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...
30-10-2022
GEEN GODEN, GEESTEN OF ALIENS: DIT IS WÉL DE VERKLARING VOOR DE MYSTERIEUZE FEEËNCIRKELS
GEEN GODEN, GEESTEN OF ALIENS: DIT IS WÉL DE VERKLARING VOOR DE MYSTERIEUZE FEEËNCIRKELS
Jeannette Kras
Eeuwenlang kenden Afrikaanse volkeren magische eigenschappen toe aan de mysterieuze feeëncirkels in Namibië. De werkelijke verklaring is minstens even fascinerend. Én biedt een lichtpuntje in de klimaatcrisis.
Al langer zijn wetenschappers erachter dat de vrijwel perfect ronde cirkels in de Namibwoestijn ofwel het werk moeten zijn van termieten of het gevolg zijn van het zelforganiserend vermogen van planten. Volgens recent onderzoek van de Duitse University of Göttingen zijn het toch de planten zelf die de knappe cirkels hebben gemaakt. De onderzoekers profiteerden van twee uitzonderlijk goede regenseizoenen in de Namibwoestijn, waarna ze continu de vochtigheid van de grond konden meten. Zo werd duidelijk dat de grassen in de feeëncirkels direct stierven na de regen en dat het niet de termieten waren die de kale vlaktes veroorzaakten. De planten rondom de cirkel blijken al het water weg te trekken van het gras binnenin de cirkel, waardoor dit doodgaat.
Bijzondere omstandigheden Zo’n 80 tot 140 kilometer van de kust in de Namibwoestijn zijn miljoenen feeëncirkels ontstaan. Het zijn ronde gaten in het grasland, meestal enkele meters breed, die samen een bijzonder patroon vormen in het landschap. “De cirkels zijn perfect rond, omdat de grassen eromheen elkaar in balans houden”, legt onderzoeker dr. Stephan Getzin uit aan Scientias.nl. “Een cirkel is een erg stabiele structuur in de natuur, vooral in simpele systemen zoals grasland in de woestijn, waar slechts een of twee grassoorten domineren. Dan kunnen er sterke patronen ontstaan, omdat bij meer soorten er één gespecialiseerd zou raken om de leegte op te vullen. Bovendien is een cirkel de meest efficiënte vorm voor gras om zoveel mogelijk water te krijgen per plantje.”
Niet te nat en niet te droog De feeëncirkels zijn uiterst zeldzaam. Lang werd gedacht dat ze alleen in Namibië voorkwamen, maar ze zijn ook ontdekt in een ander heel klein deel van de wereld in West-Australië. “De reden is dat zulke cirkels met een heel sterk ruimtelijk patroon alleen voorkomen als alle biotische en abiotische omstandigheden samenkomen op de juiste plaats”, verklaart Getzin. “Feeëncirkels kunnen alleen voorkomen in een heel specifiek dor gebied. Als er meer water zou zijn, zouden de cirkels verdwijnen en zou er overal een laag vegetatie worden gevormd. Zou het daarentegen nog droger zijn, dan zouden de cirkels ook verdwijnen en bleven er alleen enkele losse stukken gras over.”
Feeëncirkels met een drone vastgelegd.
Foto: Stephan Getzin
Maar dat is nog niet alles. “Het ecosysteem moet bovendien soortarm zijn. En tenslotte moet nog de juiste plantarchitectuur in contact komen met de juist grondsoort. In het Namibische zand hebben bijvoorbeeld de Stipagrostis-grassen allemaal wortels die voornamelijk recht naar beneden groeien. Daardoor kunnen ze op zij geen ruimte innemen en moeten ze het water uit hun omgeving naar zich toe trekken, waardoor ze het water van het gras binnen de feeëncirkels ‘stelen’ en die doodgaan. “
En de termieten dan? Om uit te sluiten dat termieten niet de oorzaak zijn van de cirkels, zoals lang werd gedacht, volgden de onderzoekers de sporadische regenbuien in verschillende gebieden in de woestijn en bestudeerden de wortels van de grassen op mogelijke schade door de insecten.
De onderzoekers startten direct na de regen met het meten van het grondwaterpeil in en rond de feeëncirkels. Dat gebeurde iedere dertig minuten vanaf het droge seizoen in 2020 tot het eind van het regenseizoen in 2022. Uit de data bleek dat zo’n tien dagen na de regen de grassen al begonnen dood te gaan in de cirkels en dat er daarbinnen nauwelijks ontkieming van gras was. Twintig dagen na de regen was het gras in de cirkel al dood en geel van kleur terwijl het gras eromheen levendig en groen was. Aan de wortels lag het niet: die waren in de cirkel even lang of langer dan buiten de cirkel. Maar de onderzoekers vonden ook geen bewijs van termieten die zich te goed zouden doen aan de wortels. Pas vijftig tot zestig dagen na de regen werd er wortelschade zichtbaar bij het dode gras. “Er was geen biomassa voor de termieten om zich mee te voeden, maar belangrijker: we konden aantonen dat het gras direct na de regen al afstierf, lang voor er tekenen waren van dieren die de wortels aten”, verklaart de Duitse onderzoeker.
Water opzuigen Uit de data bleek verder dat het grondwater binnen en buiten de cirkels maar heel langzaam zakte vlak na de regen als de grassen nog niet helemaal zijn ontkiemd. Maar zodra het gras begon te groeien, daalde het grondwater snel, ook in de gebieden in de cirkel waar vrijwel niets groeide. Getzin legt uit: “In de hitte van de Namibwoestijn verliezen de grassen continu water. Ze hebben daar geen controle over, omdat ze door diezelfde hitte snel groeien, maar door de bladeren verliezen ze water. Ze blijven dus water uit de grond zuigen en creëren zo een soort vochtige kanalen waardoor water uit hun omgeving zich naar hen toe verspreidt.” De onderzoeker vergelijkt het met de manier waarop een bever dammen bouwt. Het schaarse water trekt richting de planten. “We kunnen dit wel zwermintelligentie noemen, ook al hebben planten geen hersenen, deze grassen zijn wel intelligent bezig. Ze vormen een perfecte cirkel en ruimtelijk geordende patronen waardoor hun overlevingskansen in deze brute omgeving worden geoptimaliseerd. Elke andere manier van groeien zou niet levensvatbaar zijn in deze woestijn”, klinkt het vol bewondering.
Geen gras dus geen termieten Getzin was het meest verbaasd over de snelheid waarmee het hele proces plaatsvond. “De grassen in de cirkels begonnen al af te sterven na acht tot negen dagen dus binnen een week ontkiemen ze en sterven ze in de cirkels, terwijl de grassen daarbuiten groen blijven. Dat betekent dat de omringende grassen het water al beginnen op te zuigen uit hun omgeving direct na de regen en dat ze de overige grassen meteen doden. Dit proces is zo sterk dat de planten in de feeëncirkel vanaf het begin geen enkele kans hebben om te overleven. Ook blijkt uit de onmiddellijke afwezigheid van gras dat de termieten het niet opgegeten kunnen hebben, want er was immers geen gras.”
Dit onderzoek is interessant in het licht van de opwarming van de aarde. De manier waarop planten zichzelf organiseren in droge, hete gebieden kan bijdragen aan hun overleving in regio’s die steeds dorder worden.
AARDMAGNETISCH VELD ONTHULT DE WAARHEID ACHTER BEKENDE BIJBELVERHALEN
AARDMAGNETISCH VELD ONTHULT DE WAARHEID ACHTER BEKENDE BIJBELVERHALEN
Jeannette Kras
Was de Aramese koning Hazaël echt verantwoordelijk voor de vernietiging van een groot aantal steden in Israël? En welke steden werden verwoest door de Edomieten? De reconstructie van het aardmagnetisch veld op belangrijke archeologische sites geeft het antwoord.
Twintig onderzoekers van de Tel Aviv Universiteit en de Hebreeuwse Universiteit hebben 21 aardlagen op 17 archeologische vindplaatsen in Israël onderzocht door de richting en intensiteit van het aardmagnetisch veld te reconstrueren die in de verbrande resten zijn terug te vinden. De nieuwe data verifiëren én weerleggen enkele Bijbelverhalen van onder meer Egyptische, Aramese en Babylonische oorlogen tegen de koninkrijken van Israël en Juda. Juda is het huidige zuidelijke deel van Israël met Jeruzalem als hoofdstad.
Magnetische mineralen De bevindingen van de archeologen tonen aan dat het leger van de Aramese koning Hazaël niet alleen Gath van de Filistijnen heeft vernietigd, maar ook de plaatsen Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit en Horvat Tevet. De studie weerlegt dan weer het heersende idee dat Hazaël Tel Beth-Shean verwoestte. Andere geomagnetische bevindingen onthullen dat de steden in de Negev, de woestijn in het zuiden van Israël, werden verwoest door de Edomieten, die misbruik maakten van de vernietiging van Jeruzalem door de Babyloniërs.
Dat is allemaal knap aangetoond, maar hoe meten de archeologen deze veranderingen in het aardmagnetisch veld? De onderzoekers analyseren archeologische vondsten die magnetische mineralen bevatten. Bij verhitting of verbranding is in deze mineralen het magnetische veld op het moment van de brand vastgelegd. Bij verwoestingen door oorlogen ontstaan er vaak branden en dat is dus door de archeologen terug te vinden.
Nebukadnezar Zo wisten onderzoekers al in 2020 het magnetische veld te reconstrueren zoals dat bestond ten tijde van de vernietiging van Jeruzalem in 586 voor Christus door het Babylonische leger van de machtige koning Nebukadnezar. In de nieuwe studie zijn met behulp van het aardmagnetisch veld in combinatie met oude inscripties en Bijbelverhalen nog veel meer historische gebeurtenissen onderzocht. De data zijn zelfs gebruikt om een nieuwe wetenschappelijke methode voor archeologische datering te ontwikkelen.
Onderzoeker Yoav Vaknin legt uit hoe dat in zijn werk ging. “Op basis van de overeenkomst of het verschil in intensiteit en richting van het magnetische veld, kunnen we hypothesen die stellen dat bepaalde locaties tijdens dezelfde oorlog zijn verbrand, bevestigen of weerleggen.” Over de ontwikkelde methode vertelt hij: “Ook hebben we een variatiecurve ontwikkeld die de intensiteit van de magnetische velden kan bepalen en die zo kan dienen als een wetenschappelijk dateringsinstrument, vergelijkbaar met de radiokoolstofdateringsmethode.”
Koning Hazaël en de Filistijnen Een belangrijk voorbeeld is de vernietiging van Gath, een van de vijf hoofdsteden van de Filistijnen, door koning Hazaël. Historici gingen ervan uit dat deze oorlog rond 830 voor Christus plaatsvond, maar konden niet met zekerheid zeggen dat Hazaël ook verantwoordelijk was voor de vernietiging van de plaatsen Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit en Horvat Tevet. De nieuwe studie heeft nu aangetoond dat de magnetische velden van deze vier steden synchroon lopen voor het moment waarop de vernietiging plaatsvond. Hoogstwaarschijnlijk gebeurde dit dus tijdens dezelfde oorlog en is koning Hazaël inderdaad de dader.
Op dezelfde manier kon echter worden weerlegd dat Tel Beth-Shean ook door de oorlogszuchtige koning was vernietigd: daar was het magnetische veld totaal anders. De magnetische data tonen aan dat de stad samen met twee andere steden in het noorden van Israël 70 tot 100 jaar eerder is verwoest. Die periode komt overeen met de oorlog van de Egyptische farao Sjosjenq. Die wordt beschreven in de Bijbel en in een inscriptie op een muur van de tempel van Amon in het Egyptische Karnak. Daarin wordt Beth-Shean eveneens genoemd als een van de veroveringen van de farao.
Niet alleen de Babyloniërs Nog interessanter zijn de bevindingen over het einde van het koninkrijk Juda. Professor Erez Ben Yosef legt uit: “Over de laatste dagen van het koninkrijk Juda is al veel geschreven. Sommige onderzoekers beweren dat Juda niet volledig werd vernietigd door de Babyloniërs.” Zij hebben vermoedelijk gelijk, blijkt uit de nieuwe dateringsmethode. “Terwijl Jeruzalem en andere grenssteden werden verwoest, bleven andere steden in het zuiden in de bergen van Juda nagenoeg onaangetast. De resultaten van het magnetische onderzoek ondersteunen de hypothese, dat de Babyloniërs niet alléén verantwoordelijk zijn voor de uiteindelijke ondergang van Juda.”
Volgens de professor waren het waarschijnlijk de Edomieten die enkele decennia later de doodsteek betekenden voor het koninkrijk. Zij maakten misbruik van de val van Jeruzalem, aldus Erez Ben Yosef. “Hun rol in de vernietiging van de overgebleven steden kan verklaren waarom de Hebreeuwse Bijbel zoveel wrok koestert tegen de Edomieten.”
Mengsel van ijzer en nikkel Professor Ron Shaar, die verantwoordelijk was voor de ontwikkeling van de nieuwe dateringsmethode, legt uit dat “het magnetisch veld van de aarde van cruciaal belang is voor ons bestaan. De meeste mensen realiseren zich niet dat er zonder dit veld geen leven op aarde kan bestaan, omdat het ons beschermt tegen ionische straling en zonnewind. Bovendien gebruiken mensen en dieren het magnetische veld om te navigeren.” Het geomagnetisch veld van onze planeet bestaat uit een mengsel van vloeibaar ijzer en nikkel in de buitenste kern van de aarde, op een diepte van 2.900 kilometer. Doordat de aarde draait, beweegt deze vloeistof om de vaste kern van de aarde heen en ontstaat een magnetisch veld.
Met de nieuwe archeologische dateringsmethode op basis van dit aardmagnetische veld kunnen in de toekomst nog veel historische gebeurtenissen beter onderzocht en gedateerd worden.
NASA’s InSight spacecraft, soon after it touched down on Mars in 2018, compared with its most recent selfie, showing it coated in dust from a storm.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The first and only spacecraft to study quakes on Mars is about to die. A recent Martian storm blanketed the solar panels of NASA’s InSight lander with dust, blocking much of the sunlight it needs to charge its batteries. Mission controllers are now running its seismometer intermittently to conserve energy. In weeks, the spacecraft will probably stop responding to commands from Earth and slide into oblivion.
But InSight isn’t going out without a bang. On 27 October, scientists reported that last year, the mission detected seismic waves created by the biggest meteorite impacts ever seen on Mars1,2. Both meteorites hit the planet with the energy of a small nuclear bomb. By tracing how the massive seismicity rippled through Mars, scientists were able to study properties of the red planet’s crust thousands of kilometres from InSight, and resolve a mystery about whether the spacecraft happens to sit in a geologically unusual spot.
The findings add to InSight’s rich legacy of discovery. Since arriving on Mars in November 2018, it has gathered information on more than 1,300 ‘marsquakes’3. This has allowed researchers to calculate, among other things, the long-sought size of Mars’s core and the thickness of its crust. Just last month, researchers used data from five marsquakes to determine that Mars’s mantle is richer in iron than is Earth’s4. All of this information on Mars’s internal layers will help scientists to understand how the planet formed and evolved over billions of years.
“Before the mission, I always showed all these cartoons of cut-in-half planets,” says Mark Panning, InSight’s project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “Now the cartoon has moved from question marks and fuzzy boundaries to a real picture of what the Mars interior is. That was what we promised, and we did it.”
Seismic revelations
It wasn’t always clear that scientists would succeed. In 2012, NASA decided to build and launch the US$994-million InSight, a controversial choice because the agency had several other Mars missions already in its queue. Then, problems in building its super-sensitive seismometer forced a $150-million, two-year launch delay. Once InSight finally arrived at Mars, a German-built instrument nicknamed the Mole, which was meant to measure heat flow in the soil, failed when it couldn’t bury itself in the ground. The mission didn’t even detect its first marsquake until five months after landing — and when it finally did, researchers struggled to interpret what they were seeing.
“At the beginning, we were not really sure how much we could get from the data,” says Brigitte Knapmeyer-Erdrun, a planetary scientist at the University of Cologne in Germany.
But things picked up for InSight during its second Martian year. The spacecraft sits near the Martian equator, in a region known as Elysium Planitia. Many of the quakes it detects come from a geologically active region known as Cerberus Fossae, about 1,500 kilometres away, where underground injections of magma are thought to cause tremors5. In August and September 2021, the spacecraft detected marsquakes on the other side of the planet for the first time6.
And on 4 May this year, InSight detected a magnitude 4.7 quake — the biggest by far (most of InSight’s detections are in the magnitude 2–3 range). On Earth, such a quake could be felt by humans if they were near the epicentre.
“This is a beautiful gift given by Mars,” says Philippe Lognonné, a geophysicist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics who leads the seismometer team.
Researchers haven’t yet published what they have learnt from the ‘big one’. But it was so large that it sent seismic energy through the surface layers of the Martian crust, creating what’s known as a surface wave — which can reveal more information about a planet’s interior than can other types of seismic wave. “I don’t want to tip our hand too much,” says Bruce Banerdt, a geophysicist at JPL and InSight’s principal investigator. “But it’s really giving information all across the spectrum, from the shallow crust all the way down to the deepest mantle and core.”
Deep impacts
Meanwhile, scientists have analysed surface waves generated during the two record-setting meteorite impacts last year, on 18 September and 24 December1,2. InSight picked them up from thousands of kilometres away.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of the crater caused by a meteorite striking the red planet on 24 December 2021. It’s more than 130 metres across.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
They rippled through the Martian crust to the north of InSight, which sits near a key geological boundary where the terrain is smoother and lower in elevation than the heavily cratered southern highlands. The way the surface waves travelled through the crust to the north suggests that it is denser than the crust beneath Insight, which landed in a region where the rocks are particularly porous.
InSight was able to tell where the quakes originated thanks to NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Scientists who were looking through images from the orbiter spotted craters on the surface left by each of the impacts, and were able to pinpoint the dates on which they formed. Both of the craters are more than 130 metres across, making them the largest fresh craters observed in the 16 years that the MRO has been studying the planet. “This is a very unique data set of this size of impact,” says Liliya Posiolova, orbital-science operations lead for the MRO at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California. When the first images arrived, she says, “it was like nothing we had ever seen before, and we almost did a double-take”.
Saying goodbye
Just because InSight is almost finished doesn’t mean discovery will stop. A ‘marsquake service’ based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich has been archiving the mission’s data. Researchers will probably use that information to make fresh findings for years to come, as they have with decades-old Apollo data collected during quakes on the Moon. “I’m quite sure we’re going to do the same with Mars,” says Anna Horleston, a seismologist at the University of Bristol, UK.
Researchers have already benefited from re-evaluating InSight data. Initially, they could determine only the magnitude of marsquakes, but usually not their location. Scientists led by Géraldine Zenhäusern, a geophysicist at ETH, figured out how to use the polarity of seismic waves from a marsquake to calculate its location7. Separately, new techniques such as machine learning are already starting to unearth more marsquakes in InSight’s data8.
Once InSight dies, Mars will be without a seismometer for a while; one was planned for the European Space Agency’s ExoMars lander, but that mission involved a collaboration with Russia and is on hold in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
There is a tiny chance that a dust devil might blow off the dust covering InSight’s solar panels and prolong the mission’s life. But researchers are preparing themselves to say goodbye. “There is definitely a sense of, oh my goodness, this is about to end,” Horleston says.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03447-4
References
Posiolova, L. V. et al.Science378, 412–417 (2022).
NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars
NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars
Boulder-size blocks of water ice can be seen around the rim of an impact crater on Mars, as viewed by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE camera) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The crater was formed Dec. 24, 2021, by a meteoroid strike in the Amazonis Planitia region.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
The agency’s lander felt the ground shake during the impact while cameras aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the yawning new crater from space.
NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. What’s more, the meteoroid excavated boulder-size chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever found before – a discovery with implications for NASA’s future plans to send astronauts to the Red Planet.
Scientists determined the quake resulted from a meteoroid impact when they looked at before-and-after images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and spotted a new, yawning crater. Offering a rare opportunity to see how a large impact shook the ground on Mars, the event and its effects are detailed in two papers published Thursday, Oct. 27, in the journal Science.
The impact crater, formed Dec. 24, 2021, by a meteoroid strike in the Amazonis Planitia region of Mars, is about 490 feet (150 meters) across, as seen in this annotated image taken by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE camera) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
The meteoroid is estimated to have spanned 16 to 39 feet (5 to 12 meters) – small enough that it would have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, but not in Mars’ thin atmosphere, which is just 1% as dense as our planet’s. The impact, in a region called Amazonis Planitia, blasted a crater roughly 492 feet (150 meters) across and 70 feet (21 meters) deep. Some of the ejecta thrown by the impact flew as far as 23 miles (37 kilometers) away.
With images and seismic data documenting the event, this is believed to be one of the largest craters ever witnessed forming any place in the solar system. Many larger craters exist on the Red Planet, but they are significantly older and predate any Mars mission.
“It’s unprecedented to find a fresh impact of this size,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, who leads InSight’s Impact Science Working Group. “It’s an exciting moment in geologic history, and we got to witness it.”
InSight has seen its power drastically decline in recent months due to dust settling on its solar panels. The spacecraft now is expected to shut down within the next six weeks, bringing the mission’s science to an end.
This meteoroid impact crater on Mars was discovered using the black-and-white Context Camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The Context Camera took these before-and-after images of the impact, which occurred on Dec. 24, 2021, in a region of Mars called Amazonis Planitia.
But the quake resulting from last December’s impact was the first observed to have surface waves – a kind of seismic wave that ripples along the top of a planet’s crust. The second of the two Science papers related to the big impact describes how scientists use these waves to study the structure of Mars’ crust.
This video includes a seismogram and sonification of the signals recorded by NASA’s InSight Mars lander, which detected a giant meteoroid strike on Dec. 24, 2021, the 1,094th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/Imperial College London
Crater Hunters
In late 2021, InSight scientists reported to the rest of the team they had detected a major marsquake on Dec. 24. The crater was first spotted on Feb. 11, 2022, by scientists working at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), which built and operates two cameras aboard MRO. The Context Camera (CTX) provides black-and-white, medium-resolution images, while the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) produces daily maps of the entire planet, allowing scientists to track large-scale weather changes like the recent regional dust storm that further diminished InSight’s solar power.
The impact’s blast zone was visible in MARCI data that allowed the team to pin down a 24-hour period within which the impact occurred. These observations correlated with the seismic epicenter, conclusively demonstrating that a meteoroid impact caused the large Dec. 24 marsquake.
“The image of the impact was unlike any I had seen before, with the massive crater, the exposed ice, and the dramatic blast zone preserved in the Martian dust,” said Liliya Posiolova, who leads the Orbital Science and Operations Group at MSSS. “I couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like to witness the impact, the atmospheric blast, and debris ejected miles downrange.”
Establishing the rate at which craters appear on Mars is critical for refining the planet’s geologic timeline. On older surfaces, such as those of Mars and our Moon, there are more craters than on Earth; on our planet, the processes of erosion and plate tectonics erase older features from the surface.
New craters also expose materials below the surface. In this case, large chunks of ice scattered by the impact were viewed by MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) color camera.
Subsurface ice will be a vital resource for astronauts, who could use it for a variety of needs, including drinking water, agriculture, and rocket propellant. Buried ice has never been spotted this close to the Martian equator, which, as the warmest part of Mars, is an appealing location for astronauts.
This animation depicts a flyover of a meteoroid impact crater on Mars that’s surrounded by boulder-size chunks of ice. The animation was created using data from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
More About the Missions
JPL manages InSight and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, InSight spacecraft (including its cruise stage and lander), and supports spacecraft operations for both missions.
Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates the Context Camera and MARCI camera. University of Arizona built and operates the HiRISE camera.
A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) supplied a passive laser retroreflector.
De zon straalt, letterlijk én figuurlijk: NASA deelt opmerkelijk beeld van 'glimlachende' zon
Het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap NASA heeft een bijzonder beeld gedeeld van onze zon. Net zoals op andere foto’s zie je de zon stralen, maar dit keer lijkt ze dat ook figuurlijk te doen.
“Vandaag betrapte het Solar Dynamics Observatory van NASA de zon op een glimlach”, zo schrijft de ruimtesonde van het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap op Twitter. Met behulp van ultraviolet licht verschijnen er zwarte cirkels op het beeld van de zon waardoor er een glimlach lijkt te verschijnen.
In werkelijkheid zijn de zwarte cirkels coronale gaten, magnetische velden die verschillen van de rest van de zon en zich uitstrekken tot in de ruimte. Zulke gaten veranderen na een tijdje van vorm en grootte, maar kunnen er eerst enkele weken tot zelfs maanden exact hetzelfde uitzien.
Op Twitter zijn inmiddels ook andere vergelijkingen verschenen. Zo ziet het er volgens sommigen niet uit alsof de zon glimlacht, maar lijkt ze eerder op de Stay Puft Marshmallow Man van Ghostbusters. Anderen denken meteen aan de zon bij het kinderprogramma de Teletubbies of een (halloween)pompoen.
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Monster Black Hole Found Near Earth, Starlink Hacked, Early Life Killed Mars
Monster Black Hole Found Near Earth, Starlink Hacked, Early Life Killed Mars
There’s a monster black hole in our backyard (astronomically speaking). Life could survive underground on Mars for hundreds of millions of years. Starlink was hacked and now works as GPS. Bad news for Arecibo.
Enjoy the video version of all the latest space and astronomy news in our latest episode of Space Bites. Everything you need to know that happened last week in a convenient bite-size video format.
The Closest Black Hole Ever Discovered
A monster black hole was discovered relatively close to us. It’s just 1550 light years away, which is our backyard, astronomically speaking. The exciting thing is how it was discovered. Astronomers looked into Gaia’s data on stars and their motion. Among them, they found a star that looked like it was in a binary system. But there was no visible companion. Further analysis revealed that it was a 12-solar mass black hole. So, it’s an interesting new technique that can reveal more black holes in the future.
There is an interesting paradox about life on Mars. New studies suggest the following scenario. If there was life on Mars in its early stages, when the planet was wet and warm, it could have wiped itself out. By producing CO2, methane and other gases, it could have weakened the greenhouse effect. So, by replacing hydrogen with those gases they made the planet colder, which eventually lead to losing its atmosphere and therefore conditions for life.
Researchers managed to hack Starlink and use it as a positioning system. All that without any consent from SpaceX. By analyzing the signals from the satellites they managed to reverse-engineer it and extract timing data. Combining this information with the positions of the satellites, which are well-known and opened to the general public, it effectively turned into a GPS alternative. The precision is about 30-meters. It can be improved, if SpaceX wanted to cooperate. But whether they will want to do so is yet to be determined.
Lucy Gets a Portrait of the Earth and the Moon
Whenever spacecraft make a gravity-assisted flyby of Earth, it’s the perfect opportunity to test their optics and science instruments. During its recent flyby, Trojan-bound Lucy captured this image of planet Earth when it was about 620,000 km away. It also captured a picture of both the Earth and the Moon in the same photo, showing how far away they are from each other.
We know that red dwarf stars can blast out powerful flares, but in the case of one system, the results were catastrophic. Astronomers studied the earth-sized planet GJ 1252b, which orbits a red dwarf star every 12 hours. They found that the intense flares from the star scoured away the atmosphere from the planet. This could be the case for many other exoplanetary systems, but there’s some good news. If the worlds are farther away from the star, their atmosphere could hold under this barrage, protecting life until the star settles down.
It’s official. The famous Arecibo radar telescope won’t be rebuilt. It’s a sad but expected moment. But still, Arecibo has left a huge heritage both in science, as new studies are still being published with its data, as well as in popular culture.
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.
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Former Navy Pilot: "I witnessed a solid black cube inside a translucent sphere"
Former Navy Pilot: "I witnessed a solid black cube inside a translucent sphere"
Former Lt. U.S. Navy and F/A-18F pilot Ryan Graves was the first actives duty pilot to publicly disclose regular sightings of Unindentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) talks about his encounter with what he describes as a solid black cube inside a translucent sphere.
He states that despite the wind was over 120-140mph the object was completely stationary midair without moving a bit up and down, left or right as well as the object followed a so-called "racetrack" what means it was not flying a straight flight path but flew a random track where it made impossible maneuvers like a u turn without slowing down.
After the F/A-18F got an upgraded radar system, the pilots saw these kinds of objects of unknown origin on a daily basis and not only Navy pilots, also commercial pilots have reported these extraordinary flying objects, like the pilot who captured a black cube at high altitude during a commercial flight, see second video below.
We can speculate whether these objects without wings or visible propulsion are man-made or of extraterrestrial origin, the fact is that these objects with exceptional abilities exist and move through our skies for whatever reason.
Paul Bennewitz is a civilian who lived near an airforce base. When he saw strange lights in the sky, he initially thought they were experimental aircraft. He then started picking up alien language on the radio. After gathering evidence, he reported it to the authorities, and the Air Force supported his UFO research. The military denied his claims, but privately, they confirmed his findings. He later ended in a mental institution.
NASA's InSight 'Hears' Its First Meteoroid Impacts on Mars
NASA's InSight 'Hears' Its First Meteoroid Impacts on Mars
InSight Detects an Impact for the First Time: These craters were formed by a Sept. 5, 2021, meteoroid impact on Mars, the first to be detected by NASA’s InSight. Taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, this enhanced-color image highlights the dust and soil disturbed by the impact in blue in order to make details more visible to the human eye.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona. Download Image ›
The Mars lander’s seismometer has picked up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years.
NASA’s InSight lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021. Not only do these represent the first impacts detected by the spacecraft’s seismometer since InSight touched down on the Red Planet in 2018, it also marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact have been detected on Mars.
A new paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience details the impacts, which ranged between 53 and 180 miles (85 and 290 kilometers) from InSight’s location, a region of Mars called Elysium Planitia.
The first of the four confirmed meteoroids – the term used for space rocks before they hit the ground – made the most dramatic entrance: It entered Mars’ atmosphere on Sept. 5, 2021, exploding into at least three shards that each left a crater behind.
InSight’s Meteoroid Impact Detection: Learn more about the first meteoroid impact NASA’s InSight lander detected on Mars in this video.
Then, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site to confirm the location. The orbiter used its black-and-white Context Camera to reveal three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these spots, the orbiter’s team used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters (the meteoroid could have left additional craters in the surface, but they would be too small to see in HiRISE’s images).
“After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked beautiful,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, a co-author of the paper and a specialist in Mars impacts.
Mars Crater Collage: This collage shows three other meteoroid impacts that were detected by the seismometer on NASA’s InSight lander and captured by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its HiRISE camera.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona. Download Image ›
After combing through earlier data, scientists confirmed three other impacts had occurred on May 27, 2020; Feb. 18, 2021; and Aug. 31, 2021.
Researchers have puzzled over why they haven’t detected more meteoroid impacts on Mars. The Red Planet is next to the solar system’s main asteroid belt, which provides an ample supply of space rocks to scar the planet’s surface. Because Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as thick as Earth’s, more meteoroids pass through it without disintegrating.
InSight’s seismometer has detected over 1,300 marsquakes. Provided by France’s space agency, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales, the instrument is so sensitive that it can detect seismic waves from thousands of miles away. But the Sept. 5, 2021, event marks the first time an impact was confirmed as the cause of such waves.
InSight’s team suspects that other impacts may have been obscured by noise from wind or by seasonal changes in the atmosphere. But now that the distinctive seismic signature of an impact on Mars has been discovered, scientists expect to find more hiding within InSight’s nearly four years of data.
Listen to a Meteoroid Hitting the Red Planet: The sound of a meteoroid striking Mars – created from data recorded by NASA’s InSight lander – is like a “bloop” due to a peculiar atmospheric effect. In this audio clip, the sound can be heard three times: when the meteoroid enters the Martian atmosphere, explodes into pieces, and impacts the surface. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/IPGP. Download audio ›
Science Behind the Strikes
Seismic data offer various clues that will help researchers better understand the Red Planet. Most marsquakes are caused by subsurface rocks cracking from heat and pressure. Studying how the resulting seismic waves change as they move through different material provides scientists a way to study Mars’ crust, mantle, and core.
The four meteoroid impacts confirmed so far produced small quakes with a magnitude of no more than 2.0. Those smaller quakes provide scientists with only a glimpse into the Martian crust, while seismic signals from larger quakes, like the magnitude 5 event that occurred in May 2022, can also reveal details about the planet’s mantle and core.
But the impacts will be critical to refining Mars’ timeline. “Impacts are the clocks of the solar system,” said the paper’s lead author, Raphael Garcia of Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France. “We need to know the impact rate today to estimate the age of different surfaces.”
Scientists can approximate the age of a planet’s surface by counting its impact craters: The more they see, the older the surface. By calibrating their statistical models based on how often they see impacts occurring now, scientists can then estimate how many more impacts happened earlier in the solar system’s history.
InSight’s data, in combination with orbital images, can be used to rebuild a meteoroid’s trajectory and the size of its shock wave. Every meteoroid creates a shock wave as it hits the atmosphere and an explosion as it hits the ground. These events send sound waves through the atmosphere. The bigger the explosion, the more this sound wave tilts the ground when it reaches InSight. The lander’s seismometer is sensitive enough to measure how much the ground tilts from such an event and in what direction.
“We’re learning more about the impact process itself,” Garcia said. “We can match different sizes of craters to specific seismic and acoustic waves now.”
The lander still has time to study Mars. Dust buildup on the lander’s solar panels is reducing its power and will eventually lead to the spacecraft shutting down. Predicting precisely when is difficult, but based on the latest power readings, engineers now believe the lander could shut down between October of this year and January 2023.
More About the Missions
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages InSight for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.
A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.
Flinke krater en beving op planeet Mars door inslag ruimterots
Op kerstavond vorig jaar werd op de planeet Mars een redelijk zware aardbeving met een kracht van 4,0 gemeten. Wetenschappers die de beving hebben onderzocht, concluderen donderdag dat deze werd veroorzaakt door de inslag van een ruimterots. Door de inslag is een krater gevormd die groter is dan een voetbalveld en ruim 20 meter diep.
Een Frans apparaat in de Amerikaanse Marslander InSight van ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA heeft in de afgelopen vier jaar meer dan 1.300 bevingen op Mars geregistreerd. Volgens The New York Times was de beving die op kerstavond werd geregistreerd anders dan alle eerdere bevingen, omdat trillingen langs de buitenste korst van de rode planeet werden geregistreerd. “We waren er onmiddellijk enthousiast over”, zegt wetenschapper Mark Panning tegen de krant.
De inslag van de ruimterots, die naar schatting tussen de 4,9 en 11,9 meter breed was, creëerde een 150 meter brede krater op een afstand van 3.500 kilometer waar de Marslander InSight zich op de planeet bevond. Op beelden van de Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), een onbemande ruimtesonde van NASA, was de indrukwekkende krater te zien.
Onderzoeker Philippe Lognonne noemt de waarneming “de grootste meteorietinslag sinds met seismografen wetenschappelijk onderzoek is gedaan”.
De ontdekking helpt wetenschappers om de rode planeet beter te begrijpen en is “daarnaast een herinnering dat Mars, net als de aarde, door meteorieten getroffen kan worden”, schrijft The New York Times.
JWST Sees the Same Galaxy From Three Different Angles Thanks to a Gravitational Lens
JWST Sees the Same Galaxy From Three Different Angles Thanks to a Gravitational Lens
One of the great tragedies of the night sky is that we will never travel to much of what we see. We may eventually travel to nearby stars, and even distant reaches of our galaxy, but the limits of light speed and cosmic expansion make it impossible for us to travel beyond our local group. So we can only observe distant galaxies, and we can only observe them from our home in the universe. You might think that means we can only see one face of those galaxies, but thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope that isn’t entirely true.
As light from distant galaxies traverses the cosmos to reach us, its path can be deflected gravitationally along the way, known as gravitational lensing. For very distant galaxies their light is often lensed through galactic clusters closer to us and can produce multiple images. Each of these images comes from a different path of light.
A comparison of galaxies seen from Hubble vs Webb. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
You can see this in a recent set of images released by the Space Telescope Science Institute. It shows a comparison of the galactic cluster MACS0647 captured by Hubble in 2012 and as seen by Webb in 2022. In the faint background of this cluster are three images of a more distant galaxy known as MACS0647-JD. It’s the same galaxy, but gravitational lensing lets us see it from slightly different paths. In the Hubble image, the galaxy images are just blurry clusters of pixels, but Webb can resolve these galaxies in some detail. Each image seems to have two smudges of light, and that means JD could be an early colliding galaxy. If it is the merger of two galaxies, it will be the most distant galactic merger we’ve observed.
One of the side effects of gravitational lensing is that it can magnify light from these far galaxies. This means the galaxy appears closer and brighter than it actually is. In the case of MACS0647-JD, the three images are magnified by different amounts. The images known as JD1, JD2, and JD3 are magnified by factors of 8, 5, and 2. Additionally, since the light path of each image is different, we also see the galaxy from three slightly different times.
This image is a great example of the power of JWST. It not only allows us to study the earliest galaxies in detail, but it also allows us to see some galaxies from more than one point of view.
Dwarf Planet Haumea is one of the Stranger Objects in the Solar System. How did it get That way?
Dwarf Planet Haumea is one of the Stranger Objects in the Solar System. How did it get That way?
There’s still a raging debate in some circles as to whether Pluto should be a planet or not. Ask an astronomer, and their typical answer would be something like – if Pluto is a planet, then there are plenty of other bodies out there in the solar system that should be considered one too. One of those is Haumea, a little explored rock in the Kuiper belt that is one of the strangest large objects out there. Now, a team from NASA has a new idea as to how it got that way.
Since Haumea is so far away, there isn’t much hard data on it. A probe has never visited it, and it is too small and distant to be properly measured by an Earth-based telescope. So the researchers interested in it turned to that favorite tool of most astrophysicists – computer models.
Computer models need inputs to make predictions, however, and there are a few bizarre things that we already know about Haumea. One is how fast it spins – a day lasts only four hours on its surface, much shorter than the day of any similar-sized object in the solar system. In addition, it is elongated, looking a bit like an American football rather than the spherical shape that most bodies of its size take on.
Interview with Dr. Noviello – the lead paper author. Credit – Lunar and Planetary Institute
It also has some attending “family” – little balls of what appears to be water ice that float in a similar orbit around the main body of Haumea. Kind of like moons, but not considered to be such. So how did all of this strangeness come to be? To understand, the researchers had to look back in time – and make some estimates, of course.
That was a two-step process. First, Jessica Noviello, now a postdoc researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, developed a model requiring only three distinct inputs – Haumea’s size, mass, and spin rate. The outputs of that first model, such as the size and density of the body’s core, were then fed into another model that was used as the iterative basis for finding a creation process that reflected what Haumea looks like now.
Introducing small changes to those input parameters of the final simulation resulted in a set of expected outcomes, which could be compared to the measured reality. But it also highlighted a few interesting features that likely happened when Haumea was being formed.
Anton Petrov discusses the mysteries of Haumea. Credit – Anton Petrov YouTube Channel
First, it was likely smacked by a massive object early in its history. Hence, the dramatic spin. But, while the impact would have knocked parts of Haumea off, it likely would have been too violent to simply form the small balls of ice now known as its “family.”
Creating those tiny ice balls required a second process, which took much longer, but arguably had as big of an impact. The fast spinning caused denser rocks to slide down into the core of the dwarf planet, and those rocks started to do something unexpected. Since they, like all rocks, were radioactive, they started to melt the water ice that was coagulating on Haumea’s outer shell.
Some of that water then flooded into the core, creating a clay-like substance, which the fast centripetal force then spun out like a potter, creating the elongated shape we see today. In addition, some of the balls of ice lost their grip on the main body and broke off gently to form the smaller icy bodies that still rotate in the same orbit as the parent dwarf planet.
These outcomes are all from simulations at this point, but they make sense both from a logical and scientific standpoint. However, it will still be a while before we collect any more concrete data about Haumea or its Kuiper belt cousins. Until then, astrophysicists will have to be content with papers like the one from Dr. Noviello and her team that was recently published in the Planetary Science Journal.
A FLIR camera captures a strange UFO with an uncanny resemblance to a rubber duck.
A US surveillance aircraft being flown by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) captured by using their thermal optics system (FLIR) at around 9pm on November 23, 2019 a very strange "rubber duck" shaped UFO flying at a speed between 90 and 200mph.not far from the US's southern border with Mexico.
The so-called "rubber duck' UFO is comparable with a unknown object also caught by the FLIR system of another Homeland Security aircraft while flying over Puerto Rico on April 25, 2013.
This UFO like object also moves just above the surface at speeds of up to 120mph before reaching the ocean whereupon it splits into two objects before diving into the ocean with very little splash and then proceeds to move at times on the water surface and just below the surface.
Since no known aircraft or drone has the capacity to perform the maneuvers as these UFOs did, we have to conclude that these objects of unknown origin are equipped with an advanced technology which is unknown to the public.
It is questionable whether these objects are of extraterrestrial origin, it is very possible that these objects were developed by the military and being part of a secret project.
Both UFOs were unintentionally captured on film, but it gives us a glimpse of the capabilities of these possible man-made objects whereby the object that plunged into the ocean may refer to an underwater base which may be under the control of the Navy/military.
Navajo Park Ranger revealed that something big Is happening in National Parks
Navajo Park Ranger revealed that something big Is happening in National Parks
This Navajo park ranger revealed that something big is happening right now in National Parks. Today, we take a look at what this Navajo park ranger found inside this National Park.
The police do incredible work, and they are usually the first ones on the scene when something goes wrong. Every so often though they will encounter something that even they can't explain.
One of the places where officers are seeing strange things is that of the Navajo Reservation of the American southwest. This location is known for mysterious and legendary stories and the police here have encountered some strange things.
UFO with 6 lights hovering above Hallandale Beach, Florida
UFO with 6 lights hovering above Hallandale Beach, Florida
These UFO lights were seen and recorded in the night sky above Hallandale Beach, a city in southern Broward County, Florida. This event happened back on June 1st, 2021 but it was just today published online through MUFON’s website.
Witness report:
I was sitting outside with my cousin when we noticed an object with panels of lights slowly ascending in the sky. As the object got higher it dissipated and disappeared into the clouds.
Do intelligent aliens exist somewhere out there in the universe? It is a grand mystery that has captivated humans for generations, fueling ever-more sophisticated searches of the skies for signs of advanced civilizations. But while aliens have taken many forms in our imaginations—from hostile invaders to inscrutable ciphers—we have absolutely no idea what extraterrestrial life-forms might look like, how they would communicate, or even if they exist at all.
We can, however, make some assumptions about the only intelligent space-faring species that we know of—humans—and how we might react to contact with an alien civilization. Indeed, people have spent decades developing protocols that attempt to anticipate this momentous event and all of the extraordinary potential consequences it could have on our civilization. It’s an especially important question now, as the world appears more strongly divided than at any time in recent memory, with major powers taking on increasingly antagonistic stances toward each other.
In 2020, a pair of researchers dug into this question in an article in Space Policy by suggesting that humans might pose as big a risk to ourselves in the aftermath of alien contact as any extraterrestrial species. The study views the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) through the lens of “realpolitik,” a term that describes the kind of gritty power plays and practical maneuvers that nations pull to enhance their own positions.
Authors Kenneth Wisian and John Traphagan, a geophysicist and cultural anthropologist, respectively, at the University of Texas at Austin, envision nations monopolizing contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence, a move that could spark escalating conflicts, including possible attacks on astronomical facilities. For this reason, the team said scientists might need to enlist personal security to protect them and their families from state actors, or even terrorists, in the wake of a such a momentous event, among other concerns raised in the study.
“What might we do to ourselves? Let's not just think about what they might do to us, or vice versa, but what are the threads internally?”
“The SETI academic field is focused on looking out, and the main issues and concerns that have been brought up throughout the history of SETI development have been: what threats could the aliens present to us, if any?” said Wisian, who is a retired Major General in the U.S. Air Force, in a call with Motherboard. “I hadn't seen any thought about, well, what might we do to ourselves?”
“From a grounding in military and international affairs history, it seems pretty obvious to me that a lot of times people act on perceived interest and perceived threats,” he continued. “That's what germinated the idea—what might we do to ourselves? Let's not just think about what they might do to us, or vice versa, but what are the threads internally?”
When the study came out two years ago, it caught the attention of Jason Wright, an astronomer and SETI researcher at Penn State University. Wright disagreed with many of Wisian and Traphagan’s conclusions, and published a blog post at the time expressing his thoughts on what he called the “very dubious assumptions” underlying the study.
“I felt like it was misguided,” Wright said in a call with Motherboard, referring to the 2020 study. “I understood why they were writing what they wrote, but I thought it really would have benefited from a better understanding of how SETI and radio astronomy works, because it was based on a lot of misunderstandings about that.”
“Then, taking my own medicine, I said I’d love to write a rebuttal, but I'm not an expert on philosophy, ethics, geopolitics, and space law,” he added.
For this reason, Wright connected with Chelsea Haramia, a philosopher at Spring Hill College, and Gabriel Swiney, a senior policy advisor in NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy.
The team has now presented a comprehensive rebuttal to Wisian and Traphagan’s article, arguing that some of the study’s suggestions could backfire by sowing distrust and confusion, among many other scientific and ethical critiques presented in their new work, which was published this month in Space Policy.
The disagreements between the teams are a microcosm of the kaleidoscopic diversity of views about the possible outcomes of a successful contact event with aliens, especially what it would mean for humans here on Earth. So, what do these perspectives reveal about what might happen if humanity finally makes the ultimate discovery?
Could a nation monopolize communication with aliens?
Imagine an intelligent alien species sends a decipherable message to Earth that is received by a sophisticated astronomical observatory. In another scenario, a piece of alien technology could actually fall to Earth and be recovered by people on the ground.Though this is a far-fetched possibility, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb believes that alien artifacts may have already reached Earth; he is currently planning an expedition to search for any surviving fragments of what was likely an interstellar meteor that hit our planet in 2014, which he thinks could be artificial in origin (Loeb’s views about alien artifacts have received substantial pushback from other scientists).
Regardless of the odds of such an event, Wisian and Traphagan argue that state officials who receive a message or artifact of this kind might conclude that they could exert a geopolitical advantage by monopolizing communication with the extraterrestrials, or by siloing information about alien technologies. To support their case, the team presents many historical examples of nations using this type of realpolitik approach.
“Pretty much by definition, if we make contact with some other intelligence, they're going to have a time advantage on us and therefore, probably, a significant technological lead,” Wisian said. “That is the driver. It's the information, and what it could provide as far as an advantage in international affairs and power and diplomacy, that would drive countries to take strong action to try to monopolize that channel.”
“I could definitely see world leaders acting on that perceived reward,” he added.
Wisian and Traphagan speculate that these perceived rewards could make radio telescopes targets for espionage or cyberattacks—or perhaps even real physical attacks with air strikes or weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Morever, extremist groups that might be threatened by the reality of alien contact “would have the ability to launch small-scale raids (i.e., terrorist attacks) or possibly WMD attacks…aimed at destroying the critical infrastructure for [extraterrestrial intelligence] communication or the key personnel involved,” Wisian and Traphagan said in the study.
With that in mind, the researchers suggested that astronomical facilities and personnel might need to be defended by military or other security forces, citing the kind of protection often seen around nuclear power plants, biowarfare research institutions, or American abortion services providers.
Wright and his colleagues raised several objections with these arguments in their new study. On a practical technical level, the team said that it is very unlikely that any nation or group would be able to monopolize communication with an alien species. While an initial detection of an extraterrestrial message might be captured by a premiere observatory, such as China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) or the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, other facilities—and potentially even amateur sky watchers—could quickly start listening in, as well.
“If there are alien signals landing on Earth that contain this kind of information, then anyone can pick it up,” Wright said. “Once you know the frequency and the location on the sky, you could use satellite dishes and no one would know you were doing it because satellite dishes are pointed at the sky for all kinds of reasons. So, sending a bunch of troops to Green Bank isn't going to accomplish anything.”
In fact, Wright and his colleagues propose that hardening security around astronomical facilities might actually backfire and exacerbate the very tensions that Wisian and Traphagan sound alarms about in their study.
“If we start locking down all the SETI facilities and getting all the SETI people personal security to protect them against state-level actors, it's going to look like something happened,” Wright said. “It's going to look like you need to do that; that it was necessary for some reason. That's what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to avoid that escalation.”
“So, we were worried that their recommendations would take something that's a remote possibility to be guarded against, and make it happen, basically, by treating it as a foregone conclusion that we just go ahead and start protecting against. Our argument is that you have to fight that misperception by explaining what's going on.”
Both teams agree that this type of contact scenario—which involves a clear intelligible message with some kind of advantageous information—is extremely unlikely. It stands to reason that our first experience with extraterrestrial life in the universe would be much murkier in content and interpretation. For instance, Wright pointed out that humans cannot even speak the languages of other intelligent animals on Earth, such as dolphins or elephants, which casts doubt on our ability to decode any message from another civilization.
Wisian and Traphagan, however, note that it is worth thinking about dangerous situations even if the odds of them materializing are astronomically low.
“I hope for the best, but as a military guy, you look at the range of possibilities and you may not focus on the worst, but you have to at least take into account those potential options,” Wisian said. “If something has severe consequences, you can't just dismiss it. Neither one of us said that this is likely—it's just that it's a possibility that needs to be considered.”
Would alien contact promote conflict or cooperation among nations?
Given that monopolizing access to aliens is unlikely, it’s worth widening the aperture to consider some of the general concerns raised by Wisian and Traphagan under their realpolitik analysis of an alien contact event.
The researchers were partly inspired to write the 2020 study because they believe the protocols surrounding first contact are “limited in scope to aspirational thinking” and are not yet equipped to address the “thorny political ramifications of a discovery,” according to the study. By weaving in historical examples of power plays that span the Peloponnesian War, the Renaissance era, and the Cold War, among others, the team argue that governments are often unconstrained by international laws and deaf to the calls of scientists to adhere to existing protocols and treaties.
“The scientists may think they are in charge, but as soon as something like this happens, the governmental bodies are going to take charge, and it will go outside of scientists’ hands,” Wisian said, though he added that “scientists have a pretty good network and an ability to subvert controls, which gives me cause for some optimism here.”
While Wright and his colleagues said that there is value in viewing SETI through a realpolitik lens, they note that this is one of many possible geopolitical perspectives that need to be considered when developing post-detection protocols. For instance, if a nation were the first to receive an alien signal, it might want to shout the news from the rooftops—as opposed to shroud the discovery in secrecy—due to the “incalculable prestige that would accrue to the state that made arguably the most significant scientific finding of the modern era,” Wright’s team said in their study.
In much the same way, Wright and his colleagues suggest that even if nations are primarily motivated by self-interest, their realpolitik posture to an alien message could very well be collaborative rather than combative.
“Most interactions between nations are not driven by the threat of force,” Wright said. “There are so many other, probably more likely, outcomes that we can see, and so many other successful ways that nations manage sensitive science and technology in a peaceful cooperative way—even among rivals—that it's clear that we have a framework other than just hardening security for managing that sort of thing.”
“We're having this discussion because we don't really have a good post-detection protocol yet”
“The example we give is fusion research,” he continued, referring to the international effort to derive power from nuclear fusion reactions. “It’s a sensitive topic that involves nuclear materials and nuclear technologies, but it's primarily driven towards trying to develop peaceful civilian uses for nuclear power generation. We have these international agreements that rivals sign onto and, basically, obey, that allows for constrained international collaboration.”
For his part, Wisian does not dispute that outcomes beyond the realpolitik mold are possible. Indeed, he hopes that any first contact scenarios inspire our better angels and promote more scientific curiosity to counter ascendant anti-science attitudes and distrust in research institutions.
Moreover, while Wisian said that many of the points raised by Wright’s team seem valid, he objected to what he saw as “straw man” arguments in their new study that misrepresented his original work with Traphagan. Wisian also acknowledged that the SETI field is not his academic specialty—he is an expert on geothermal energy—but suggested that interdisciplinary input will be essential to a robust post-detection plan.
“I've worked and served in multiple wars,” Wisian said. “I've seen how humanity actually behaves—not how it theoretically should.”
How should we prepare for first contact?
To that end, both teams also agree on another important point: As the search for life elsewhere in the universe continues to mature, people from all walks of life should be involved in the preparations for a successful detection of alien life, and what it might mean for all Earthlings.
There should be “a ‘big tent’ approach to this, not just a few disciplines and academics—and not just the academic world,” said Wisian. “There's a whole bunch of areas that are ripe for exploration here that could move from the science fiction world into the practical planning world, like SETI has moved, over the last 50 or 60 years, from science fiction to a major scientific discipline now.”
Wright also pointed to the need to enlist diverse perspectives in the conversation about alien contact, and our own human reaction to it, though he emphasized that these efforts should involve researchers who are steeped in SETI history and technologies.
To that point, the basic post-detection protocol, as it stands today, is centered on making sure a detection is accurate, disseminating the news to the public as soon as it has been unambiguously confirmed, and refraining from responding to the alien civilization—not necessarily because of any inherent danger, but because a reply would need to emerge on behalf of our entire civilization, which is no simple task.
Both teams think that there are many nuances and gaps within, and around, the existing guidelines that will need to be addressed by future discussions between people with different views and backgrounds. To that end, the United Nations, the International Academy of Astronautics, and other organizations have been working for years to harness the talents of people with a wide range of expertise—including sociologists, philosophers, policy makers, and scientists—to game out the various ways in which we might first encounter alien life.
That work will have to keep pace with the exciting pace of the search for aliens in the skies, as well as the dizzying geopolitical and cultural shifts that we are experiencing right here on Earth.
“Our paper is not supposed to close the book on this topic,” said Wright. “We're having this discussion because we don't really have a good post-detection protocol yet. We have protocols that are old and they're probably insufficient, given all of the ways that we can do SETI these days.”
“The response has to represent humanity and we don't know how to do that,” he concluded. “It should not be the purview of the people who make the discovery to be the ones to respond. That's a bigger decision that needs to be made at a larger collective level. That’s the essence of the protocol.”
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
27-10-2022
Modern Humans and Neanderthals Lived Together in Europe for 2,000 Years!
Modern Humans and Neanderthals Lived Together in Europe for 2,000 Years!
When Homo sapiens first arrived on the European continent about 42,500 years ago, the Neanderthals were still living there, and would remain there for another 1,400 to 2,900 years before finally disappearing from the face of the Earth. When the anatomically modern humans moved in, the Neanderthals did not move out, but stayed where they were and apparently lived peacefully alongside their Homo sapiens cousins for approximately 2,000 years, give or take a few centuries.
This is the conclusion of a trio of scientists from Leiden University in the Netherlands and Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, who used a unique and sophisticated modeling method known as optimal linear estimation to pin down more exactly when the Neanderthals actually lived in western Europe. The evidence the archaeologists examined was collected from multiple excavation sites in France and northern Spain, where modern human and Neanderthal artifacts have proven relatively easy to find.
Speleofacts ring structure built by Neanderthal people in Bruniquel cave, France.
The results of this study, which have just been published in the journal Scientific Reports , offer no evidence to demonstrate that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals merged their genetic materials with each other 42,500 ago. But past research has proven that the modern human genome contains portions of Neanderthal DNA , which could have only gotten there if the two species of hominin had interbred at some point. People of European descent are among those who carry Neanderthal genetic material, so at least some of that interbreeding must have occurred on European soil.
The Stunning Convergence of Modern Humans and Neanderthals
Igor Djakovic, an archaeological PhD candidate at Leiden University and lead author of the Scientific Reports paper, acknowledges in an interview with the French press agency AFP that humans and Neanderthals “met and integrated in Europe,” at some point in the distant past, before adding that “we have no idea in which specific regions this actually happened.”
Scientists have also struggled to identify the precise years when modern humans and Neanderthals would have lived in Europe simultaneously, and this was what the scientists in the Leiden University-led study were trying to discover.
To apply their sophisticated modeling techniques to the question, the scientists gathered radiocarbon dating results connected to 56 artifacts taken from 17 archaeological sites across France and northern Spain. Half of these artifacts had been linked to Neanderthals, while the other half had been left by humans. The artifacts in question included skeletal remains of both species, plus different types of tools including distinctive stone knives believe to have been made by Neanderthals.
Distinctive stone knives thought to have been produced by the last Neanderthals in France and northern Spain. This specific and standardized technology is unknown in the preceding Neanderthal record, and may indicate a diffusion of technological behaviors between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals immediately prior to their disappearance from the region.
The idea was to cross-reference all of these dated materials, first through Bayesian statistical modeling and then through optimal linear estimation modeling, to search for signs of overlapping activity. Optimal linear estimation modeling is a technique originally developed for use in biology that has now been repurposed for examining and dating human remains and artifacts (and in this case, Neanderthal remains and artifacts as well) to relatively narrow periods of time.
In this study Baynesian modeling could only narrow the potential date ranges down so far, but optimal linear estimation allowed the scientists to achieve much further refinement.
When the final numbers were crunched, the data showed that Neanderthals went extinct in the region of France and northern Spain between 40,870 and 40,547 years ago, a range covering just over three hundred years of time. Meanwhile, it was confirmed that modern humans first migrated into this part of Europe approximately 42,500 years ago. With some variations in the approximate time frame for when the modern humans arrived, the researchers concluded that modern humans and Neanderthals would have occupied the same geographical region for between 1,400 and 2,900 years, after which Neanderthals disappeared forever.
Geographic appearance of dated occurrences for the Châtelperronian (grey circles – Neanderthal stone tools), Protoaurignacian (white squares – Homo sapiens stone tools), and directly-dated Neandertals (black skulls) in the study region between 43,400 (a) and 39,400 (f) years cal BP.
(Djakovic, I., Key, A. & M. Soressi / Nature 2022 )
Sharing Knowledge
While there is no proof, it is reasonable to conclude that interbreeding between the two genetically compatible species would have occurred at this time and at this place. Perhaps just as significantly, there are signs that an extensive “diffusion of ideas” occurred, according to Djakovic, meaning there was a meeting of the cultures and a meeting of the minds that accompanied the physical encounters.
This period of time is "associated with substantial transformations in the way that people are producing material culture," including the way they made tools and ornaments, Djakovic explained. He and his colleagues also noted a dramatic change in the types of physical artifacts being produced by Neanderthals, which started to closely resemble tools and utensils made by the modern humans.
The Death of the Neanderthals Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
The latest research reveals that the DNA of humans of European and Asian descent is between one and two percent Neanderthal. In Africans Neanderthal DNA is not found except in trace amounts , since Africans and Neanderthals did not come into contact before the latter went extinct.
With respect to the extinction of the Neanderthals, Igor Djakovic argues that the concept should be reconsidered
"When you combine that with what we know now—that most people living on Earth have Neanderthal DNA—you could make the argument that they never really went extinct, in a certain sense," Djakovic said. Instead, he hypothesized, they were “effectively swallowed into our gene pool,” where they continue to exert a small but real influence over human genetic development to this very day.
It remains a mystery why Neanderthals weren’t able to breed and produce enough offspring among themselves to preserve their viability as a distinct species after modern human contact . Many different theories have been offered, but none are universally accepted.
Nevertheless, through genetic exchanges with anatomically modern humans they were able to guarantee their survival in a different form. They are like a shadow inside us, still preserved and never to be completely forgotten.
Top image: A new study shows that modern humans and Neanderthals lived together in Europe for 2000 years.
This episode of UFO Hard Evidence looks at some of the most mind-blowing sightings and disturbing encounters on record, as well as interviews with various people from UFO circles.
To begin with, the Alien and UFO Exhibition in Blackpool is examined, including what is available to see and what is discussed. The notion of secret underground facilities in the United Kingdom used to study or even store UFOs is looked at next, including looking at some of the locations themselves.
UFO Hard Evidence then speaks with UFO researcher, Clifford Stone, and his claims of his involvement with recovered UFOs, including what projects these secret recoveries take place under, and what the future plans might be of these discreet departments.
Russell Callaghan examines some of the latest UFO videos and pictures, demonstrated techniques that are used, and how to tell how credible a piece of footage might be, before then looking at some of the better pieces of UFO footage sent to UFO Magazine over the last few years.
UFO Hard Evidence then takes to the streets of Leeds to see what general members of the public think about the idea of UFOs, including how they think the media portrays this notion.
A series of episodes from the UFOs: Hard Evidence series by Graham W Birdsall of the now defunct UK publication, UFO Magazine originally produced for Quest Publications and edited by Russel Callaghan. Originally released in 1998.
Cryptozoology is the search for and study of animals that mainstream science considers to be mythical or non-existent. Animals studied by cryptozoologists are called cryptids. Famous examples include creatures like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Yeti. Unsurprisingly then, there is quite a lot of derision aimed at cryptids in scientific circles. Cryptids are the stuff of low-level tabloid magazines and conspiracy theorists, right? Wrong! Many animals that experts once believed to be cryptids are actually flesh and blood living things.
Famous Cryptids that Aren’t Actually Cryptids Anymore
1. The Platypus
The platypus is a weird animal that seems to break a lot of rules. At the time of its first discovery by Europeans, it seemed to contradict everything they thought they knew about mammals.
The platypus is a furry, Australian mammal that lives in rivers. It has the feet of an otter and the tail of a beaver. So far, not that strange. Then one looks at the head, and it appears to have a bill of a duck, unlike any other mammal.
Even stranger still is the fact that it lays eggs. Only five living mammal species do so, the platypus and four kinds of echidna (spiny anteaters). Up until the discovery of the platypus, it was common knowledge that one of the things which defined a mammal was giving birth to live offspring.
On top of this, the platypus is venomous! Venomous mammals were basically unheard of. The male platypus produces venom from glands attached to its ankle spurs. It is believed these are used defensively against other males, especially during mating season.
It’s unsurprising then that European naturalists from the 18th and 19th centuries believed the platypus to be a hoax. When the first platypus corpses arrived in Europe from Australia, the experts weren’t sure what to make of them.
Many thought it to be the work of Chinese sailors, who had previously tricked them with the corpse of a supposed mermaid. It was believed the platypus corpses were just well-put-together amalgamations of other animals! It took nearly a century for zoologists to admit they were wrong and definitively confirm the existence of the platypus.
Another poster child for famous cryptids that turned out to be real is the terrifying giant squid. Reports of the giant squid go back 2,000 years to the time of Aristotle. Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist, did a pretty good job describing the giant squid in his Natural History .
He got pretty much everything right, except the size. Showing that the giant squid was too massive even for the superstitious ancient writers to get right, Pliny only estimated the squid at 30 feet (9 meters) long, when in reality it's over 40 feet (12 meters) long! Early run-ins with giant squid were likely the inspiration for several mythological sea monsters , like Norse mythology’s Kraken and the Scylla of Greek mythology.
A life size model of the world record-holding giant squid discovered near Glover's Harbor, Newfoundland (ProductOfNewfoundland / CC BY NC ND 2.0 )
The giant squid remained a cryptid for so long because its existence was seemingly fantastical, and hard to verify. The sea is almost unfathomable in its size and depth. Looking for anything in the ocean, even something as huge as a giant squid, is like looking for a needle in a haystack. This is exacerbated by the fact that the giant squid is a deep sea creature, and humans haven’t spent much time down there.
The only chance early zoologists had to study and verify the giant squid was through carcasses that would very occasionally wash ashore. The problem with this was that hungry sea creatures had often begun eating the corpses before they washed ashore, meaning complete samples were rare. Added to this was the fact that the carcasses tended to rot extremely quickly, leaving little to work with.
The first recorded discovery of a mostly intact giant squid carcass was in the 1870s. However, it wasn’t until the last decade or so that we managed to take photos of a live specimen, cementing the giant squid's status as a former cryptid.
Giant squid occasionally washed ashore, but were rarely intact, and quickly decomposed. Giant squid at The Rooms in St. John's; a regular sized squid is placed in the top left corner to compare.
Stories of dreadful sea serpents that dwell in the ocean date back thousands of years. Even the Bible makes references to a gigantic beast called Leviathan that roams the briny depths looking for prey. Much like in the case of the giant squid, for a long time, scientists thought these sea monsters were too huge to be real.
Cryptozoologists, however, believe that many sightings of these historic sea monsters are cases of real animals being misidentified, and then being given a fantastical, superstitious twist. One incredibly rare species is perhaps the likely culprit.
The oarfish is a long, bony fish with an elongated body that has been found to grow to at least 56 feet (17 meters) long. They are found in oceans all over the world, but usually live in the deep ocean. They have sometimes washed ashore during storms and occasionally come to the surface when near death.
A giant oarfish (Regalecus glesne) found in Los Cabos, Mexico
It seems likely that these giant fish are responsible for at least some of these early depictions of sea serpents. The first live oarfish wasn’t filmed until 2001, showing just how rare and hard to verify these fish were.
After hearing about giant sea snakes, imaginations went wild. Sea serpents can no longer be considered cryptids, however, after documented creatures 56 feet (17 meters) long
Now obviously, unicorns as traditionally portrayed don’t exist. The unicorn is still very much a cryptid. Except it isn’t. Although no one has discovered a horned horse yet, we can go back 2,000 years and find the animals that likely inspired talk of unicorns.
Pliny the Elder described the unicorn two thousand years ago. He described it as having “the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits in length. This animal, it is said, cannot be taken alive.” That sounds suspiciously like an Indian rhinoceros.
Reading Pliny the Elder’s description of a unicorn sounds a lot like the Indian rhino
There is another contender for real-life unicorn inspiration. The second is a little stranger, however, seeing as it lives in the sea. The narwhal is a type of toothed whale that lives in the freezing waters around Greenland, Canada, and Russia. Its defining feature is a large protruding canine tooth, known as its tusk. This tusk is startlingly similar to the imagined unicorn horn.
Unicorn horns were an incredibly popular curio through the Middle Ages into the Renaissance period. These unicorn horns came from narwhals that the Vikings had hunted, selling their tusks for crazy prices as unicorn horns. When the English explorer Martin Frobisher led a Canadian expedition in 1577, he came across a dead narwhal. The name he gave it? The sea unicorn.
Unicorns are still cryptids, but the ocean dwelling narwhal may have inspired unicorn legends. Its hard, pointed tusk is quite distinctive.
Before 1910, any scientist claiming to believe in a giant lizard that looked like a dragon would have been laughed out of the room. At the time, it was widely believed that giant lizards were a thing of the past, and nothing on the scale of a Komodo dragon could exist.
When pearl fishermen returned from the Lesser Sunda Islands in Indonesia telling tall tales of giant ‘land crocodiles’, no one took them seriously. After all, fishermen are famous for exaggeration. Then, in 1910, an expedition from Buitenzorg Zoological Museum visited Komodo Island and produced the first scientific report on the creatures. Lieutenant Jacques Karel Henri visited the island and took home both a Komodo dragon skin and a photograph.
The Komodo dragon remained mostly a mystery until 1926, when a second expedition went in search of the dragon. Its leader, W. Douglas Burden, came back with twelve preserved Komodo dragon bodies, as well as two live animals. It was only then the Komodo dragon truly left the realm of the cryptids and entered the world of established science.
The 1926 expedition and discovery of an animal considered by many to be prehistoric went on to inspire the 1933 film King Kong .
From cryptid to captured: A Komodo dragon at the Louisville Zoo, Kentucky, United States
Sometimes an animal becomes so commonly known that it’s surprising it was ever considered a cryptid at all. For example, the humble gorilla was considered a cryptid until 1847.
The term gorilla comes from a Carthaginian explorer called Hanno the Navigator, who was exploring the African coast in 500 BC. He described coming across a tribe of “gorillae”, monstrous and violent humans. Although it is likely he actually encountered chimps or baboons, the name has stuck.
Reports of monstrous, hairy humans who would attack and overpower villages continue throughout the centuries but were never taken seriously by scientists. In the 16th century, an English explorer described ape-like humans visiting his campfire at night.
Gorillas in general remained cryptids until 1847, when Thomas Savage found gorilla bones in Liberia. With the help of a Harvard anatomist named Jeffries Wyman, he then released a formal description of the species dubbing it, Gorilla gorilla. Sadly, from this point onwards, other anthropologists began hunting gorillas in earnest, seeking to learn as much about the discovery as possible.
The mountain gorilla stayed a cryptid for a while longer. It wasn’t formally recognized as a species until 1902, when a German officer, Captain Robert von Beringe, shot one in the Virunga region of Rwanda and took it home to Europe.
Surprisingly, gorillas were considered cryptids until the mid- to late-1800s.
The okapi is an African mammal that resembles a cross between a zebra and a donkey. Their only bizarre feature is the two hair-covered, horn-like structures called ossicones that they have just above their eyes. These may sound bizarre, but actually, the okapi is from the giraffe family, and the ossicones are pretty much the same as a giraffe's horns.
The okapi stayed in cryptid status for a long time, as they are quiet animals that live in dense forests. However, the okapi may have been depicted as early as the 5th century BC. Its unique ossicones led to its nickname as an African unicorn.
The okapi isn’t especially peculiar, certainly not compared to the giant squid or platypus. Yet it was considered a myth until 1901. The problem was its central African habitat was already well-known to European explorers, and since they had never seen one, they did not believe the tales the locals told of the okapi.
Okapi inhabit incredibly dense forests and live quiet, solitary lives. Even the locals who told stories of them were unsure. Their knowledge of the okapi predominantly came from evidence the animals left behind, like tracks, rather than actual sightings.
In 1890, Sir Henry Stanley was the first European to describe the mammal after traveling in the region. However, he had no solid proof, and so the okapi remained a cryptid. It was not until 1901 that zoologist and imperial officer Sir Harry Johnston obtained a skull and some skins with the help of locals. With this physical evidence, the okapi's existence could finally be confirmed.
The okapi wasn’t caught on film in the wild until 2008, which should give an idea of just how hard this beautiful animal is to track down.
The okapi was thought to be a cryptid until 1901. Its habitat and appearance hindered its documentation. It wasn’t caught on film until 2008!
So, if these cryptids turned out to be real, what about Nessy or Bigfoot? Why are people who believe in them still mocked and derided in the scientific community? The animals above, and in fact, all former cryptids share at least one thing in common.
They come from remote, hard-to-explore regions of the planet. These animals stayed cryptids for so long because European scientists hadn’t had a chance to fully explore their habitats yet. Once they had, these animals stop being cryptids. The problem is, besides the oceans, most of the earth's land mass has been pretty well studied by now. The likelihood of creatures as large as the okapi walking around undiscovered up to now is slim to none.
Another thing most cryptids have in common is that they were actually discovered ages ago. The okapi and mountain gorilla had been talked about by African tribes for centuries. Likewise, the indigenous peoples of Australia were likely familiar with the platypus.
The awkward truth is that the only reason these animals were never taken seriously is old-fashioned racism. For the most part, something remained cryptid until European scientists said otherwise, seeing it with their own eyes. Centuries of eyewitness accounts made by the locals didn’t count, because colonial-era European scientists lacked respect for the indigenous people of the places they were colonizing.
Although it is unlikely any more large cryptids will be discovered, there is always some hope. There are still far-flung corners of the world and the fathomless depths of the oceans we haven’t scoured yet. If we are now willing to listen to the people from these areas, who knows what we might discover?
Top Image: The Altamaha-ha legend has its roots in Muscogee traditions. This cryptid river monster with an alligator shaped head and long neck, is said to inhabit the Altamaha river and nearby marshes in southern Georgia. Will it be the next cryptid proven real?
Earth's methane 'super-emitters' REVEALED: NASA identifies more than 50 regions in Central Asia, the Middle East and US pumping out unprecedented levels of the greenhouse gas
Earth's methane 'super-emitters' REVEALED: NASA identifies more than 50 regions in Central Asia, the Middle East and US pumping out unprecedented levels of the greenhouse gas
NASA's 'EMIT' spectrometer is intended to measure solar energy reflected by airborne dust particles on Earth
However, scientists have discovered it is also capable of detecting large plumes of methane gas
So far it has picked up over 50 'super-emitter' regions, including oil and gas infrastructure in Turkmenistan
Other culprits are a waste-processing complex south of Tehran in Iran, and an oilfield in New Mexico, USA
It is hoped the knowledge will be able to inform operators of these facilities to act to reduce their emissions
An orbital NASA instrument has identified more than 50 'super-emitter' regions worldwide that are pumping out unprecedented levels of methane.
The top culprits include Turkmenistan, which produces plumes that stretch more than 20 miles (32 km) wide, Iran and New Mexico, USA.
Earth Surface Mineral Dust Investigation, or 'EMIT', is a spaceborne spectrometer that measures solar energy reflected from Earth in hundreds of wavelengths of light from the visible to the infrared range.
Its purpose is mainly to advance studies of airborne dust and its effects on climate change, but NASA scientists have discovered it can also detect areas where significant amounts of methane are being produced.
The newly measured methane hotspots - some previously known and others just discovered - include sprawling oil and gas facilities and large landfills.
'Some of the (methane) plumes EMIT detected are among the largest ever seen - unlike anything that has ever been observed from space,' said Andrew Thorpe, a NASA research technologist leading the methane studies.
'What we've found in a just a short time already exceeds our expectations.'
NASA's EMIT mission detected a methane plume 2 miles (3 km) long southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is much more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide
A methane plume at least 3 miles (4.8 km) long billows into the atmosphere south of Tehran, Iran. The plume, detected by NASA's EMIT mission, comes from a major landfill, where methane is a byproduct of decomposition
East of Hazar, Turkmenistan - a port city on the Caspian Sea - 12 plumes of methane stream westward. The plumes were detected by NASA's EMIT mission and some of them stretch for more than 20 miles (32 km)
THE EMIT MISSION
Earth Surface Mineral Dust Investigation, or 'EMIT', is a spectrometer onboard the International Space Station that measures solar energy reflected from Earth in hundreds of wavelengths of light.
Its primary duty is to collect information about the mineral composition of dust blown into the atmosphere from Earth's deserts and other arid regions in Africa, Asia, North and South America and Australia.
It does this by measuring the wavelengths of light reflected from the surface soil, as darker-colour dust tends to absorb more of the sun's rays, while lighter-colour dust reflects more of them, thus cooling the area around it.
This investigation will help scientists determine whether airborne dust in different parts of the world is likely to contribute to climate change.
Methane is is a potent greenhouse gas that can trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere.
During the day, the sun shines through the atmosphere and warms the planet's surface, while at night, it cools down again, releasing heat back into the air.
However, greenhouse gases can trap some of this hot air, which results in the warming of the planet.
Methane has more than 80 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere.
While this does decrease over time as it breaks down, it means emissions have a more immediate impact on planetary warming.
The EMIT imaging spectrometer was launched and docked onto the International Space Station in July this year, and now circles the Earth once every 90 minutes some 250 miles (420 km) above us.
Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), it is able to scan vast tracts of the planet dozens of miles across while also focusing in on areas as small as a football pitch.
Its primary duty is to collect information about the mineral composition of dust blown into the atmosphere from Earth's deserts and other arid regions in Africa, Asia, North and South America and Australia.
It does this by measuring the wavelengths of light reflected from the surface soil. Darker dust tends to absorb more of the sun's rays, while lighter dust reflects more of them, thus cooling the area around it.
This investigation will help scientists determine whether airborne dust in different parts of the world is likely to contribute to climate change.
However, while verifying the accuracy of the imaging spectrometer's mineral data, scientists found that it could also pinpoint emissions of methane.
This will provide them with the locations of facilities, equipment, and infrastructure that produce the gas at high rates - known as 'super-emitters' - so authorities can quickly act to limit emissions.
'We have been eager to see how EMIT's mineral data will improve climate modelling,' said Kate Calvin, NASA's chief scientist and senior climate adviser.
'This additional methane-detecting capability offers a remarkable opportunity to measure and monitor greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.'
The cube (left) shows methane plumes (purple, orange, yellow) over Turkmenistan. The rainbow colours are the spectral fingerprints from corresponding spots in the front image. The blue line in the graph (right) shows the methane fingerprint EMIT detected; the red line is the expected fingerprint based on an atmospheric simulation
Earth Surface Mineral Dust Investigation, or 'EMIT' (pictured), is a spaceborne spectrometer that measures solar energy reflected from Earth in hundreds of wavelengths of light from the visible to the infrared range
The EMIT imaging spectrometer was launched and docked onto the International Space Station (pictured) in July this year, and now circles the Earth once every 90 minutes some 250 miles (420 km) above us. Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, USA, it is able to scan vast tracts of the planet dozens of miles across while also focusing in on areas as small as a football pitch
Levels of methane in the atmosphere are growing 'dangerously fast', scientists warn
Levels of methane found in the atmosphere are 'growing dangerously fast', scientists have warned, and it could be global warming causing the rapid increase.
A report, published in Nature, was compiled by an international team that examines data gathered by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration throughout 2021.
Researchers found that methane in the atmosphere had raced past 1,900 parts per billion, which is triple levels found before the industrial revolution.
This 'grim new milestone' could be linked to global warming causing a rise in wetland areas, which then produce higher levels of methane, the team said.
So far, EMIT has identified more than 50 super-emitters in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Southwestern United States.
Examples of newly imaged methane super-emitters showcased by JPL include a cluster of 12 plumes from oil and gas infrastructure east of the Caspian Sea port city of Hazar in Turkmenistan.
Scientists estimate these plumes collectively spew methane at a rate of 111,000 pounds (50,400 kilograms) per hour, rivalling the peak flow of 110,000 pounds (50,000 kilograms) per hour of the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas field blowout.
Another other large emitter is the Permian Basin oilfield in New Mexico - one of the largest oilfields in the world - which generated a plume about two miles (3.3 km) long.
The third culprit revealed by NASA is a waste-processing complex south of Tehran, Iran, which emits a plume at least three miles (4.8 km) long. Methane is a byproduct of decomposition, and landfills can be a major source.
Scientists estimate flow rates of about 40,300 pounds (18,300 kilograms) per hour at the Permian site and 18,700 pounds (8,500 kilograms) per hour at the Iran site.
JPL officials said neither were previously known to scientists.
'These results are exceptional, and they demonstrate the value of pairing global-scale perspective with the resolution required to identify methane point sources, down to the facility scale,' said David Thompson, EMIT's instrument scientist and a senior research scientist at JPL.
'It's a unique capability that will raise the bar on efforts to attribute methane sources and mitigate emissions from human activities.'
Robert Green, EMIT's principal investigator at JPL, said: 'As it continues to survey the planet, EMIT will observe places in which no one thought to look for greenhouse-gas emitters before, and it will find plumes that no one expects.'
NASA says that EMITcould potentially find hundreds of previously unknown methane super-emitters before its year-long mission ends.
'Reining in methane emissions is key to limiting global warming,' said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
'This exciting new development will not only help researchers better pinpoint where methane leaks are coming from, but also provide insight on how they can be addressed – quickly.
'The International Space Station and NASA's more than two dozen satellites and instruments in space have long been invaluable in determining changes to the Earth's climate.
'EMIT is proving to be a critical tool in our toolbox to measure this potent greenhouse gas – and stop it at the source.'
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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.
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Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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