Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
31-10-2022
Three pulsating lights hovering above English Mountain, Dandridge, Tennessee
Three pulsating lights hovering above English Mountain, Dandridge, Tennessee
This UFO video was filmed over English Mountain in Tennessee on 27th October 2022.
Witness report:
Lights were observed over English Mountain in Sevier County, TN. At first 3 lights were visible but they were constantly changing, with one, two or three lights visible. At times they were steady but at other times, they seemed to pulsate. They would occasionally dart from side to side or up or down but they stayed in the same location for close to an hour. The neighborhood dogs were all barking and my dog was very nervous. I went in and out of my house several times and it was still there until it vanished. On my trips out to view the object I was able to use my phone to record 4 short videos–
Neanderthals might have lived in small groups, with females regularly arriving and leaving.
Credit: S. Plailly/E. Daynes/SPL
Set on a rocky outcrop in southern Siberia, Chagyrskaya Cave might not look like much. But for one family of Neanderthals, it was home.
For the first time, researchers have identified a set of closely related Neanderthals: a father and his teenage daughter and two other, more-distant relatives.
The discovery of the family — reported on 19 October in Nature1 — and seven other individuals (including a pair of possible cousins from another clan) in the same cave, along with two more from a nearby site, represents the largest ever cache of Neanderthal genomes. The findings also suggest that Neanderthal communities were small, and that females routinely left their families to join new groups.
Gleaning insights into kinship and social structure is new territory for ancient-genome studies, which have typically focused on broader population history, says Krishna Veeramah, a population geneticist at Stony Brook University in New York. “The fact that we can do this with Neanderthals is incredible.”
Buried treasure
Set on the banks of the Charysh River in the foothills of the Altai mountains, Chagyrskaya is 100 kilometres west of Denisova Cave, an archaeological treasure trove in which humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans (and at least one Neanderthal–Denisovan hybrid) all lived intermittently over some 300,000 years2,3. Excavations of Chagyrskaya, however, have so far revealed only Neanderthal remains, dated to between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, and characteristic stone tools.
In 2020, a genome sequence from a female Neanderthal from Chagyrskaya suggested she belonged to a population distinct from those that occupied Denisova Cave much earlier4. To study the cave’s inhabitants in greater depth, a team of researchers led by palaeogeneticist Laurits Skov and population geneticist Benjamin Peter at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, extracted DNA from 17 other samples of ancient-human remains from Chagyrskaya, as well as several from a nearby cave, called Okladnikov.
The Chagyrskaya remains — teeth and bone fragments — yielded complete and partial genomes from 11 individuals (samples from Okladnikov were poorly preserved, and only two had enough DNA to extract and sequence).
With this trove, the researchers confirmed that Chagyrskaya’s residents were more closely related to Neanderthals living in Europe around the same time than to those who occupied Denisova Cave tens of thousands of years earlier.
When Skov started comparing the genomes from Chagyrskaya, he got the surprise of his career. Two individuals, an adult male and a teenage female, shared half of their DNA, a situation that could occur only if they were siblings or a parent and child. To determine the relationship, the researchers examined mitochondrial DNA — which is maternally inherited and would therefore be identical between siblings and between a mother and child, but not between a father and child. This differed between the male and female, suggesting that they were father and daughter.
The researchers found more family members as they continued to examine the genetic material. They found that the father had two types of mitochondrial DNA — a characteristic known as heteroplasmy — that were shared by two other adult males from the cave, suggesting that they were all from the same maternal lineage. Heteroplasmies usually vanish after a few generations, says Skov, so the three probably lived around the same time. His team also identified members of another Neanderthal family: a male and female who were second-degree relatives, such as cousins.
“It makes you wonder what the familial relationship between these individuals were and how they were interacting with each other,” says Skov. “It is a little glimpse into a Neanderthal family.”
Social structures
The glut of Neanderthal genomes — which nearly doubles the number now available — has allowed researchers to look at other aspects of Neanderthal life. The genomes of the Chagyrskaya Neanderthals all had low diversity between maternal and paternal copies, a sign that the interconnected population of breeding adults was low. Researchers have uncovered similar patterns in mountain gorillas, which typically live in communities of fewer than 20 individuals, and other threatened species.
The researchers also found that the maternally inherited mitochondrial genomes were vastly more diverse than were the Y chromosomes, which are passed down along the male line. One explanation for this is a steady influx of females from different Neanderthal communities, Skov says. Modelling from the team suggests that the patterns observed in genetic diversity would occur if more than half of women in small communities were born elsewhere.
“I think we can say this social structure was present in most Neanderthals,” says palaeogeneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox, director of the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona, Spain. A decade ago, his team analysed 12 Neanderthals buried in a Spanish cave and found diverse mitochondrial DNA in women, but not in men, which they interpreted as evidence that females had left their communities5. This makes Lalueza-Fox wonder whether it was mobile Neanderthal women who encountered — and mated with — Homo sapiens in other parts of Eurasia. Other scientists caution that Neanderthal groups living elsewhere or at other times might have adopted different social customs. “Until you get more points on the board, you can’t tell,” says Veeramah.
Rebecca Wragg Sykes, a writer and archaeologist at the University of Liverpool, UK, is surprised that remains from so many related individuals — who were part of highly mobile hunter-gathering communities — have been recovered from one site. Especially perplexing is the presence of one baby tooth and two barely worn permanent teeth belonging to the same adolescent male. “To me, it suggests that this community of Neanderthals, either they tend to stay in their sites for quite a long time, or they revisit them very often,” she says.
Chagyrskaya Cave is also chock full of bison and horse remains, and Skov and his colleagues think that the site served as a hunting camp of sorts during these animals’ seasonal migrations. These hunts could have created opportunities for disparate Neanderthal communities to meet and mix, Sykes suggests. “I don’t think Neanderthals were planning to meet up with each other, but it offers that opportunity.”
The Chagyrskaya family is likely to grow. Only one-third of the cave has been excavated so far, and Skov and his colleagues have analysed less than one-quarter of the Neanderthal remains already discovered. Skov hopes that future studies can build more complete Neanderthal family trees — and perhaps find the teenage girl’s mother. “She’s probably also in there,” he says.
A NEW LASER-POWERED CHIP CAN TRANSMIT THE ENTIRE INTERNET (TWICE) EACH SECOND
MOLLY GLICK
Well, consumer devices can’t run on lasers just yet. But in recent years, researchers have been working hard to make this dream a reality.
In the most recent breakthrough, a new chip can bend laser light to transmit 1.8 petabits, or over 1 million gigabits, per second. To put things in perspective, that’s nearly twice the world’s internet traffic per second.
This breaks the May 2022 record of 1.02 petabits per second, as reported by New Atlas.
What’s new — Most computer chips rely on electricity to transmit information, but this new gizmo uses light to do its thing.
Once a laser delivers information to the chip, it uses a comb to split data into hundreds of frequencies (or colors), according to a new paper by scientists in Denmark, Sweden, and Japan that was published in Nature Photonics.
A new laser-powered chip can transmit the entire internet (twice) each second
Ooh, pretty colors — More specifically, the chip splits the info into 223 chunks, each of which corresponds to a different section of the light spectrum. This means that the information can travel quickly and efficiently without getting mixed up in the process. After it’s processed, the data recombines into a single beam and travels through a cable.
The team put their system into a matchbox-sized device and fed it multiple channels of data. They used a fiber cable, which measured nearly 5 miles long, to hook it up to another device to confirm it could send quality information.
Eventually, the scientists predict it could even reach 100 Pbit/s — a nearly unimaginable speed compared to today’s possibilities.
“Our findings could mark a shift in the design of future communication systems, targeting device-efficient transmitters and receivers,” the team wrote in their paper.
While the U.S. electric vehicle market is finally revving up, sluggish charging times can pose a major headache for drivers. After all, nobody wants to sit at a roadside station for upwards of 20 minutes to an hour while their ride juices up. But that dilemma could soon change.
A new battery could charge up in about 11 minutes, according to a new Nature study.
Researchers from Penn State University took advantage of a technique called asymmetric temperature modulation, which rapidly preheats and then cools the cell to help move charge faster. They also worked with a very porous anode, or a positively charged electrode that’s able to take in lots of charged ions at once.
The new battery has an estimated lifespan comparable to current EV batteries, lasting around 2,000 charge cycles, or about 500,000 miles.
Study author Chao-Yang Wang, a mechanical engineer at Penn State University, founded a startup called EC Power to bring speedy charging to the masses. The company’s Pennsylvania-based factory is already churning quick-charging out EV batteries, including ones that powered buses at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
This latest breakthrough should enable them to produce even more efficient batteries, Wang says.
Randy Cramer claims to have completed a 20 and back tour of duty with a secret space program where he attained the rank of Captain in the USMC special section. He was sent to Lunar Operations Command in 1987 for his induction and spent the next 17 years as a supersoldier protecting Mars corporate colonies from attacks by indigenous Reptilian and Insectoid species.
Randy says that he subseqently spent 3 years as a pilot of various types of spacecraft that belonged to the Solar Warden space fleet. He asserts that he next completed a ten year assignment performing rescues or assassinations in special space operations. Randy has undergone a lie detector test which confirmed that he was not being deceptive and he discusses the results in the interview.
Do Aliens Exist? We Asked a NASA Scientist: Episode 5
Do Aliens Exist? We Asked a NASA Scientist: Episode 5
Do aliens exist? Extraterrestrial life has never been discovered, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. At NASA, astrobiologists like Lindsay Hays are trying to answer one of the most profound questions ever: Is there life beyond Earth?
Do aliens exist? This is a really interesting question and one that NASA has been trying to understand, explore, and figure out for a long time. We have not yet discovered life on any other planet, and we have not seen any scientifically supported evidence for extraterrestrial life.
But if we think about life on this planet, beyond the big things — the elephants, the whales, redwoods trees –– and focus on the tiny things, nearly everywhere on Earth that we've looked, we've found microbial life.
Our definition of habitable environments continues to expand. Off the Earth we've only begun to look. NASA has sent five rovers and four landers to the surface of Mars. Additionally, orbiters have been outfitted with some amazing cameras to take pictures of the whole surface of the Red Planet. But we've only explored a tiny fraction of Mars. And that's only one of the promising bodies to look for life in our solar system.
There are icy moons in the outer solar system like Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa that look like they may have subsurface oceans that could be habitable. And that's just what's in our solar system. The more exoplanets we find around other stars, the more we learn about how many different environments could exist for life.
We can't yet say for sure whether or not aliens exist. To quote Carl Sagan: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.” So, NASA will keep looking.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - UFO Sighting News.
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - UFO Sighting News.
UFO Seen From Plane Over Denver, 6-6-2022, UFO Sighting News.
Eyewitness states:
I was on a flight descending into Denver when I looked out the right side of the window and saw these two pill-like objects cruising smoothly through the air. They were well below us, even as we descended.
UFOs Over Elkton, Maryland Oct 25, 2022, UFO Sighting News.
Eyewitness states:
There have been at least 4 or more occasions where I have notice a bright light beneath spotted clouds going into circles and looked like a boomerang or a stingray in the sky just flying around in circles and looked like a school of fish flying around fast in circles following each other and my family has also saw it the second time I saw it and no one believed me until that day that it was no aircraft no spot lights it was amazing something we’ve never seen before but I felt so good that i got to finally show them because they were laughing at me until that day now they are all believers. I posted the best video I could and have herd from other people of them seeing similar and couldn’t understand but knew that what they were seeing wasn’t normal.
These lights would stay with the patterns of the clouds and as the clouds moved so did these lights and would shift back over and there they were while the rest of the sky was really clear. I have saw them over my house, also over a field multiple times behind these apartments and also above the woods across the st from my house clear as day.
There’s definitely some activity but it’s at random when it comes out. So since then me and my family always looks at the sky. Last time I saw one a month ago I would say and I barely got it but you could see just one light kind of dim but I have it and it looks like a white ball of light flying in circles and below it is woods and no center lights are in the sky where I live but when I tried to catch the boomerang ones the months before but I couldn’t see it good enough on tape.
Flashing Rings of Light, Wellingborough, England 7-10-2022, UFO Sighting News.
Eyewitness states:
Hi there. On Sunday 10th July, I was in the garden with my husband when I looked up over our house and saw 2 objects high up in the sky. They were trailing each other in a straight line and seemed to flash. They were moving quite slowly but always kept the same distance between them. There were no other aircraft in the sky that we could see and it was a clear evening with no clouds. A few days later I read an article that something similar was seen in London around the time we saw these objects but no one has been able to claim what they were. I do have video evidence which I will attach and also close ups of the objects taken from print screens of the videos. If you need any further info, don’t hesitate to contact me! Would be great to hear what you think also.
Cigar-shaped UFO filmed from a plane over Denver, Colorado 2022
Cigar-shaped UFO filmed from a plane over Denver, Colorado 2022
In this video, you can see a cigar-shaped object flying at an incredible speed as it flies over Denver, Colorado. Although only one of the objects can be seen in the footage, the author claims that there were two. This happened on 6th June 2022.
Witness report:
I was on a flight descending into Denver when I looked out the right side of the window and saw these two pill-like objects cruising smoothly through the air. They were well below us, even as we descended.
Apollo 17 Astronaut Couldn’t Hide His Surprise When He Saw A UFO On The Moon
During Apollo 17 mission, the final mission of NASA’s Apollo program in 1972, astronauts walking on the Moon - Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt – witnessed something very strange hovering over their heads. Usually NASA astronauts follow a “script” and they know exactly what and when to say. But one astronaut however was too shocked by something he had never seen before. He forgot his “lines” and no longer followed the script. What did he see on the moon ?
Top 10 Insane Pieces of Evidence of Aliens and UFOs
Today, we will look at the many hints that have emerged over the years pointing toward the existence of life beyond earth. Top 10 Insane Pieces of Evidence of Aliens and UFOs.
What James Webb Saw Near the Edge of the Universe | James Webb Part 1
The journey of James Webb's images, from nebulas in our galaxy, to the youngest galaxies at the edge of the universe.
Researchers Just Revealed A Terrifying Discovery That No One Was Supposed To See
Relics left behind by ancient people are frequently damaged, buried, and difficult to identify, but some can completely transform our perspective on our place in history. Archaeologists have made some spectacular discoveries over the years. Some are strange archaic items that they still do not fully comprehend. Today, let's have a look at these objects that could have come from space. The Dropa Stones
High on the Bayan-Kara-Ula mountains, which run through China and Tibet, is a very remarkable labyrinth of caves that are mysteriously interconnected — built by either man or nature. Within these caves are the buried bodies of the most unusual hominoid species ever seen by man. The team of archaeologists who accidently discovered the caverns in 1938 initially thought they were ape bodies. However, apes do not bury their dead. If not animals, what or who did these strange-looking skeletons belong to? Yes, they were neither human nor animal, or at least not totally human. The skeletons had little and very thin limbs and legs, almost spindly, but huge heads in comparison to their short and weak frames. Chi Pu Tei, a Chinese archaeologist, and his team were inspecting the skeletons when they uncovered something even odd. A circular disc lay half-buried in the cave floor. It seemed to be made of stone, with a hole in the center. There were spiral inscriptions or grooves like two rings going around it.
RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
Top Secret Anti-Gravity Spy Plane - TR3b Black Manta
In the case of the TR-3B Black Manta, it means a craft that uses highly pressured mercury accelerated by nuclear energy, so that plasma is produced, which, in turn, creates a field of anti-gravity around the craft. It has an electromagnetic coil at the heart of it’s motive power system, the result of which is electromagnetic drive that interacts with the Higgs-Boson field at the quantum level. Heady stuff indeed!
So, an anti-gravity aircraft doesn’t use conventional turbine or rocket engine technology, but instead a propulsion system that creates thrust by generating high-energy plasma. These aircraft are also referred to as ‘flux liners’.
As with many divergent aviation technologies, anti-gravity technology dates back to the latter part and aftermath of World War II, and specifically the covert U.S. project known as Operation Paperclip.
The objective of Operation Paperclip was for the U.S. to gain as much leverage against the Soviet Union in the military armaments technology race, which is why the project was packed to the rafters with German scientists who were avowed members of the Nazi Party.
That means the U.S. has been investigating anti-gravity technology for nearly 70 years.
It is the culmination of theories regarding gravitation, quantum gravity and general relativity, the latter as first put forward by Albert Einstein himself.
Anti-gravity is of huge interest to the military and scientists alike, given that, for example, one could hypothetically reduce an aircraft’s mass by using electromagnetic propulsion, even down to zero.
Little wonder that the likes of NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin researchers have all invested in theoretical studies regarding the ability to alter inert mass. According to experts, the TR-3B Black Manta would use conventional thrusters located at the tips of the aircraft that would allow it to perform a dizzying number of rapid high-speed manoeuvres,
including perfect right-angle turns and hyper acceleration. And it could achieve this along all its three axes.
Remember, the TR-3B was designed to be a subsonic stealth spy plane.
For one thing, it’s a very silent aircraft, save for a slight humming sound. An interesting by-product of the plasma the TR-3B generates is that it significantly reduces the aircraft’s radar signature, thereby making it ideal for missions in which stealth is paramount.
That means the TR-3B Black Manta could sneak into just about any air space of any country and not be detected by its air traffic control or air defence systems.
This little black number has been associated with multiple reports of sightings of flying triangle aircraft over Antelope Valley, an area of desert in southern California much beloved by UFO watchers.
It’s also this desert area of California that draws people interested in covert black project or ‘black ops aircraft projects, given its close proximity to several known military research and testing areas,
including Edwards Air Force Base and USAF Plant 42, the latter which is a mere 60 miles or 97 kilometres from downtown Los Angeles.
In my humble opinion, the United States Air Force must thank its lucky stars for UFO enthusiasts and believers of alien spacecraft.
After all, as Popular Mechanics has written, a number of reports of so-called black triangle UFOs have probably been secret military aircraft in reality.
The TR-3B Black Manta would certainly be the type of black ops project typical of the U.S. Air Force and Navy.
The U2 spy plane of the 1950s, the SR-71 jet of the 1980s, and the present-day F-117A stealth craft are just three examples of planes that the U.S. Air Force denied existed for years, all of which were first covertly developed at Nevada’s infamous Area 51 base.
And don’t let’s forget that Area 51 itself was only finally acknowledged by the U.S. government when that most covert of agencies, the CIA, did so in June 2013, courtesy of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed eight years earlier.
But does it exist?
There are of course the inevitable allegations that the TR-3B was built by the military using extraterrestrial reverse-engineered technology.
Even Forbes magazine mused in 2021 that maybe, just maybe the patents issued to Salvatore Cezar Pais could be a cover for alien technology captured over the years by the U.S. military.
So, what of the TR-3B Black Manta? How far back does it go, if at all? Does it have anything to do with the aforementioned 2018 patent issued to Pais and the U.S. Navy? Is it a plane, is it a bird, could it even be Superman? No, it’s just the United States Air Force messing with our heads again.
RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
ALIEN CONTACT : NASA EXPOSED 1 - FULL HD SCIFI MOVIE IN ENGLISH
Whistleblowers claim NASA not only knows about alien visitations but that they are in contact with extraterrestrials.
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.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
