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.
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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.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
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...
16-10-2022
Laughing gas in space could be a sign of aliens: Scientists says nitrous oxide could be a biosignature for life
Laughing gas in space could be a sign of aliens: Scientists says nitrous oxide could be a biosignature for life
By Cassidy Morrison Senior Health Reporter For Dailymail.Com
Nitrous oxide in another planet's atmosphere could indicate the presence of life
Scientists typically look at oxygen and methane to determine presence of life
It is possible that the groundbreaking James Webb Telescope could detect N2O
Astrobiologists believe the presence of laughing gas in a distant planet's atmosphere could indicate life.
Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas emitted by plants, making it a biosignature, or a compound in the atmosphere generated by a living thing.
Biosignatures typically include gases found in abundance in Earth’s atmosphere today.
Oxygen, which is produced by photosynthesis, and methane, which results from the decay of organic material, have been touted as the most promising biosignatures for life on exoplanets, or planets outside the Solar System.
But astrobiologists at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) believe the scientific community has largely overlooked the party drug as an indicator of life.
Dr Eddie Schwieterman, an astrobiologist in UCR’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences said: 'Fewer researchers have seriously considered nitrous oxide, but we think that may be a mistake.'
Nitrous oxide is a sedative and pain reliever commonly associated with a dentist's office.
It is also abused as a party drug - often via small cannisters called 'whippets'. It is also known as laughing gas, or simply nitrous.
The team led by Dr Schwieterman came to their conclusion after calculating how much nitrous oxide living things on a planet resembling Earth could produce.
Then, they constructed models simulating the other planet around different stars, which showed the amounts of laughing gas that could be detected on these rocky, Earth-like exoplanets by an observatory such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
Their findings were published last week in The Astrophysical Journal.
University of California Riverside scientists believe nitrous oxide in the atmosphere could offer clues about life on planets outside of the solar system.
Nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, is a popular party drug. N2O is emitted by living organisms like oxygen and methane, which are considered indicative of extraterrestrial life.
The Webb telescope, which will continue studying the potential presence of life on exoplanets, is capturing some of the first light emitted after the big bang.
Living things are constantly transforming other nitrogen compounds into nitrous oxide and its presence in another planet's atmosphere would insinuate life.
'In a star system like TRAPPIST-1, the nearest and best system to observe the atmosphere of rocky planets, you could potentially detect nitrous oxide at levels comparable to CO2 or methane,' Dr Schwieterman said.
Nitrous oxide has not been granted as much attention as a potential biosignature as other atmospheric compounds.
The UC Riverside scientists hope their report will garner attention from the wider scientific community.
There are certain circumstances under which the presence of nitrous oxide would not indicate life, and the UC Riverside team accounted for that in the modeling.
What can laughing gas tell us about space?
Astrobiologists at UC Riverside believe the compound found in Earth's atmosphere could indicate life on planets outside of our solar system.
Nitrous oxide, N2O, is a common sedative and pain reliever sometimes used in party settings
Like other biosignatures (any characteristic that can be used as evidence for life) oxygen and methane, N2O is naturally derived
Scientists at UC Riverside hope their report out last week will bring more attention to N2O has a viable sign of life
They expect that the James Webb Telescope, the most powerful one ever built, will expand their study into N2O as an indicator for life outside our solar system
For example, a small amount of nitrous oxide can be generated by lightning, which the modelers considered.
Lightning also creates nitrogen dioxide, which offers a clue that non-living weather or geological processes created the gas.
Scientists who have considered nitrous oxide as a biosignature have often concluded that it would be too difficult to detect from such a great distance.
They based that conclusion on how much nitrous oxide is in the Earth's atmosphere today.
The atmosphere has a very small concentration of nitrous oxide despite the billions of living organisms here that produce it, leading skeptical scientists to believe it would be too difficult to measure.
But according to Dr Schwieterman, that conclusion ignores the fact that there was a time in Earth's history 'where ocean conditions would have allowed for much greater biological release of [nitrous oxide].'
He added: 'Conditions in those periods might mirror where an exoplanet is today.'
The James Webb Telescope, the most powerful one ever built, began surveilling planets that orbit other stars over the summer.
It was dreamed up by scientists as a tool primarily to capture some of the first light in the universe emitted shortly after the big bang.
Astronomers hoped at the outset that it would answer whether some of those exoplanets harbor atmospheres that could support life.
OOK LACHGAS KAN HINTEN OP DE AANWEZIGHEID VAN BUITENAARDSE WEZENS
OOK LACHGAS KAN HINTEN OP DE AANWEZIGHEID VAN BUITENAARDSE WEZENS
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Op jacht naar sporen van leven in buitenaardse atmosferen ligt de focus vaak op ons bekende biosignaturen zoals zuurstof en methaan. Maar ook lachgas kan wijzen op de aanwezigheid van buitenaards leven, zo stellen onderzoekers nu.
Zijn we alleen? Het is een vraag die de mensheid al eeuwenlang bezighoudt. En eindelijk hebben we de middelen om die prangende vraag van een antwoord te voorzien. Zo rijdt op Mars momenteel een wagentje rond dat actief zoekt naar sporen van (vergane) Marsbewoners en zijn er plannen om ook een sonde naar Jupiters maan Europa te sturen om uit te vogelen of die leven kan herbergen. Een robot naar andere werelden sturen om daar te zoeken naar sporen van leven, is een prima benadering voor relatief nabije werelden die deel uitmaken van ons eigen zonnestelsel, maar leent zich minder goed voor de zoektocht naar buitenaards leven op exoplaneten: planeten die zich buiten ons zonnestelsel bevinden. Simpelweg omdat zelfs de reis naar de dichtstbijzijnde exoplaneet – Proxima b – decennialang zou duren. Maar onderzoekers hebben daar wat op bedacht. In plaats van die verre werelden met een bezoekje te vereren en ter plekke naar sporen van leven te zoeken, willen ze hun atmosferen op afstand gaan ‘uitlezen’. Het enige wat je daarvoor nodig hebt, is een superkrachtige telescoop. En die hebben we sinds kort: de James Webb Space Telescope. Met deze telescoop kunnen onderzoekers de samenstelling van buitenaardse atmosferen vaststellen en nagaan of die atmosferen elementen herbergen die hinten op de aanwezigheid van leven. Dergelijke elementen worden ook wel biosignaturen genoemd. Bekende voorbeelden zijn zuurstof en methaan (zie kader). Maar als het aan onderzoekers ligt, gaan we verder kijken dan die twee populaire opties en opent James Webb ook de jacht op…lachgas, oftewel N2O.
De atmosfeer van de aarde is vandaag de dag rijk aan zuurstof. Maar dat is niet altijd zo geweest; toen de aarde net gevormd was, herbergde deze noch in de atmosfeer, noch in de oceanen zuurstof. Dat begon zo’n 2,4 miljard jaar geleden echter te veranderen, toen bacteriën middels fotosynthese meer en meer zuurstof gingen produceren. De hogere zuurstofconcentraties maakten de evolutie van hogere levensvormen mogelijk, waarvan een deel ook weer zuurstof ging produceren en zo steeg de zuurstofconcentratie geleidelijk aan naar het huidige niveau. Daarmee is de hoge zuurstofconcentratie in de aardatmosfeer dus een direct gevolg van de aanwezigheid van leven. Maar de aanwezigheid van zuurstof maakt ook de aanwezigheid van methaan in diezelfde aardatmosfeer wat raadselachtig. Want zuurstof en methaan reageren vrij snel met elkaar, waardoor er koolstofdioxide en water ontstaat. In die zin zou je – zeker met het oog op de hoge zuurstofconcentratie – dan ook eigenlijk niet verwachten dat de aardatmosfeer vrij methaan herbergt. Het feit dat dat wel het geval is, hint er dan ook op dat er voortdurend nieuw methaan wordt aangemaakt. Nu kan methaan op twee manieren gevormd worden: door geologische processen en door leven. En juist het feit dat het samen met zuurstof in de aardatmosfeer voorkomt, hint op het laatste. Wanneer buitenaardse wezens van een afstandje naar onze planeet kijken, zouden ze uit de aanwezigheid van zuurstof en methaan in de aardatmosfeer dan ook voorzichtig kunnen afleiden dat onze planeet hoogstwaarschijnlijk leven herbergt. En op een vergelijkbare manier kunnen wij door de atmosfeer van andere planeten te onderzoeken, nagaan of die misschien leven herbergen.
“Er wordt veel nagedacht over zuurstof en methaan als biosignaturen,” stelt onderzoeker Eddie Schwieterman. “Veel minder onderzoekers hebben ook distikstofmonoxide (in de volksmond beter bekend als lachgas, red.) serieus als biosignatuur overwogen. En wij denken dat dat onterecht is.”
Lachgas is hier schaars Dat lachgas tot op heden als biosignatuur een beetje is afgeserveerd, komt doordat de atmosfeer van de aarde – de enige planeet waarvan we met zekerheid kunnen stellen dat deze leven herbergt – niet rijk is aan distikstofmonoxide. Maar, zo stellen Schwieterman en collega’s, dat kan in het verleden weleens anders zijn geweest. “De mate waarin N2O in onze atmosfeer voorkomt, wordt gedicteerd door de omvang van bronnen van lachgas en de snelheid waarmee dat lachgas – voornamelijk door UV-straling – wordt afgebroken,” legt Schwieterman aan Scientias.nl uit. “De (niet-industriële) productie van lachgas op aarde komt voor het grootste deel voor rekening van levensvormen. Organismen kunnen bepaalde vormen van stikstof omzetten in lachgas om zo cellulaire energie te verkrijgen. De stikstofcyclus kent echter nog een volgende en laatste stap, waarbij dat lachgas omgezet wordt in moleculair stikstof (N2), maar die stap is relatief lastig en vereist de aanwezigheid van een speciaal enzym dat nitrous oxide reductase wordt genoemd. De effectiviteit van dit enzym hangt af van omgevingsfactoren en dan met name van de aanwezigheid van koper, dat het enzym nodig heeft. Op de hedendaagse aarde is de stikstofcyclus vrij efficiënt en wordt het meeste biologische lachgas uiteindelijk omgezet in N2, hoewel ook wel een deel van het lachgas in de atmosfeer weglekt.” Maar in het verleden kan dat weleens heel anders zijn geweest. “In het Proterozoïcum, tussen 2,5 en 0,5 miljard jaar geleden, kunnen grote hoeveelheden zwavel en lage hoeveelheden zuurstof in de oceaan de hoeveelheid koper sterk beperkt hebben, waardoor er veel grotere hoeveelheden lachgas in de atmosfeer weglekten. Nu kunnen we ons voorstellen dat vergelijkbare omstandigheden vandaag de dag voorkomen op een exoplaneet of in een stikstofcyclus die nog niet zodanig geëvolueerd is dat het enzym dat nodig is voor die laatste stap (N2O naar N2) voorhanden is.”
Methaan en lachgas
We moeten lachgas – ondanks dat het hier in de aardatmosfeer relatief schaars is – dus niet te snel uitsluiten als biosignatuur, zo vinden Schwieterman en collega’s. Temeer, omdat lachgas met onze huidige gereedschappen een stukje gemakkelijker in buitenaardse atmosferen op te sporen is dan zuurstof. “James Webb is bijvoorbeeld niet gevoelig genoeg om de zuurstofconcentraties zoals we die vandaag de dag in de aardatmosfeer aantreffen in buitenaardse atmosferen te meten. Maar de telescoop zou bijvoorbeeld in de atmosfeer van rotsachtige planeten in het TRAPPIST-1-systeem wel methaan kunnen detecteren. En onze resultaten suggereren dat James Webb ook eventueel lachgas zou kunnen zien. De detectie van zowel methaan als lachgas in de atmosfeer van zo’n planeet zou net zo’n overtuigend biosignatuur zijn als de detectie van methaan en zuurstof.”
Of beter nog: methaan, lachgas en zuurstof Maar ook in de toekomst, als er nog krachtigere observatoria komen, waarmee ook aardachtige zuurstofconcentraties kunnen worden opgespoord, is het belangrijk om verder te kijken dan zuurstof en methaan alleen, zo benadrukt Schwieterman. “Hoe meer potentiële biosignaturen we kunnen detecteren, hoe zekerder we er in onze uiteindelijke beoordeling van de leefbaarheid van de planeet ook van kunnen zijn dat deze daadwerkelijk leven herbergt. Als we in de toekomst zowel zuurstof, methaan als lachgas in een atmosfeer aantreffen, zouden we daarmee al behoorlijk wat twijfels die er omtrent de aanwezigheid van leven op die planeet zouden kunnen zijn, kunnen wegnemen.”
Abiotisch of biotisch? Daarnaast moeten we ook niet vergeten dat methaan en zuurstof – zeker als de één zonder de ander in een atmosfeer voorkomt – als biosignaturen ook de nodige tekortkomingen kennen. Zo zijn er scenario’s denkbaar waarbij ze ook in de afwezigheid van leven in een atmosfeer op kunnen hopen. “Zo weten we bijvoorbeeld dat methaan op gasreuzen zoals Jupiter en Saturnus voorkomt en veel wetenschappers hebben al scenario’s geschetst waarin abiotisch zuurstof (oftewel zuurstof dat niet door leven is voortgebracht, red.) zich in de atmosfeer van exoplaneten – weliswaar in de afwezigheid van methaan – kan verzamelen. Daarnaast zijn er ook in de Marsatmosfeer kleine hoeveelheden abiotisch zuurstof en ozon te vinden.” Kortom: zuurstof en methaan zijn in ieder geval op zichzelf geen keihard bewijs dat een planeet leven herbergt. Lachgas is wat dat betreft wat overtuigender. “Hoewel er kleine abiotische bronnen van lachgas bekend zijn, zoals bijvoorbeeld bliksem, kennen we nog geen abiotische processen die zodanig veel lachgas zouden kunnen voortbrengen dat sprake is van een concentratie die we in een planetaire atmosfeer zouden kunnen detecteren.”
Na jaren naar de komst van James Webb te hebben uitgezien, is de telescoop sinds enkele maanden daadwerkelijk actief. En het is dan ook een kwestie van tijd voor deze de ogen richt op buitenaardse atmosferen en daadwerkelijk op zoek zal gaan naar biosignaturen, zoals methaan en – na dit onderzoek – misschien ook wel lachgas. Het lijkt daarbij echter niet aannemelijk dat we op basis van de door de telescoop verzamelde data ook echt kunnen concluderen dat een planeet leven herbergt, zo benadrukt Schwieterman. “In het best denkbare scenario zouden we een sterke aanwijzing kunnen vinden dat er leven op een planeet is.” Maar ook dat zou al een gamechanger zijn. Goede kandidaten in die zoektocht naar sterke aanwijzingen voor leven zijn er genoeg, maar voor Schwieterman springen er toch een paar uit. “Er zijn twee veelbelovende systemen die rotsachtige planeten herbergen en door James Webb gekarakteriseerd zullen worden: TRAPPIST-1 en SPECULOOS-2. De moedersterren zijn in beide gevallen kleine, lichtzwakke, rode dwergsterren waarvan we weten dat ze zeer actief zijn. Het is mogelijk dat ze met hun activiteit de atmosferen van hun planeten hebben doen eroderen. Maar als dat niet zo is, zijn er wel enkele werelden in deze systemen – zoals TRAPPIST-1e – die zich op de juiste afstand van de moederster bevinden om op hun oppervlak vloeibaar water en misschien wel leven te herbergen. Als die planeten een robuuste biosfeer hebben, zou James Webb gassen als methaan en lachgas in grote hoeveelheden kunnen aantreffen. Het zijn een hoop ‘als-en’, maar we mogen blijven hopen dat we geluk hebben.”
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
ZWART GAT LAAT NOG STEEDS BOERTJES JAREN NA OPETEN STER: 'ZOIETS HEBBEN WE NOG NOOIT GEZIEN'
ZWART GAT LAAT NOG STEEDS BOERTJES JAREN NA OPETEN STER: 'ZOIETS HEBBEN WE NOG NOOIT GEZIEN'
Jeannette Kras
In een melkwegstelsel hier ver vandaan, vermorzelde een zwart gat een paar jaar geleden een kleine ster, die te dicht in de buurt durfde te komen. Nog steeds is hij niet uitgegeten, of beter gezegd uitgeboerd: jaren na dato komt er nog materiaal uit het gat omhoog.
Het gebeurde in oktober 2018 in een sterrenstelsel op 665 miljoen lichtjaar van de aarde. En sterrenkundigen waren niet eens verbaasd. Het komt vaker voor. Maar wat hen wel erg verraste is dat het zwarte gat opnieuw de hemel verlichtte, terwijl het geen nieuwe ster heeft opgeslokt. “We waren compleet verbaasd. Niemand heeft ooit zoiets gezien”, vertelt Yvette Cendes, die aan Harvard werkt en het fenomeen onderzocht.
Slome eter Het zwarte gat spuwt nu materiaal uit dat met de helft van de lichtsnelheid voortbeweegt, maar Cendes en haar team begrijpen niet waarom dit gebeurt met een vertraging van jaren. De sterrenkundigen vergelijken het ‘eetgedrag’ van het zwarte gat met wel erg late ‘boertjes na een maaltijd’. Het team ontdekte de ongebruikelijke uitbarsting toen het een aantal zogenoemde getijdenverstoringen (TDE’s), waarbij een ster zo dicht bij een zwart gat komt dat hij uit elkaar wordt getrokken tot een spaghettisliert, van de afgelopen jaren opnieuw onderzocht.
Radiodata van de Very Large Array (VLA) in de Amerikaanse staat Nieuw-Mexico toonden aan dat het zwarte gat op mysterieuze wijze gereanimeerd werd in juni 2021. Cendes en haar team haastten zich om dit fenomeen nader te onderzoeken. Ze vroegen met spoed toestemming om meerdere telescopen te gebruiken. “Dat kan alleen als je iets zo onverwachts vindt dat je niet kunt wachten op de normale cyclus van telescoopaanvragen”, legt Cendes uit. “Alle verzoeken werden meteen ingewilligd.”
Lange radiostilte De TDE kreeg de naam AT2018hyz en werd op meerdere lichtgolflengtes bestudeerd door gebruik van telescopen uit de hele wereld. De radiodata van de VLA waren het meest opmerkelijk. “We bestuderen TDE’s al meer dan een decennium met radiotelescopen en soms zien we dat ze radiogolven uitzenden als ze materiaal uitspuwen nadat de ster is opgegeten door het zwarte gat”, zegt coauteur Edo Berger, astronomieprofessor aan Harvard. “Maar in AT2018hyz was er de eerste drie jaar juist een complete radiostilte en nu licht hij zo hard op dat hij een van de meest lichtgevende TDE’s ooit is.”
Sebastian Gomez, die ook meewerkte aan het onderzoek, laat weten dat de TDE in 2018 nog ‘erg onopvallend’ was. “We monitorde hem enkele maanden tot hij uitdoofde en toen zijn we hem vergeten.” Hoe konden ze ook weten wat AT2018hyz nog voor hen in petto zou hebben?
Spaghetti TDE’s staan erom bekend dat ze licht uitzenden als ze verschijnen. Als een ster een zwart gat nadert, wordt hij door de zwaartekrachten uitgerekt tot een spaghettisliert. Uiteindelijk kromt het materiaal als een spiraal in het zwarte gat en wordt het heet. Er ontstaat een grote flits die sterrenkundigen van miljoenen lichtjaren afstand kunnen zien. Maar niet al het materiaal wordt ‘opgepeuzeld’ door het zwarte gat. Sommige stukjes spuugt het weer de ruimte in. Die zwarte gaten zijn een beetje smerige eters. Niet alles wat ze consumeren, belandt in hun mond. Maar normaal gesproken spuugt een zwart gat materiaal uit vlak na zijn maaltijd, niet jaren later. “Het is alsof dit zwarte gat plotseling een hoop materiaal begon op te boeren, jaren nadat hij de ster opat”, legt Cendes uit.
En in dit geval waren het harde boeren: normaal gesproken reist materiaal uit een zwart gat op 10 procent van de lichtsnelheid, nu was dat 50 procent. “Dit is voor het eerst dat we getuige zijn van zo’n lange pauze tussen het opslokken van de ster en de uitstoot van materiaal”, zegt Berger. “De volgende stap is om te achterhalen of dit vaker gebeurt en we gewoon eerder hebben gekeken naar TDE’s zo laat in hun evolutie.” Het kan dus zijn dat het vaker voorkomt dat een zwart gat jaren later nog materiaal uitstoot, maar dat wetenschappers simpelweg te vroeg zijn gestopt met observeren.
US Air Force Scientist: “Giant 250 meters alien ships enter our world through the portal”
US Air Force Scientist: “Giant 250 meters alien ships enter our world through the portal”
A world-renowned scientist and former engineer of the United States Air Force and Boeing Company, using a telescope, photographed a UFO with a diameter of 250 meters flying at a speed of 48,000 km / h.
But this is just one of the huge UFOs, of which many more have been recorded. According to Frederick Portigal, this is absolute proof that the aliens are already here.
This data has been confirmed as authentic by the US National Air and Space Intelligence Agency (NASIC).
Frederick Portigal, a former US Air Force and Boeing engineer, captured UFO images and data with a hyper-spectral imaging telescope. According to him, he captured very large objects moving at great speed.
Hyperspectral remote sensing, also known as imaging spectroscopy, is a technique being researched by scientists to detect and identify minerals, terrestrial plants, and man-made materials and landscapes.
The technique will be used on the James Webb Space Telescope, which is slated to launch in December, and will provide a peek into the depths of the universe.
Frederic Portigal is a leading world scientist with extensive experience in this technique.
Frederick was responsible for the process flow design for the Fourier Transform Hyperspectral Imager (FTHSI), the first hyperspectral sensor launched into orbit by the US Air Force Research Laboratory / RVBYI. He created a mathematical model to simulate space observations to be conducted using Landsat 7 data.
Portigal led a USDA-sponsored study evaluating hyperspectral imaging for the detection of Pierce’s disease (PD) in California grapes.
Frederic Portugal has previously worked for organizations such as the Air Force Research Laboratory, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and the National Science Foundation.
Portigal has a message for our world – giant alien ships are entering the Earth through the portal.
According to former Boeing chief engineer, aliens are using wormhole penetration technology to move these plasma-like UFOs near the Earth’s surface at a speed of 48,000 kilometers per hour.
Portigal telescopic footage captured the astonishing appearances of plasma-like objects flying at inconceivable speeds in the vicinity of the Petroglyph National Monument near Albuquerque, New Mexico. His telescope was on Sandia Heights with a field of view of about 15 miles.
Shortly after DNI presented a report to Congress on unidentified aerial events, Portigal wrote on LinkedIn expressing his disappointment at the lack of clarity in the government’s efforts.
“I decided that the recent Congress report on UFOs lacked detail on the extraterrestrial category, given that I provided NASIC and DIA. I have to go directly to the people. They need to know.
“They have all this data, which proves that giant motherships are infiltrating into our world, with smaller ships on board and that leave the motherships and stay here, and the motherships leave and return with new cargo. This has been happening since at least 2008, when we first recorded their appearance.
“The military and the government have all the information and they themselves are now watching the ongoing expansion of aliens on Earth. Why do they transport their ships to us in such quantities? Why is the government silent about this? ”
According to Portigal, the Department of Defense has created a special hyperspectral telescope, which they call “binoculars for hunting aliens”.
The technology is based on Frederick’s personal telescope and was refined with $ 750,000 from the Air Force Research Laboratory.
The video recording begins with a concentration on the white sphere – such luminous balls are very often observed by many eyewitnesses of the appearance of UFOs in our sky, but they do not see what is hidden behind this plasma screen.
Simply put, intense energy gathered in one visible location looks like a highly illuminated ball to the naked eye. Once Frederick’s sensor is able to analyze the plasma and estimate the volume of gases, it can build a picture of the object hidden behind the plasma envelope, showing the true outlines of the pyramids and various other shapes of UFOs that were dropped by the large mother ship.
Frederick’s technical report accompanying the video can be viewed here. According to Frederick, this is absolute proof that the aliens are already here.
“You have to understand what this is about – I have developed a technology with which you can see alien ships. I developed this technology officially and the military, with the support of the government, invested in it and improved it to make binoculars for detecting alien ships for themselves.
“I first discovered these mother ships entering our world through wormholes (portals) and dropping their cargo – smaller ships, back in 2008. Why people are not told that alien ships invisible to ordinary people penetrate into our world. What is their purpose? What are they doing? What are they preparing for?
“Perhaps this is evidence of extraterrestrial mining on our planet, but who knows what is in the cargo that materializes and travels through the wormholes after the mother ship departs?
“This is not one ship. These are giant alien ships hidden from our eyes with the help of their camouflage technology, which one after another materialize in our sky and drop other ships.
“The United States has officially recognized the existence of a UFO in our sky. This is good, but they said “A” did not say “B” – they left a shadow of doubt by saying that they did not know whose apparatus it was and the Pentagon did not use the term “extraterrestrial”.
“And this while, since 2008, they have been watching giant alien ships entering our world every day!”
Portigal added another note about extraterrestrial craft:
" They travel through wormholes, and another possibility is a portal between parallel universes.”
The information was disseminated to the media by Frederic Portugal on October 29, 2021.
A rare 'missing link' black hole has been found in the Milky Way's closest large galactic neighbour, a new study reveals.
Astronomers say the black hole has an 'intermediate-mass', and is the rare third type of black hole that has only recently come to light.
Described as 'unlike any other', the black hole was found in a star cluster called B023-G078 in the Andromeda galaxy.
Otherwise known as Messier 31 or M31, Andromeda is the closest large spiral galaxy to our galaxy, the Milky Way.
This newly-found black hole has a mass 100,000 times greater than our Sun, making it smaller than black holes found at the centre of galaxies (supermassive black holes), but bigger than black holes born when stars explode (stellar black holes).
One theory is that intermediate-mass black holes could be the seeds from which supermassive black holes grow.
The black hole was found hidden within B023-G078, an enormous star cluster in Andromeda with a solar mass of 6.2 million. The left panel shows a wide-field image of M31 with the red box and inset showing the location and image of B023-G78 where the black hole was found
Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. The diffuse light from Andromeda is caused by the hundreds of billions of stars that compose it. The several distinct stars that surround Andromeda's image are actually stars in our Galaxy that are well in front of the background object
The three types of black hole
Stellar: Five to several tens of solar masses
Intermediate-mass: 100 to 100,000 solar masses
Supermassive: Millions to billions of solar masses
The new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, was based on data from the near-infrared integral-field spectrograph (NIFS) at the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii.
Astronomers measure the mass of a black hole by tracing the motion of the gas and dust swirling around it.
This can be done at many wavelengths, such as by measuring the positions of stars which orbit near a black hole at optical wavelengths.
Study author Anil Seth, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Utah, said the finding fills a gap between the very large and the very small black holes known to exist.
'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 centers of galaxies that are millions of times the size of our sun,' he said.
'But there aren't any measurements of black between these – that's a large gap. This discovery fills the gap.'
The study was based on data from the near-infrared integral-field spectrograph (NIFS, pictured) at the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii
On the right side of this image shows the Gemini Observatorium on the top of the vulcano Mauna Kea. In the background is the Canada France Hawaii Telescope
STAR CLUSTERS
As the name suggests, star clusters are groups of hundreds to millions of stars that share a common origin, all gravitationally bound for as long as several billions of years.
There are two types of star clusters – open and globular. Globular clusters are dense balls of about one million ancient stars, all bound by gravity. Open clusters are much younger and smaller than globular clusters.
According to experts at Penn State University, open clusters are usually a few tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years old, while globular clusters are typically about 12 billion to 13 billion years old.
The black hole was found hidden within B023-G078, an enormous star cluster in Andromeda with a solar mass of 6.2 million.
Long thought to be a globular star cluster, the researchers argue that B023-G078 is instead a stripped nucleus - a remnant of a small galaxy that fell into a bigger one and had its outer stars stripped away by gravitational forces.
What's left behind is a tiny, dense nucleus orbiting the bigger galaxy and at the centre of that nucleus, a black hole.
'Previously, we've found big black holes within massive, stripped nuclei that are much bigger than B023-G078,' said lead author Renuka Pechetti at Liverpool John Moores University.
'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.'
A globular cluster has a signature light profile that has the same shape near the centre as it does in the outer regions.
But B023-G078 is different – the light at the centre is round and then gets flatter moving outwards.
The chemical makeup of the stars changes too, with more heavy elements in the stars at the centre than those near the object's edge.
'Globular star clusters basically form at the same time,' said Professor Seth.
'In contrast, these stripped nuclei can have repeated formation episodes, where gas falls into the center of the galaxy, and forms stars.
'And other star clusters can get dragged into the centre by the gravitational forces of the galaxy.
'It's kind of the dumping ground for a bunch of different stuff. So, stars in stripped nuclei will be more complicated than in globular clusters. And that's what we saw in B023-G078.'
The researchers are hoping to observe more stripped nuclei that may hold more intermediate mass black holes.
In September 2020, researchers in Australia working as part of an international collaboration studying gravitational waves reported the first direct observation of an intermediate-mass black hole.
Around 150 times heavier than our Sun, it was birthed from the merger of two smaller (yet still very large) black holes 17 billion light years away.
BLACK HOLES HAVE A GRAVITATIONAL PULL SO STRONG NOT EVEN LIGHT CAN ESCAPE
Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them - not even light.
They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them. Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around.
How they are formed is still poorly understood. Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole.
Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy.
Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun's mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses.
When these giant stars die, they also go 'supernova', a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space.
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.
UT interview discussing exoplanet atmospheres
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”
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.
Phobos and Deimos, as seen by Mars Express. Credit: ESA.
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.
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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.
Black hole is spotted 'giving birth' to stars in a nearby...
Ever wondered how many black holes there are?...
On the hunt for the universe's first ever stars: Upgraded...
Stephen Hawking was RIGHT! New model of the early universe...
Out of this world! NASA will launch a huge flying...
How does Elon Musk's Starship stack up against NASA's Space...
British-built planetary rover that was dropped from NASA's...
