UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES

Since July, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has delivered some of the most unbelievable space images we've ever laid eyes on. In just a few months, this pioneering machine has built a stunning repertoire of glowing nebular portraits, possible proof of ancient galaxies and even refreshing perspectives of planets in our own solar system.

But on Wednesday, the JWST shook things up a bit -- again.

As detailed by a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, it presented us with an image of 17 concentric dust rings -- though one thing hasn't changed. Like with the rest of the 'scope's lovely space discoveries, these haloes are just as breathtaking as they are crucial to the field of astronomy.

The agency believes these hazy rings are the result of two stars, located just over 5,000 light-years from Earth, treading close enough for their stellar winds to share a kiss now and then. In essence, every time the stars' sparkly streams of gas intertwine, they form a dusty ring. It's almost like they mark their union in spaceborne stone -- or, as NASA puts it, leave behind a "fingerprint."

What's especially fascinating about these stellar memories is they allow us to calculate the passage of time.

Basically, each of those 17 rings signifies exactly one starry rendezvous in the way each ring formed by a tree indicates a year of the plant's life. In fact, the stellar bodies' nested loops even resemble the inside of a tree trunk, bringing about a poignant reminder that everything we see -- from the mightiest stars and farthest planets to the greenest leaves and smallest bugs -- is part of the same, cohesive universe.

A close-up of a tree trunk, many rings are present that indicate the age of the plant.

Rings inside a tree trunk, like these, indicate the age of the tree.

Getty Images

"We're looking at over a century of dust production from this system," Ryan Lau, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab and lead author of the new study, said in a statement. "The image also illustrates just how sensitive this telescope is."

Before, with the ground-based telescopes available to us, we were able to see only two dust rings, Lao explains. "Now, we see at least 17 of them."

All in all, from what the JWST captured, scientists think the stars' special meeting occurs about once every eight years.

For the first time, @NASAWebb saw rings of stardust from a rare type of dual star system.

Every eight years, these two stars come close to each other, and the interaction forms a new cosmic ring. Ground scopes saw two; Webb revealed at least 17: https://t.co/7yuUMtPAxa pic.twitter.com/OAz1GhZsWM
— NASA (@NASA) October 12, 2022

The find is thanks to the JWST's Mid-Infrared instrument, of MIRI. In contrast to the 'scope's Near-Infrared sensors -- pretty much the big-dog tool on this machine -- MIRI focuses on light emanating from spaceborne objects found on the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Typically, the JWST's Near-Infrared equipment is what gives us the bulk of our beautiful cosmic images, but when it comes to studying outer space dust rings, NASA brings MIRI up to bat. This part of the JWST is simply better suited to find cooler objects, the agency says, like the wispy hoops, and even succeed in revealing their composition.

Further, the study team notes, one star in this stellar system is considered a rarity.

It's called a Wolf-Rayet star. (The duo is aptly named Wolf-Rayet 140 because of this). The other star is an O-type star, a superhot object that's also relatively difficult to spot.

Wolf-Rayet stars, unlike standard stars, shed an incredible amount of mass over time, meaning they also tend to spit out heavy elements rooted deeply inside them. They also have a lot of mass to shed because they're at least 25 times more massive than our sun. And at the end of their life, they tend to turn into some of the most extreme known objects in our universe: black holes.

On the top left is a tiny circle representing out sun. In the middle left is a Wolf-Rayet star, which appears shrouded in wind and gas. On the right is a slightly larger O-type star without any gas or wind surrounding it.

This graphic shows the relative size of the sun, upper left, compared with the two stars in the system known as Wolf-Rayet 140. The O-type star is roughly 30 times the mass of the sun, while its companion is about 10 times the mass of the sun.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

According to NASA, stars generally eject only the (very light) element hydrogen. But it's those heavy elements emitted by Wolf-Rayets that cool in the stellar wind, thereby compressing when they meet another star's breeze and potentially fostering the right environment for new stars to form. In fact, some scientists believe the sun rose from compressed Wolf-Rayet residue long ago.

With regard to WR-140, such compression seems to form the concentric circles we see left behind. Possibly, the agency explains, that's because of the system's elongated orbit. Only about 600 of these so-called Wolf-Rayet stars have been found in our galaxy so far, though scientists suspect there should be at least a few thousand total.

"Even though Wolf-Rayet stars are rare in our galaxy because they are short lived as far as stars go, it's possible they've been producing lots of dust throughout the history of the galaxy before they explode and/or form black holes," Patrick Morris, an astrophysicist at Caltech and co-author of the new study, said in a statement.

"I think with NASA's new space telescope we're going to learn a lot more about how these stars shape the material between stars and trigger new star formation in galaxies."

{ https://www.cnet.com/ }

Now that we have a powerful lens pointed toward the deepest regions of the universe, our definition of "surprise" has slightly altered when it comes to astronomy pics.

It's no longer surprising, really, when NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveals yet another brilliant, ancient piece of the cosmos. At this point, we know to expect nothing less from the trailblazing machine.

Instead, whenever the telescope sends back a jaw-dropping space image, it now elicits more of a "JWST strikes again" feeling. And still, our jaws legitimately drop every single time.

This sort of dissonant version of "surprise" has happened yet again -- to a pretty extreme degree. Last week, scientists presented the JWST's brilliant view of a galaxy cluster merging around a massive black hole that houses a rare quasar -- aka an incomprehensibly bright jet of light spewing from the void's chaotic center.

There's a lot going on here, I know. But the team behind the find thinks it could escalate even further.

"We think something dramatic is about to happen in these systems," Andrey Vayner, a Johns Hopkins astronomer and co-author of a study about the scene soon to be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, said in a statement. For now, you can check out a detailed outline of the discovery in a paper published on arXiv.

51656393132-877b8f8b6a-3k

An artist's concept of a galaxy with a brilliant quasar at its center.

NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted (STScI)

Especially fascinating about this portrait is that the quasar at hand is considered an "extremely red" quasar, which means it's super far away from us and therefore physically rooted in a primitive region of space that falls near the beginning of time.

In essence, because it takes time for light to travel through space, every stream of cosmic light that reaches our eyes and our machines is seen as it was long ago. Even moonlight takes about 1.3 seconds to reach Earth, so when we peer up at the moon, we're seeing it 1.3 seconds in the past.

More specifically with this quasar, scientists believe it took about 11.5 billion years for the object's light to reach Earth, meaning we're seeing it as it was 11.5 billion years ago. This also makes it, according to the team, one of the most powerful of its kind observed from such a gargantuan distance (11.5 billion light-years away, that is).

"The galaxy is at this perfect moment in its lifetime, about to transform and look entirely different in a few billion years," Vayner said of the realm in which the quasar is anchored.

Analyzing a galactic rarity

In the colorful image provided by Vayner and fellow researchers, we're looking at several things.

On the left is a Hubble Space Telescope view of the region studied by the team, and in the middle is a blown-up version of the spot that the JWST zeroed-in on. Glance to the far right of this image, where four individually color-coded boxes are seen and you'll be analyzing different aspects of the JWST data broken down by velocity.

Red stuff is moving away from us and blue toward us, for instance.

This classification shows us how each of the galaxies involved in the spectacular merger are behaving -- including the one that holds the extreme black hole and accompanying red quasar, which is, in fact, the only one the team expected to uncover with NASA's multibillion dollar instrument.

"What you see here is only a small subset of what's in the data set," Nadia L. Zakamska, a Johns Hopkins astrophysicist and co-author of the study, said in a statement. "There's just too much going on here so we first highlighted what really is the biggest surprise. Every blob here is a baby galaxy merging into this mommy galaxy and the colors are different velocities and the whole thing is moving in an extremely complicated way."

Now, Zakamska says, the team will start to untangle the motions and enhance our view to an even greater extent. Already, though, we're looking at information far more incredible than the team expected to begin with. Hubble and the Gemini-North telescope previously showed the possibility of a transitioning galaxy but definitely didn't hint at the swarm we can see with the JWST's awesome infrared equipment.

Toward the center, slightly southwest, is a glowing circle depicting Neptune. Faint rings, also glowing, are seen encircling the orb. Northwest of this globe is a six-spiked, bright bluish fixture representing one of Neptune's moons. Tons of spots and swi

In another spectacular image taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), a smattering of hundreds of background galaxies, varying in size and shape, appear alongside the Neptune system.

ESA

"With previous images, we thought we saw hints that the galaxy was possibly interacting with other galaxies on the path to merger because their shapes get distorted in the process," Zakamska said. "But after we got the Webb data, I was like, 'I have no idea what we're even looking at here, what is all this stuff!' We spent several weeks just staring and staring at these images."

Soon enough, it became clear that the JWST was showing us at least three separate galaxies moving incredibly fast, the team said. They even believe this could mark one of the densest known areas of galaxy formation in the early universe.

mpia-pr-banados-quasar-2021-fig11

An artistic impression of the quasar P172+18, which is associated with a black hole 300 times more massive than the sun.

ESO/M. Kornmesser

Everything about this complex image is mesmerizing. We have the black hole, that Zakamska calls a "monster," a highly rare jet of light being spit from that black hole and a gaggle of galaxies on a collision course -- all seen as they were billions of years in the past.

So, dare I say it? The JWST strikes again, offering us an exceedingly precious cosmic vignette. Cue, jaw drop.

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{ https://www.cnet.com/ }

Paul Seaburn

Crop circles are a controversial subject – farmers hate them, drone camera operators love them, believers think they’re made by extraterrestrials as messages, skeptics swear they’re made by artistic humans with boards, ropes and vivid imaginations. What crop circles need is someone to conduct a scientific analysis on them to determine what they are and who made them. On October 4, 2022, a crop circle appeared in Ipuaçu, a city in the state of Santa Catarina in the South region of Brazil – a town with so many crop circles, it is considered by some to be the Wiltshire of Brazil or the “City of ETs.” Word traveled quickly and it was visited and scientifically studied by a government and military specialist in electronics and a paranormal and UFO investigator. What did he find? Will it change everything? Anything?

It pays to look both ways when examining a crop circle

"I woke up and it was already there. When I came out, I could see from above."

Farmer Sérgio Girotto told the GZH General media organization of his experience on the morning of October 4 in Ipuaçu. Looking out the balcony of his house at a wheat field, where he also plants beans corn and oats, he saw parts of his crop pressed down into the crop. Brazilians refer to crop as agroglyphs and Girotto says he is far from the first farmer in the area to see one – they date back to at least 2008 in Ipuaçu. Other farmers saw the agroglyph and texted photos to Girotto, along with posting them on WhatsApp and other social media platforms. Girotto noted that he’s had agroglyphs on his property before in 2013, but this one – with its geometric combination of a pentagon, circles and a triangle -- was one of the most intricate and precise he has seen and the first to be so close to an urban area. (Photos of the crop circle can be viewed here.)

"I don't believe it or disbelieve it. But that's very strange, yes. People from Curitiba, São Paulo and even the Amazon. There was a French couple too. They said they live in Foz do Iguaçu."

As with the crop circles in England, the photos of this one went viral and the farm and Ipuaçu were soon swamped with visitors. By October 16, tramplings, decay and heavy rains had washed out the agroglyph … but not before it was visited by a team of investigators led by Alcides Cores. According to his biography at UFO Magazine (Revista UFO), Cores is a professional in electronic systems maintenance for the Brazilian Airport Infrastructure Company (Infraero) qualified in radio aid to air navigation, and is a technician specialized by the Air Force Command in high-precision flight telemetry equipment. On the paranormal side, Cores has been a researcher of paranormal phenomena and a ufologist for over 40 years, and is the author of “Dimensional Portals (Portais Dimensionais,) described by A Gazeta de Vale do Argentina as a best seller and “a fundamental work for any ufologist or interested in the subject, and it needs to be part of your library.”

“Several measurements were made inside and outside the figure to have a comparison parameter, using two different electromagnetic field meters: one with three axes, which makes scanning easier and more accurate and operates in the range between 50 MHz and 3.5 GHz, and a single-axis meter, but sensitive to a wider and higher band of frequencies, ranging from 700 MHz to 6 GHz.”

Cores and his team issued the results of their investigation last week in Revista UFO. They were most interested in magnetic anomalies in and around Sérgio Girotto ‘s crop circle. While the readings revealed a relatively weak electromagnetic field, they noticed several sudden magnetic pulse of more than 60,000 nT (an nT is one nanotesla or 10 to the -9 tesla) which “curiously happened outside the crop circle.” While they recorded fluctuations on their instruments, no anomalies were seen on personal electronics like cell phones and compasses.

Cores notes that the weak magnetic field could be due to the crop circle’s close proximity to the city of Ipuaçu. It could also be picking up electromagnetic emissions from a nearby (700 meters or 2300 feet) cell phone tower. Cores also points out that his team arrived the day after the agroglyph appeared and reading could have been different on that day. Moreover, he admits that “we are unaware of the technology that produces this phenomenon, but there is certainly the involvement of an energy that we can assume is of an electromagnetic nature and of high frequency, perhaps in the microwave range.” This is far from the first crop circle he has investigated, and Cores says he’s seen high magnetic readings in the wheat stalks of various crop circles. Unfortunately, electromagnetic radiation dissipates quickly and leaves no traces.

Those sudden magnetic pulse of more than 60,000 nT continued to bother the investigation team. Cores offered one possible explanation for them:

“According to the magnetic map that uses data from the World Magnetic Model (WMM2020), the magnetic field of Ipuaçu should have a value of 22,365.7 nT. Furthermore, it is known that the southern region is under the great magnetic anomaly of the South Atlantic, an immense area that is characterized by a great weakening of the global magnetic field, and Ipuaçu is located relatively close to its epicenter, which is currently over the Paraguay.”

Cores is referring to the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) – the area where Earth's inner Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to Earth's surface, causing an increased flux of energetic particles in this region and exposes orbiting satellites to higher-than-usual levels of ionizing radiation, which is why NASA tries to avoid sending satellites or space flights over it. If the Southern Atlantic Anomaly caused the spikes in electromagnetisim, could those spikes be attracting non-human entities there to create the crop circles?

Is the electromagnetism in the reading human-made or something else?

Alcides Cores has been investigating the paranormal with a scientific eye long enough to know better than to jump to any conclusions.

“The phenomenon of crop circles is perhaps more complex than we imagine. What is physically presented to the eye is the kneading of the wheat and the geometric figure formed by it, which undoubtedly can contain messages not yet deciphered. But perhaps, in addition to the geometric shape and the effects in wheat, there is something deeper in it that vibrates in the spectrum of energies of the universe that human perception does not reach.”

In other words, the local magnetic field may be dictating the shape of this and other agroglyphs in Ipuaçu and possibly in other areas. Since no one admits to seeing this crop circle being made, there is no evidence to conclude it was made by humans … but there is also none to drive the conclusion to extraterrestrials either. At this point, Cores reminds us why there are so many conflicts between science and the paranormal.

“However, it is worth remembering that science is not a matter of belief or disbelief. Science is verification, impartial investigation within a methodology established by it to avoid mistakes and reach results as close to reality as possible. In this process, data collection is essential.”

As we have noted, Alcides Cores and his team collected the data at the site of the recent crop circle in Ipuaçu, analyzed it a drew their conclusions as best as they could. To the frustration of believers, the conclusion was not extraterrestrials. However, this was only one of many agroglyphs in Ipuaçu and the surrounding area. Cores and other investigation teams will be back. And one day they may find the conclusive data on crop circles everyone is waiting for.

Paul Seaburn

For the organization which has spent more time in outer space that any other, NASA has been slow to embrace the idea of unidentified flying objects. Even when its own astronauts swear they have seen UAPs, the space agency has stepped back from acknowledging them, let alone investigating them. As the Department of Defense finally admitted that videos of UAPs taken by military pilots and naval ship personnel are real and the U.S. Congress demanded and received briefings and hearings, NASA this summer decided to jump on the UAP bandwagon and announced it would form a panel to investigate them. After months of searching, that panel has finally been announced. Let’s take a look at who is on it and why, and then compare it to some rival organizations.

“Exploring the unknown in space and the atmosphere is at the heart of who we are at NASA. Understanding the data we have surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena is critical to helping us draw scientific conclusions about what is happening in our skies. Data is the language of scientists and makes the unexplainable, explainable.”

In the NASA press release, Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, makes some bold statements about a 16-person commission with a budget under $100,000 and only nine months to complete the project. But we’ll have to take when we can get from the organization that usually gives nothing on the subject. At the head of the table is David Spergel, the chair of the study. Spergel is the president of the Simons Foundation where he was the founding director of its Flatiron Institute for Computational Astrophysics and helped establish the standard model of cosmology.

Two names on the panel that should be familiar to the general public are Scott Kelly and Frederico Bianco. Kelly is a veteran NASA astronaut – having served on four space missions, including a one -year stint on the International Space Station – and is have of the human space travel guinea pigs team with his identical twin brother and fellow astronaut Mark Kelly, now a U.S. senator. Scott Kelly was asked by CNN in 2021 if he believes in UFOs or extraterrestrials and he said, “No. I think the distances are too great. The physics are... The nearest Earth-like planet, if we went as fast as we could, would take 80,000 years to get there." If UFO believers were hoping for a fighter on the team, Scott Kelly isn’t it … but Federica Bianco is. The Italian-born astrophysicist took up boxing for fitness and while living in New York and found she was good enough to turn pro – competing in competitions like Beautiful Brawlers and the National Women’s Golden Gloves. Bianco calls herself “The Mad Scientist” and has real science credentials – she is a joint professor at the University of Delaware, is the principal investigator of Federica Astrostatistics Lab (FASTLab), and coordinates more than 1,500 scientists for the 2023 Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Science Collaboration to discover new galaxies and stars in the southern sky.

Former astronaut Scott Kelly

With some UAPs also showing underwater capabilities, the team decided to include biological oceanographer Paula Bontempi, a professor of oceanography University of Rhode Island and a NASA veteran who was the acting deputy director of NASA’s Earth Science Division for the Science Mission Directorate and worked on many NASA Earth observing satellite missions. To help include non-military UFOs in the evaluation is Karlin Toner, the acting executive director of the FAA’s Office of Aviation Policy and Plans, who previously was the director of the Airspace Systems Program at NASA Headquarters. Also representing the FAA is Warren Randolph, the deputy executive director of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Accident Investigation and Prevention for Aviation Safety department. This is a good sign that the many UFOs seen by commercial pilots will be included in the NASA research. To make sure the photos are clear and the facts checked thoroughly is science journalist Nadia Drake, a contributing writer at National Geographic and Scientific American covering astronomy, astrophysics, planetary sciences, and jungles and the holder of a doctorate in genetics.

The search of extraterrestrial intelligence will be represented on the panel by Anamaria Berea, an associate professor of Computational and Data Science at George Mason University and a research affiliate with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, focusing on the science of both biosignatures and technosignatures as signs of intelligent life. Representing the issues of the Department of Defense is Reggie Brothers, the former undersecretary for Science and Technology at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research at the Department of Defense. On the medical side – if they happen to uncover some living ETs – is Jen Buss who worked with NASA on strategic planning processes for astronaut medical care. When it comes to negotiating with those living extraterrestrials, the panel has Mike Gold, a former NASA associate administrator for Space Policy and Partnerships, acting associate administrator for the Office of International and Interagency Relations and senior advisor to the Administrator for International and Legal Affairs. Gold also worked with the State Department on the creation and execution of the Artemis Accords, which established the norms of behavior in space. To help figure where the UFOs and aliens are coming from is David Grinspoon, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and a researcher on comparative planetology, climate evolution and the implications of habitability on earth-like planets.

Proving that the James Webb Space Telescope has taken over SETI, the panel includes Matt Mountain, who oversees a consortium of national and international universities who help NASA and the National Science Foundation build and operate observatories including NASA’s Hubble Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. Representing earthlings is Walter Scott, the executive vice president and chief technology officer of Maxar in Colorado which specializes in earth intelligence and space infrastructure. Also looking at the Earth side is Joshua Semeter, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University where he also researches interactions between Earth’s ionosphere and the space environment. For those who support the theory that extraterrestrials beat the speed of light limitation by traveling through wormholes and black holes is Shelley Wright, an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Studies specializing in supermassive black holes and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

Who will prove their existence first?

That is NASA’s UFO investigation panel. It seems to have every aspect of unidentified aerial phenomena and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence covered except for one – no one on the panel has had an encounter with a UFO or ET. For that, we turn to a rival organization – the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession, the AAIA announced the formation of the Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Community of Interest with two co-chairpersons -- Ravi Kopparapu, a planetary scientist at NASA who is studying the potential habitability of Earth-like planets, and Ryan Graves, the former Navy fighter pilot and defense contractor who revealed his UFO encounters while piloting his F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet in 2014 and 2015. These two organizations are just starting out, while the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office formed in July “to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in, on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security. This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects.”

NASA’s unidentified aerial phenomena panel has the broadest background and a boxer, but the smallest budget. On the private sector side, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics has a pilot with real UFO experience. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has the backing of the federal government and the biggest budget. Which one will win the race to reveal the first extraterrestrials and their space ships?