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!!!
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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...
01-12-2022
Researchers discover two new minerals on meteorite grounded in Somalia
Researchers discover two new minerals on meteorite grounded in Somalia
‘Phenomenal’ finds are named elaliite and elkinstantonite, and Canadian scientists are analysing third mineral
A slice of the El Ali meteorite contains two minerals never seen before in a natural state on Earth.Photograph: Supplied
A team of researchers in Canada say they have discovered two new minerals – and potentially a third – after analysing a slice of a 15-tonne meteorite that landed in east Africa.
The meteorite, the ninth largest recorded at over 2 metres wide, was unearthed in Somalia in 2020, although local camel herders say it was well known to them for generations and named Nightfall in their songs and poems.
Western scientists, however, dubbed the extraterrestrial rock El Ali because it was found near the town of El Ali, in the Hiiraan region. A 70-gram slice of the iron-based meteorite was sent to the University of Alberta’s meteorite collection for classification.
The meteorite was found near the town of El Ali in Somalia.Photograph: Courtesy of Global Resources
Dr Chris Herd, a professor in the department of earth and atmospheric sciences and the curator of the collection, said that while he was classifying the rock he noticed “unusual” minerals. Herd asked Andrew Locock, the head of the university’s electron microprobe laboratory, to investigate.
“The very first day he did some analyses, he said, ‘You’ve got at least two new minerals in there’,” said Herd. “That was phenomenal. Most of the time it takes a lot more work than that to say there’s a new mineral.”
Similar minerals had been synthetically created in a lab in the 1980s but never recorded as appearing in nature, Herd said, adding that these new minerals could help understand how “nature’s laboratory” works and may have as yet unknown real-world uses. A third potentially new mineral is being analysed.
A sample of the meteorite.
Photograph: Courtesy of University of Alberta Meteorite Collection
“I never thought I’d be involved in describing brand new minerals just by virtue of working on a meteorite,” said Herd. “That’s what makes this exciting: in this particular meteorite you have two officially described minerals that are new to science.” They have been named elaliite, after the location of the meteorite, and elkinstantonite, after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator of Nasa’s upcoming Psyche mission that aims to send a spacecraft to a metal-rich asteroid.
“Lindy has done a lot of work on how the cores of planets form, how these iron nickel cores form, and the closest analogue we have are iron meteorites. So it made sense to name a mineral after her and recognise her contributions to science,” Herd said.
University of Alberta scientists would like to examine other samples from the same meteorite but Herd said there were reports that it had been removed to China. Meteorites are often bought and sold on international markets.
A third ancient human skull has been uncovered at a site in China. A 3D reconstruction of the second skull, discovered three decades ago and called Yunxian 2, is pictured.
Credit: Pascal Goetgheluck/SPL
Researchers are heralding the discovery of an ancient human skull in central China as an important find. As excavation of the remarkably intact fossil continues, archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists anticipate that the skull could give a fuller picture of the diverse family tree of archaic humans living throughout Eurasia in prehistoric times.
Archaeologists expect to finish excavating the ancient human skull in November, at the same site in Yun county, Hubei province in central China where the remains of two other million-year-old humans were found decades ago.
Photo: CCTV
No 3 skull of Yunxian Man is found in an excavation site known as Xuetangliangzi in Yunyang district, Shiyan city, Central China's Hubei province.
[Photo/Xinhua]
The skull was discovered on 18 May at an excavation site 20 kilometres west of Yunyang — formerly known as Yunxian — in central China’s Hubei province. It lies 35 metres from where two skulls — dubbed the Yunxian Man skulls — were unearthed in 1989 and 19901, and probably belongs to the same species of ancient people, say researchers.
“It’s a wonderful discovery,” says palaeoanthropologist Amélie Vialet at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, who has worked on the first two skulls, commonly referred to as Yunxian 1 and 2. Unlike those earlier discoveries, which were crushed and distorted after millennia underground, the third skull, Yunxian 3, seems to be in good condition.
In 2010, Vialet and her colleagues created digital reconstructions of the Yunxian 2 skull, and confirmed that it was probably a member of the archaic human species Homo erectus2. Dating of sediment and animal fossils from the site suggest that the Yunxian humans lived between 1.1 million and 800,000 years ago.
Is Yunxian Man Homo erectus?
Homo erectus was first described from fossils found on the Indonesian island of Java in the late nineteenth century. Javanese fossils dating to 1.5 million years ago suggest that members of the species might have been the first early humans to have ventured out of Africa.
Homo erectus was both widespread and long-lived. Remains have been found in eastern Africa, eastern Asia and possibly Europe, and they span a period from 1.9 million to 250,000 years ago. Because of this, there is a great deal of variability in the species’ fossil record, and the precise relationships between different populations are a matter of debate
The skulls of Yunxian 1 and 2 were distorted after millennia underground.
Credit: Alamy
The Yunxian 3 skull is half-buried in an upright position. Researchers have uncovered the forehead, including the brow ridge and eye sockets, as well as the top, back and left cheekbone of the skull. It is not yet known whether teeth or a lower jawbone are attached to the skull, says Gao Xing at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, who is leading the excavation.
Vialet says that the Yunxian 1 and 2 skulls share some features with older Javanese fossils, and others with younger Homo erectus fossils from mainland Asia. Like the Javanese fossils, they are large, big-brained skulls. But she says that they are less heavily built, a characteristic that usually indicates a more modern individual.
Researchers have found Homo erectus remains at more than a dozen sites across China. Vialet says that the ancient humans at Yunxian could be the ancestors of some of these populations, but their skulls bear distinct features that set them apart.
For example, fossils from around 700,000 years ago that were discovered in the Zhoukoudian cave system in suburban Beijing — known as the Peking Man Site — have a prominent sagittal keel, a crest that runs along the midline of the skull for the attachment of strong jaw muscles. The Yunxian skulls all seem to lack this feature, says Vialet.
Variable fossils
Yameng Zhang, a palaeoanthropologist at Shandong University, says that the Homo erectus fossils found in China are highly variable and researchers don’t know why. It could be that each population evolved independently in Asia. Or they could have been the result of multiple waves of expansion out of Africa, he says. “More complete Chinese H. erectus like Yunxian 3 are crucial to answer this question.”
Vialet says that the Yunxian 3 skull should be compared with Chinese as well as European hominin fossils, such as the 1.4-million-year-old face from the Sima del Elefante cave in Atapuerca, Spain, discovered in July. She is currently comparing Yunxian 2 with European hominin fossils, and says that the Yunxian people could be more similar to European populations from the middle Pleistocene epoch than they are to later specimens from China.
If the Yunxian 3 skull has teeth, especially molars, they could be useful for discerning evolutionary relationships with other early humans, says Clément Zanolli at the University of Bordeaux, France.
Archaeologists work to uncover the secrets of ancient humans at the site in Yun county, in the central Chinese province of Hubei.
Photo: Weibo
An age-old question
Once the Yunxian 3 skull is excavated, probably within the next few months, dating it will be an important task. Several techniques have been used to estimate the age of Yunxian 1 and Yunxian 2 at between 800,000 and 1.1 million years.
Wei Wang, a geochronologist at Shandong University, says that hominin fossils in China are often more difficult to date than fossils in Africa, because China lacks volcanic sediments that can be reliably dated by measuring the amounts of radioactive isotopes in the rock.
Jean-Jacques Bahain at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris dated sediments collected from the Yunxian site using electron spin resonance and uranium series dating3. This requires a close comparison between values taken from the fossil and the quartz in the sediment. But he says that the samples he measured weren’t collected at the same time and location as the Yunxian 1 and 2 skulls.
The discovery of Yunxian 3 therefore represents a unique opportunity to collect sediment samples from the ground that the skull sits in, he says.
Small animal fossils surrounding the Yunxian 3 skull are slowing the extraction process, according to Gao. Bahain says that such specimens could help to pinpoint the age of the Yunxian 3 skull, and also connect it to early human remains elsewhere in China that have been found with prehistoric fauna.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04142-0
References
Tianyuan, L. & Etler, D. Nature357, 404–407 (1992).
Waanzinnige ontdekking in de diepte: is dit het langste dier ter wereld?
Waanzinnige ontdekking in de diepte: is dit het langste dier ter wereld?
In een onderwaterkloof voor de kust van Australië vond een waanzinnige ontdekking plaats op ongeveer 600 meter diepte. Het gaat om een lang gelatineachtig wezen dat in een reusachtige spiraal hangt. “Het was als een touw aan de horizon. Je kon het niet missen”, zegt Nerida Wilson van het West-Australisch Museum aan de Britse krant 'The Guardian’.
De lengte van het dier bedraagt maar liefst 45 meter. Dat is dubbel zo lang als een blauwe vinvis. Het gaat hier om een buiskwal, waarschijnlijk een nieuwe soort uit het geslacht Apolemia, een groep die er meestal uitziet als een in de knoop geraakte sjaal. De spiraalvorm zorgt ervoor dat ze veel eten binnen krijgen. Talrijke stekende tentakels creëren een muur des doods in het water, waarin kleine prooien, waaronder schaaldieren en vissen, gevangen zitten.
Duikboot
Het dier werd toevallig ontdekt, dat gebeurt wel vaker bij diepzee-onderzoek. De wetenschappers wilden het leven op de zeebodem bestuderen, en kwamen deze drijvende kwal toevallig tegen toen hun onderzeeër onderweg was terug naar het schip.
Het schip, Falkor, zond live beelden uit van de duikboot. Wilson beschrijft hoe iedereen aan boord gefascineerd en verbaasd was toen de enorme spiraal in beeld kwam. Iedereen zwermde naar de controlekamer om het beter te kunnen zien. “Het was zo’n prachtige energie”, zegt Wilson. “Iedereen had zoiets van: ‘Wat is dit?’”
KIJK.
Het gaat om een lang gelatineachtig wezen dat in een reusachtige spiraal hangt
Buiskwallen behoren tot dezelfde groep als gewone kwallen, maar ze bouwen hun lichaam op een unieke manier op. Het zijn eigenlijk honderden aan elkaar geplakte kleine kwallen. Toch is een buiskwal één organisme. “Het had twee ouders”, zegt Wilson aan ‘The Guardian’. In plaats van te groeien tot een lichaam met organen die verschillende functies vervullen, bestaan buiskwallen uit afzonderlijke delen. Sommige delen zijn verantwoordelijk voor de voeding, andere voor de voortplanting, en weer andere bewegen en sturen het dier door het water.
Nog geen wereldrecord opgeëist
Gebaseerd op een ruwe berekening van het spoor van de duikboot is de spiraalvormige buiskwal een kandidaat voor het langste exemplaar dat ooit is aangetroffen. Met ongeveer 45 meter zou het zelfs het langste dier kunnen zijn dat ooit is gemeten.
De piloot van de duikboot die hem vanaf de oppervlakte bestuurde kon maar heel even het dier in beeld brengen omdat de batterij van de duikboot bijna leeg was. “We cirkelden rond, namen wat beelden en een klein weefselmonster”, zegt Wilson. “Daarna moesten we gewoon verder gaan.” Wilson wil nog geen wereldrecords opeisen en werkt samen met een specialist in fotogrammetrie om een nauwkeuriger schatting van de grootte van de buiskwal te krijgen.
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This is Why Snails Are Afraid of This Worm
This is Why Snails Are Afraid of This Worm
When these worms begin consuming everything in their path, gigantic piers, ships, and fairy bridges are all endangered. And if this worm is starving and there is only a tiny snail around, all that will be left of it will be the shell. Why are grotesque beings so vital to our world? Where did the iron snail originate? Why did Darwin chop up worms? How did snails acquire long-range weaponry like harpoons? Let’s find out.
At least once, you’ve looked up at the night sky and asked the same longstanding question we’ve all asked at least once, “Are we alone?” With all those points of light out there, we can’t be the only intelligent beings in the universe, right? There must be at least one technological civilization aside from us in the great vastness that we call the cosmos.
The astronomer Carl Sagan was famous for his quote in his book and film, Contact, “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Yet, for some of us, it’s incredibly hard to fathom that it’s just us in the vast unknown full of so many stars and a growing list of exoplanets being discovered on a near daily basis. However, despite all our endless searching, we’ve so far found no one.
So, what if you found out one day that it is just us? What if in the great cosmos, out of all the planets, stars, and galaxies, we are truly alone? How would you look at the universe? At humanity? At yourself? Would you believe it? Would you stop looking up at the stars entirely? Would you feel disappointed that we’re alone, that we’re truly it, or would you feel a sense of optimism knowing that the longstanding question has finally been answered once and for all?
The film, Ad Astra, showed Roy McBride played by Brad Pitt searching for his father, H. Clifford McBride, played by Tommy Lee Jones, the latter of whom was on a mission at Neptune searching for intelligent life outside of the solar system and in the rest of the universe. In the end, Brad finds his dad alone on the space station orbiting Neptune, only to discover that his father didn’t find anything. No intelligent life anywhere in the universe. He discovered that we’re it.
Throughout the film, Roy was struggling to reconnect with his father and his father was struggling to connect with the universe, and this only serves as an appropriate analogy for our own pursuit of answering the longstanding question. At one point when he’s on Mars, Roy asks himself regarding his father, “I don’t know if I hope to find him or be free of him.” In our own pursuit of trying to answer the longstanding question, what if it’s not that we’re hoping to find intelligent life, but that we’re trying to be free of knowing if there’s intelligent life?
In the end, when Clifford disappointingly tells his son that there’s no one else in the universe and that he’s failed in his mission, Roy doesn’t respond with anger or disappointment, but with optimism, telling his estranged father with a smile, “Dad, you haven’t. Now we know. We’re all we’ve got.” In that moment, it was as if the literal weight of the universe was lifted from Roy’s shoulders knowing that we’re it. After Roy unfortunately leaves his father to die in the void, Roy notes that he can’t wait for the day that his solitude ends, and the film ends with him reconnecting with his wife.
While Roy felt almost relieved to finally know the answer to the longstanding question, it’s important to ask if you’d feel the same way? Because, despite all the hopes of us finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, we must face the real possibility that we’re it. That’s it just us, and where do we go from here?
Two Great Globular Clusters Seen by Hubble: Pismis 26 and Ruprecht 106
Pismis 26, a globular star cluster located about 23,000 light-years away, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Credit: NASA, ESA and R. Cohen (Rutgers the State University of New Jersey); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America).
Two Great Globular Clusters Seen by Hubble: Pismis 26 and Ruprecht 106
If you like shiny things, some of the most gorgeous objects in space are globular clusters, with their bright, densely packed collections of gleaming stars. And if you like globular clusters, you’re in luck: two different Hubble images of globular clusters were featured this week by NASA and ESA.
The Hubble telescope basically revolutionized the study of globular clusters, as with ground-based telescopes, it is almost impossible to distinguish the individual stars in globular clusters because they are so densely packed. Hubble been used to study what kind of stars globular clusters are made up of, how they evolve and the role of gravity in these dense systems.
The first image from Hubble, featured by NASA, is this beautiful glittering gathering of stars (above) called Pismis 26, a globular star cluster located about 23,000 light-years away. The cluster is named for Armenian astronomer Paris Pismis who first discovered the cluster in 1959 at the Tonantzintla Observatory in Mexico; and this cluster has the dual name Tonantzintla 2.
Usually, globular clusters consist of stars that are quite old (red and dead), with some of the oldest stars in the Universe. In fact, our resident astrophysicist, Paul Sutter has called globular clusters the “retirement homes for the galaxy.”
Astronomers estimate the age of this particular cluster to be 12 billion years old.
The stars in globular clusters are held together by mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters cover a relatively small region in space, with most no more than a couple dozen parsecs across. But each one contains hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of stars. Sutter says that puts the average distance between stars at about 1 light-year, but in their cores the stars pack together over a thousand times more tightly than in our own neighborhood.
Hubble captured this star-studded image of Ruprecht 106.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Dotter
The second globular cluster image, this one featured by ESA, shows Ruprecht 106. Hubble captured this star-studded image with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was installed on the space telescope by astronauts during a servicing mission in 2002.
Ruprecht 106 contains a bit of a mystery. Even though most of the constituent stars in globular clusters stars likely formed at approximately the same time and location, research with Hubble has shown that is not always true. It turns out that almost all globular clusters contain groups of stars with distinct chemical compositions, which means those groups of stars within the clusters have very slightly different ages or compositions from the rest of the cluster.
However, a handful of globular clusters do not possess these multiple populations of stars, and Ruprecht 106 is a member of that group. Astronomers will likely use the James Webb Space Telescope to study enigmatic clusters like Ruprecht 106 to learn more about the stars and their life cycles.
The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters: CHALLENGER SPACECRAFT UNCOVERED ON OCEAN FLOOR (Season 1)
The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters: CHALLENGER SPACECRAFT UNCOVERED ON OCEAN FLOOR (Season 1)
Mike and his dive team search for clues regarding a }case of 27 missing people but come across something bigger. See more in this clip from Season 1, "A Big Find."
Watch new episodes of The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters, Tuesdays at 10/9c, and stay up to date on all of your favorite The HISTORY Channel shows at history.com/schedule.
NASA's Artemis 1 spacecraft "strange" moon images taken less than 4,500 miles away
See footage below of the Orion spacecraft a little over an hour before its "outbound powered flyby burn" on Nov. 21, 2022. The spacecraft was less than 4,500 miles away (~7,242 km) and was traveling at 757 miles per hour (1218 kph). NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft aces close moon flyby in crucial engine burn.
During Orion's moon flyby it shows an oval shaped/egg shaped moon rather then the round-shaped moon as we know which is very strange, isn't it?
If you compare an image of the moon, photographed in 2010 from Madison, Alabama, USA, photographed with a Celestron 9.25 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. Acquired with a Canon EOS Rebel T1i (EOS 500D), with the moon image, taken less than 4,500 miles away from the moon, with the cameras on board of the Artemis 1 spacercaft then you come to the conclusion that these images are overexposed on purpose.
With overexposed moon images and an unusual oval-shaped/egg-shaped moon, we may wonder what they like to keep hidden from the public.
Alien Invasion: Is The Government Secretly Fighting Dangerous ETs?
Alien Invasion: Is The Government Secretly Fighting Dangerous ETs?
In this video, entitled “The Fight Against Alien,” the creators of Unveiled discuss the possibility that Earth is fighting a secret battle against extraterrestrials. There are various reasons why this might be true, but do we really need to start looking for the bunkers yet?
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Linda Moulton Howe: An Interview with an Annunaki Hybrid
Linda Moulton Howe: An Interview with an Annunaki Hybrid
Marina, a Starseed human hybrid, talks about her experiences with extraterrestrial creatures, including beings that she encountered when she was six years old. In this interview, Linda Howe asks a lot of important questions about the presence of hybrid humans on Earth.
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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
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS
Shenzhou 15 crew enters Chinese space station after docking
Shenzhou 15 astronauts Fei Junlong (commander), Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu completed ingress into the Tiangong space station on Nov. 29, 2022 (Nov. 30 - Beijing time) shortly after docking.
NASA Artemis 1 mission update - Breaking spaceflight records and upcoming events
Orion has now flown "farther than any spacecraft built to fly Human, more than 268,000 miles," according to NASA. Learn about the Artemis 1 record-breaking feat and more in this mission update.
Credit: NASA
An Interstellar Visitor is Lying Dormant in the Depths of the Pacific Ocean
A guest from beyond our solar-system is earth-bound, and we have absolutely no idea. The object wasn’t all that big, just a meter or so across, but its significance is massive. What is amazing here, is that the information about the asteroid was not immediately made public by the Government. It took two men Avi Loeb and Amir Siraj three years to have the government accept the origin of the interstellar object and make it public. Let's check out what it could really be?
ASTONISHING UFO SIGHTING IN TEXAS | The Proof is Out There (Season 3)
A mysterious UFO sighting in Texas shocks the whole community. See more in this clip from Season 3, "Bigfoot Photobombs Eagle's Nest, Mexican Blackbirds Dive To Their Death, and Human Faced Fish."
Do Habitable Planets Exist Other Than Our Earth? | Exoplanets: Thousands Of New Worlds | Spark
Are we alone in the universe? This question has been one of the greatest mysteries of all time. 20 years ago, individual scientists began to challenge traditional planetary science as they set off to seek, observe and reveal the existence of unknown worlds: EXOPLANETS. The film recounts the epic journey of these astrophysicists, who turned our knowledge of the universe upside down, in their quest for extraterrestrial life.
An ancient virus that has lain frozen in the Siberian permafrost for 48,500 years has become the oldest ever revived so far, scientists say.
It is among seven types of viruses in the permafrost that have been resuscitated after thousands of years.
The youngest had been frozen for 27,000 years and the oldest, called Pandoravirus yedoma, has been frozen for 48,500 years.
Although the viruses are not considered a risk to humans, scientists warn that other viruses exposed by melted ice could be 'disastrous' and lead to new pandemics.
The 48,500-year-old virus is a pandoravirus, which infects single-cell organisms known as amoebas. Image A shows the isolated egg-shaped particle of pandoraviruses with a small hole or opening called an ostiole (white arrowhead). B shows a mixture of pandoravirus particles and 'megavirus' particles with a 'stargate' - a white starfish-like structure (white arrowhead)
Pandoravirus yedoma was found in permafrost 52ft (16m) below the bottom of a lake in Yukechi Alas in Yakutia, Russia
REVIVED VIRUS TYPES
- Pandoravirus
- Cedratvirus
- Megavirus
- Pacmanvirus
- Pithovirus
'48,500 years is a world record,' Jean-Michel Claverie, a virologist at Aix-Marseille University in France, told the New Scientist.
Named after pandora's box, pandoravirus is a genus of giant virus first discovered in 2013, and the second largest in physical size of any known viral genus after pithovirus.
Pandoravirus is one micrometre long and 0.5 of a micrometre wide, meaning that it is visible with a light microscope.
This particular 48,500 year-old specimen was found in permafrost 52ft (16m) below the bottom of a lake in Yukechi Alas in Yakutia, Russia.
Professor Claverie and his colleagues previously revived two 30,000-year-old viruses from permafrost, the first of which was announced in 2014.
All nine viruses are capable of infecting single-cell organisms known as amoebas — but not plants or animals. However, other frozen viruses could be very dangerous to plant and animal life, including humans.
Some 65 per cent of Russian territory is classed as permafrost — ground that remains permanently frozen even during summer months.
But, as temperatures rise due to global warming, the ground is now starting to thaw out, coughing up animals and objects that have been frozen for thousands of years.
It has even spawned an industry reliant on the wooly mammoth — which went extinct some 10,000 years ago — as hunters go in search of unearthed skeletons so they can extract their tusks and sell them to ivory dealers.
But the discovery of such well-preserved specimens has also given rise to the fear that diseases which the animals may have carried could be unfrozen with them, and, unlike their hosts, may survive being thawed out.
Professor Claverie warned last year of 'extremely good' evidence that 'you can revive bacteria from deep permafrost'.
He even discovered one such virus himself — pithovirus — which, when defrosted from permafrost began attacking and killing amoebas.
While the pithovirus, which had been frozen for some 30,000 years before the experiment, is harmless to humans, Professor Claverie said it demonstrates that long-frozen viruses can 'wake up' and begin re-infecting hosts.
Scientists disagree about the exact age of the Arctic ice cap, the permafrost which surrounds it, and therefore the age of the objects it contains.
Pictured, elongated particle of a pithovirus (1.9 micrometres in length) exhibits a single apex cork-like structure (white arrowhead)
But most defrosted discoveries that have been uncovered so far date from the last ice age, around 115,000 to 11,700 years ago.
In their research paper, Professor Claverie and colleagues say the release of live bacteria or archaea that have remained in cryptobiosis in permafrost for millions of years a potential 'public health concern'.
'The situation would be much more disastrous in the case of plant, animal, or human diseases caused by the revival of an ancient unknown virus,' they say.
'As unfortunately well documented by recent (and ongoing) pandemics, each new virus, even related to known families, almost always requires the development of highly specific medical responses, such as new antivirals or vaccines.'
The Arctic is of course more sparely populated than other parts of the world, but Professor Claverie said more people are now going there to mine resources such as gold and diamonds.
Unfortunately, the first step in mining these resources is to strip away the upper layers of permafrost, thus exposing people to viruses.
'How long these viruses could remain infectious once exposed to outdoor conditions (UV light, oxygen, heat), and how likely they will be to encounter and infect a suitable host in the interval, is yet impossible to estimate,' the team say.
'But the risk is bound to increase in the context of global warming when permafrost thawing will keep accelerating, and more people will be populating the Arctic in the wake of industrial ventures.'
This nine viruses are detailed further in the new preprint paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, on the bioRxiv server.
Last month, scientists warned that the chance of a virus 'spilling over' to another species increases with the melting of glaciers — slowly moving rivers of ice.
Meltwater from the glaciers can transport pathogens to new hosts, making parts of the Arctic potential 'fertile ground for emerging pandemics'.
KILLER VIRUSES COULD BE RELEASED FROM MELTING ICE IN THE ARCTIC, STUDY WARNS
Glaciers that are melting amid rising global temperatures could be the cause of the next deathly pandemic, a study said.
Scientists investigated how climate change may affect the risk of 'spillover' – a virus jumping to another species – by examining samples from Lake Hazen in the Arctic.
Lake Hazen, seen from above in this NASA image, is the largest High Arctic freshwater lake in the world
They found that the chance of a spillover event increases with the melting of glaciers, as the meltwater can transport pathogens to new hosts.
A warming climate could bring viruses in the Arctic into contact with new environments and hosts, increasing the risk of this 'viral spillover', the experts warn.
'Spillover risk increases with runoff from glacier melt, a proxy for climate change,' say the researchers in their paper, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
'Should climate change also shift species range of potential viral vectors and reservoirs northwards, the High Arctic could become fertile ground for emerging pandemics.'
What Could Go Wrong?! 48,500-Year-Old Siberian Virus is Revived
What Could Go Wrong?! 48,500-Year-Old Siberian Virus is Revived
The world’s oldest known frozen and dormant virus has been revived in a French laboratory leading many to express concerns about the dangers of bringing to life ancient microbes. The virus was removed from the Siberian permafrost in Russia’s far east and is 48,500 years old, offering proof that viruses are incredibly hardy and capable of surviving indefinitely when they’re preserved in a frozen state.
Melting Siberian Permafrost in a Virus-Filled Pandora’s Box
This particular virus is actually one of nine different types of viruses that have been resuscitated from Siberian permafrost samples in recent years. That includes seven viruses resuscitated for this new study, and two other approximately 30,000-year-old viruses brought back to life by the same team of researchers from other samples taken in 2013. The youngest of these viruses was frozen 27,000 years ago.
As reported in the non-peer-reviewed journal bioRxiv, the 48,500-year-old virus has been named Pandoravirus yedoma , in reference to Pandora’s box. The virus was found in a sample of permafrost taken from 52 feet (16 m) below the bottom of a lake in Yukechi Alas in the Russian Republic of Yakutia.
The first-ever pandoravirus was one of the two viruses found in 2013, although that one was of a different type altogether. “48,500 years is a world record,” Jean-Michel Claverie, a virologist at Aix-Marseille University in France and the lead author of the permafrost viral study, told the New Scientist .
In addition to its age, the other remarkable feature of this pandoravirus is its size. Classified as a type of giant virus, Pandoravirus yedoma is approximately one micrometer long and .5 micrometers wide. This means they can be examined directly under a microscope. It contains approximately 2,500 genes, in contrast to the miniscule modern viruses that infect humans that possess no more than 10 to 20 genes.
Climate change and the resulting thawing of the permafrost could release a mass of new Siberian viruses into the atmosphere.
Climate Change and the Threat of Permafrost Viral Release
Given the disturbing coronavirus pandemic the world has just experienced, it might seem alarming that these scientists are intentionally reviving long-lost viruses previously hidden in the frozen wastelands of Siberia. But they say this research is necessary to evaluate the dangers associated with climate change.
One quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost,” they wrote in their newly published paper. With the thawing of the permafrost, organic matter which has been frozen for as many as a million years is thawing out. One of the effects of this is the release of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, amplifying the greenhouse effect.
"The other is that “part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times,” explained the authors in bioRxiv. Only by extracting viruses from permafrost samples and reviving them in controlled conditions, the scientists claim, will it be possible to evaluate the nature of the threat they might pose to human health and safety in a warmer, permafrost-free future.
Since permafrost covers more one-fourth of all land territory in the Northern Hemisphere, this is not an idle concern. The viral load currently locked up in permanently frozen ground is undoubtedly massive, and if it were all released over the course of a couple of decades it could conceivably set off an avalanche of new viral infections in a variety of host species.
None of these victims would be immune to the impact of viral agents that had been out of circulation for tens of thousands of years. Immune systems would eventually adjust, but that might happen too late to prevent a catastrophic loss of life that cuts across the microbial-, plant- and animal-life spectrums.
The 48,500-year-old Siberian virus is a pandoravirus, which infects single-cell organisms known as amoebas.
Immortal Viruses May Be Returning Soon, in Quantities too Astounding to Imagine
Concerns about permafrost melting are not only theoretical. The once-frozen ground has already started to thaw in some areas, and that has allowed scientists to recover frozen and well-preserved specimens of animals that lived during the Paleolithic period.
In recent years the remains of wooly rhinos that went extinct 14,000 years ago have been found, and in one instance scientists recovered a 40,000-year-old wolf’s head that was in almost pristine condition. Wooly mammoth remains have proven especially easy to find in the freshly-thawed soil, so much so that a black-market industry has arisen in which mammoth tusks removed from illicitly unearthed mammoth skeletons are being sold to ivory traders.
What concerns scientists about this development is that potent infectious agents may be hiding dormant inside these well-preserved ancient animal remains. It is notable that the 27,000-year-old virus found in this new study was not removed from the lake bottom sample, but was instead extracted from frozen mammoth excrement taken from a different permafrost core.
Needless to say, ancient viruses released from thawed animal hosts would be more likely to evolve into something threatening to humans than a virus that specifically attacks microbes like amoeba.
Winter landscape and frozen lake in Yakutia, Siberia.
The Hidden Danger of Ancient Bacteria and Viruses in the Thawing Permafrost
In their research paper, Professor Claverie and his colleagues emphasized how dangerous ancient bacteria and viruses could be to present-day life forms of all types. Even if frozen in deeper levels of permafrost for millions of years, they could become active again should the permafrost disappear.
In comparison to outbreaks from modern viruses, “the situation would be much more disastrous in the case of plant, animal, or human diseases caused by the revival of an ancient unknown virus,” the French scientists wrote. “As unfortunately well documented by recent (and ongoing) pandemics, each new virus, even related to known families, almost always requires the development of highly specific medical responses, such as new antivirals or vaccines.”
The Arctic regions of the planet are largely free of permanent human settlers. But the researchers point out that more people are visiting the planet’s coldest regions than ever before, mainly to harvest valuable resources like oil, gold and diamonds that are present in abundance in these previously under-explored areas. In strip-mining operations the upper layers of the permafrost are actually torn out intentionally, meaning that viral exposures during such operations may be unavoidable.
“How long these viruses could remain infectious once exposed to outdoor conditions (UV light, oxygen, heat), and how likely they will be to encounter and infect a suitable host in the interval, is yet impossible to estimate,” the scientists concluded. “But the risk is bound to increase in the context of global warming when permafrost thawing will keep accelerating, and more people will be populating the Arctic in the wake of industrial ventures.”
Other scientists have warned of the dangers of viruses being released in the Arctic through the melting of glaciers, which is yet another possible side effect of global warming. This could expose animals and humans to flowing rivers of glacial meltwater that could carry pathogens to new areas further south.
Whether any of these worst-case scenarios come to fruition remains to be seen. But even a small amount of melting, regardless of the cause, could be enough to release some potentially hazardous viral agents into the global environment, where billions of vulnerable people live.
Top image: Colony of microbes, representational image.
Record voor Orion: nooit eerder was ruimteschip voor mensen zo ver van de aarde
De nieuwe Amerikaanse raket Orion heeft sinds de lancering de verste afstand bereikt die ooit is afgelegd door een ruimtevaartuig dat is bedoeld voor het vervoeren van mensen. Dat meldde de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA maandagavond laat. Het ruimtevaartuig was maandag 432.000 kilometer van de aarde verwijderd
In this image provided by NASA, the Earth and its moon are seen from NASA's Orion spacecraft on Monday.
NASA
KIJK.:
“We hebben de maximale afstand tot de aarde gehaald!”, zei de ruimtevaartorganisatie op Twitter. Het oude record werd in 1970 gevestigd met de ruimtemissie Apollo 13. De bemanningsleden vlogen toen op 401.056 kilometer afstand van de aarde.
Orion begon op 16 november aan zijn eerste vlucht naar de maan en terug. Het vaartuig bereikte zaterdag de baan om de maan. Begin december moet het vaartuig de maan verlaten en beginnen aan de terugvlucht naar de aarde. Die eindigt, als alles goed gaat, op 11 december.
Over een paar jaar willen de Verenigde Staten weer mensen op de maan laten rondlopen, voor het eerst sinds 1972. De onbemande missie Artemis I is een generale repetitie om de veiligheid van de Orion te toetsen. De volgende Artemis-vlucht staat gepland voor 2024. Dan moet het ruimteschip met vier mensen aan boord rond de maan vliegen. Rond 2025 moeten mensen weer voet op de maan zetten.
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29-11-2022
Astronomers Directly Image a Jupiter-Sized Planet Orbiting a Sunlike Star
Astronomers with the SHINE collabortion observed a debris disk containing a Super-Jupiter around a young star.
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); M. Weiss (NRAO/AUI/NSF)
Astronomers Directly Image a Jupiter-Sized Planet Orbiting a Sunlike Star
According to the most widely-accepted theory, planetary systems form from large clouds of dust and gas that form disks around young stars. Over time, these disks accrete to create planets of varying size, composition, and distance from their parent star. In the past few decades, observations in the mid- and far-infrared wavelengths have led to the discovery of debris disks around young stars (less than 100 million years old). This has allowed astronomers to study planetary systems in their early history, providing new insight into how systems form and evolve.
This includes the SpHere INfrared survey for Exoplanets (SHINE) consortium, an international team of astronomers dedicated to studying star systems in formation. Using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the SHINE collaboration recently observed and characterized the debris disk of a nearby star (HD 114082) in visible and infrared wavelengths. Combined with data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Space Satellite (TESS), they were able to directly image a gas giant many times the size of Jupiter (a “Super-Jupiter”) embedded within the disk.
The SPHERE instrument shortly after it was installed on ESO’s VLT Unit Telescope 3. Credit: ESO/J. Girard
As they state in their paper, the team relied on the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on the VLT to take optical and near-IR images of HD 114082, an F-type star (a yellow-white dwarf) located in the Scorpius–Centaurus association – a stellar cluster located about 310 light-years from Earth. Like the 500 stars surveyed by the SHINE team, HD 114082 is a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary debris disk (from which planets form). Observations of these disks in recent decades have shown that they are an integral part of planetary systems:
As Dr. Engler told Universe Today via email, these surveys date back to 1983 and the discovery of the first disk around Vega. Since then, dozens of surveys have been performed in infrared wavelengths and scattered light using space-based telescopes like the Herschel Space Observatory and the venerable Hubble and ground-based telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA), the Gemini Planet Imager (GMI), and SPHERE/VLT. As she explained:
“These studies provided valuable information about the formation and evolution of planetary systems since planets are formed from, reside in, and interact with the dust material. Young debris disks (in the first hundred million years) trace the processes of terrestrial planet formation, and thus studying them helps us to understand the dynamical interaction and evolution of terrestrial planets, in particular the Earth, in the young Solar system.”
Using Sphere, Engler and her team observed HD 114082 in the optical and near-infrared using the angular differential imaging (ADI) and polarimetric differential imaging (PDI) techniques. The former consists of acquiring high-contrast images from an altitude-azimuth telescope while the instrument rotator is off, allowing the instrument and telescope optics to remain aligned and the field of view to rotate relative to the instrument. The latter involves combining different incident polarizations of light and measuring the specific polarization components transmitted or scattered by the object.
Artist’s impression of circumstellar disk of debris around a distant star. Credit: NASA/JPL
Both techniques have been used extensively in the study of circumstellar debris disks and (according to Engler) revealed some interesting things about HD 114082:
“Our images revealed a bright planetesimal belt at a distance of 35 AU from the host star, very similar to the Kuiper belt in the Solar system. The debris belt is inclined at 83° and has a wide inner cavity. The dust particles, which we trace in this observation, have sizes around 5 microns and a relatively high scattering albedo of 0.65; this means they scatter nearly two-thirds of incoming stellar radiation and absorb only one third of it. The scattered light has a relatively low degree of linear polarization with a maximum of 17% which, however, is comparable with the polarization values for cometary dust in the Solar system.”
The team also consulted data from TESS to confirm the presence of a super-Jupiter companion, which was first detected by the observatory in 2021 using transit photometry (aka. the Transit Method). Consistent with this data, Engler and her colleagues confirmed that the planet orbits its parent star at approximately 0.7 AU – about the same distance between Venus and the Sun. Recent observations based on radial velocity measurements confirmed this planet and produced mass estimates about eight times that of Jupiter.
“HD 114082 provides an example for young planetary systems, where the presence of planetary companions to the host star has been inferred from the discovery of a debris disk,” Engler added. “This confirms the theoretical considerations of debris systems as signposts for young planets. Studying this and other similar planetary systems will allow [astronomers] to establish a link between the properties of extrasolar Kuiper belts and planets residing within them.”
Artist’s impression of the super-hot Super-Jupiter WASP-79b located 780 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. Credit: NASA
The implications of this study go beyond the study of young stars and planetary systems that are still in formation. They are also significant for studying our Solar System, which has some interesting parallels to these protoplanetary environments. Said Engler:
“The direct imaging studies of the last decade show that the circumstellar material in many debris disks is confined to ring-like structures, similar to two debris belts in the Solar system: the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt and the main asteroid belt. The cavities inside the extrasolar Kuiper belts are curved by unseen planets, which leave their imprints in the debris dust distribution, such as warps, clumps and belt eccentricities.”
Lastly, this study demonstrates the growing use and effectiveness of direct imaging studies, which are possible thanks to improved instruments, imaging capability, and data-sharing methods. In the near future, next-generation instruments will allow for even more accurate and detailed direct imagining studies. These include space-based observatories like the JWST and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the Giant Magellan Telescope, and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).
By studying the geometry and asymmetric features in debris disks, astronomers can predict the location and masses of planets that are not yet detectable with current instruments. “Direct imaging makes it possible to study the scattering properties of dust particles around distant stars,” Engler added. “These properties contain information about particle composition, shape, and size, and thus we can gain insights into the composition of the building blocks of exoplanets.”
The Second-Closest Supermassive Black Hole Might be in a Nearby Dwarf Galaxy
The Second-Closest Supermassive Black Hole Might be in a Nearby Dwarf Galaxy
There’s a little galaxy in the Milky Way’s cosmic neighborhood called Leo 1. It’s a dwarf spheroidal that lies less than a million light-years away from us. Surprisingly, it has a supermassive black hole about the same mass as Sagittarius A* in our galaxy. That’s unusual in several ways, and astronomers want to know more about it.
The name of the central supermassive black hole is Leo 1*. The galaxy itself is hard to observe, due to its proximity to the bright star Regulus. Leo 1* is challenging to spot, too. It’s just not bright, even though it is gobbling up material to stay alive. So, astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, are developing a method to study it and figure out how this monster supermassive black hole could exist in such a small galaxy.
“Black holes are very elusive objects, and sometimes they enjoy playing hide-and-seek with us,” said Fabio Pacucci, lead author of a study published this week. “Rays of light cannot escape their event horizons, but the environment around them can be extremely bright — if enough material falls into their gravitational well. But if a black hole is not accreting mass, instead, it emits no light and becomes impossible to find with our telescopes.”
Leo 1 and its Black Hole
This galaxy’s supermassive black hole’s existence was suggested in 2021 by astronomers who noticed that stars at the heart of Leo 1 were speeding up as they approached. That’s pretty good evidence for a black hole. However, imaging the emissions from any material spiraling into the black hole was impossible. And thus, Leo 1’s black hole remained tantalizingly out of reach.
What makes this supermassive black hole in a dwarf spheroidal such a challenge to understand? Let’s look at its home. Leo 1 is a very “low metal” galaxy, like many other dwarf spheroidals. It has stars, to be sure, but not a lot of gas. Until recently astronomers didn’t think these types of galaxies had central supermassive black holes. That’s because these monsters accrete and grow by feeding on gas and other material that wanders too close. A metal-poor, gas-poor galaxy just doesn’t seem like the right environment for a behemoth like Leo 1 seems to have.
Leo 1 is also a fairly young galaxy. It last went through a star-forming epoch that began some 6 billion years ago and ended about a billion years ago. Star formation gobbles up a lot of gas. In addition, since this galaxy orbits the Milky Way, a close passage may have stripped more gas away. That would have also slowed the star formation rate and robbed the black hole of the fuel it needs. So, that leaves a lot of questions, first among them, if there is a 3-million-solar-mass black hole in Leo 1, how did it get so big? Clearly, it grew from something, and it’s still growing, albeit slowly. Also, since it’s not hugely bright with emissions, how can it be observed?
Observing the Leo 1* Supermassive Black Hole
Pacucci and his research partner, Avi Loeb, suggest using red giant stars as tracers to track the supermassive black hole’s activity. “In our study, we suggested that a small amount of mass lost from stars wandering around the black hole could provide the accretion rate needed to observe it,” Pacucci explained. “Old stars become very big and red — we call them red giant stars. Red giants typically have strong winds that carry a fraction of their mass to the environment. The space around Leo I* seems to contain enough of these ancient stars to make it observable.”
U Camelopardalis, or U Cam for short, is a red giant star nearing the end of its life. It’s losing mass as it dies, and that material is ejected into space. Red giant stars similar to this one, but in Leo 1 are losing mass, too. If they wander too close to Leo 1*, that mass gets caught up in the gravitational pull of the Leo 1* black hole. Emissions from that gas as it gets superheated can be traced, and used to help understand more about this black hole. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and H. Olofsson (Onsala Space Observatory).
It’s an interesting methodology that should allow them to gain more information about the black hole and its environment. It also raises more questions about this supermassive black hole’s very existence. “Observing Leo I* could be groundbreaking,” said Loeb, the co-author of the study. “It would be the second-closest supermassive black hole after the one at the center of our galaxy, with a very similar mass but hosted by a galaxy that is a thousand times less massive than the Milky Way. This fact challenges everything we know about how galaxies and their central supermassive black holes co-evolve. How did such an oversized baby end up being born from a slim parent?”
Most galaxies host central supermassive black holes that are a small percent of their total mass. That’s true of the Milky Way. But, Leo 1* breaks the mold. “In the case of Leo I,” Loeb said, “we would expect a much smaller black hole. Instead, Leo I appears to contain a black hole a few million times the mass of the Sun, similar to that hosted by the Milky Way. This is exciting because science usually advances the most when the unexpected happens.”
Using Radio Telescopes to Probe Leo 1*
While there’s no way to image Leo 1* in visible light, it turns out radio observatories can focus on it. The team has already observed it using the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Karl Jansky Very Large Array, and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. Those observations should confirm the existence of the black hole and give some idea of its accretion rate.
5 oval like bright lights flying and hovering – Rivery, California – YESTERDAY
5 oval like bright lights flying and hovering – Rivery, California – YESTERDAY
These bright unidentified flying objects were seen and recorded in the daytime sky above Rivery in California. This happened yesterday (on 28th November 2022).
Witness report:
The lights were moving in formation. Not ever straying too far from one another. Visible to invisible in seconds
Blastoff! Shenzhou 15 crew launches to China's space station
A Long March 2F rocket launched the Shenzhou 15 spacecraft carrying astronauts Fei Junlong (commander), Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu to the Tiangong space station on Nov. 29, 2022 at 10:08am ET (23:08 BJT - 15:08 GMT).
Broadcast feed from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert courtesy China Central Television (CCTV)
The Ultimate Problem for Deep Space Missions - Galactic Cosmic Radiation and SpaceX Starship
What is The Ultimate Problem for Deep Space Missions? This pursuit of affordable mass to orbit has taken decades but may be finally upon us. The amount of other problems that need solutions before we can commence sustainable crewed missions into deep space is not to be understated though. Over the past few months I’ve been taking a look at as many of these problems as possible to peer into the future a little to see how some solutions may evolve.
In this video I’m focussing on the big daddy of ultimate harm, and that’s Galactic Cosmic Radiation! Galactic Cosmic Radiation and SpaceX Starship (or any other vehicle) must protect against this in the long term. This is not your usual electromagnetic radiation. These teeny tiny bits of atomic nuclei traveling through space up to relativistic speeds. Being hit by one of these particles can be problematic. Being bombarded by them is lethal. So get ready to reroute all the power you have through those Dilithium crystals. This one is going to get dicey.
Amazing Artemis 1 views of Earth and moon continue to beam down - Time-lapse!
See a time-lapsed view of the NASA Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft, Earth and moon that was captured on Nov. 29, 2022.
China’s Long March 2D rocket launches Yaogan-36 satellite
A Chinese Long March-2D rocket launched the Yaogan-36 satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on Nov. 27, 2022.
Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: China Central Television (CCTV) | edited by [Steve Spaleta](https://twitter.com/stevespaleta)
How We Will Live In An Underground Mars Colony!
How We Will Live In An Underground Mars Colony!
How Humanity Will Actually Colonize Mars (Year by Year)
Colonizing Mars may be a near impossible task, but that doesn't mean humans won't try anyway. Check out what a successful colonization of the red planet would actually look like in today's epic new video.
Why Don't We Explore Venus If It's Much Closer To Earth Than Mars?
What is the closest planet to earth? No, it's not Mars. Although Mars is a famous planet, the title of the closest planet does not belong to it. If we talk about distances, Venus is the closest planet to the earth, although on average, Mercury spends more time near the earth than Venus. How is this possible? And if Venus is the closest planet to Earth, why aren't there so many missions to explore it? Let’s go! " We live in a time when space exploration is seriously thinking about reaching Mars in the coming years. Even the wealthiest man in the world, Elon Musk, has repeated ad nauseam his goal of wearing the first generation of humans to the red planet as soon as possible. Currently, this goal is increasingly realistic, and some space agencies such as NASA already have programs that seek to take the first steps to colonize Mars; even so, faced with this panorama, it is valid to ask ourselves, why is this obsession with visiting the red planet and not another, like Venus, which is much closer to earth? First, why did we say Mercury is the closest planet to Earth? Aren't Mer
Scientists Discover 300,000 Year Old Alien Technology in Ancient Underground Ruins
Scientists Announce Discovery of 300000 Year Old Alien Technology in Ancient Ruins. OOPARTs, Out of Place Artifacts, sometimes appear unexpectedly among ancient ruins when there is no evidence of their development in older layers. It has led some researchers to suggest that aliens once visited ancient civilizations and left evidence of advanced technologies in times where human technology had not yet evolved to the point of inventing the devices itself.
James Webb SHOCKS The Space Industry With Pictures Of City Lights
The James Webb space telescope, an engineering marvel and an exhibition work of craftsmanship, is about to change everything. The riddle of the unidentified artificial lights on another planet may finally be solved by the James Webb space telescope. Is there life out there? The James Webb Telescope may finally have all the answers!
An Object of Astronomical Proportions Just Started Punching Holes in Our Galaxy And Scientist Don’t Know What It Is
An Object of Astronomical Proportions Just Started Punching Holes in Our Galaxy And Scientist Don’t Know What It Is
There is a “dark object” in our galaxy that is creating gigantic holes.
It is invisible, and it may not be composed of conventional matter. It may be something that astronomers have never before identified. And despite the fact that we cannot see the enormous thing, astronomers have recently discovered its effects, while not having seen the object itself.
Astronomer at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher Ana Bonaca described the mysterious object as “a dense bullet of something.” Bonaca presented proof of the existence of the object at a convention of the American Physical Society in Denver.
In our galaxy’s longest star stream, GD-1, evidence of the object that is creating holes was identified.
A stellar stream is a collection of stars that orbits a galaxy that was originally a globular cluster or dwarf galaxy but has been ripped apart and stretched along its orbit by tidal forces.
The top image shows us what the G-1 looks like. The bottom image shows what it should look like. Image Credit: New Astrophysical Probes of Dark Matter, Ana Bonaca/GAIA.
Bonaca noted to Live Science that star streams are often consistent and should resemble a single line that has been elongated by the galaxy’s immense gravity.
Now, this stellar stream may have up to one gap, which corresponds to the initial globular cluster before its stars began migrating in two directions.
What is odd, though, is that GD-1 has a second gap with a very jagged edge.
This area has been dubbed the “spur” of GD-1. It seems that something quite enormous exploded into the star stream not too long ago.
An image from Bonaca’s presentations shows a detailed map of GD-1, revealing a second gap and spur. Image Credit: New Astrophysical Probes of Dark Matter, Ana Bonaca/GAIA.
Whatever hit the stellar stream with such force tugged the stars with its gravity.
In other words, the star stream seems to have been “hit” by an “unseen” bullet, as Bonaca described it.
What this bullet is, we are unclear.
But it is large. It is powerful. We cannot perceive it. Did I mention it is massive?
“We can’t map [the impactor] to any luminous object that we have observed,” Bonaca explained to Live Science.
“It’s much more massive than a star… Something like a million times the mass of the sun. So there are just no stars of that mass. So we can rule that out. And if it were a black hole, it would be a supermassive black hole of the kind we find at the centre of our galaxy.”
Several hypotheses exist as to what the strange item may be. One theory suggests that we should blame a secondary supermassive black hole in our galaxy.
Obviously, we have no proof that another black hole exists in our galaxy, so we cannot be certain.
In addition to the hypothesis that GD-1 was affected by a Black Hole, Bonaca thinks that a large mass of dark matter may have collided with the star stream. Bonaca clarified that this does not imply that the object is composed completely of dark matter.
“It could be that it’s a luminous object that went away somewhere, and it’s hiding somewhere in the galaxy,” she added.
We are aware that whatever the thing is, its scale is enormous.
“We know that it’s 10 to 20 parsecs [30 to 65 light-years] across,” Bonaca revealed. “About the size of a globular cluster.”
Supernova Is 570 Billion Times Brighter Than the Sun, Pushes Limits of Known Physics
Supernova Is 570 Billion Times Brighter Than the Sun, Pushes Limits of Known Physics
Astronomers have discovered the brightest star explosion ever, a super supernova that easily outshines our entire Milky Way.
An international team revealed “the most powerful supernova observed in human history” Thursday in the latest Science journal. The astronomers used a network of telescopes around the world to spot the record-breaking supernova last year.
Super luminous supernovas — extra bright stellar explosions — are believed to be rare. The newly discovered supernova is especially rare: It is more than twice as luminous as any supernova observed to date, including the previous record-holders.
At its peak intensity, it is believed to be 20 times more luminous than the entire Milky Way. Some estimates put it at 50 times brighter.
It is 570 billion times brighter at its peak than our sun.
Lead author Subo Dong of China’s Peking University said when he learned the magnitude of the discovery last summer, he was “too excited to sleep the rest of the night.” Fellow researcher Benjamin Shappee of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, California, didn’t believe the results at first, which seemed “surreal.”
“Discoveries like this are the reason I am an astronomer,” Shappee said in an email. “Nature is extremely clever and it is often more imaginative than we can be.”
Labeled ASASSN-15lh for the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae and pronounced “assassin,” the mega blast is located in a galaxy perhaps 3.8 billion light-years away. The precise galaxy is unknown. There are other puzzles as well.
“The explosion’s mechanism and power source remain shrouded in mystery because all known theories meet serious challenges in explaining the immense amount of energy ASASSN-15lh has radiated,” Dong said in a statement.
The next step for scientists is to figure out its incredible power source. Other super supernovas, like this one, could be out there. More observatories are on the case, including some NASA spacecraft. The Hubble Space Telescope will be pressed into service to solve this mystery, allowing astronomers to examine this object in detail.
Dong said ASASSN-15lh “may lead to new thinking and new observations of the whole class of super luminous supernova.”
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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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