Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
15-10-2022
BREAKING: Astronomers Just Discovered A Black Hole Unlike Any Other
BREAKING: Astronomers Just Discovered A Black Hole Unlike Any Other
Astronomers discovered a black hole concealed inside a huge star cluster, B023-G078, in the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighboring galaxy.
With a mass of one hundred thousand solar masses, this black hole is smaller than any other black hole yet larger than those developed when stars explode.This makes the black hole the only verified black hole with an intermediate-mass.
B023-G078 was regarded as a massive star cluster. However, experts contend that the nucleus is empty. The nucleus of stripped galaxies is the relics of smaller galaxies that collided with larger ones and had their surrounding stars stripped away by gravitational forces.
Senior author Anil Seth, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Utah and co-author of the study, said, “We have very good detections of the biggest, stellar-mass black holes up to 100 times the size of our sun, and supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies that are millions of times the size of our sun, but there aren’t any measurements of black between these. That’s a large gap. This discovery fills the gap.”
Lead author Renuka Pechetti of Liverpool John Moores University, who started the research while at the U, said, “Previously, we’ve found big black holes within massive, stripped nuclei that are much bigger than B023-G078. We knew that there must be smaller black holes in lower mass stripped nuclei, but there’s never been direct evidence. I think this is a pretty clear case that we have finally found one of these objects.”
Seth said, “I knew that the B023-G078 object was one of the most massive objects in Andromeda and thought it could be a candidate for a stripped nucleus. But we needed data to prove it. We’d been applying to various telescopes to get more observations for many years, and my proposals always failed. When we discovered a supermassive black hole within a stripped nucleus in 2014, the Gemini Observatory gave us the chance to explore the idea.”
The researchers acquired data from the Gemini Observatory and photos from the Hubble Space Telescope for their investigation. Using the data, they modeled the light profile of B023-G078 to determine its mass distribution.
Near the core of a globular cluster, the characteristic light profile has the same form as the outside areas. B023-G078 is different. The light in the center is spherical and becomes flattered as it moves outward. The chemical composition of the stars also varies, with the central stars containing more heavy elements than those towards the object's periphery.
Seth said, “Globular star clusters form at the same time. In contrast, these stripped nuclei can have repeated formation episodes, where gas falls into the centre of the galaxy and forms stars. And other star clusters can get dragged into the centre by the galaxy’s gravitational forces. It’s kind of the dumping ground for a bunch of different stuff. So, stars in stripped nuclei will be more complicated than globular clusters. And that’s what we saw in B023-G078.”
Using the object's mass distribution, the scientists projected the speed at which stars inside the cluster should be travelling at any given position. They then matched it to their own data. They discovered that the fastest-moving stars orbited the center.
When scientists constructed a model without a black hole, the central stars moved too slowly relative to their observations. When the black hole was introduced, the speeds matched the data. The black hole adds to the evidence that this item is a nucleus that has been stripped.
Pechetti said, “The stellar velocities we are getting gives us direct evidence that there’s some dark mass right at the centre. It’s tough for globular clusters to form big black holes. But if it’s in a stripped nucleus, then there must already be a black hole present, left as a remnant from the smaller galaxy that fell into, the bigger one.”
Seth said, “We know big galaxies generally form from the merging of smaller galaxies, but these stripped nuclei allow us to decipher the details of those past interactions.”
If we Detect This gas on Other Planets, it’s a Good Sign There’s Life There
If we Detect This gas on Other Planets, it’s a Good Sign There’s Life There
Here is an idea that likely never crossed the mind of most space enthusiasts – a gas emitted from broccoli (and other plants) is one of the most indicative signs of the existence of life on a planet. At least according to a new study from researchers at the University of California Riverside.
That gas, methyl bromide, has long been associated with life on Earth. It occurs naturally from the process of plants defending themselves. Methylation, as the defense process is known, allows plants to expel foreign contaminants, such as bromide, by attaching a series of carbon and hydrogen atoms to it, thereby gasifying it and allowing it to escape into the air.
Methyl bromide, in particular, is interesting from an astrobiological perspective. It was used as a pesticide until the early 2000s and has several important advantages over other potential biosignatures if it shows up in an exoplanet’s atmosphere.
First, it has a relatively short lifespan in a planet’s atmosphere. This is particularly important for exoplanet searches, as it means whatever process produces the gas is most likely still active. Its presence isn’t simply a result of a geological event that happened eons ago.
A second advantage is one that all astrobiologists love to see – there are very few non-biological processes that produce the gas, and even those processes aren’t typically natural. Despite now being considered a hazardous chemical, methyl bromide was produced in large quantities for use as a pesticide before being regulated due to its deleterious health effects.
A third advantage is the spectroscopic wavelength it shares with a “cousin” gas that is also a biosignature – methyl chloride, which also results from the methylation process. Their combined signature would make them much easier to detect from far away, and both are indicative of the existence of a biological process, though being able to distinguish between methyl chloride and methyl bromide, as methyl chloride has already been seen around some stars, which was likely caused by an inorganic process.
Not quite an advantage, but an interesting quirk about the ability to detect methyl bromide, is that it would be relatively difficult to detect in Earth’s atmosphere from far away. Its concentration levels are high enough, but the UV light from the Sun causes water molecules in the atmosphere to split into compounds that eliminate methyl bromide, so it does not exist for very long in Earth’s atmosphere.
UV light is only a problem for Sun-like stars, though. Around stars like M-dwarfs, which are ten times more common in the galaxy than sun-like stars, there would be less UV radiation that would potentially break up the methyl-bromide molecule. Since those M-dwarfs will be some of the first places astrobiologists look, they might be a chance to see a build-up of methyl bromide in their atmospheres.
Any such discovery might have to wait a little while, though. Even the JWST isn’t set up to detect trace elements in an exoplanet’s atmosphere. However, in the next few years, some ground-based telescopes will be up to the task. Hopeful astrobiologists will have to wait until after those come online before they can truly look for this highly interesting biosignature.
Huge DART Success, JWST Sees Weird Rings, Moon’s True Origin
Huge DART Success, JWST Sees Weird Rings, Moon’s True Origin
DART’s results are in and they exceed all expectations. The Moon might just be a big chunk of the Earth that formed in just hours. Webb sees bizarre rings around a star, and SLS gets a new launch date… at night.
As always, if you prefer a video version of space news to accompany your morning coffee or other activities, here’s the latest episode of Space Bites. Delicious space news nuggets.
DART Exceeds NASA’s Expectations
When NASA directed its DART mission to slam into Asteroid Dimorphos, it hoped to shorten its orbital period around Asteroid Didymos. Seventy-three seconds was the bare minimum; 10 minutes would have been excellent. But when they ran the numbers, it looked like DART shortened the asteroid’s orbital time by 32 minutes. Before the impact, Dimorphos took 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit; now, it’s 11 hours and 23 minutes. This provides a baseline that astronomers can use to calculate how difficult it’ll be to prevent a dangerous asteroid from hitting Earth.
Where did the Moon come from? The evidence is leaning towards the theory that a Mars-sized object crashed into the Earth billions of years ago, and the rubble collected together into the Moon. This goes partway to explaining the Moon, but there are a few outstanding mysteries, like how to explain the Moon’s orbit, which doesn’t orbit around the Earth’s equator. A new theory suggests that a single large asteroid strike blasted two huge chunks of the Earth into space. One crashed back down, but it gave a boost to the other chunk, leaving it in orbit to become the Moon.
Take a look at this picture of a star system taken by JWST. There appears to be some chromatic aberration or lens flare, but these concentric rings are really there. They are formed by a binary star system where their gravitational interaction causes one star to release a cloud of dust every eight years. The second star passes through the cloud and drags it along as it orbits. Then the combined light pressure from the two stars pushes the dust out into space, creating these concentric rings.
We’ve got a new launch date for the upcoming Artemis 1 mission: November 14th. If the rocket blasts off that day, it should be an incredible sight. That’s because it’s scheduled for 12:07 a.m. EST… a night launch! These are always spectacular, with the bright exhaust from the rocket illuminating the landscape. This launch date would allow the uncrewed Orion Capsule to spend 25.5 days in space and at the Moon, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 9th. There are backup windows on November 16th and 19th.
SpaceX has been testing the Super Heavy booster with more and more of its Raptor 2 engines firing simultaneously, but the rocket was always on its own. This week, SpaceX showed off a picture of Super Heavy with the Starship stacked on top, held in place by Mechazilla. Does this mean that Starship is about to make an attempt to fly to orbit? Elon Musk hinted that the rocket was likely to fly in mid-November, similar to the new schedule for SLS. I wonder who’ll launch first?
A few weeks ago, NASA announced its CAPSTONE CubeSat mission was tumbling uncontrollably. Fortunately, they maintained a communications link to the spacecraft, attempting to stop its tumble and get it back on track. This week we learned that the recovery efforts were successful, and CAPSTONE is no longer out of control. It’s good timing since it needs to make an orbital insertion maneuver in mid-November. From there, it’ll help chart out a rectilinear lunar halo orbit, the exact orbit the Lunar Gateway will take when it’s constructed at the Moon.
The weight of rockets is mainly made up of fuel. They also generate a lot of greenhouse gases as they blast into orbit. A new startup called Spinlaunch uses an electric catapult that spins up projectiles so fast that they’re thrown into space. At least, that’s the plan. Spinlaunch just completed the 10th test of a prototype launcher that can only hurl payloads on suborbital trajectories, but a future version will send them to orbit. NASA and other partners sent test instruments on the most recent launch to measure the extreme forces.
Scientists believe there are vast seas of liquid water under an icy shell on Europa; the perfect place to search for life. However, this water could be under dozens of kilometers and almost impossible to reach. It’s believed this water can seep upward through the ice forming subsurface lakes. The upcoming Europa Clipper mission is equipped with an ice-penetrating radar instrument that can peer through the ice and map out any subsurface lakes. It’s due for launch in 2026, arriving at Europa in 2030.
Coronographs will soon be in every major telescope. They can block the light from the star and reveal things around it, like exoplanets. There’s so much amazing science behind them. Like, did you know coronographs can be adaptive? We dive into all that with Dr Lucie Leboulleux.
How understanding the Sun can change our view of all the other stars in the Universe. What will current instruments and future mission will bring. And what are the mysteries that are waiting to be solved in this field.
If you want to get a curated selection of the most important space and astronomy news every week, subscribe to our Weekly Email Newsletter and get magazine-size ad-free news directly from Fraser Cain.
If you prefer the news to be videoed at you, check out our Space Bites playlist on our YouTube channel.
Guys Door Cam Catches UFO over Raytown, Missouri on 10-13-2022 -video- UFO Sighting News.
Guys Door Cam Catches UFO over Raytown, Missouri on 10-13-2022 -video- UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Oct 13, 2022
Location of sighting: Baytown, Missouri, USA
Hey check this out! A persons door cam captured some movement two nights ago and it shows a UFO passing over the neighborhood and moving behind the trees. Also...there is a mysterious figure seen in the video at the 2:18 mark. This person is walking oddly, frantically toward the direction the UFO went. So...I have to wonder, is this person tracking the UFO with more footage for us or was it an alien from the UFO itself?
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
Unknown aerial object caught on camera, slow moving and sometimes translucent and sometimes rejecting light.
6 Recent UFO Sightings that Prove Aliens are FAR Superior than Us
Twenty-five years ago, thousands of people reported seeing strange bright lights flying over Nevada, Arizona and part of Mexico, for more than 12 hours. This, later, came to be known as the Phoenix Lights, and those who witnessed the bizarre lights, described them as “otherworldly.” And some witnesses, whose stories were shared at the International UFO Congress, reported a sort of temporary amnesia, after seeing the lights.
In today’s video, we will explore some of the most bizarre UFO sightings, that will absolutely blow your mind. 6 Recent UFO Sightings that Prove Aliens are FAR Superior to Us #ufo#alien#aliens
Eyewitnesses talk about observing debris from the 1947 crashed alien craft in Roswell
Eyewitnesses talk about observing debris from the 1947 crashed alien craft in Roswell
The incident in Roswell, New Mexico, which happened in 1947, involved the recovery of rubber and metallic debris from a ranch. It sparked conspiracy theories about a flying saucer and the involvement of the US government. The debris was found by officers from the Roswell Army Air Field.
On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field released a press release stating that it had recovered a flying saucer. However, it was later revealed that the object was a weather balloon. In 1994, the US Air Force identified the object as a surveillance balloon that was part of a nuclear test project known as Project Mogul.
The incident was not widely discussed during the 1970s. In an interview with Stanton Friedman, Jesse Marcel, a former lieutenant colonel, said that he believed that the debris found in Roswell was extraterrestrial. Ufologists then started promoting various conspiracy theories about the incident. They claimed that the saucer was an alien spacecraft, and that the military had recovered the occupants.
Despite the various conspiracy theories about the incident, the story about the incident continues to be talked about in the media. It has been regarded as the most thoroughly debunked UFO claim ever made.
0:00 Jesse Marcel Sr.
1:07 Jesse Marcel Jr.
3:05 Bill Brazel Jr., son of W.W. “Mac” Brazel
9:09 Marian Strickland, neighbor of W.W. “Mac” Brazel
11:20 Loretta Proctor, neighbor of W.W. “Mac” Brazel
WASP-39 b is a hot Saturnlike exoplanet caught in an extremely close orbit to its host star.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and J. Olmsted (STScI)
The James Webb Space Telescope wowed the world with its first science images release on July 12, which included data on the chemical composition of an exoplanet’s atmosphere. But that was just a glimpse at what JWST has to offer.
Now JWST has taken its first peer-reviewed spectrum of an extrasolar planet atmosphere. This time, scientists looked at WASP-39 b, a Saturn-like world orbiting extremely close to its parent star, with each orbit only taking 4.1 days. The data, which has been accepted for publication in Nature and presented in a preprint on arXiv.org, revealed the clearest evidence ever collected for carbon dioxide (CO2) in an exoplanet’s atmosphere.
The bump of CO2 was not surprising, but was still an exciting confirmation of older, less detailed data taken of WASP-39 b.
Illustration:NASA, ESA, CSA, and L. Hustak (STScI); Science: The JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Team
Due to its prevalence in our own solar system, CO2 may not be the most groundbreaking of molecules to find. But it does have important implications for planetary formation theories and understanding the atmospheres of both giant and rocky exoplanets.
Why WASP-39 b?
These observations were taken as a part of JWST’s Early Science Release Program, which wraps up at the end of the observatory’s first five months of science observations. This meant that the scientists needed to select a target that would be visible during that time.
Not only that, since JWST would still be stretching its legs, researchers wanted a planet that would be big and easy for the telescope to scrutinize. And, of course, they wanted a world with a little mystery as well.
Size? Check.
WASP-39 b is just about the same mass as Saturn and about 1.3 times Jupiter’s diameter.
Difficulty? Check.
WASP-39 is a Sun-like star just 700 light-years distant. And this exoplanet orbits extremely close to its host star, about one-eighth the Sun-Mercury distance, completing one orbit roughly every 4 Earth-days.
Mystery? Check
Previous observations from the Spitzer telescope indicated that CO2 could be present in the atmosphere of WASP-39 b, but the data could have just as easily been evidence of another molecule.
Unprecedented detail
The previous Spitzer observations may have hinted at the presence of a relatively heavy element, which mostly closely resembled CO2, but coauthor and University of Chicago professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Jacob Bean, wouldn’t have been surprised if those results were wrong.
“It was quite surprising that the Spitzer points held up as well as they did,” Bean told Astronomy. “I would have just been like, 'Of course they're not right.’" He adds they easily could have been statistically off from what JWST detected.
The Spitzer observations (grey circles and “IRAC1” and “IRAC2” sensitivity curves) of CO2 has been matched with the one taken by JWST (in color).
Ahrer, E.-M. et al.
To Bean, JWST instead has validated some of those older Spitzer measurements. “The previous data are holding up really well, and now we're just extending that with James Webb.”
In the spectrum of WASP-39 b, JWST was able to measure the subtle differences in individual colors across the 3- to 5.5-micron range, something no other observatory has done before. And JWST isn’t even done with this exoplanet yet. Three more observations are planned, which, when combined, will essentially give the full chemical inventory of WASP-39 b.
Scientists will then be able to use that information as a kind of fossil record, helping them piece together the formation history of the planet.
The great migration
Prior to the discovery of exoplanets, researchers believed that the gas giants in our solar system formed entirely in their respective orbits. But when observations showed that many giant exoplanets were winding up in wildly different orbits, such as extremely close to their host stars, that theory had to be modified. Now, most researchers think that Jupiter and Saturn migrated throughout the solar system during their formation, sweeping in closer to the Sun before backtracking closer to their original birth places.
The movements of the giant planets in our solar system as explained by the Grand Tack theory.
Astronomy:Roen Kelly
This migration left fingerprints all over the planets' atmospheres, as the two worlds picked up heavy-element-laden planetesimals — small, solid bodies present in the protoplanetary disks around young stars — that are only located closer to the Sun. Some of these bodies dissolved into the atmosphere of our gas giants, enriching them with heavy elements.
If WASP-39 b has a similar composition as Saturn, then that would suggest it also experienced such a migration before settling in its current orbit. “[Previously,] we haven’t had a lot of success because our instruments have not had the sensitivity, the wavelength coverage, the accuracy to really tell us this information,” says Bean. “And so, we’ve been kind of stumbling around in the dark about this.”
But JWST is finally ripping open the metaphorical blinds. While more data still needs to be analyzed, the new data seems to point to WASP-39 b being comparable to Saturn, according to Bean.
Migration isn’t the only explanation for how WASP-39 b’s atmosphere may have been seeded with a heavy element like CO2, however. It’s possible that, while it was still young, the world was assailed by comets and asteroids — an upbringing that is also comparable to Saturn.
More to come
Besides having implications for WASP-39 b’s origins, the JWST teases yet another mystery, too — another type of molecule whose presence can’t be as easily explained as the CO2.
Knowing the temperature, pressure, and elemental abundances of a planet’s atmosphere, scientists can usually compute a good estimate of the world's expected chemistry. But the unidentified spectral feature is beyond what the model suggested, indicating that some other atmospheric phenomena is creating the mystery molecule.
“It’s a subtle spectral feature,” says Bean, which is why the team is taking its time to analyze all the data before they share their findings. But ultimately, “we wouldn’t have put it in the paper if we didn’t have a lot of confidence in it.”
JWST isn’t only focused on the mysteries of WASP-39 b, either. Or even just giant planets, for that matter.
Now that JWST has proven its capability, researchers will be using the observatory to peer at more Earth-like worlds. Although the level of detail attainable for a rocky planet will be significantly less than that for a giant planet, the confidence built by observing planets like WASP-39 b will influence how much trust is given to the telescope and its instruments when looking at rocky worlds.
“I think most people, given a choice [between WASP-39 b and Trappist-1 c] they'd probably pick Trappist-1 c,” says Bean, referencing a rocky, Venus-like world located some 40 light-years away. But “It’s all tied together for me," he says. "We have to understand [WASP-39 b] at the same time we have to understand [Trappist-1 c], because the unifying factor is planets with atmospheres, our observational techniques, and how we go about interpreting that.”
Fascinerende close-upfoto van mier gaat over de tongen: “Om nachtmerries van te krijgen”
Fascinerende close-upfoto van mier gaat over de tongen: “Om nachtmerries van te krijgen”
Een fascinerend, intrigerend en tegelijkertijd doodeng close-upbeeld van een mier gaat over de tongen op het internet. De foto werd genomen door ene Dr. Eugenijus Kavaliauskas uit Tauragė, Litouwen. Hij maakte het kiekje voor de Nikon Small World 2022-fotowedstrijd, die fotografen en wetenschappers van over heel de wereld uitnodigt om beelden in te sturen van alle coole dingen die zichtbaar zijn onder een microscoop. De Litouwer besloot een mier van naderbij te bestuderen en vast te leggen. Bedankt voor de nachtmerries, dokter.
De reacties op Reddit onder de opmerkelijke close-upfoto liegen er niet om: “Het lijkt wel een draak”, “Om nachtmerries van te krijgen”, “Ren voor je leven”, klinkt het. Sommigen zien er een ork van ‘Lord of The Rings’ in, anderen roepen prompt ‘Dracarys!’ - het handige commando dat de Targaryens van ‘Game of Thrones’ gebruiken als ze willen dat hun draken vuur spuwen.
Deze mier lijkt dan ook een echte draak zo fel ingezoomd. Een monster met een glimmende doch craquelerende zwarte huid, en met felle oranjerode, vlammende ogen, grote briesende neusgaten en demonisch oplichtende stekels.
Ogen
Gelukkig is de foto enigszins misleidend. Want die vlammende ogen zijn helemaal geen ogen en het geheel is geen mierensmoel. Toch niet volledig. Het zijn wij die een gezicht zien ín een mierengezicht, waarbij de oranjerode ‘ogen’ eigenlijk onderdeel zijn van de antennes die op de kop van de mier zitten. De echte ogen van de mier zijn niet in beeld.
Vergelijk de foto maar eens met deze andere - het moet gezegd; nog steeds angstaanjagende - beelden van mieren, deze keer genomen door de Amerikaanse fotograaf Josh Coogler. Daar zijn de echte ogen van de mieren steeds wel in beeld. Ze blijven zelfs zo dus wel écht draakachtige tronies hebben, die kleine zwarte kruipertjes.
Verschillen
Voor Coogler is een doodgewone mier die hij ergens ziet telkens weer een nieuwe kans om in de wondere wereld van macrofotografie te duiken en iedereen te tonen hoeveel complexer deze wezens zijn dan ze lijken, zo legde hij onlangs uit bij ‘My Modern Met’, nadat zijn foto’s viraal waren gegaan.
Terwijl hij zich oorspronkelijk op de diertjes begon te focussen, louter en alleen omdat ze zo makkelijk te vinden zijn, is het hun rijke visuele variatie die hem maar blijft teruggrijpen naar hen. “Wat mij het meest heeft verrast, is hoe verschillend ze zijn van elkaar”, aldus Coogler. “Hoe een werker - meer behendig en lenig qua uitzicht - er anders uitziet dan een soldaat - met hun grote, sterke hoofden. En hoe een rode vuurmier er weer anders uitziet dan een houtmier. Ze zijn allemaal uniek en ze hebben veel meer te bieden dan de meeste mensen zouden denken. Het is leuk om ze te kunnen fotograferen en ze op deze manier te tonen aan iedereen.”
De foto van de Litouwse Dr. Eugenijus Kavaliauskas was één van de meer dan 1.300 inzendingen uit 72 landen die binnenkwamen voor de 48ste editie van Nikon Small World 2022. Hoewel er meer lijkt te worden gesproken over de foto van de mier, is het beeld niet de ultieme winnaar van de fotowedstrijd. Dat werd een mooie microscopische foto van een pootje van een Madagaskardaggekko.
Mieren zijn zeer belangrijke ecologische spelers. De nuttige diertjes ruimen massaal afval en andere insecten op. Ze zijn vooral bekend om hun spectaculaire kracht: de kleine krachtpatsers kunnen tot wel vijftig keer hun eigen lichaamsgewicht optillen. Helemaal niet zo gek dat ze er van dichtbij bekeken uitzien als een echte badass, toch?
Eerie footage captured by European Space Agency's Mars Express probe shows the Martian moon Deimos eclipsing Jupiter.
The new clip, captured by the European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite, comprises 80 individual images that were stitched together.
In the foreground is the irregular-shaped Martian moon Deimos, with its rocky and cratered surface.
In the background is Jupiter and its four largest moons, known as the 'Galilean moons' – Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto.
Jupiter is the large bright white circle near the centre, while its moons appear as small white specks of light.
A second, shorter clip, meanwhile, shows Phobos, the other Martian moon, blocking its sibling Deimos.
Mars Express probe shows Martian moon Deimos eclipsing Jupiter
The Martian moon Deimos (left) notable for its rocky and cratered surface, can be seen here about to pass Jupiter, which appears as a large white spot. Jupiter's moons appear as mere specks of light
THE GALILEAN MOONS
The Galilean moons are the four largest moons of Jupiter:
- Ganymede (3,273 miles in diameter)
- Callisto(2,995 miles in diameter)
- Io (2,263 miles in diameter)
- Europa(1,939 miles in diameter)
Mars Express is still going strong nearly 20 years after its launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in June 2003.
'The new images demonstrate that Mars Express continues to shine a light on Mars, the immediate surroundings of the Red Planet, and beyond,' said the European Space Agency (ESA).
The first clip is made up of a series of 80 images taken on February 14, 2022. It first shows Deimos passing in front of Europa, the smallest of the four Galilean moons, known for its icy surface and thin oxygen atmosphere.
The largest moon in the Solar System, Ganymede, is then obscured from view, as is Jupiter, Io and then lastly Callisto.
In the clip, Deimos appears to move up and down in the animation due to the small swaying movements of Mars Express while it rotates to place its camera into position.
Deimos is the smaller and outermost of the two natural satellites of Mars, the other being Phobos.
Here, the Martian moon obscures Callisto. Jupiter and the other three Galilean moons are visible to the left
Artist's impression of the the European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite, which launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in June 2003
The two Martian moons experience strong tidal forces from the planet, causing their orbits to fluctuate constantly.
Phobos orbits extremely close to Mars at an average of 3,700 miles and is moving towards the planet, while Deimos is 12,470 miles away on average and moves away from it.
ESA's second new clip, meanwhile, comprises 19 images captured on March 30, 2022 by Mars Express.
In this second video, Deimos is blocked by its larger sibling, Phobos, which measures about 14 miles along its longest axis. Deimos is a dwarf in comparison – only 3.7 miles.
Enhanced colour image of Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons. It measures 14 miles along its longest axis
At only 3.7 miles in diameter, Deimos (pictured in this enhanced colour image) is a dwarf in comparison to its Martian sibling
At the time the images were taken, Phobos was 7,618 miles away from the camera, while Deimos was 17,340 miles away.
'From this perspective it is difficult to see the size difference between the Martian moons,' ESA said.
Much is still unknown about the formation and composition of Mars' two moons, although the upcoming MMX mission, led by the Japanese space agency, aims to remedy this.
Set to launch next year, the mission will orbit Phobos and Deimos before landing on Phobos and collecting a sample from the larger moon to return to Earth.
WHAT IS THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY'S MARS EXPRESS SATELLITE?
Mars Express, so called because of the rapid and streamlined development time, represents the European Space Agency's (ESA's) first visit to another planet in the solar system.
The spacecraft, launched in 2003, borrowed technology from ESA's Rosetta mission and the Mars 96 mission.
Since beginning science operations in 2004, the durable orbiter has given scientists an entirely new view of Earth's intriguing neighbour.
It is now helping to answer fundamental questions about the geology, atmosphere, surface environment, history of water and potential for life on Mars.
Mars Express, so called because of the rapid and streamlined development time, represents the European Space Agency's (ESA's) first visit to another planet in the solar system
(artist's impression)
The spacecraft’s high-resolution camera has sent back thousands of dramatic 3D views of the Martian surface.
One instrument has discovered hydrated minerals that form only in the presence of liquid water, providing confirmation that Mars was once much wetter than it is today.
The first radar sounder ever to orbit another planet has detected subsurface layers of water ice.
Another instrument has detected enough water ice in the polar caps to create a global ocean 36 ft (11m) deep, and revealed vast plains of permafrost around the South Pole.
Mars Express found the highest clouds ever seen above any planetary surface at 62 miles (100km).
The mission found indications of the possible presence of methane, which on Earth is attributed to active volcanism and biochemical processes.
Its highly elliptical orbit has enabled the spacecraft to look beyond Mars, in order to survey its two tiny moons, particularly the innermost satellite Phobos, which has been studied in unprecedented detail.
During its lifetime it has acted as a communication relay between Earth and various NASA spacecraft, including the Phoenix lander and several rovers on the surface.
Mars Express Watched Deimos Pass in Front of Jupiter and its Moons
Mars Express Watched Deimos Pass in Front of Jupiter and its Moons
That’s no moon … wait … yes, it is, and more!
ESA’s Mars Express has captured an unusual and rare occultation, all from its vantage point in orbit of Mars. The spacecraft’s orbit brought it to the right place where it could witness the moment Mars’ small moon Deimos passed in front of Jupiter and its four largest moons. Scientists say that celestial alignments like these enable a more precise determination of the Martian moons’ orbits.
If you’ve seen Jupiter and its moons through binoculars or a small telescope, you might be envious of Mars Express’ view, especially when Deimos passes through the field of view.
ESA said this sequence is made up of a series of 80 images taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera onboard Mars Express on February 14, 2022. In the foreground, the images show the irregular shaped Deimos, with its rocky and cratered surface, and in the background Jupiter and the four Galilean satellites are visible. Jupiter is the large bright white spot and the moons appear as small white specks of light.
The distance between Mars Express and Jupiter is about 745 million km (463 million miles). In order for distant Jupiter and the moons to show up in this video, the images have contrast enhanced. Otherwise, because of the difference in brightness compared to the nearby Deimos, the distant objects would not have been visible.
The workhorse Mars Express has been in orbit of the Red Planet since 2003 and Mars’ two moons, Deimos and Phobos, have been studied frequently by the spacecraft. Mars Express data has helped scientists understand more about the moons’ composition, especially Phobos’ mysterious grooved terrain, and learn more about the moons’ puzzling origin. This includes tracking their orbits.
Scientists say the moons experience strong tidal forces from Mars, causing their orbits to fluctuate constantly. Phobos orbits extremely close to Mars at just 6,000 km (3,700 miles), and is moving towards the planet, while Deimos moves away from it. It is difficult to measure their orbits from Earth due to the brightness of Mars in comparison to these small bodies.
About a month and half after imaging the alignment with Jupiter, Mars Express captured another occultation, when Deimos was blocked by its larger sibling, Phobos. The images were taken on March 30, 2022 when Phobos was 12 km away from the camera. From this perspective it is difficult to see the size difference between the martian moons, as Deimos is further from the camera at a distance of 28 km.
Deimos has a diameter of 12 km (7.5 miles) and Phobos has a diameter 22 km (14 miles).
Dark Ring UFO Over Seaford England, Shoots Away When Filmed, 9-24-2022, UFO Sighting News.
Dark Ring UFO Over Seaford England, Shoots Away When Filmed, 9-24-2022, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: 9-24-2022
Location of sighting: Seaford, England
Just when you thought it was safe to go to the beach, this happens. An eyewitness caught sight of a dark ring UFO moving low over the water so he began to record it. The UFO then begins to move away, as if it could sense that it was being recorded. It quickly moved up and into the clouds to hide within. Absolute proof that aliens exist over England. Ring UFOs are not new, but have been seen for thousands of years.
The Bible story of Ezekiel's wheel features a vision of four wheels that illustrates the spiritual, divine essence of God and His omnipresence in our reality. This story is predominately found in the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel, as part of his inaugural vision. God approaches Ezekiel as the divine warrior, riding in his battle chariot. The chariot is drawn by four living creatures, each having four faces (those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle) and four wings. Beside each "living creature" is a "wheel within a wheel", with "tall and awesome" rims full of eyes all around. God appoints Ezekiel as a prophet and as a "watchman" in Israel: "Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites."
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
I was at the beach looking out to the wind Array on a nice day at Seaford. I saw what I thought was tourists or workers in a helicopter going low in and out of the wind turbines which I though both dangerous and stupid. They saw the shape was odd not a helicopter more like a balloon, but it was moving oddly so I decided to film it on my phone in case it crashed. I could not hold my phone still enough, so I walked the wall to steady it and filmed it for just over a minute and eventually it went up high into the clouds. But I thought I would develop the film or zoom in and then I saw it is more like a disc moving side to side then further out to sea the wind array gives good perspective although it was a long way out. Other people at the beach saw me filming but did not seem that interested probably because they have bad eyes most people in Seaford are over 70. But there could well be more footage out there...
Amazing UFO filmed over United States Kansas City, MO yesterday!
Amazing UFO filmed over United States Kansas City, MO yesterday!
This really interesting UFO footage was filmed yesterday at 7:30 pm. The exact location is currently undisclosed.
Update: Location of the sighting is Kansas City, Missouri.
Witness report:
Saw this on security but wasn’t fast enough to see in person. I have absolutely no idea what it is but have never seen anything similar on cam. Ideas welcome. This is straight from the camera, saved and uploaded in its entirety. The camera naturally records in approx 2 minute blocks. I do live near a place B-2s fly but I never heard a sound and that would be flying extremely low per usual what I see and hear. I only see them 1-2 times a year though. They sometimes make a huge boom when they break the sound barrier.
After the DART spacecraft ploughed into the asteroid Dimorphos, the Hubble Space Telescope captured images of the ejected plume of dust and debris that streamed for thousands of kilometres behind the space rock.
Credit: NASA/European Space Agency/Space Telescope Science Institute/Hubble
Humans have for the first time proved that they can change the path of a massive rock hurtling through space. NASA has announced that the spacecraft it slammed into an asteroid on 26 September succeeded in altering the space rock’s orbit around another asteroid — with better-than-expected results.
Agency officials had estimated that the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft would ‘nudge’ the asteroid Dimorphos closer to its partner, Didymos, and cut the time it takes to orbit around that rock by 10–15 minutes. At a press conference on 11 October, researchers confirmed that DART in fact cut the orbital time by around 32 minutes.
Neither asteroid was a threat to Earth, but the agency tested the manoeuvre to prove that humanity could, in principle, deflect a worrisome space rock heading for the planet.
“This is a watershed moment for planetary defence, and a watershed moment for humanity,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson.
Tracking the aftermath
Determining whether the mission succeeded relied on more than a half dozen telescopes around the world. Ground-based optical telescopes can’t resolve Didymos and Dimorphos, which are millions of kilometres from Earth and only a few hundred metres across, so are seen as a single point in the night sky. But the telescopes can measure dips in brightness as Dimorphos cycles in front of and behind Didymos. Observers tracked these movements and compared them with pre-collision orbital times to quantify DART’s impact.
Independently, a pair of radar facilities — Goldstone Observatory in Fort Irwin, California, and Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia — turned their dishes towards the asteroid pair. Unlike optical telescopes, radar observations can discern the two asteroids as distinct objects, allowing astronomers to view their respective positions and estimate Dimorphos’s orbital period around Didymos.
Both sets of observations agreed that DART’s impact knocked Dimorphos tens of metres closer to its companion and cut its orbital period to around 11 hours and 23 minutes.
Although the 32-minute reduction is larger than expected, it still falls within the range of possibilities that scientists modelled. Researchers think the manouevre succeeded as well as it did because Dimorphos is more a loose collection of rocks than a solid chunk that would be harder to deflect. Another reason for the dramatic change in the orbital period is that when DART hit, a lot of debris shot out from the asteroid, creating a tail thousands of kilometres long; the recoil from it probably accentuated the potency of DART’s impact, researchers said at the press conference.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us in order to really understand what happened,” said Tom Statler, a DART programme scientist at NASA’s headquarters in Washington DC.
Saving Earth
Scientists will continue to observe the asteroid pair in the months to come, hoping to understand more about the shape of Dimorphos’s new orbit and whether DART’s impact introduced a ‘wobble’ to the asteroid. With the help of images from LICIACube — the Italian Space Agency’s probe that trailed DART and then flew by to capture the impact — scientists hope to learn more about the properties of the ejected debris.
But the mission’s final post-mortem won’t be complete for the better part of a decade. Launching in its wake, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission — currently slated for lift-off in October 2024 — should arrive at Dimorphos in late 2026, to observe the aftermath of DART’s impact.
For now, the results indicate that the US$330-million DART mission was a success. But defending Earth from future impacts requires a few things, researchers say: knowing the locations and properties of any dangerous space rocks, and having enough time to act. DART launched in November last year and took about ten months to hit its target.
If a threatening asteroid really were headed towards Earth, said Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist and the DART coordination lead at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, a mission would need to launch years in advance to deflect it safely. “Warning is really key here,” she said, adding that even space rocks larger than the 160-metre-wide Dimorphos might be dealt with, given enough planning and time.
Future Moon dwellings could end up looking a bit like our terrestrial camping sites: Lunar residents may carry an inflatable structure with them and blow it up when they get there. These have a major advantage as you can fit a massive living structure inside a much smaller rocket.
And now, some architects are taking this idea pretty seriously.
Humans could live in inflatable houses buried under the lunar soil and supported by food from inflatable greenhouses, according to a recent concept study funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and drawn up by Pneumocell, an Austria-based company specializing in inflatable architecture.
It isn’t Pneumocell’s first blow-up space idea. The company has previously designed an inflatable Mars habitat and a partially inflatable spacecraft. But they were just that — concepts. “It’s very difficult in a small country like Austria to get funding for such an idea,” says Thomas Herzig, an architect at Pneumocell.
Rather than halt their out-of-this-world idea, Herzig and his colleagues acquired an ESA grant last year. Even so, ambitious off-Earth habitat designs like theirs have a long way to go before they can see the light of the (lunar) day.
LUNAR LIVING WON’T BE EASY
Any off-Earth habitat has one key goal: to keep its crew alive outside of the atmosphere we evolved to survive in.
There are many formidable dangers that await us on the Moon. California’s earthquakes and wildfires have nothing on the micrometeoroids, constant radiation, and apocalyptic temperature swings (from 250 degrees Fahrenheit in the two-week-long day to 200 degrees below 0 in the two-week-long night) that plague the lunar surface.
But as they say in real estate, it’s all about location. The specific areas that people settle in could minimize some of these threats.
For example, humans could live underground, where the lunar regolith would protect them from the worst of the elements. Moon migrants could also land in polar regions, where we could tap water from the ground.
Rather than fortnight-long nights and days, the poles get more constant sunlight (convenient for solar power).
Pnuemocell looked into digs for both regions, pinpointing polar craters to plop its habitat on: Hinshelwood near the north pole and Shackleton near the south pole. The architects plan to build within the crater walls, carving out a network of tunnels to fill with inflatable modules and tubes.
Unfortunately, that setup comes with a major obstacle. This environment is air-free and has no running water to erode and blunt rocks, so pieces of lunar regolith could stick out like shards of glass. It’s a very real hazard for inflatable structures.
“That inflatable portion would have to be designed to where it would have some sort of barrier layer that is resistant to being penetrated by those sharp particles,” says James Nabity, an engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder who isn’t involved with Pneumocell.
To protect against such a fate, the designers envision a skin composed of two layers separated by a gap.
“The biggest threat is not the collapse of the structure,” says Herzig. While you may think falling debris is the main risk in a collapse, possible asphyxiation is most concerning.
Bedrooms would surround donut-shaped greenhouses, the largest rooms in the habitat. Tunnels would link these greenhouses and branch off into utilities and laboratories.
Mirrors positioned above the crater would reflect sunlight — always available thanks to the habitat’s strategic polar placement — down into soil and crops below.
THIS PLAN IS PRETTY MUCH UNPRECEDENTED.
“Having plants is a great idea,” Nabity says. Certainly, greenhouses can help feed a crew living more than 200,000 miles from Earth’s farms. But flora can do more than that: Designers have evidence to believe that it can boost crew members’ moods.
Those plants would grow in air that has been modified to prevent balloon-popping, with reduced air pressure and increased oxygen content. The greenhouse would also be humidified to lower the fire risk.
But this plan is pretty much unprecedented: “I’m not aware of any experiments with growing plants in that level of atmosphere,” says Nabity. While scientists have recently grown plants in samples of real lunar soil, they’re still far from nailing down the real thing.
It isn’t just the horticulture aspect that remains highly hypothetical. Pneumocell hasn’t yet decided which material will make up its inflatable structures.
One candidate is mylar, which spacecraft have used for decades to trap and reflect heat. Mylar balloons are pretty easy to come by (they’re a staple at children’s birthday parties), but nobody has ever tried to use it for a giant inflatable structure before.
A second option: thermoplastic polyurethane, a low-cost, flexible material that’s used in life rafts and phone cases — but so far hasn’t gone into space. It’s unclear whether it will remain elastic when it encounters the moon’s chilling temperatures.
All things considered, Pneumocell’s idea will need a good deal of prototyping and testing on the ground before it can blast off to space.
BLOWING UP IN SPACE
While Pneumocell’s concept might seem particularly zany, inflatable space habitats aren’t a new idea. As early as the 1960s, Goodyear (yes, the tire company) proposed a space station constructed from a giant air-filled rubber ring.
Decades later, in the late 1990s, NASA engineers plottedTransHab, an inflatable module that they imagined could one day house astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) or even on a spacecraft bound for Mars.
TransHab never left the drawing board, but it inspired the current generation of space architects. “A lot of people have picked it up in the last 10 years,” says Georgi Petrov, an architect at the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
One of TransHab’s imitators did in fact make it to the ISS. In 2016, astronauts tethered a little experimental module called BEAM to the station’s side and inflated it — all in orbit. Eventually, NASA hopes to use inflatable modules like BEAM to build out the planned Gateway station that might one day orbit the Moon.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the European Space Agency was interested, too. The agency partnered with SOM — the same architecture firm behind New York’s One World Trade Center, Hong Kong’s HKCEC, and several modern airport terminals — to envision such a village.
At the Venice Biennale art exhibition in 2021, SOM showed off its vision for cone-shaped lunar homes. Its homes would be inflatable, and they might even expand to house more crew members. Like Pneumocell, it would set up camp on the lunar south pole.
INFLATABLES AREN’T THE ONLY CREATIVE WAY TO GET AROUND A ROCKET’S CARGO SPACE LIMITATIONS.
In contrast to Pneumocell’s subterranean balloon-dwellers, these would touch down on the lunar surface. SOM’s homes may be far more vulnerable to radiation and micrometeoroids, but the firm says a protective shell for each structure could combat those problems.
In SOM’s design, each cone would house a crew of four. The concept takes advantage of the Moon’s relatively low gravity (about 17 percent of ours on Earth) by stacking its rooms — inhabitants would move between them via ladders. SOM imagines combining dozens of these habitats into a “lunar village.”
Inflatables aren’t the only creative way to get around a rocket’s cargo space limitations.
Rather than packing up prefab habitats, future Moon-folk might bring over 3D printers — and build their residences after they arrive by printing parts from lunar regolith.
To pursue this idea, NASA tapped construction startup AI SpaceFactory to design a 3D-printable lunar habitat. Its curved concept, called Lunar Infrastructure Asset (LINA), would rise in the form of a bulbous three-pointed star — its roof printed from a mixture of lunar soil and Earth-made synthetic polymers.
Nobody has taken a 3D printer to the Moon yet, so reshaping moondust remains up to future missions. But engineers on Earth can try their hand with artificial materials meant to mimic lunar regolith. They have already 3D-printed Moon-like bricks, along with gears and screws.
Last year, researchers in Germany printed parts from fake lunar regolith in a zero-gravity environment — suggesting that lunar folk might be able to print parts in lunar orbit.
OUR NEXT MOONSHOT
So far, no plans exist to launch any of these lunar habitats. “We’re an architecture and engineering firm,” says Petrov, who was involved with SOM’s lunar village project. “We don’t have the means to build spaceships.”
What’s more, humans might not even return to the Moon as soon as we had hoped. As of this writing, Artemis 1— the next uncrewed celestial stepping-stone to Earth’s celestial companion — currently sits delayed on the pad in Florida. Any lunar architecture plans will likely have to wait for the 2030s, if not later.
The team at Pneumocell is currently seeking out more funding so it can build a small-scale prototype on Earth. Only after this crucial step can it do the much more expensive work of sending it to space.
“I THINK IT’S IMPORTANT THAT YOU HAVE DERIVED PRODUCTS THAT HAVE A USE HERE ON EARTH AND NOT JUST FOR SPACE.”
In the meantime, the Pneumocell architects think their work can benefit our terrestrial habitats. Herzig points out that materials like thermoplastic polyurethane are easier to recycle than most building components. Worldwide, constructionand demolition gobble up more raw materials than any other industry. And in the United States, it contributes around 40 percent of all solid waste.
“I think it’s important that you have derived products that have a use here on Earth and not just for space,” he says.
Projects like Pneumocell’s mark a significant shift in our vision for extraterrestrial living: Around a decade ago, space architects didn’t know if they were drafting up homes for the Moon or Mars, according to Petrov.
“Long term, I think Mars is still a much more interesting and viable destination,” he says. “But we need to go to the Moon first.”
Hubble Spots Ultra-Speedy Jet Blasting From Star Crash
Hubble Spots Ultra-Speedy Jet Blasting From Star Crash
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have made a unique measurement that indicates a jet, plowing through space at speeds greater than 99.97% the speed of light, was propelled by the titanic collision between two neutron stars.
The explosive event, named GW170817, was observed in August 2017. The blast released the energy comparable to that of a supernova explosion. It was the first combined detection of gravitational waves and gamma radiation from a binary neutron star merger.
Two neutron stars, the surviving cores of massive stars that exploded, collided sending a ripple through the fabric of time and space in a phenomenon called gravitational waves. In the aftermath, a blowtorch jet of radiation was ejected at nearly the speed of light, slamming into material surrounding the obliterated pair. Astronomers used Hubble to measure the motion of a blob of material the jet slammed into. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Paul Morris
This was a major watershed in the ongoing investigation of these extraordinary collisions. The aftermath of this merger was collectively seen by 70 observatories around the globe and in space, across a broad swath of the electromagnetic spectrum in addition to the gravitational wave detection. This heralded a significant breakthrough for the emerging field of Time Domain and Multi-Messenger Astrophysics, the use of multiple "messengers" like light and gravitational waves to study the universe as it changes over time.
Scientists quickly aimed Hubble at the site of the explosion just two days later. The neutron stars collapsed into a black hole whose powerful gravity began pulling material toward it. That material formed a rapidly-spinning disk that generated jets moving outward from its poles. The roaring jet smashed into and swept up material in the expanding shell of explosion debris. This included a blob of material through which a jet emerged.
While the event took place in 2017, it has taken several years for scientists to come up with a way to analyze the Hubble data and data from other telescopes to paint this full picture.
The Hubble observation was combined with observations from multiple National Science Foundation radio telescopes working together for very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). The radio data were taken 75 days and 230 days after the explosion.
"I'm amazed that Hubble could give us such a precise measurement, which rivals the precision achieved by powerful radio VLBI telescopes spread across the globe," said Kunal P. Mooley of Caltech in Pasadena, California, lead author of a paper being published in the October 13 journal of Nature magazine.
The authors used Hubble data together with data from ESA's (the European Space Agency) Gaia satellite, in addition to VLBI, to achieve extreme precision. "It took months of careful analysis of the data to make this measurement," said Jay Anderson of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
This is an artist's impression of two neutron stars colliding. The smashup between two dense stellar remnants unleashes the energy of 1,000 standard stellar nova explosions. In the aftermath of the collision a blowtorch jet of radiation is ejected at nearly the speed of light. The jet is directed along a narrow beam confined by powerful magnetic fields. The roaring jet plowed into and swept up material in the surrounding interstellar medium.
Credits: Artwork: Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)
By combining the different observations, they were able to pinpoint the explosion site. The Hubble measurement showed the jet was moving at an apparent velocity of seven times the speed of light. The radio observations show the jet later had decelerated to an apparent speed of four times faster than the speed of light.
In reality, nothing can exceed the speed of light, so this "superluminal" motion is an illusion. Because the jet is approaching Earth at nearly the speed of light, the light it emits at a later time has a shorter distance to go. In essence the jet is chasing its own light. In actuality more time has passed between the jet's emission of the light than the observer thinks. This causes the object's velocity to be overestimated – in this case seemingly exceeding the speed of light.
"Our result indicates that the jet was moving at least at 99.97% the speed of light when it was launched," said Wenbin Lu of the University of California, Berkeley.
The Hubble measurements, combined with the VLBI measurements, announced in 2018, greatly strengthen the long-presumed connection between neutron star mergers and short-duration gamma-ray bursts. That connection requires a fast-moving jet to emerge, which has now been measured in GW170817.
At present there is a discrepancy between Hubble constant values as estimated for the early universe and nearby universe – one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics today. The differing values are based on extremely precise measurements of Type Ia supernovae by Hubble and other observatories, and Cosmic Microwave Background measurements by ESA's Planck satellite. More views of relativistic jets could add information for astronomers trying to solve the puzzle.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
Image. Mrs. Hannah McRoberts, Campbell River, BC, 1981
IN BRIEF
The Facts:
The People’s Republic of China announced last year that there has been an increase of mysterious and unexplained aircraft in Chinese airspace.
They, like several other countries have established official programs to study the phenomenon.
Evidence does suggest, however, that governments have been studying the phenomenon for decades.
Reflect On:
UFOs have been studied and observed for years. Why is the U.S. and other governments claiming that they will only now start to study it?
What should we make of the data that's been collected over the past several decades when it's not even being acknowledged?
Can we trust an "official" explanation about the phenomenon from such sources?
Some proponents of the theory that UFOs are secret military craft from foreign nations fail to realize that dozens of governments are dealing with the “UFO” issue, and have been for decades.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported in June 2021 that Chinese analysts “have been overwhelmed in recent years by rapidly mounting sighting reports from a wide range of military and civilian sources” by what the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are calling “unidentified air conditions.”
Once again, as we’ve been seeing the United States, the mainstream perspective of the phenomenon and the nature in which it’s being reported has taken the tone of ‘a problem.’
“The frequent occurrence of unidentified air conditions in recent years … brings severe challenges to air defence security of our country,”
Chen Li of the PLA’s Air Force Early Warning Academy, in a 2019 report cited by SCMP.
What if looking at the phenomenon through the lens of it being some sort of threat is in fact the problem? This is not to assume their nature and purpose, but it’s simply putting more focus on our reaction to the phenomenon, which is important. Are we the aggressors? Multiple cases and encounters suggest that may be the case.
Is the protocol to shoot first and ask questions after?
That being said, nobody can deny that there are air safety issue concerns here. But the vast majority of UFO encounters with human aircraft, be it civilian or military, perform evasive maneuvers to avoid our own aircraft. This is what’s been reported for decades, and that is made clear by going through the literature that describes military and civilian encounters with UFOs.
“At a time when cross- domain trans medium threats to United States national security are expanding exponentially, the Committee is disappointed with the slow pace of DoD-led efforts to establish the office to address those threats and to replace the former Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force as required in Section 1683 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022.”
Transmedium objects are those that are capable of flying at tremendous speeds both in the air and through the water. Many UFOs are observed doing this.
The United States Navy recently expressed that releasing their classified videos they have in their possession of UFOs would be a threat to national security.
This topic has been shrouded in secrecy since the 1940’s, should we expect much to change? If we look at other topics and/or actions that have been justified under the guise of ‘national security’, it doesn’t paint a really trustworthy picture. Mass surveillance is a great example. It was once considered a conspiracy theory until NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden provided proof of just how vast and global it really is, and what kind of intrusive surveillance technology is being used.
All of this was justified under the claim that it (mass surveillance) was necessary to protect citizens.
History is chock full of example where our ‘safety’ and ‘national security’ has been used as a mask to cover our eyes to very immoral and unethical actions that governments partake in. Whether it be arming and assisting the very same terrorist organizations they claim to be fighting themselves, or something else. Why do we imprison people, like Julian Assange, for exposing war crimes?
It’s not for national security. It’s to maintain a monopoly of power, wealth, and as NSA whistleblower William Binney said, “total population control.”
So, if we have governments and political systems that seem to incentivize immoral and unethical behaviour, one that thrives off of secrecy, perception manipulation and the retention of power, as well as a history of disseminating propaganda, then why should we expect anything different when it comes to the topic of UFOs?
A few UFO researchers have warned against the threat perspective. Renowned UFO researcher, scientist, mathematician, and astrophysicist Dr. Jacques Vallée made an appearance on the Joe Rogan show in late 2020 stating just that.
Thousands of contact stories, which are closely associated with UFOs, share stories that are benevolent in nature. That being said, there are some what appear to be malevolent stories as well.
The fact remains, the phenomenon has been documented for thousands of years throughout art, the introduction of the printing press and more. An “invasion” type of scenario doesn’t seem to probable given the fact that it probably would have happened by now.
This topic is so vast and leaves no aspect of humanity untouched. What we are likely to receive from governments is a watered down sanitized version of it, not a holistic, open and transparent revelation that shares all that is represented of this phenomenon and its nature. But that’s just my opinion.
Miniature human-brain-like structures transplanted into rats can send signals and respond to environmental cues picked up by the rats’ whiskers, according to a study1. This demonstration that neurons grown from human stem cells can interface with nerve cells in live rodents could lead to a way to test therapies for human brain disorders.
Scientists would like to use brain organoids — tiny brain-like structures grown from human stem cells — to study neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders that humans develop. But the organoids mimic human brains only so far. They don’t develop blood vessels and so can’t receive nutrients, meaning that they don’t thrive for long. And they don’t get the stimulation they need to grow fully: in a human infant’s brain, neurons’ growth and how they develop connections with other neurons are based in part on input from the senses.
To give brain organoids this stimulation and support, neuroscientist Sergiu Pasca at Stanford University in California and his colleagues grew the structures from human stem cells and then injected them into the brains of newborn rat pups, with the expectation that the human cells would grow along with the rats’ own cells. The team placed the organoids in a brain region called the somatosensory cortex, which receives signals from the rats’ whiskers and other sensory organs and then passes them along to other brain regions that interpret the signals.
Human brain cells mature much more slowly than rat cells, so the researchers had to wait for more than six months for the organoids to become fully integrated into the rat brains. But when they examined the animals’ brains at the end of that time, they saw that the integration had been so successful that it was almost like adding “another transistor to a circuit”, Pasca said at a 10 October press conference.
Paola Arlotta, a molecular biologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is excited about the results. “It’s an important step in allowing organoids to tell us more complex properties of the brain,” she says, although she thinks that the transplantation procedure is probably still too expensive and complex to become a standard research tool. The next step, Arlotta adds, will be to work out how individual human neurons — not just fully developed organoids — are integrated into the rat brain.
Behaviour trigger
In their report, published in Nature on 12 October1, the researchers describe how they genetically engineered the neurons in the organoids to fire when stimulated with light from a fibre-optic cable embedded in the rats’ brains. The team trained the rats to lick a spout to receive water while the light was switched on. Afterwards, when the researchers shone the light on the hybrid brains, the rats were prompted to lick the spout, meaning that the human cells had become integrated well enough to help drive the animals’ behaviour. Furthermore, when the researchers prodded the rats’ whiskers, they found that the human cells in the sensory cortex fired in response, suggesting that the cells were able to pick up sensory information.
To demonstrate the promise of their work for studying brain disorders, Pasca and his colleagues also created brain organoids from the stem cells of three people with a genetic condition called Timothy syndrome, which can cause symptoms similar to some seen in autism. The tiny structures looked the same as any other brain organoids grown in a dish, but when the researchers transplanted them into rats, they did not grow as large as others and their neurons didn’t fire in the same way.
Rusty Gage, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, is glad to see these results. In 2018, he and a team of researchers found that transplanted human brain organoids could be integrated into the brains of adult mice2. Mice don’t live as long as rats, and Pasca and his colleagues hoped that because newborn rat pups’ brains are more plastic than those of adult animals, they would be better able to receive the new cells.
“We’ve got challenges out there for us,” Gage says. “But I do believe the transplantation procedure will be a valuable tool.”
Some of the challenges are ethical. People are concerned that creating rodent–human hybrids could harm the animals, or create animals with human-like brains. Last year, a panel organized by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report concluding that human brain organoids are still too primitive to become conscious, attain human-like intelligence or acquire other abilities that might require legal regulation. Pasca says that his team’s organoid transplants didn’t cause problems such as seizures or memory deficits in the rats, and didn’t seem to change the animals’ behaviour significantly.
But Arlotta, a member of the National Academies panel, says that problems could arise as science advances. “We can’t just discuss it once and let it be,” she says. She adds that concerns about human organoids need to be weighed against the needs of people with neurological and psychiatric disorders. Brain organoids and human–animal hybrid brains could reveal the mechanisms underlying these illnesses, and allow researchers to test therapies for conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. “I think we have a responsibility as a society to do everything we can,” Arlotta says.
A color view of the Jovian moon Europa captured by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute)
Salty water lakes throughout the crust of Jupiter's icy moon Europa might burst from the surface as plumes of vapor or flows of slushy ice "lava", new research suggests.
NASA's Europa Clipper will explore the moon in the early 2030s and should be able to detect these subsurface lakes, if they indeed exist. Their presence would mean that the global ocean scientists think exists below the surface of the Jovian moon isn't the only liquid water lurking under Europa's icy shell. Scientists are keen to investigate Europa and its liquid water because this moon of Jupiter appears tantalizingly capable of hosting life.
The Europa Clipper spacecraft, set to launch in 2024, will fly past Europa around 50 times using sophisticated instruments to collect data about the moon. But before the mission gets underway, scientists are working to better model the water on Europa to more accurately focus the spacecraft's investigation.
One piece of new research in that vein offers new theories about the material that erupts from the surface of Europa as plumes or as "cryolava," the icy equivalent of the molten lava in volcanic activity seen on Earth. The work uses a new computer model and suggests that these eruptions may originate from subsurface reservoirs of salty water or "lakes" in the crust of Europa, rather than from its global liquid ocean.
"We demonstrated that plumes or cryolava flows could mean there are shallow liquid reservoirs below, which Europa Clipper would be able to detect," Elodie Lesage, lead author of the research and a Europa scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, said in astatement. "Our results give new insights into how deep the water might be that's driving surface activity, including plumes. And the water should be shallow enough that it can be detected by multiple Europa Clipper instruments."
The team's models suggest that the mission should detect reservoirs of water relatively close to the surface of Europa, in the upper 2.5 to 5 miles (4 to 8 kilometers) of the crust.
This is the region where the ice is at its coldest and most brittle. Pockets of water held here would freeze and expand, thus breaking the surrounding ice and triggering an eruption. This phenomenon is similar to how carbonated drinks can swell and burst when placed in a freezer.
The researchers also determined that the reservoirs most likely to erupt in this way are wide and flat, like a pancake.
However, the situation is different deeper inside Europa, according to the team. Reservoirs below around 5 miles (8 kilometers) under Europa's crust would also expand and push on surrounding ice. But because this ice is warmer, it is less brittle and thus soft enough to absorb the increased pressure rather than bursting. Instead of being analogous to an exploding soda can, this is more like a balloon of water that stretches as the liquid it contains freezes and expands.
These findings should help the Europa Clipper's radar instrument, called Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON), hunt for pockets of water when the spacecraft arrives at Europa in 2030.
"The new work shows that water bodies in the shallow subsurface could be unstable if stresses exceed the strength of the ice and could be associated with plumes rising above the surface," Don Blankenship, leader of the REASON team and a geophysicist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics in Texas who wasn't involved in the research, said in the same statement. "That means REASON could be able to see water bodies in the same places that you see plumes."
Astronomers Discover A Water Reservoir Floating In Space That Is Equivalent To 140 Trillion Times All The Water In The Earth's Ocean
Astronomers Discover A Water Reservoir Floating In Space That Is Equivalent To 140 Trillion Times All The Water In The Earth's Ocean
by Mirza Newton
There is a reserve of water the size of 140 trillion oceans lurking in a faraway supermassive black hole, the universe's largest deposit of water and 4,000 times the amount found in the Milky Way.
This amount of water was discovered by two teams of astronomers 12 billion light-years away, where it appears as vapor dispersed across hundreds of light-years.
The reservoir was discovered in a quasar's gaseous area, which is a brilliant compact region in the heart of a galaxy powered by a black hole. This finding demonstrates that water may be present throughout the cosmos, even at the start.
While this is not surprising to experts, water has never been discovered this far out before. The light from the quasar (specifically, the APM 08279+5255 quasar in the constellation Lynx) took 12 billion years to reach Earth, implying that this mass of water existed when the universe was just 1.6 billion years old.
One group used the Z-Spec instrument at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory in Hawaii, while the other used the Plateau de Bure Interferometer in the French Alps.
These sensors detect millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, allowing the detection of trace gases (or vast reservoirs of water vapor) in the early cosmos.
The discovery of many spectral fingerprints of water in the quasar provided researchers with the data they needed to calculate the vast magnitude of the reservoir.
[NASA][THIS IS AN UPDATED VERSION OF THE OLD ARTICLE]
Human brain cells grown in a lab learn to play Pong: Incredible footage shows mini-brains mastering the classic video game after just five MINUTES of training
Human brain cells grown in a lab learn to play Pong: Incredible footage shows mini-brains mastering the classic video game after just five MINUTES of training
Pong is a classic table tennis-themed video game, first released in 1972
Researchers took human brain cells and grew 800,000 neurons in a dish
They demonstrated that the brains cells could master Pong in just five minutes
In the future, the researchers hope the findings could pave the way for treatments for neurodegenerative conditions like dementia
It's the classic table tennis-themed video game that tasks players with moving a paddle vertically across a screen to hit a ball.
And now even human brain cells grown in a lab have mastered Pong.
Researchers from Melbourne-based start-up, Cortical Labs, have shown for the first time that 800,000 brain cells can perform goal-directed tasks – in this case, Pong.
The findings suggest that even brain cells in a petri dish can exhibit inherent intelligence, modifying their behaviour over time.
'This new capacity to teach cell cultures to perform a task in which they exhibit sentience – by controlling the paddle to return the ball via sensing – opens up new discovery possibilities which will have far-reaching consequences for technology, health, and society,' said Dr Adeel Razi, an author of the study.
'We know our brains have the evolutionary advantage of being tuned over hundreds of millions of years for survival.
'Now, it seems we have in our grasp where we can harness this incredibly powerful and cheap biological intelligence.'
Researchers from Melbourne-based start-up, Cortical Labs, have shown for the first time that 800,000 brain cells living in a dish can perform goal-directed tasks – in this case, Pong
How will the results be used?
The team will now try to see what happens when DishBrain is affected by medicines and alcohol.
'We're trying to create a dose response curve with ethanol – basically get them 'drunk' and see if they play the game more poorly, just as when people drink,' said Dr Kagan.
In the future, the researchers hope the findings could pave the way for treatments for neurodegenerative conditions.
'DishBrain offers a simpler approach to test how the brain works and gain insights into debilitating conditions such as epilepsy and dementia,' says Dr Hon Weng Chong, Chief Executive Officer of Cortical Labs.
Scientists have previously been able to grow brain cells in the lab and read their activity.
However, until now, it's not been possible to stimulate the cells in a structured and meaningful way.
Dr Brett Kagan, who led the study, explained: 'In the past, models of the brain have been developed according to how computer scientists think the brain might work.
'That is usually based on our current understanding of information technology, such as silicon computing.
'But in truth we don't really understand how the brain works.'
In the new study, the team took mouse cells from embryonic brains as well as some human brain cells, and grew 800,000 neurons in a dish, in what they're calling 'DishBrain'.
The neurons were connected to a computer in such a way where they received feedback on whether their paddle was hitting the ball.
Electrodes on the left or right of one array were fired to tell DishBrain which side the ball was on, while distance from the paddle was indicated by the frequency of signals.
Using electric probes that recorded 'spikes', the researchers monitored the neuron's activity and responses to this feedback.
In the new study, the team took mouse cells from embryonic brains as well as some human brain cells, and grew 800,000 neurons in a dish, in what they're calling 'DishBrain'
(pictured)
Pong is a classic table tennis-themed video game that tasks players with moving a paddle vertically across a screen to hit a ball
What is Pong?
Pong was officially released on November 29, 1972.
The two-dimensional table tennis simulator, the first release by Atari, is credited with being one of the progenitors of the video games industry, which is now worth a phenomenal $65billion a year.
The simple two-dimensional simulation of ping pong, consists merely of two paddles which moved up and down to pass a moving spot between each player.
Yet its addictive gameplay captured the imagination of thousands of players around the world, building Atari's status as a video games giant.
Spikes became stronger the more a neuron moved its paddle and hit the ball.
And when neurons missed the ball, their playstyle was critiqued by a software programme.
This shows that neurons can adapt their activity to a changing environment in a goal-oriented way, in real time.
Professor Karl Friston, a theoretical neuroscientist at UCL, and co-author of the study, said: 'Remarkably, the cultures learned how to make their world more predictable by acting upon it.
'This is remarkable because you cannot teach this kind of self-organisation; simply because — unlike a pet — these mini brains have no sense of reward and punishment.'
Pong wasn't the only game the team tested.
'You know when the Google Chrome browser crashes and you get that dinosaur that you can make jump over obstacles (Project Bolan),' said Dr Kagan.
'We've done that and we've seen some nice preliminary results, but we still have more work to do building new environments for custom purposes.'
The team will now try to see what happens when DishBrain is affected by medicines and alcohol.
'We're trying to create a dose response curve with ethanol – basically get them "drunk" and see if they play the game more poorly, just as when people drink,' said Dr Kagan.
In the future, the researchers hope the findings could pave the way for treatments for neurodegenerative conditions.
'DishBrain offers a simpler approach to test how the brain works and gain insights into debilitating conditions such as epilepsy and dementia,' said Dr Hon Weng Chong, Chief Executive Officer of Cortical Labs.
WHAT IS A NEURON AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
A neuron, also known as nerve cell, is an electrically excitable cell that takes up, processes and transmits information through electrical and chemical signals. It is one of the basic elements of the nervous system.
In order that a human being can react to his environment, neurons transport stimuli.
The stimulation, for example the burning of the finger at a candle flame, is transported by the ascending neurons to the central nervous system and in return, the descending neurons stimulate the arm in order to remove the finger from the candle.
A typical neuron is divided into three parts: the cell body, the dendrites and the axon. The cell body, the centre of the neuron, extends its processes called the axon and the dendrites to other cells.Dendrites typically branch profusely, getting thinner with each branching. The axon is thin but can reach enormous distances.
To make a comparable scale, the diameter of a neuron is about the tenth size of the diameter of a human hair.
All neurons are electrically excitable. The electrical impulse mostly arrives on the dendrites, gets processed into the cell body to then move along the axon.
On its all length an axon functions merely as an electric cable, simply transmitting the signal.
Once the electrical reaches the end of the axon, at the synapses, things get a little more complex.
The key to neural function is the synaptic signalling process, which is partly electrical and partly chemical.
Once the electrical signal reaches the synapse, a special molecule called neurotransmitter is released by the neuron.
This neurotransmitter will then stimulate the second neuron, triggering a new wave of electrical impulse, repeating the mechanism described above.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.