).
Twenty-eight miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater hosts a delta – an ancient fan-shaped feature that formed about 3.5 billion years ago at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is currently investigating the delta’s sedimentary rocks, formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery environment. During its first science campaign, the rover explored the crater’s floor, finding igneous rock, which forms deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the surface.
“The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks – formed from crystallization of magma – discovered on the crater floor,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, California. “This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater – and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.”
Sample Collection and Rock Analysis at ‘Wildcat Ridge’: Composed of multiple images from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, this mosaic shows a rocky outcrop called “Wildcat Ridge,” where the rover extracted two rock cores and abraded a circular patch to investigate the rock’s composition.
“Wildcat Ridge” is the name given to a rock about 3 feet (1 meter) wide that likely formed billions of years ago as mud and fine sand settled in an evaporating saltwater lake. On July 20, the rover abraded some of the surface of Wildcat Ridge so it could analyze the area with the instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC.
SHERLOC’s analysis indicates the samples feature a class of organic molecules that are spatially correlated with those of sulfate minerals. Sulfate minerals found in layers of sedimentary rock can yield significant information about the aqueous environments in which they formed.
Perseverance Explores the Jezero Crater Delta: NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover has arrived at an ancient delta in Jezero Crater, one of the best places on the Red Planet to search for potential signs of ancient life. The delta is an area where scientists surmise that a river once flowed billions of years ago into a lake and deposited sediments in a fan shape.
Organic molecules consist of a wide variety of compounds made primarily of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms. They can also contain other elements, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. While there are chemical processes that produce these molecules that don’t require life, some of these compounds are the chemical building blocks of life. The presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature – a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.
In 2013, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples, and Perseverance has detected organics in Jezero Crater before. But unlike that previous discovery, this latest detection was made in an area where, in the distant past, sediment and salts were deposited into a lake under conditions in which life could potentially have existed. In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the SHERLOC instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date.
“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Farley. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock – known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth – is important. However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it’s returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency’s Mars Sample Return campaign.”
The first step in the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign began when Perseverance cored its first rock sample in September 2021. Along with its rock-core samples, the rover has collected one atmospheric sample and two witness tubes, all of which are stored in the rover’s belly.
The geologic diversity of the samples already carried in the rover is so good that the rover team is looking into depositing select tubes near the base of the delta in about two months. After depositing the cache, the rover will continue its delta explorations.
“I’ve studied Martian habitability and geology for much of my career and know first-hand the incredible scientific value of returning a carefully collected set of Mars rocks to Earth,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “That we are weeks from deploying Perseverance’s fascinating samples and mere years from bringing them to Earth so scientists can study them in exquisite detail is truly phenomenal. We will learn so much.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
NASA's Perseverance Rover Investigates Geologically Rich Mars Terrain
NASA's Perseverance Rover Investigates Geologically Rich Mars Terrain
Perseverance Workspace at ‘Skinner Ridge’: NASA’s Perseverance rover puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Composed of multiple images, this mosaic shows layered sedimentary rocks in the face of a cliff in the delta, as well as one of the locations where the rover abraded a circular patch to analyze a rock’s composition.
The latest findings provide greater detail on a region of the Red Planet that has a watery past and is yielding promising samples for the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return campaign.
NASA’s Perseverance rover is well into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples from features within an area long considered by scientists to be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12.
“We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. “These first two science campaigns have yielded an amazing diversity of samples to bring back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.”
Two Perseverance Sampling Locations in Jezero’s Delta: NASA’s Perseverance rover collected rock samples for possible return to Earth in the future from two locations seen in this image of Mars’ Jezero Crater: “Wildcat Ridge” (lower left) and “Skinner Ridge” (upper right).
Twenty-eight miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater hosts a delta – an ancient fan-shaped feature that formed about 3.5 billion years ago at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is currently investigating the delta’s sedimentary rocks, formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery environment. During its first science campaign, the rover explored the crater’s floor, finding igneous rock, which forms deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the surface.
“The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks – formed from crystallization of magma – discovered on the crater floor,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, California. “This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater – and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.”
Sample Collection and Rock Analysis at ‘Wildcat Ridge’: Composed of multiple images from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, this mosaic shows a rocky outcrop called “Wildcat Ridge,” where the rover extracted two rock cores and abraded a circular patch to investigate the rock’s composition.
“Wildcat Ridge” is the name given to a rock about 3 feet (1 meter) wide that likely formed billions of years ago as mud and fine sand settled in an evaporating saltwater lake. On July 20, the rover abraded some of the surface of Wildcat Ridge so it could analyze the area with the instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC.
SHERLOC’s analysis indicates the samples feature a class of organic molecules that are spatially correlated with those of sulfate minerals. Sulfate minerals found in layers of sedimentary rock can yield significant information about the aqueous environments in which they formed.
Perseverance Explores the Jezero Crater Delta: NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover has arrived at an ancient delta in Jezero Crater, one of the best places on the Red Planet to search for potential signs of ancient life. The delta is an area where scientists surmise that a river once flowed billions of years ago into a lake and deposited sediments in a fan shape.
Organic molecules consist of a wide variety of compounds made primarily of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms. They can also contain other elements, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. While there are chemical processes that produce these molecules that don’t require life, some of these compounds are the chemical building blocks of life. The presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature – a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.
In 2013, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples, and Perseverance has detected organics in Jezero Crater before. But unlike that previous discovery, this latest detection was made in an area where, in the distant past, sediment and salts were deposited into a lake under conditions in which life could potentially have existed. In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the SHERLOC instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date.
“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Farley. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock – known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth – is important. However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it’s returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency’s Mars Sample Return campaign.”
The first step in the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign began when Perseverance cored its first rock sample in September 2021. Along with its rock-core samples, the rover has collected one atmospheric sample and two witness tubes, all of which are stored in the rover’s belly.
The geologic diversity of the samples already carried in the rover is so good that the rover team is looking into depositing select tubes near the base of the delta in about two months. After depositing the cache, the rover will continue its delta explorations.
“I’ve studied Martian habitability and geology for much of my career and know first-hand the incredible scientific value of returning a carefully collected set of Mars rocks to Earth,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “That we are weeks from deploying Perseverance’s fascinating samples and mere years from bringing them to Earth so scientists can study them in exquisite detail is truly phenomenal. We will learn so much.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
AlphaTensor was designed to perform matrix multiplications, but the same approach could be used to tackle other mathematical challenges.
Credit: DeepMind
Researchers at DeepMind in London have shown that artificial intelligence (AI) can find shortcuts in a fundamental type of mathematical calculation, by turning the problem into a game and then leveraging the machine-learning techniques that another of the company’s AIs used to beat human players in games such as Go and chess.
The AI discovered algorithms that break decades-old records for computational efficiency, and the team’s findings, published on 5 October in Nature1, could open up new paths to faster computing in some fields.
“It is very impressive,” says Martina Seidl, a computer scientist at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. “This work demonstrates the potential of using machine learning for solving hard mathematical problems.”
Algorithms chasing algorithms
Advances in machine learning have allowed researchers to develop AIs that generate language, predict the shapes of proteins2 or detect hackers. Increasingly, scientists are turning the technology back on itself, using machine learning to improve its own underlying algorithms.
The AI that DeepMind developed — called AlphaTensor — was designed to perform a type of calculation called matrix multiplication. This involves multiplying numbers arranged in grids — or matrices — that might represent sets of pixels in images, air conditions in a weather model or the internal workings of an artificial neural network. To multiply two matrices together, the mathematician must multiply individual numbers and add them in specific ways to produce a new matrix. In 1969, mathematician Volker Strassen found a way to multiply a pair of 2 × 2 matrices using only seven multiplications3, rather than eight, prompting other researchers to search for more such tricks.
DeepMind’s approach uses a form of machine learning called reinforcement learning, in which an AI ‘agent’ (often a neural network) learns to interact with its environment to achieve a multistep goal, such as winning a board game. If it does well, the agent is reinforced — its internal parameters are updated to make future success more likely.
AlphaTensor also incorporates a game-playing method called tree search, in which the AI explores the outcomes of branching possibilities while planning its next action. In choosing which paths to prioritize during tree search, it asks a neural network to predict the most promising actions at each step. While the agent is still learning, it uses the outcomes of its games as feedback to hone the neural network, which further improves the tree search, providing more successes to learn from.
Each game is a one-player puzzle that starts with a 3D tensor — a grid of numbers — filled in correctly. AlphaTensor aims to get all the numbers to zero in the fewest steps, selecting from a collection of allowable moves. Each move represents a calculation that, when inverted, combines entries from the first two matrices to create an entry in the output matrix. The game is difficult, because at each step the agent might need to select from trillions of moves. “Formulating the space of algorithmic discovery is very intricate,” co-author Hussein Fawzi, a computer scientist at DeepMind, said at a press briefing, but “even harder is, how can we navigate in this space”.
To give AlphaTensor a leg up during training, the researchers showed it some examples of successful games, so that it wouldn’t be starting from scratch. And because the order of actions doesn’t matter, when it found a successful series of moves, they also presented a reordering of those moves as an example for it to learn from.
Efficient calculations
The researchers tested the system on input matrices up to 5 × 5. In many cases, AlphaTensor rediscovered shortcuts that had been devised by Strassen and other mathematicians, but in others it broke new ground. When multiplying a 4 × 5 matrix by a 5 × 5 matrix, for example, the previous best algorithm required 80 individual multiplications. AlphaTensor uncovered an algorithm that needed only 76.
“It has got this amazing intuition by playing these games,” said Pushmeet Kohli, a computer scientist at DeepMind, during the press briefing. Fawzi tells Nature that “AlphaTensor embeds no human intuition about matrix multiplication”, so “the agent in some sense needs to build its own knowledge about the problem from scratch”.
The researchers tackled larger matrix multiplications by creating a meta-algorithm that first breaks problems down into smaller ones. When crossing an 11 × 12 and a 12 × 12 matrix, their method reduced the number of required multiplications from 1,022 to 990.
AlphaTensor can also optimize matrix multiplication for specific hardware. The team trained the agent on two different processors, reinforcing it not only when it took fewer actions but also when it reduced runtime. In many cases, the AI sped up matrix multiplications by several per cent compared with previous algorithms. And sometimes the fastest algorithms on one processor were not the fastest on the other.
The same general approach could have applications in other kinds of mathematical operation, the researchers say, such as decomposing complex waves or other mathematical objects into simpler ones. “This development would be very exciting if it can be used in practice,” says Virginia Vassilevska Williams, a computer scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “A boost in performance would improve a lot of applications.”
Grey Ballard, a computer scientist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, sees potential for future human–computer collaborations. “While we may be able to push the boundaries a little further with this computational approach,” he says, “I’m excited for theoretical researchers to start analysing the new algorithms they’ve found to find clues for where to search for the next breakthrough.”
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Here are the High-Resolution Images of Europa Captured by Juno During its Recent Flyby
Here are the High-Resolution Images of Europa Captured by Juno During its Recent Flyby
It’s been over twenty-two years since we’ve been able to see Jupiter’s enticing moon Europa close-up. But now the Juno spacecraft has made its closest pass of Europa, sending back some amazing pictures of the icy mini-world, which likely has an ocean that contains more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.
Observations from the spacecraft’s 45th orbit around Jupiter brought it close enough to give us some of the best views of Europa that we’ve ever had.
Another view of Europa from Juno’s JunoCam. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/processed by Kevin M. Gill.
The Galileo mission was the last spacecraft that flew past Europa during its 8-year mission, which started in 1995. Galileo flew past Europa at 350 km (218 miles) away in 2000.
Most of the images here were taken by JunoCam, the outstanding public outreach camera, and images here have been downloaded and processed by members of the public who have been actively processing Juno’s images since it reached Jupiter in 2016. The images here are by Kevin M. Gill, as well some below by with additional editing by Navaneeth Krishnan and AkaSci on Twitter.
Surface features of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa are revealed in an image obtained by Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) during the spacecraft’s Sept. 29, 2022, flyby. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
However, NASA says this image, above, is the highest-resolution photo that Juno has ever taken of a specific portion of Europa’s surface and it was taken by another camera, the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU), a star camera used to orient the spacecraft.
It obtained the black-and-white image during the spacecraft’s flyby of Europa on Sept. 29, 2022, at a distance of about 412 km (256 miles). It reveals a detailed view of a puzzling region of the moon’s heavily fractured icy outer crust.
The image covers about 150 kilometers (93 miles) by 200 km (125 miles) of Europa’s surface, revealing a region crisscrossed with a network of fine grooves and double ridges (pairs of long parallel lines indicating elevated features in the ice).
Near the upper right of the image, as well as just to the right and below center, are dark stains possibly linked to something from below erupting onto the surface, possibly a collapse in the ice shell.
The SRU has a resolution that ranges from 256 to 340 meters (840 to 1,115 feet) per pixel, and the image was captured as Juno raced past at about 24 km per second (15 miles per second) over a part of the surface that was in nighttime, dimly lit by “Jupiter shine” – sunlight reflecting off Jupiter’s cloud tops.
“This image is unlocking an incredible level of detail in a region not previously imaged at such resolution and under such revealing illumination conditions,” said Heidi Becker, the lead co-investigator for the SRU. “The team’s use of a star-tracker camera for science is a great example of Juno’s groundbreaking capabilities. These features are so intriguing. Understanding how they formed – and how they connect to Europa’s history – informs us about internal and external processes shaping the icy crust.”
The SRU was designed for low-light conditions, and the team said it has also proven itself a valuable science tool, discovering shallow lightning in Jupiter’s atmosphere, imaging Jupiter’s enigmatic ring system, and now providing a glimpse of some of Europa’s most fascinating geologic formations.
In addition to the images of Europa, all of the spacecraft’s science instruments were collecting data both during the Europa flyby and then again as Juno flew over Jupiter’s poles just 7 ½ hours later.
“Juno started out completely focused on Jupiter. The team is really excited that during our extended mission, we expanded our investigation to include three of the four Galilean satellites and Jupiter’s rings,” said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton. “With this flyby of Europa, Juno has now seen close-ups of two of the most interesting moons of Jupiter, and their ice shell crusts look very different from each other. In 2023, Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, will join the club.”
Citizen scientist Andrea Luck processed this global image of Jupiter's moon Europa, taken by NASA's Juno orbiter on September 29, 2022
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS/ANDREALUCK
The complex, ice-covered surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft during a flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. At closest approach, the spacecraft came within a distance of about 219 miles (352 kilometers). NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS
Citizen scientist Andrea Luck processed this global image of Jupiter's moon Europa, taken by NASA's Juno orbiter on September 29, 2022.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS/ANDREALUCK
Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed this global image of Jupiter's moon Europa, taken byNASA's Juno orbiter on September 29, 2022.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS/KEVIN M. GILL
Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed this global image of Jupiter's moon Europa, taken by NASA's Juno orbiter on September 29, 2022.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSSS/KEVIN M. GILL
Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed this global image of Jupiter's moon Europa, taken byNASA's Juno orbiter on September 29, 2022.
In this short episode, I breakdown a few documents likely related, describing UFO “material” years after the U.S. government / military’s investigation into UFOs known as Project Blue Book.
The documents show that within the walls of the CIA, despite the U.S. government’s public stance, officials and personnel continued to watch UFO developments. They even reference “material” and something “handcarried” to the office of one of the CIA scientists. What was it? A document? A post it note? Piece of wreckage?
Here’s a breakdown, along with what happened when The Black Vault tried to get both documents further declassified.
After 10 months flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration – successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space.
Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact at 7:14 p.m. EDT.
As a part of NASA’s overall planetary defense strategy, DART’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered.
“At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defense, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth.”
DART targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body 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.
The mission’s one-way trip confirmed NASA can successfully navigate a spacecraft to intentionally collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact.
The investigation team will now observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that DART’s impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos. Researchers expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1%, or roughly 10 minutes; precisely measuring how much the asteroid was deflected is one of the primary purposes of the full-scale test.
“Planetary Defense is a globally unifying effort that affects everyone living on Earth,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now we know we can aim a spacecraft with the precision needed to impact even a small body in space. Just a small change in its speed is all we need to make a significant difference in the path an asteroid travels.”
The spacecraft’s sole instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), together with a sophisticated guidance, navigation and control system that works in tandem with Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav) algorithms, enabled DART to identify and distinguish between the two asteroids, targeting the smaller body.
These systems guided the 1,260-pound (570-kilogram) box-shaped spacecraft through the final 56,000 miles (90,000 kilometers) of space into Dimorphos, intentionally crashing into it at roughly 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) per hour to slightly slow the asteroid’s orbital speed. DRACO’s final images, obtained by the spacecraft seconds before impact, revealed the surface of Dimorphos in close-up detail.
Fifteen days before impact, DART’s CubeSat companion Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), provided by the Italian Space Agency, deployed from the spacecraft to capture images of DART’s impact and of the asteroid’s resulting cloud of ejected matter. In tandem with the images returned by DRACO, LICIACube’s images are intended to provide a view of the collision’s effects to help researchers better characterize the effectiveness of kinetic impact in deflecting an asteroid. Because LICIACube doesn’t carry a large antenna, images will be downlinked to Earth one by one in the coming weeks.
“DART’s success provides a significant addition to the essential toolbox we must have to protect Earth from a devastating impact by an asteroid,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer. “This demonstrates we are no longer powerless to prevent this type of natural disaster. Coupled with enhanced capabilities to accelerate finding the remaining hazardous asteroid population by our next Planetary Defense mission, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, a DART successor could provide what we need to save the day.”
With the asteroid pair within 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) of Earth, a global team is using dozens of telescopes stationed around the world and in space to observe the asteroid system. Over the coming weeks, they will characterize the ejecta produced and precisely measure Dimorphos’ orbital change to determine how effectively DART deflected the asteroid. The results will help validate and improve scientific computer models critical to predicting the effectiveness of this technique as a reliable method for asteroid deflection.
“This first-of-its-kind mission required incredible preparation and precision, and the team exceeded expectations on all counts,” said APL Director Ralph Semmel. “Beyond the truly exciting success of the technology demonstration, capabilities based on DART could one day be used to change the course of an asteroid to protect our planet and preserve life on Earth as we know it.”
Roughly four years from now, the European Space Agency’s Hera project will conduct detailed surveys of both Dimorphos and Didymos, with a particular focus on the crater left by DART’s collision and a precise measurement of Dimorphos’ mass.
Johns Hopkins APL manages the DART mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office.
Dark Craft Over Mundelein, Illinois On Oct 5, 2022, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Dark Craft Over Mundelein, Illinois On Oct 5, 2022, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Oct 5, 2022
Location of sighting: Mundelein, Illinois, USA
Watch this great catch that was made while fishing in Mundelein, Illinois this week. The object was black, circular on two ends, but thin in the middle. It also kept its flat surface perfectly balanced to the ground. Dark UFOs are often seen near the water areas just as this one is seen. UFOs often travel below water as easily as in the air or space. Absolute proof that aliens exist in Illinois, USA.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
Noticed what looked like 2 thick vinyl records spinning in the air. At first we thought they were balloons but it remained level so I started recording. We are in a flight path and saw several planes before during and after the sighting. While recording the object continues spinning at a leveled rotation and not floating away like a balloon. The object passes a cloud and seems to glow.
UFO passes by boat at sunset Mundelein, Illinois 5-Oct-2022
UFO passes by boat at sunset Mundelein, Illinois 5-Oct-2022
This daytime glowing object was flying across the daytime sky over Mundelein, a village in Lake County, Illinois, United States and a northern suburb of Chicago. Filmed on 5th October 2022.
Witness report:
Noticed what looked like 2 thick vinyl records spinning in the air. At first we thought they were balloons but it remained level so I started recording. We are in a flight path and saw several planes before during and after the sighting. While recording, the object continues spinning at a leveled rotation and not floating away like a balloon. The object passes a cloud and seems to glow.
How Should the World’s Governments Respond if We Detect an Alien Civilization?
How Should the World’s Governments Respond if We Detect an Alien Civilization
Science fiction is the realm where people traditionally wrestle with the idea of contact with an ETI (Extraterrestrial Intelligence.) But now, those discussions are migrating from science fiction into more serious realms. Academics are going back and forth, one paper at a time, concerning the response and geopolitical fallout from potential contact with an ETI.
The discussion is interesting whether you think it’s likely or even remotely possible that humanity ever contacts an ETI. And it might tell us more about humanity than it does about an ETI.
A new paper titled “Geopolitical Implications of a Successful SETI Program” is the latest salvo in the back and forth among professional thinkers. The paper’s three authors are associated with institutions including NASA, the Penn State ETI Center, the Department of Philosophy at Spring Hill College, and Harvard Law School. The lead author is Jason T. Wright from Penn State University. The paper’s been accepted for publication by the journal Space Policy, and it’s currently available on the pre-press site arxiv.org.
This paper is a response to a previous article published in 2020 called “The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: A Realpolitik Consideration.” That paper was also published in the journal Space Policy, bringing a new emphasis to the discussion around potential contact with an ETI. The authors are Kenneth Wisian & John Traphagan. Wisian is from the Center for Space Research at the University of Texas, and Traphagan is from the Department of Religious Studies and Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations, also at the University of Texas. We’ll refer to their paper as WT 2020.
In WT 2020, the two authors pointed out that much of the thinking around ETIs is centred on the risks of Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and Messaging an Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI.) What if the ETI is technologically advanced and menacing? What if they’re like conquistadors or something? Stephen Hawking expressed this fear well in 2010 when he said, “Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they could reach.”
Stephen Hawking warned us against advertising our presence to aliens, whether with powerful lasers or other technology. He was a brilliant guy, so maybe we should listen to him. Credit: University of Cambridge
Those types of invading aliens make millions of dollars for Hollywood, but the authors of WT 2020 focused on a different risk, one which doesn’t garner as much attention. What’s that risk? “Specifically, the risk of merely detecting an alien signal from passive SETI activity is usually considered to be negligible,” they write.
What’s so risky about merely detecting a signal? Us and our realpolitik.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term realpolitik, history is full of examples. Merriam-Webster defines realpolitik as “Politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives.” In WT 2020, the authors use this definition of realpolitik from historian John Bew: “…the view of interstate relations where ‘the notion that the state could be regulated or controlled by law [is] flawed’ and that ‘power obey[s] only greater power.’”
Realpolitik is the down-and-dirty, nitty-gritty politics between political groups, usually nations. Realpolitik is separate from the oration political leaders use in elections and public-facing situations, where ideology and virtue-signalling run amok and leaders use political theatre to sway the populace and advance their causes. Realpolitik is about the mechanics of power in our world.
A great example of realpolitik comes from World War 2. The American President Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Churchill played nice with Stalin and Russia. They called Stalin an ally, shook his hand and smiled when they met with him. They needed Stalin to continue to fight and weaken Hitler, and the Americans even sent a steady stream of supplies to Russia to enable their war effort. All good on the surface, as this famous clip from the Yalta Conference shows. At the 2:35 mark, we can watch the three leaders make nice with each other.
But behind the scenes, realpolitik spun a different web. Churchill and Roosevelt needed Stalin to help win the war, and Stalin knew that. Stalin promised democratic elections for Poland after the war because he needed the allies to help him beat Germany. He backtracked on that as soon as the war ended, occupied Poland and other countries, and Russia and the West became open enemies. That’s all realpolitik, and Stalin practiced it well.
But that was long ago, and the world was at war. Why is it relevant to our more modern age and the potential contact with an ETI?
Because human nature hasn’t changed.
If we passively detect a signal from an ETI, it could be troubling for religious people. Their worldview could be severely threatened, and there may be some significant upheaval in religious countries or even religious extremist violence. But it would die down, the thinking goes, and people would return to their daily lives. It would be revolutionary for scientists, but most people would move on with their lives. That’s how the WT 2020 paper sums up the thinking. But how would nations and their political leaders react?
Photo of the central region of the Milky Way. Might we receive a signal from that direction one day? Credit: UCLA SETI Group/Yuri Beletsky, Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory
But whenever nations are vying with one another, there will be some measure of realpolitik. And when it comes to contact with an ETI, monopolizing that contact presents potential benefits for the nation that monopolizes it. “The history of international relations viewed through the lens of the realpolitik tradition of realist political thought suggests, however, that there is a measurable risk of conflict over the perceived benefit of monopoly access to ETI communication channels,” the authors write in WT 2020. “This possibility needs to be considered when analyzing the potential risks and benefits of contact with ETI.”
For Wisian and Traphagan, the danger lies in what we might do to ourselves.
Any ETI would likely have an enormous technological advantage over us, and as long as the ETI wasn’t malicious, that advantage presents an opportunity to nations. If a government monopolizes communications with the ETI, it could gain a technological edge. Imagine China, Russia, or the USA coveting that technological advantage. Or North Korea, Iran, etc. This is the realpolitik lens that the authors are examining. It could lead to conflict or other undesirable consequences.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) listens for radio signals from other civilizations. In this image, radio telescopes in SETI’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) are hard at work with the Milky Way in the background. Image: SETI
In WT 2020, the authors say that realpolitik considerations should be important in planning for successful passive SETI. They make several recommendations. They suggest that scientists working in SETI form supportive relationships with local law enforcement, strengthen the perimeters and security of their institutions, and strengthen personnel security for scientists and their families. The WT 2020 authors also suggest that observational facilities like radio telescopes adopt security measures similar to those of nuclear power plants.
But the new paper, which is a rebuttal to the WT 2020 paper and their realpolitik concerns, doesn’t see these security actions as helpful. They also disagree that it’s likely any nation could somehow monopolize communications with an ETI.
“The existence of hardened facilities and locked-down information flows could itself be interpreted by outsiders as evidence that some world-altering activity was occurring within that community or facility…”---
From “Geopolitical Implications of a Successful SETI Program,” Wright et. al. 2022.
“While we do not dispute that a realpolitik response is possible, we uncover concerns with W&T’s presentation of the realpolitik paradigm,” the authors write. They say there are flaws in the WT 2020 analysis and that “… sufficient reason is not given to justify treating this potential scenario as action-guiding over other candidate geopolitical responses.”
If a realpolitik response does come into play, it could be the most relevant response. The new paper’s authors agree with that much but show that “… it is highly unlikely that a nation could successfully monopolize communication with ETI.” The more realistic threat is that a nation thinks it could monopolize communications.
SETI’s Alien Telescope Array (ATA) listens day and night for a signal from space. Credit: SETI
The authors criticize other aspects of the WT 2020 realpolitik scenario, too. For example, if it’s a western democracy that detects a signal, could it monopolize it? Unlikely, according to the authors, since western science is well-integrated internationally. Our most powerful observatories have multiple nations and institutions as partners, so monopolization seems doubtful. The scientific community runs on openness, not informational protectionism.
The authors also criticize the sample contact scenario in WT 2020. WT 2020 contends that contact that seems trivial to an ETI could contain valuable technical information that could be useful to a monopolizing nation. This is unlikely. “That this could happen is not obvious at all. First of all, science is cumulative and nonlinear: for a new insight to be useful, we must first have the appropriate scientific context to understand it,” they write. Could medieval scholars make use of a textbook on nuclear weapons design? If they could understand it, could they act on it? Not likely, according to the authors, and the same is true of advanced technological information from a highly-advanced ETI.
Also, what specific technological advantage could be gained? We already have enough nuclear weapons to destroy civilization. We have bioweapons, too. Could an ETI unintentionally share information that could allow the monopolizer to build some sort of super-weapon? According to the authors, this is drifting into the realm of science fiction and leaving realpolitik behind.
For the authors, the best way to prevent state actors from even thinking they may gain a monopoly is through openness rather than stricter security and state policing measures. In fact, the measures urged in WT 2020 could precipitate precisely what they’re trying to avoid: a realpolitik nightmare.
This artist’s impression shows the view from the surface of one of the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. A powerful laser beacon using current and near-future technology could send a signal strong enough to be detected by any alien astronomers here. If we can build one, certainly an advanced civilization could. Maybe an ETI somewhere has already sent a signal and is on its way. Credit: NASA/ESA/HST
In their new paper, the authors explain this clearly: “Finally, it is important that implementing extensive security protections in the SETI and METI fields could itself cause the very problems W&T warns about. The existence of hardened facilities and locked-down information flows could itself be interpreted by outsiders as evidence that some world-altering activity was occurring within that community or facility, thus leading to exactly the kind of espionage and conflict that W&T are trying to avoid in the first place, even if nothing had actually been discovered.”
There’s some agreement between the papers about the risks inherent in contact. “W&T’s legitimate worry is that the mere perception of an information monopoly could be enough to generate dangerous conflict,” the authors of the new paper write. History shows us that antagonistic nations can be paranoid, engage in sabre-rattling, and even launch pre-emptive strikes if they think they’re in danger. With all the unknowns around potential contact with an ETI, the worry and fear would be more difficult for some societies to bear than others. There would be flashpoints.
Another point of agreement concerns the security of scientists working on contact with an ETI. “However, even if we have good reason to avoid extensive security protections of facilities per se, there remain other reasons to enact security measures meant to protect the SETI practitioners themselves, especially in the event of detection,” the authors write. These scientists could very well become targets of harassment and even assault. There are a lot of crazies out there, as the COVID pandemic showed us, and a rising tide of anti-science thinking.
Dr. Anthony Fauci faced a barrage of criticism, harassment, and threats during the COVID-19 pandemic as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President. How would ETI scientists be treated in the event of a confirmed signal from an ETI? Image Credit: Anthony Fauci. (2022, October 3). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci
In their conclusion, the authors say that “… a realpolitik response to a contact scenario is worth considering, but we maintain that it is just one of the various candidate post-contact responses that merit consideration.”
They suggest that there are much better alternatives and involve responses “… that might generate cohesion or greater collaboration at the level of international relations.”
They also say that the WT 2020 paper relies on the premise that political leaders will misperceive the potential for contact with an ETI to be manipulated by another state. While that fear isn’t unfounded, according to the authors, and it needs to be considered, the authors of this paper disagree with the recommendations given in WT 2020.
What do they suggest the world should do when we contact an ETI?
Instead of hardening security at SETI sites, the authors “… recommend transparency, data sharing, and education of policymakers.”
Guys, we all have heard about the late great Kenneth Arnold and his close up sighting of nine bat-like UFOs in 1947. I think I have found a similar craft using the sky map website World Wide Telescope. The UFO is similar in shape, but its size...thats the only thing in question. Its size can very from that of a asteroid to that of a moon. Its had to tell in the vastness of space its exact size. There is also a long orange line to the left of it on the map, which is another similar ship that is traveling at almost light speed and is on the same path as the one stopped. Clearly this ship is huge and could fit tens of thousands or maybe millions of people on board it. Many humans try to say such size ships are impossible, because thats how they see the world...as limited. But the universe to not conform to limited ideas.
Alien probe appears in front of Dimorphos moments before impact DART spacecraft?
Alien probe appears in front of Dimorphos moments before impact DART spacecraft?
Moments before NASA's DART spacecraft hit asteroid Dimorphos the live footage shows an unknown black object that appears in front of the asteroid making some strange movements.
The footage shows the object changing direction several times before disappearing.
Could it be space debris flying next to the asteroid Dimorphos or it may be an alien object under intelligent control monitoring the DART mission and the results of the impact?
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LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS
Three UFO "Orbs" Spotted Flying In Formation Over Burlington In Ontario, Canada.
This footage was captured on September 29, 2022 with the use of an Sionyx Arora night vision camera.
The Witness stated the following:
"It was in Burlington Ontario Canada. I live in an area of Burlington called aldershot. The objects came from the direction of the skyway bridge. If you check it out on Google maps you can see the area and the landmarks I'm describing. I took this video on September 29 at around 1015 pm. And the whole reason I bought a night vision camera is because just over a month before this video, I had a similar sighting coming from the same area. The 2 sighting were just over a month apart, and both right around the 1015pm mark."
Thanks to witwar101 for allowing me the use of this footage and to view the original:
UFO chased by Italian Fighter Jets vanishes into Water, Sept 2022
Video shared by astral32images on Twitter in October 2022. The video shows italian fishermen filming a UFO chased by fighter jets just before it vanishes into water. No further information about this video. Well made hoax or real UFO sighting ?
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Cigar shaped UFO seen over a Military Fuel Tanker in Canada, May 2021
Video shared on Instagram and filmed in Canada in May 2021.
Have Aliens Found Us? Scientists’ Discovery of a Mysterious Interstellar Visitor
A strange Cosmic object was flying past our planet and no one had the slightest clue 5 days later the interstellar object was on its way out of the solar system when Robert Warwick an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa spotted it. It was from the moment of its discovery a weird object, weird orbit, weird speed, and weird properties, the strange object was called Oumuamua, the first known Interstellar object to visit the solar system but here is the thing astronomers had only 11 days to observe the odd visitor. Have Aliens Found Us? Scientists’ Discovery of a Mysterious Interstellar Visitor
Ancient Alien City Discovered Under Antarctica is Made of Crystal
Crystal City of Aliens Discovered Under Antarctica is Home to Ancient Beings?
Breakthrough: NASA's Rover Makes a Stunning Discovery On Mars
Mars wasn't always a barren world ruled by raging dust storms. On the contrary, several pieces of evidence suggest that the Red Planet was warm, had lakes of liquid water, and was possibly habitable for a short period in its history. This dramatic transition of Mars is generally attributed to the loss of its magnetic field. A planet's magnetic field is a fundamental ingredient that decides its course of events. It's an entity that can cause the difference between life and death. So the loss of the magnetic field was a turning point in the history of Mars.
Studying the planet's past habitability has been one of the prime objectives of multiple missions to Mars, including the recently launched Perseverance rover. Perseverance has been exploring the Martian rocks since early 2021, and now, it has found strong signals of organic matter on Mars. So, how did Perseverance make this significant discovery? What does it tell us about the history of Mars? Finally, and most importantly, if life existed on Mars, what did it look like?
Kyiv Astronomers capture “UFOs everywhere” using meteor-tracking software
Kyiv Astronomers capture “UFOs everywhere” using meteor-tracking software
According to the astronomers at Kyiv’s Main Observatory, they have been able to spot many unknown objects in Ukraine’s daytime skies.
It’s believed that this incident happened decades before the development of UFOs. In 1942, soldiers from Russia and Germany were watching a dogfight near Leningrad during the Eastern Front war. Hundreds of them reportedly saw two silver disc-shaped objects.
The two objects, which were reportedly hovering above the dogfight, quietly observed the aircraft involved. They were most likely looking for something that was flying over them. The Germans had been keeping accurate combat reports during the war, and this incident is likely included in them.
Are the Old Tombs of Kaole, Tanzania, Really Able To Heal?
Are the Old Tombs of Kaole, Tanzania, Really Able To Heal?
Situated on the beautiful east coast of Africa, Tanzania is a fascinating country with a rich culture and no shortage of historic sites on its Indian Ocean coast. Kaole, an abandoned town and archaeological location, is one of the most significant of these sites due to the development of Islam and commerce in the region.
The History of Kaole, Tanzania
Kaole is located near the historic town of Bagamoyo and, based on archaeological research, we know the area was first settled by local tribes as early as the 8 th century, drawn to the region’s resources. Unfortunately, because it was made of wood, most of the first settlement no longer exists.
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The tribesmen traded extensively with seafarers, including Arabs and Persians. In fact, the eastern coast of Africa has been decisively influenced by Arab-Persian traders and merchants who brought Islam to the area, which in turn led to the development of the unique Swahili culture.
Still the predominant ethnic group in the region, the Zaramo people settled in Kaole around the 10 th century. During the Middle Ages, roughly 13 th century AD, the town of Kaole was occupied by both Arabs and a Swahili population. The town was diverse and had extensive trade connections both by land and sea; pottery and other artifacts which have come from as far afield as China have been found.
Old Arab Teahouse, Bagamoyo (Jones, A / CC BY 3.0 )
The town was ruled by local sheikhs who had immense political and religious authority. One of the best known was Sheikh Ali Muhamad al-Hatim al-Barawi, an important figure in the region who is still revered by local Muslims. At some point in time, however, Kaole was a dependency of the power city-state of Kilwa. The town was controlled by Muslims, often of Arab origin, who taxed the local population.
In the 18 th century settlers from Oman came to the area. They moved the markets to the small settlement of Bagamoyo, three miles north of Kaole, due to the fact that the harbor upon which the prosperity of the town rested had silted up and was no longer suitable for merchants’ vessels.
The Timeless Ruins at Kaole, Tanzania
There are significant archaeological remains at the site dating from the Middle Ages, including houses, wells, and walls. At the center of the old town stand two mosques. The first is from the period of the Sultanate of Kilwa and dates to the 13 th century, the oldest on mainland Tanzania. A paved pathway, which is one of the finest examples of Medieval paving in Africa, leads to the second mosque which dates from the 15 th century. Approximately 22 graves of foreigners who resided in the town during its heyday have been found.
Several Shirazi style tombs with distinctive pillars which are almost certainly the graves of local religious leaders grace the area. These tombs are thought to be of Persian inspired design and indicate the level of influence the culture had on the east coast of Africa. Many tombs found around the old town which have no inscriptions are those of children.
The Spiritual Significance of Kaole, Tanzania
This site retains a great deal of religious significance for communities in the area and pilgrims still visit the tombs of the religious leaders or sheiks. It is widely believed in this part of Tanzania that certain tombs have magical healing powers, so many people looking to be cured of evil spirits come to this site that overlooks the magnificent Indian Ocean. Another option is hammering iron nails into a sacred tree which is believed to transfer bad luck or illness into the wood.
Getting to Kaole
The Kaole ruins are five kilometers (three miles) southeast of the town of Bagamoyo from where you can hire a taxi. Accommodation near the archaeological site is plentiful.
Top image: Old mosque of Kaole. Source: Hinrichsen, L / CC BY 3.0
HARVARD ASTRONOMER SAYS HE'S BUILDING DEVICE TO CAPTURE "HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGE" OF UFO
HARVARD ASTRONOMER SAYS HE'S BUILDING DEVICE TO CAPTURE "HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGE" OF UFO
CAN HE PULL IT OFF?
GETTY
High Fidelity
Harvard professor Avi Loeb has long been outspoken about taking the search for extraterrestrial life more seriously. In an eyebrow-raising quest, he's often even exhorted his colleagues to take UFO research more seriously.
Now, Loeb says he hopes to collect a "high resolution image" of a UFO within the next couple years, according to a new interview with the Guardian.
"I really want the next generation to be free to discuss it, and for it to become part of the mainstream," Loeb told the paper. "My hope is that by getting a high resolution image of something unusual, or finding evidence for it, which is quite possible in the coming year or two, we will change it."
Saucer Watcher
Last year, Futurism talked to Loeb about his book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth,” which purported that an interstellar object that drifted through our solar system in 2017 may have been an alien probe rather than a boring space rock. At the time, Loeb said many of his colleagues held UFO research at arm's length and generally dismissed findings as natural events or the stuff of conspiracy theory.
"The scientific community can address a topic even if other people address it in a way that is not scientific and doesn’t make much sense," he said.
Loeb heads the Galileo Project, in which a team of more than 100 scientists are establishing a network of sophisticated telescopes to scan the skies for extraterrestrials. According to the Guardian, Loeb's first telescope will begin operation from the roof of the Harvard college observatory this summer, equipped with infrared cameras rolling 24/7, a radio sensor, an audio sensor and a magnetometer to detect non-visual objects.
"We’re taking a road not taken so there may be low hanging fruit, that nobody else picked because it was not taken," Loeb told the Guardian.
Loeb says capturing strong UFO evidence, including the high-res image he hopes to snap within the next two years, will attract younger scientists scared away by the older, more cynical crowd. If he manages to pull it off — a major if, to be clear — we may finally have to take UFO research more seriously.
REVEALED: The first images of DART's asteroid crash captured by the tiny LICIACube satellite show the incredible moment NASA's spacecraft smashed into Dimorphos and its bright, messy aftermath
REVEALED: The first images of DART's asteroid crash captured by the tiny LICIACube satellite show the incredible moment NASA's spacecraft smashed into Dimorphos and its bright, messy aftermath
The small LICIACube spacecraft captured the first images NASA's successful DART asteroid crash, including a before and after of the Didymos system and bright debris emanating from the incredible collision
NASA's DART spacecraft completed its mission to crash into an asteroid in the first planetary defense test on Monday at 7:14 pm ET
The mission aimed to nudge the asteroid from its orbit, but NASA won't know the results for two months
The space agency's technique could be used in the future to prevent an asteroid from colliding with Earth
fter NASA's DART spacecraft successfully completed its first planetary defense test last night, the tiny Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) spacecraft captured the moment in its messy glory.
The Italian space agency released a series of images this afternoon that show a before-and-after comparison of the Didymos asteroid system and a bright burst of debris surrounding Dimorphos.
LICIACube is tiny, contaiAns two optical cameras and weighs about 31 pounds. The small spacecraft hitched a ride with DART, which deployed the cubesat on Sept. 11, and is operated from a mission control center in Turin, Italy.
'We're really very proud,' Elisabetta Dotto, science team lead at Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), said during a news conference held in Italian on Tuesday.
After NASA 's DART spacecraft successfully completed its first planetary defense test last night, the tiny Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) spacecraft captured the moment in its messy glory
The Italian space agency released a series of images this afternoon that show a before-and-after comparison of the Didymos asteroid system and a bright burst of debris surrounding Dimorphos
The images will help researchers gain a better understanding of Dimorphos' structure and composition, Dotto explained, noting that there will be more images released in the coming days.
In the last image, Dimorphos is blanketed by bright and hazy debris.
'Dimorphos is completely covered really by this by this emission of dust and detritus produced by the impact,' Dotto said, according to Space.com.
On Monday, the LICIACube stayed at a safe distance as DART zoomed into its target, but then performed a perfectly timed drive-by past the impact site a few minutes later.
The small but mighty craft is now conducting Italy's first deep-space mission and will continue to beam images back to Earth.
NASA's DART mission slammed into Dimorphos, a smaller space rock circling a larger asteroid called Didymos, to see if it could throw off the orbit of a potential future asteroid that was threatening life on Earth. Scientists will be watching the Didymos system closely to see how much Dimorphos' orbit actually changed - those results won't come for at least another two months.
Confirmation of NASA's successful planetary defense test came seconds after the 7:14 ET (00:14 BST) 14,000 mph collision, sparking applause among the ground team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. 'Impact success!' NASA tweeted after the DART spacecraft collided with the 560 foot asteroid, around 6.7 million miles away from Earth.
'We're really very proud,' Elisabetta Dotto, science team lead at Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), said during a news conference held in Italian on Tuesday
LICIACube is tiny, contains two optical cameras and weighs about 31 pounds. The tiny spacecraft hitched a ride with DART, which deployed the cubesat on Sept. 11, and is operated from a mission control center in Turin, Italy
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.
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
NASA's DART successfully impacted the Dimorphos asteroid on Monday at 7:14pm ET. This is the first planetary defense test and it could be used to save Earth. Pictured is an image from the DART satellite just 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
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)
DART is the world’s first planetary defense 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 defense will inform future missions that could one day save Earth from a deadly asteroid impact.
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 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 defense,' 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
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.
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.
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.
'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.
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 460 feet in diameter.
More than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids have been cataloged but none currently pose a danger to our planet.
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
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
DEFLECTING AN ASTEROID WOULD REQUIRE 'MULTIPLE BUMPS', STUDY SAYS
Deflecting an asteroid such as Bennu, which has a small chance of hitting Earth in about a century and a half, could require multiple small impacts from some sort of massive human-made deflection device, according to experts.
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.
Bennu, which is about a third of a mile wide, has a slightly greater chance of hitting Earth than previously thought, NASA revealed earlier this month.
The space agency upgraded the risk of Bennu impacting Earth at some point over the next 300 years to one in 1,750.
Bennu also has a one-in-2,700 chance of hitting Earth on the afternoon of September 24, 2182, according to the NASA study.
Scientists have been seriously considering how to stop an asteroid from ever hitting Earth since the 1960s, but previous approaches have generally involved theories on how to blow the cosmic object into thousands of pieces.
The problem with this is these pieces could potentially zoom towards Earth and present almost as dangerous and humanity-threatening an issue as the original asteroid.
A more recent approach, called kinetic impact deflection (KID), involves firing something into space that more gently bumps the asteroid off course, away from Earth, while keeping it intact.
Recent KID efforts were outlined at the 84th annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society held in Chicago this month and led by Dr George Flynn, a physicist at State University of New York, Plattsburgh.
'You might have to use multiple impacts,' Dr Flynn said in conversation with The New York Times. 'It [Bennu] may barely miss, but barely missing is enough.'
Researchers have been working at NASA's Ames Vertical Gun Range, built in the 1960s during the Apollo era and based at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley, for the recent KID experiments.
They fired small, spherical aluminum projectiles at meteorites suspended by pieces of nylon string.
The team used 32 meteorites – which are fragments of asteroids that have fallen to Earth from space – that were mostly purchased from private dealers.
The tests have allowed them to work out at what point momentum from a human-made object fired towards an asteroid turns it into thousands of fragments, rather than knocking it off course as desired.
'If you break it into pieces, some of those pieces may still be on a collision course with Earth,' Dr Flynn said.
Carbonaceous chondrite (C-type) asteroids, such as Bennu, are the most common in the solar system.
They are darker than other asteroids due to the presence of carbon and are some of the most ancient objects in the solar system – dating back to its birth.
According to the findings from experiments at AVGR, the type of asteroid being targeted (and how much carbon it has in it) may dictate how much momentum would be directed at it from any human-made KID device.
From the experiments, the researchers found C-type meteorites could withstand only about one-sixth of the momentum that the other chondrites could withstand before shattering.
'[C-type] asteroids are much more difficult to deflect without disruption than ordinary chondrite asteroids,' the experts concluded.
'These results indicate multiple successive impacts may be required to deflect rather than disrupt asteroids, particularly carbonaceous asteroids.'
Therefore, around 160 years in the future – when Bennu is most likely to collide with Earth, according to NASA – a KID device would have to give it a series of gentle nudges to prevent it from breaking up and sending dangerous splinter fragments flying towards Earth.
NASA's recent study about Bennu, published in the journal Icarus, did point out there is more than a 99.9 per cent probability Bennu will not smash into Earth over the next three centuries.
'Although the chances of it hitting Earth are very low, Bennu remains one of the two most hazardous known asteroids in our solar system, along with another asteroid called 1950 DA,' NASA said in a statement.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.