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...
10-12-2022
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS
LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS
SpaceX Ripping It Back Up, Artemis 1 Reentry, ISS Upgrades, Square Kilometre Array (SKA) underway
This has been a difficult week to squeeze down and it looks like that is only going to get more tricky over the next few weeks. It is busy right now. We’ve got very intriguing stuff to talk about at SpaceX’s Starbase. We now have SpaceX Ripping It Back Up. Yes, the 11 Raptor Engine Static Fire caused enough damage for SpaceX to rip that concrete base back out again with diggers this week. An expendable pad vs the reusable Starship now it seems. Artemis 1 is still going strong as it plummets back toward the atmosphere for reentry. Another incredible week of updates there. Action on the International Space Station as astronauts roll out for the iROSA rollout. We have OneWeb and SpaceX becoming more than frenemies! The mind-blowing Square Kilometre Array to be scanning the skies for an alien spaceport near you, and this is getting real exciting too. Let's jump into it.
Artemis 1 mission update - Earth return prep and benefits for humanity
Preparations are underway for the return of NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft. Also, learn about the benefits of returning to the moon with the Artemis program. Here's how NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft will splash down to end its moon mission in 8 not-so-easy steps:
Artemis 1 mission going 'phenomenally well' says NASA in exclusive interview
NASA's Nujoud Merancy, Chief of the Exploration Mission Planning Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, talks to Space.com's Elizabeth Howell about the ongoing Artemis 1 mission.
Iconic Earthrise By Artemis 1 // Rule-Breaking GRB // SpaceX Launches Starshield
Construction Begins on the Square Kilometer Array. Artemis I’s iconic crescent Earthrise picture. A gamma-ray burst that breaks all the rules. SpaceX launches a new service.
Damaged Concrete Under the Orbital Launch Mount Removed | SpaceX Boca Chica
Damaged concrete was removed from under the Orbital Launch Mount, crews worked on the Mega Bay extension, and work on the Orbital Launch Mount and Tower continued. Video from Nic (@NicAnsuini).
If Dark Matter is Made of Axions, This Could be the Detector That Finds Them
As we’ve noted in plenty of other articles, science also moves forward by constraints. Understanding the limits of a physical phenomenon helps to develop better methods of looking for it, especially in its absence. Dark matter is an archetype of a missing phenomenon, but there are plenty of potential explanations for it. One of them is known as the axion, which was originally developed as a hypothetical particle that could plug a hole in the Standard Model of particle physics but could also solve the problem of dark energy. That is if they actually exist. Now a new experiment from researchers at CERN can help the scientific community better define where to look for those axions.
Part of the problem with searching for axions is how widely varied their properties could potentially be. Both their strength of interaction with other particles and their mass, two of the most fundamental parts of any particle in the standard model, are up for debate at this point. And to cover that many possibilities, physicists must look all over the place for them.
They generally agree on one of the ways to do so, though – axions can turn into photons if they are subjected to a strong enough magnetic field. And photons can be detected. As such, most axion detectors consist of powerful magnets and photodetectors, and one of the most capable is the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST) experiment.
UT video on that most elusive of all substances – dark matter
CAST is basically a giant metal tube with a very strong magnet known as a helioscope and various kinds of light detectors inside of it. It was initially designed to look at axions that could be coming from our own Sun. So far, it has failed to find any, but the scientists working on the experiment came up with a slight modification that allowed them to take a look at even more data.
Their modifications resulted in the magnet being capable of detecting axions that would have developed in the dark matter halo that surrounds the Milky Way. This is another possible source of axions, but one that other experiments hadn’t yet explored. The next experiment, dubbed an axion haloscope, or CAST-CAPP, started collecting data in September 2019.
Another UT video on how we’re searching for it.
Since it is unclear what frequency of photon axions would turn into at the magnetic field strengths provided by CAST-CAPP, the scientific team had to monitor a wide range of possible frequencies, which took almost two full years. The team also had to eliminate potential noise contamination, such as that from 5 GHz wireless signals.
Unfortunately, even after that, there were still no signs of axions. But, as stated at the beginning of the article, even a lack of evidence for something can help move science forward. Researchers can now definitively narrow down the maximum potential strength of an axion’s interaction with photons and tailor their experiments accordingly. CAST, in all its various forms, isn’t done with its mission yet.
Most Exoplanets Suffer Worse Space Weather Than We Do
We have it relatively easy on the Earth. Our Sun is relatively calm. The space weather environment in the solar system is altogether placid. Things are nice. But new research has shown that we may be the exception rather than the rule, and that many exoplanets face much harsher conditions than we do.
Stars are not simple things. They contain within their hearts cores of nuclear fusion powered by the gravitational weight of their own mass. This releases enormous amounts of energy which makes its way to the surface through radiation and giant convective plumes of material.
In addition to their complex interiors, stars are also spinning. The complex movement of all the plasma that makes up the bulk of a star’s mass triggers the formation of incredibly strong and tangled magnetic fields. Those magnetic fields in turn can dredge up material from the stellar surface and launch it into space.
The collective term for all the events that happen outside a star is called stellar weather or space weather. Space weather can take many forms. For example, it can just be the stellar wind, which is a steady drizzle of charged particles that constantly emanate from a star’s surface. It can also include the occasional flare, which happens when the tangled magnetic field lines around a star break. These flares release huge amounts of x-ray radiation. Sometimes those flares even pull up material from the stellar surface and launch it in this space in the form of a coronal mass ejection.
Astronomers around the world constantly monitor our own Sun for space weather. These solar-generated storms can affect orbiting satellites, crewed missions in space, and sometimes even overwhelm our own planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere, leading to dangerous consequences on the surface.
A new study surveying many different kinds of stars in many different stages of their life has shown that overall we have a pretty good. Our Sun is pretty mild with relatively infrequent outbursts. In contrast, the astronomers behind the study found that exoplanets typically suffer much more severe stellar weather than we do. Some of this is just due to random chance, because they happen to lay closer to their parent star than the Earth does around the Sun. And some of it has to do with the kind of star that they orbit. For example, small red dwarfs are much more turbulent and chaotic than our Sun, with some of them capable of suddenly increasing in brightness by over 50%.
In other cases it simply has to do with age. Young stars are much more temperamental than older ones. Planets around younger stars experience much more extreme space weather events then those around more mature systems.
All told, it seems that we should simply count ourselves lucky.
A new 3D map of the Milky Way Uses close to 66,000 Stars and Reveals New Details About the Shape of our Galaxy
In the 17th century, Galileo Galilee aimed his telescope at the stars and demonstrated (for the first time) that the Milky Way was not a nebulous band but a collection of distant stars. This led to the discovery that our Sun was merely one of the countless stars in a much larger structure: the Milky Way Galaxy. By the 18th century, William Herschel became the first astronomer to create a map that attempted to capture the shape of the Milky Way. Even after all that time and discovery, astronomers are still plagued by the problem of perspective.
While we have been able to characterize galaxies we see across the cosmos with relative ease, it is difficult for astronomers to study the size, shape, and population of the Milky Way because of how our Solar System is embedded in its disk. Luckily, there are methods to circumvent this problem of perspective, which have provided astronomers with clues to these questions. In a recent paper, a team from the Astronomical Observatory at the University of Warsaw (AstroUW) used a large collection of variable stars to trace the shape of the Milky Way, which yielded some interesting results!
Patryk Iwanek, an astronomer with AstroUW, led the study team. The paper that describes their findings, titled “A three-dimensional map of the Milky Way using 66,000 Mira variable stars,” recently appeared online. For the sake of their study, the team examined data on 65,981 stars observed by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), a long-term sky survey of variable stars based at the University of Warsaw. Since 1992, OGLE has monitored the brightness of about two billion stars in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds, providing insight into a wide range of astronomical phenomena.
The shape of the Milky Way galaxy is perturbed by tidal interactions with a dwarf galaxy, as predicted by N-body simulations. Credit: T. Mueller/C. Laporte/NASA/JPL-Caletch
The OGLE project, also known as the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, is one of the largest-scale sky surveys worldwide. It is a long-term sky survey that monitors the brightness of about two billion stars in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. During its long history, the OGLE survey has provided significant contributions to the study of a wide range of astronomical phenomena, including gravitational lensing and microlensing, extrasolar planets, variable stars, cosmic distance scale, and the structure and evolution of the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds.
As stars approach the end of their main sequence phase, they exhaust their supply of hydrogen fuel and begin consuming helium. This causes them to expand to several times the original size and to become dimmer and cooler than main sequence stars – hence the term Red Giants. Mira variables are a special class of pulsating red giants that have long periods ranging from 80 to more than 1000 days. They are part of the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) of the Hertzsprung–Russell Diagram, which includes all stars with less than 5-8 solar masses.
Their dramatic changes in brightness (like other variable stars) make them very useful to astronomers for measuring distances and the spatial distribution of stars in galaxies. As Iwanek explained Universe Today via email:
“These stars follow a well-defined period-luminosity relation, which means that [by] knowing their pulsation periods, it is possible to calculate their absolute magnitudes and then determine their distances. This feature makes Miras an excellent cosmic distance indicator. Using their precisely measured distances, it is possible to study the three-dimensional distribution of stars in our galaxy.
“Moreover, the high luminosity of Miras, which is orders of magnitude greater than that of the Sun, makes it possible to observe these stars not only in the Milky Way but also in other nearby galaxies (e.g., M31 or the Magellanic Clouds). Studying the Mira variables may help to understand the structure and evolution of galaxies.”
This enhanced image shows the X-shaped distribution around the bulgebased on data from the NASA space telescope WISE. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/D. Lang
For their study, the team used 65,981 stars mapped by OGLE that fall into the category of Mira variables. They also considered the distance uncertainties by implementing the Bayesian Hierarchical Method (BHM), a statistical model where inferences are made about stellar populations based on smaller samples. From this, they were able to create a detailed 3D map of our galaxy composed of young and intermediate-age stellar populations. Their analysis provides (for the first time) independent evidence of an X-shaped bulge component and a flared disk.
“Based on the sample of 66,000 Mira variables, we measured and confirmed the angle of the Galactic bar (equal to ~20° to the Sun-Galactic center line-of-sight),” said Iwanek. “But more importantly, we showed that a [X-shaped] structure in the center of the Galaxy exists. The X-shape is an additional structure in the dense, central part of the Milky Way, the Galactic bulge, formed by two overlapping groups of stars. This structure is thought to be caused by the movements and interactions of stars within the bulge. It could be a common feature of barred spiral galaxies (similar to our Milky Way).”
This study builds on previous work conducted by astronomers from the University of Warsaw, Ohio State University (OSU), and the University of Warwick (of which Iwanek was a co-author). For this study (released in 2019), Iwanek and his colleagues used data on Cepheid variable stars to create a 3D map of the Milky Way. This map revealed the structure of the Milky Way and allowed the team to constrain the warped nature of the Milky Way’s disk.
The 3D map of the Milky Way from this latest study offers new clues about the structure of the Galactic Bulge, which could also help astronomers understand the structure of other barred spiral galaxies. As Iwanek emphasized, all 66,000 Miras variables were selected and classified from the OGLE survey “by hand.” In other words, the light curve of every star was examined by an experienced astronomer to determine if they were variable and what type they were. This, said Iwanek, presents opportunities for future surveys that rely on machine learning:
“Our huge collection of Mira variables, thanks to its purity and completeness, as well as the accurate and long-term OGLE light curves, can be used to train the machine learning algorithms for the automatic classification of variable stars in future sky surveys conducted with larger telescopes.”
Mile High Towers On Moon In Artimis Mission Photo. Video, UFO Sighting News.
Mile High Towers On Moon In Artimis Mission Photo. Video, UFO Sighting News.
Guys I found this last night and though I better make a video of it. Its just really amazing to find one tower that 1-2km tall, but to find two side by side is beyond rare. Aliens love the shadow areas of craters to hide from micrometeorites, with the wall offering some protection for ships and buildings.
It's important to understand, that alien structures wont conform to what humans think they should be, but instead are what they are, and we need to respect the differences in cultural ways that they clearly have. Or in other words, we need to think outside the box if we the public are going to succeed at revealing the truth. Rather than be confined to NASAs tight lipped, scientific discoveries being drop fed to us, and us thrilled by it. Take a stand and begin searching photos with us. We will bring the truth, and we will win this fight. Disclosure will happen because of us uniting in our efforts.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Sun Shoots Out Solar Storm Today! 100X Earths Size, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Sun Shoots Out Solar Storm Today! 100X Earths Size, Video, UFO Sighting News.
I made a video of the event so you can see it in real time. The object still has not passed out of sight, meaning, Earth could still be in danger, so give it 1-5 hours and well, we will know then. This material spit out from the sun is over 100X the size of Earth.
See those tiniest little white specks? Thats how big Earth is. Earth is so small the scale in the upper right corner now shows no earth, because its so small. So..lets just wait and see if NASA talks about this, or...if we are toast. Either way, its going to be an interesting day.
Giant Solar Storm Just Misses Earth, But Could Have Turned Us Into The Next Mars Had It Hit, UFO Sighting News
Giant Solar Storm Just Misses Earth, But Could Have Turned Us Into The Next Mars Had It Hit, UFO Sighting News
Source: NASA Date of photo: December 8, 2022 21:42
Guys, this is nuts, but there is something that just shot out of Earths sun on the NASA SOHO LASCO C3 viewer that shows a huge solar mass shooting outward. Its already traveled a huge distance in just a short time. Totally must have caught NASA off guard, lucky for us Earth is clearly not in the way of the storm. How do I know, well the atmosphere would be torn off our planet whiping all the air, gasses into space, leaving us nothing. All water would instantly turn to gas and be swept into space, life would not be here and you would not be reading this right now. Thats how I know. Basically, what Mars is today, is what that solar storm would turn Earth into if it had hit us.
So...I guess this is your lucky day. That storm is between 50X earths wide and up to 100X wide. It's like the universe is playing Russian Roulette, and we were invited.
You are not going to hear about NASA talking about this anytime soon. NASA makes it a policy to not make the public panic in any way.
Man went outside to speak to a higher being and two UFOs come & hover above him – Georgia, Yesterday
Man went outside to speak to a higher being and two UFOs come & hover above him – Georgia, Yesterday
This interesting UFO sightingwas filmed in the sky above Cornelia, Georgia yesterday. Cornelia is a city in Habersham County, GA.
Witness report:
I saw two orbs, like stars that came upon me as I’m looking up and talking to a higher being. They showed up and I know for a fact that they showed up and moved in a fashion that was realistic
The US Military’s Secret Flying Saucer Project | Alien Reproduction Vehicles
The US Military’s Secret Flying Saucer Project | Alien Reproduction Vehicles
Brad Sorenson was an aerospace designer who went to the Norton Air Force Base in 1988 for an air show. The event was a chance for companies and government agencies to show off new technology. He was hoping to connect with potential clients. At some point, Brad got separated from his group.
After he got separated from his group, Brad went to a large hangar to watch a presentation by a three-star general. At first, Brad thought he was in the right place when he saw the usual list of top-secret aircraft. However, the general suddenly pulled a curtain and revealed three brand new airplanes.
Meet the dearMoon crew that will fly on SpaceX's Starship
Yusaku Maezawa announced the 8 crew members and 2 backup crew members for a trip around the moon aboard SpaceX's Starship.
Credit: dearMoon
SpaceX launches OneWeb satellites for 1st time, nails landing in Florida
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 40 OneWeb Satellite from from Launch Complex 39A in Florida on Dec. 8, 2022. A few minutes after stage separation, the first stage of the rocket landed on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Scientists Terrifying Discovery of a Massive Alien Structure Changes Everything
Massive Unidentified Object Bigger than Jupiter Spotted Around A Star Is Proof of Advanced Aliens. NASA’s Kepler telescope first noticed the mysterious dipping in the star’s brightness, at random intervals between 2011 and 2013. Tabby's Star, nestled 1300 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus. At first glance, this star looks like any other normal yellow-white dwarf. However, once we started observing it, we noticed that its dimming was wild and mysterious.
In this video, you’ll find out: where on Earth does lightning strike forty times per minute? What wildest atmospheric phenomena can be seen with the naked eye? And how to find a giant red jellyfish in the sky?
China’s Long March 2D launches Gaofen-5 01A satellite, rocket sheds tiles
A Chinese Long March 2D rocket launched the Gaofen-5 01A satellite from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center on Dec. 9, 2022. The rocket sheds insulation tiles during launch, a normal occurrence.
Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: China Central Television (CCTV) | edited by [Steve Spaleta](https://twitter.com/stevespaleta)
Ancient Aliens: Ronald Reagan's Shocking UFO Encounter
Ronald Regan has a frightening encounter with an unidentified flying object next to his plane. See more in this clip from "Aliens and the United States."
Egypt's Lost Wonders (Full Episode) | Drain the Oceans
Using the latest technology and research, a missing ancient wonder and once fabled city of the early Egyptian world are discovered beneath the Nile.
15 MOST Mysterious Archaeological Discoveries
With at least 200 thousand years of modern human history, people are continuously finding ancient artifacts and structures that provide a fascinating insight into what life was once like. From lines carved into the ground, to strange caves, devices, and writings… it’s time to explore the 15 most mysterious archaeological discoveries!
Recently, there has been renewed interest in what’s happening at the fabled Area 51 military base.
Much of the interest stems from the FBI reportedly raiding the homes of a popular Area 51 website operator, seizing his computers and other equipment.
As a result of this renewed interest, a 2013 interview with an alleged former CIA agent who made some stunning claims about Area 51 on his deathbed.
The anonymous 77-year-old ex-CIA agent, who went by the name Agent Kewper, supposedly worked for the government agency from 1957 to 1960.
The pseudonym comes from a 11 hour interview he did with journalist Linda Moulton Howe in 1998. In Dolan and Corbell’s video, he just goes by the nickname “Anonymous.”
After that interview with Howe, he says he was told to not speak anymore about his experience in the intelligence community, but in ailing health he decided to speak out again in 2013.
The anonymous ex-CIA agent was reportedly later identified as Oscar Wayne Wolff.
In his 2013 interview, he spoke about his experiences at Area 51 in an interview with UFO researcher Richard Dolan and award-winning documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell.
In his confession, Agent Kewper described seeing an extraterrestrial spacecraft inside of the secretive Area 51 base. He also mentioned seeing a living alien, giving a description of the creature.
Kewper said there were several alien vehicles inside the base and he was able to examine a number of alien artifacts.
The man told Dolan that President Dwight Eisenhower had warned of a threat of Earth being invaded, so he and his superior at the CIA were allowed inside Area-51 to report back to the president. He claimed the two men were also taken to the alleged S-4 facility southwest of Area-51, where they observed “live extraterrestrials.”
“It took us 13 or 15 miles south to s4 and like different garage door openings okay and in these garage door openings they had like different saucer crafts. The very first one had Roswell craft and it was kind of crashed up but apparently, every alien that was in a died except for a couple… The Roswell craft was really strange because it looked like really heavy aluminum foil. We could walk next to it and the whole thing probably weighed 150-300 pounds.”
“Could they tell what the source of power was of this craft?” asked Dolan. “Yeah, it was like a reverse’s gravitational thing of some kind. In fact, I got the mathematical code for reversing gravity in a three-by-five card. I guess they are different types of grays and so on.”
“How did you see that evidence?” – “At s4 we viewed the autopsy film and then the colonel said what we’ve got in here is we’re interviewing a grey alien. I thought we had no idea we were going to see the real thing all we saw was the film. What did this gray alien look like could you describe them a little bit? It didn’t look human as far as the skin tone and basically the shape of it and the size how was its head size compared with a normal human. For example, the brain was kind of a little bit bigger and the nose was very, very small and the ears were just like holes and the mouth was very small.”
There are always TEOTWAWKI survival scenarios that capture the survival community’s imagination. For a number of years that’s been an EMP, although back around 2014 the possibility of an Ebola pandemic rose to the forefront. The epidemic in Northwest Africa had a lot of people concerned, especially since it was the largest outbreak of Ebola on record. But back 30 or 40 years ago, before we were aware of EMP, the big one that everyone was concerned about was an asteroid hitting the Earth.
Part of this renewed interest can be laid at the doorstep of NASA, our government’s space agency, which has upped their asteroid detection game in recent years. Just recently, NASA upgraded their asteroid tracking capability, giving them “full sky” tracking capability. This is now done by radar, rather than through the use of telescopes, a much more accurate means of determining an asteroid’s course track. A single hour’s worth of radar data provides sufficient data to accurately project the asteroid’s path for years to come.
I suppose that the idea of a rogue asteroid destroying the Earth does have some historic president, considering that scientists believe that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by an asteroid impacting with the Earth. This impact is believed to have caused an ice age, with the colder climate killing off the giant reptiles.
This may not make much sense, unless you understand what would happen if such an asteroid or comet hit the Earth. These asteroids, which are made up of a mixture of clay, rock, minerals and sometimes even ice, travel at an average speed of about 25 kilometers per second. Those that get captured by the Earth’s gravity accelerate as they come down, reaching about 30 kilometers per second. To put that into perspective, that works out to 98,425 feet per second. Rifle bullets, which vary in velocity, travel at an average of 3,900 feet per second, 1/25 of that speed.
With that high a velocity, any asteroid hitting the surface of the Earth would have an incredible amount of kinetic energy; enough so that the apparent explosion from the asteroid’s impact could be greater than that generated by a nuclear bomb. The material of the asteroid, as well as the rocks and dirt at the impact point would be pulverized, creating a huge blast wave, traveling out from the epicenter. Then, just like happens with an atomic explosion, that blast wave would collapse back on itself, creating a mushroom cloud.
The characteristic mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion is filled with dust and debris, kicked up by the explosion, just as it would be in the case of a large asteroid impact. This is carried up into the upper atmosphere and eventually comes back down as fallout. There would be fallout too, in this case, but it would not be radioactive.
We have a very good idea of what that dust in the upper atmosphere does, because of what’s known as the Year Without a Summer, which happened in 1816. Mount Tambora, a volcano in what was then known as the Dutch East Indies erupted, spewing tons of ash into the upper atmosphere. During the three years that it took for that ash to fall back to earth, the amount of sunlight reaching the surface was diminished by 0.4 – 0.7°C. While that didn’t have much of an impact, the loss of sunlight reduced harvests considerably in 1816, causing widespread famine.
While there is no historic record of the Chicxulub Impactor, as the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs is known, the dust and debris kicked up into the upper atmosphere by its impact probably had a similar effect, although to a much greater degree. This asteroid, which was 3.1 miles in diameter, hit off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, near the city of Mérida, Mexico, leaving a crater that is 110 miles (180 km) in diameter and over 12 miles (20 km) in depth. Scientists have estimated that the kinetic impact equaled an explosion equivalent to 100,000 gigatons of TNT. By comparison, the Tzar Bomb, the largest nuclear bomb ever built, was only the equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT, one-two-thousandth of the explosive force.
The asteroid that made this crater is estimated to have been 10 kilometers, or six miles, in diameter. Not only did it throw up massive amounts of pulverized dust into the upper atmosphere, but more recent research indicates that it also caused the biggest earthquakes the Earth has ever known, releasing some 50,000 times more energy than the magnitude 9.1 earthquake that hit Sumtra in 2004. That was the third largest earthquake in recorded history.
By comparison, the asteroids that NASA tracks as “Near Earth Objects” (NEOs) are much smaller, with sizes ranging from 4 meters up to 320 meters in 2022. Pretty much all of those are large enough that they would survive passing through our atmosphere and hit the Earth, if they were on a collision course. But NASA classifies any asteroid or comet that passes within 1.3 au of the Earth. An AU or astronomical unit, is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. That’s 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles. Not quite close enough to do much damage.
Some 17,000 meteorites hit the Earth each year; but most are not much more than dust by the time they make landfall, having burnt up as they passed through our atmosphere. Few are large enough to cause any damage at all by the time they reach the surface and there is only one recorded case of one actually hitting a person, Ann Hodges, in 1954. In addition to being slowed by passing through the atmosphere, the Hodes meteorite was slowed by passing through the roof of her home, a radio and hitting the blanket she was under. It still left a grapefruit-sized bruise.
Few meteorites large enough to be noticed, let alone cause damage hit the Earth. In 1908, an asteroid or comet came into contact with the Earth’s atmosphere and exploded over Russia. The resulting explosion was equivalent to 12 megatons of TNT, flatting an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometers (830 square miles).
The Chelyabinsk meteor, which measured roughly the size of a six-story office building, came down over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 and was caught on film. It was undetected ahead of time, because it came from the direction of the sun, making it difficult to stop by astronomical observation. Most of the meteorite was lost in an air burst, which had the explosive power of 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT. That was enough to cause damage to 7,200 buildings and was recorded as far away as Antarctica.
Yet these events are extremely rare. While it is always possible that another meteorite, large enough to cause considerable damage, could hit the Earth in our lifetime, these events have historically happened only every few hundred years. A meteorite large enough to destroy life on Earth would have to be 60 miles wide (96 kilometers), roughly twenty times the size of the Chicxulub Impactor that wiped out the dinosaurs.
There is obviously little that you or I can do to protect ourselves from such an event. Considering the explosive power of these impacts, it would be physically impossible to fortify a home to withstand them or build a bunker that would allow us to survive at ground zero. Such a bunker would have to be buried 12 miles underground, far deeper than the deepest hole that mankind has ever drilled.
There is some good news though; NASA is hard at work, turning science-fiction into reality. In September of 2022, NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, in an attempt to alter its course. The small asteroid chosen was Dimorphos, an asteroid 525 feet in diameter (160 meters) and one of a pair of asteroids some 6.8 million miles away. The spacecraft impacted this asteroid at 3.8 miles per second, giving it only 0.5% of the asteroid’s momentum. Even so, it managed to altar the asteroid’s orbit around its twin by 23 minutes. Considering that they had pre-determined that anything more than 73 seconds would be a success; this test can be considered an outstanding success.
Considering the small mass and velocity of the spacecraft, it appears that the material ejected from the asteroid by the kinetic explosion works out to somewhere between 10 and 100 times the mass of the spacecraft itself. Such a huge increase in performance was obviously due to the mass and velocity of the asteroid itself.
While this does not mean that NASA has a weapon ready to protect the Earth from a destructive asteroid aimed right at us; but it is a major step in the right direction. This was nothing more than a proof of concept. Now the concept needs to be developed and turned into a real weapon.
One of the biggest challenges facing NASA is one of aiming the spacecraft; something that they fortunately have lots of experience with. Dimorphos was hit at a point in its orbit when it was coming right at the course track of the spacecraft. That simulates the course track to be expected from an asteroid heading towards the Earth. There would still be some cross-ranging to be concerned about, as both the orbital path of the Earth and the orbital path of the asteroid could have to be taken into consideration. But again, that’s something that NASA has been doing for years. At the time of impact, there would be no cross-ranging, as the point of impact would be somewhere between the original detection point and the Earth, with the asteroid heading towards where the Earth would end up being when it arrived.
Yes, the math is enough to give a world-class headache to you and me. I guess that just proves we’re not rocket scientists. On the other hand, the people working on this program are actual rocket scientists, who I am sure are much better at the math, than I am.
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This Hellish Planet Orbits its Star Every 18 Hours. How Did it Get There?
An artist’s impression of the planet 55 Cnc e (smaller, dark orange circle) blocking the light from its rotating host star.
Image Credit: Maggie Chiang/Simons Foundation
BY EVAN GOUGH
This Hellish Planet Orbits its Star Every 18 Hours. How Did it Get There?
Astronomers discovered 55 Cancri e in 2004. That was five years before NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft was launched, and exoplanet science has come a long way in the intervening years. Astronomers discovered the planet with the radial velocity method rather than Kepler’s transit method. 55 Cancri e was the first super-Earth found around a main-sequence star. The 55 Cancri system was also the first star discovered with four, and then five, planets.
The discovery was big news then; over the years, follow-up work has revealed more details, including that 55 Cancri e is extremely close to its star and has a molten surface.
But one question remained unanswered: How did it get there?
A new study published in Nature Astronomy shows how 55 Cancri e must have formed further away from the star in its solar system’s cooler reaches. The study is “Measured spin-orbit alignment of ultra-short-period super-Earth 55 Cancri e.” The lead author is Lily Zhao, a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) in New York City.
55 Cancri is a binary star system about 41 light-years away. One star (55 Cancri A) is a K-type main sequence star, and the other (55 Cancri B) is a red dwarf. 55 Cancri e isn’t the only planet in the system. It has four siblings.
The new paper is based on observations made with the EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph (EXPRES) instrument on the 4.3-m Lowell Observatory Discovery Telescope at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. It’s built for precise radial velocity measurements of planets as they orbit their stars.
As the study title suggests, the spin-orbit of planets is vital in understanding planets and their place in the evolution of the solar system they belong to. It’s particularly important when it comes to planets like 55 Cancri e because astronomers don’t understand how planets like it end up so close to their stars. More on that later.
55 Cancri e is known for being extremely close to its main sequence star, Cancri 55 A, most often referred to as simply Cancri 55. Cancri 55 is smaller and less massive than the Sun, so it’s also a little cooler. But that doesn’t matter to the planet.
55 Cancri e is classified as a super-Earth, but it’s far from Earth-like. (Many exoplanets are interesting because of potential habitability but don’t even mention habitability in this case.) It orbits so closely to the star that its surface is molten and reaches a temperature of 2000 Celsius. (3600 F.) It travels so rapidly that its year is only 17.5 hours long.
Because it’s so close to its star and orbits so quickly, 55 Cancri e is called an ultra-short period (USP) planet. Planets that complete an orbit in less than 24 hours are USPs.
The planet wasn’t always a blistering, molten inferno. That’s because it didn’t form in its current location.
“Astronomers expect that this planet formed much farther away and then spiralled into its current orbit,” said Debra Fischer. She’s from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Astronomical Sciences and is a senior author of the paper. “That journey could have kicked the planet out of the equatorial plane of the star, but this result shows the planet held on tight.”
But even though the planet formed further from the Sun than where it resides now, and it’s a super-Earth, it likely was never habitable. 55 Cancri e “… was likely so hot that nothing we’re aware of would be able to survive on the surface,” said lead author Zhao.
55 Cancri e isn’t the only planet to change orbit over time. The same thing happened in our Solar System. The Grand Tack Hypothesis says that Jupiter formed at 3.5 AU, migrated inward to 1.5 AU, then back out to 5.2 AU, where it orbits today. The Grand Tack Hypothesis explains a few things about our Solar System, including why Mars is so small.
Jupiter’s migrations helped shape the Solar System and may have influenced Mars’ fate. If Mars was once habitable, and it’s looking more and more like it was, Jupiter’s migration had to have affected it somehow. So understanding how exoplanets like 55 Cancri e migrate over time should help us understand exoplanet habitability in other solar systems. Such information is critical to finding just how common Earth-like environments might be in the universe and, by extension, how abundant extraterrestrial life may be.
The oddball planet is fascinating because it’s so unlike our planet or any other planet in our Solar System. For curious scientists, it’s more than just an oddball. They want to know how it ended up so close to its star.
That brings us back to the unusual planet’s spin-axis alignment.
This image shows 55 Cancri e’s orbital axis relative to the star’s stellar spin axis. 55 Cancri e is that small black dot, and the larger circle represents the star. The red and blue halves of the star represent how the light is shifted, a critical factor in determining the planet’s spin-orbit axis. Image Credit: L.Zhao et al./Nature Astronomy 2022
It may seem counterintuitive that astronomers use a spectrograph, which measures light, to determine a planet’s motion. But it works because of the Doppler effect. The Doppler effect explains how light moving away from us is red-shifted and light moving toward us is blue-shifted. Cancri 55 e’s host star is spinning, meaning the light from the receding side is red-shifted. Conversely, the light from the approaching side is blue-shifted.
As Cancri 55 e transits in front of the star, the EXPRES instrument at the Lowell Observatory measures the star’s light precisely. Those measurements reveal apparent, but not real, deviations in the planet’s radial velocity, and those deviations tell astronomers about the planet’s orbit and spin relative to the star’s. The authors explain it best when they write, “Capturing the resultant net red/blueshift reveals the orientation of the planet’s orbital normal vector with respect to its host star’s spin vector, that is, the sky-projected stellar spin-orbit alignment or the stellar obliquity.”
The specific effect that the team measured when the planet transits the star is the Rossiter–McLaughlin (RM) effect. Explaining that in detail would mean going down a rabbit hole, and it’s beyond the scope of this article. But the image below does shed some light on it. It’s sufficient to say that the nature of the light changes, and EXPRES can measure it precisely, more precisely than older instruments.
This image illustrates the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect. The viewer is situated at the bottom. Light from the anticlockwise-rotating star is blue-shifted on the approaching side and red-shifted on the receding side. As the planet passes in front of the star, it sequentially blocks blue- and red-shifted light, causing the star’s apparent radial velocity to change, but it does not in fact, change. Image Credit: By Autiwaderivative work: Autiwa (talk) – Rossiter-McLaughlin_effect.png, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9761976
Even though the planet’s actual radial velocity doesn’t change, the measured apparent change still shows the slight gravitational change that the planet induces on the star. Without that information, it isn’t easy to piece together Cancri 55 e’s story and how it got so close to its star. Because, as we know, it cannot have formed there.
This is an inside look at the actual data collected by EXPRES. It shows radial velocity measurements for Cancri 55 e, captured over two separate transits of the planet with the EXPRES instrument. The white highlighted regions span the transit duration of the planet, and the areas outside of the white are from directly before and after the transits. Image Credit: L.Zhao et al./Nature Astronomy 2022
The key finding is that Cancri 55 e orbits along its star’s equator while its four siblings don’t. Remember that the Cancri 55 system is a binary system, and the small red dwarf in the binary pair is quite distant from the larger star. But it still exerts its weaker gravity on the system, which explains why all five stars likely had an orbit not precisely aligned with the larger star’s rotation. Since it’s highly likely that the planet initially had the same orbital plane as its siblings, it shows that as it migrated inward, the primary star’s gravitational force pulled the planet into alignment with the star’s equator.
As far as what led Cancri 55 e to start its migration toward the star, there could be several causes. Planets are in constant motion, and when there are five of them, they exert influence on each other which can cause planets to migrate. It’s also possible that the planet formed out of the circumstellar disk with an initial misalignment.
“We’ve learned about how this multi-planet system — one of the systems with the most planets that we’ve found — got into its current state.”
Lily Ahao, lead author, Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics.
“We’ve learned about how this multiplanet system — one of the systems with the most planets that we’ve found — got into its current state,” said study lead author Lily Zhao.
While this study can’t conclude exactly what caused Cancri 55 e to get so close to its star, it’s still important. Previous measurements of its spin-orbit alignment gave contradictory results because the instruments used to measure the alignment weren’t as precise.
Several theories attempt to explain how Ultra-Short Period planets end up in hellish locations. One theory says that due to the distant red dwarf, all of the planets should be misaligned with the primary star’s rotation. Another says that secular resonance between 55 Cancri e and the other planets excited the planet’s orbital eccentricity and inclination, misaligning it with the other planets and the star. But thanks to the precise measurements possible with EXPRES, the team has narrowed it down.
An artist’s illustration of the so-called ‘Hell Planet,” 55 Cancri e, orbiting its star, 55 Cancri. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser
“The close alignment of the ultra-short-period, super-Earth 55 Cnc e’s orbit normal with its host star’s spin axis places constraints on theories for how USPs migrate to their present-day positions and how they interact with other planets in compact multiplanet systems,” the authors write in their conclusion. “This measurement additionally gives clues as to why none of the other known planets around 55 Cnc transit and the possible role of 55 Cnc’s distant stellar companion.”
As is usually the case, better data leads to better conclusions. In this case, the powerful EXPRES instrument helped the team understand this unusual planet better. “The EXPRES data used in this analysis have a consistent and often a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), as well as lower uncertainties than the RV measurements previously used,” they write. Here they’re referring to instruments like HARPS, the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, another spectrometer designed to find exoplanets.
“Our precision with EXPRES today is more than 1,000 times better than what we had 25 years ago…”
Debra Fischer, senior author, National Science Foundation’s Division of Astronomical Sciences
The team concludes that the close alignment between the planet’s orbit and the host star’s axis favours one explanation over others. “The close alignment of 55 Cnc e’s orbit normal with its host star’s stellar axis preliminarily favours the low eccentricity and planetary obliquity tide models.” Low eccentricity means the planet’s orbit wasn’t completely circular but didn’t deviate much from a circle. Planetary obliquity is the angle between a planet’s orbit and its spin axis. And that’s as deep as we’re going.
Remember that this star system is 41 light-years away—an enormous distance! And even though Cancri 55 e is several times more massive than Earth, it’s still impossibly tiny from this far away. That’s why improved instruments like EXPRESS are so important in astronomy.
Cancri 55 is 41 light-years away in the Cancer constellation. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=361148
“Our precision with EXPRES today is more than 1,000 times better than what we had 25 years ago when I started working as a planet hunter,” Fischer said. “Improving measurement precision was the primary goal of my career because it allows us to detect smaller planets as we search for Earth analogs.”
EXPRES is newer than HARPS and reveals more detail in transiting exoplanets than HARPS can. And the detail is helping us understand solar system dynamics in remote systems like Cancri 55 and may eventually help explain our own Solar System’s history. “With this robust measurement using EXPRES data, we can place constraints on the different proposed dynamical histories for the 55 Cnc system.”
SpaceX Launches ‘Starshield’. A Quiet Announcement With A Huge Potential
SpaceX revealed their new service called Starshield. It is a “secured satellite network for government entities” and is aimed at “supporting national security.” The project looks similar to Starlink, but instead of providing service to end users and businesses, Starshield is aimed at government entities. Here’s what we know so far.
There was no big presentation with Elon Musk getting on stage or anything like that. SpaceX quietly released a new section on its website that adds another entry to the company’s list of services. The information we got is rather limited, but it’s still enough to see where things might be going.
What Is Starshield Exactly?
Image credit: SpaceX
SpaceX has a lot of experience developing Starlink satellites. They develop all the hardware on their own. SpaceX launches the satellites with an unprecedented cadence. They control and maintain this huge constellation, providing communication services worldwide, even to Antarctica. Now SpaceX wants to offer this expertise as a service to the US government through Starshield.
SpaceX claims that Starshield will be focused on three main areas: Earth observation, communications, and hosted payload. This means they will develop, launch, and maintain custom satellites using Starlink technology and launch capability. They are offering SCaaS — Satellite Constellations as a Service — aimed at the B2G market.
Starshield is basically SCaaS — Satellite Constellations as a Service
With Starlink, SpaceX was their own customer. They ordered a constellation capable of delivering space internet connectivity on LEO from themselves, and they delivered it. With Starshield, SpaceX is ready to take orders from others.
Taking Starlink to The Next Level
Starshield will build upon the technology already available for Starlink. Satellites will feature a modular design. This means SpaceX will be able to integrate a variety of payloads depending on the customer’s specific needs. It will also use “additional high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads” on top of the end-to-end encryption available with Starlink. Starshield satellites will also use laser communication to talk to each other. It’s probably safe to say that Starshield will also use the existing Starlink network for communication if that’s what’s needed.
Image credit: SpaceX
Working with the US government isn’t something new for SpaceX. They already do multiple launches for NASA, US Air Force, and US Space Force. With Starshield, they intend to expand this relationship. Thus getting even more government contracts. We heard multiple times from SpaceX and Elon himself that Starlink is a project intended to provide a lot of cash flow for the company. This way, they should be able to afford all their ‘Occupy Mars’ plans and other not-so-profitable ideas. Adding the government to the list of customers should surely help with that.
With Starshield in place, SpaceX will have even more vertical integration. They are the first private company that provides a full-stack approach to satellite constellations. SpaceX develops, launches, maintains, and services all its satellites. If you want to see how such an approach can benefit you, just look at Apple. It is the most valuable and, arguably, one of the most influential companies in the world. Many of their current successes came because of their very hardcore vertical integration.
NASA Has No Alternative to SpaceX At The Moment
At the moment, NASA depends on SpaceX a lot. Crew Dragon is the USA’s only spacecraft capable of delivering astronauts to the ISS, as Starliner continues to experience problems. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy make up more than 2/3 of the USA’s launches in 2022. Other rockets that may provide completion, like Vulcan or New Glenn, suffer multiple delays. But the situation can get even worse soon, as Starship will become operational.
When NASA awarded the HLS contract solely to SpaceX and further extended it later, they put themselves in a very dependent position. It’s obvious that the main space activity for the upcoming decade will revolve around Artemis. This is NASA’s flagship program that will generate the most hype, have the biggest contracts, etc. And it all depends on the success of SpaceX’s Starship. At least through Artemis III and Artemis IV, which are now planned for 2025 and 2027, respectively, and may be further delayed.
Artist’s rendering of SpaceX Starship human lander design. Image credit: SpaceX
The Lunar version of Starship is designed to require multiple LEO refuelings to perform a landing on the Moon. This means that the fully stacked Starship system will need to perform multiple flights quickly. The only way to do that is to master rapid reusability. And the only way to do that is to have a working heat shield that will withstand reentry and won’t need too much servicing between flights; to have a fully working SuperHeavy with all its 33 Raptor V2 engines; to have a working Mechazilla that catches both Starship and SuperHeavy multiple times; as well as all the other bits and pieces that make Starship work.
Failing any of these things is a blocker for the entire Artemis program, as it further delays human landing on the Moon. Therefore, NASA now fully depends on the entire Starship project. It has no alternatives in the near future, as it’s the only landing option for both Aremis III and Artemis IV.
Starshield Makes Dependancy on Starship Even Worse
Image credit: SpaceX
With the HLS contract, SpaceX got NASA (and thus the US government) dependent on Starship. This means they are directly interested in the success of the project. So, there’s a strong incentive for NASA and other government structures to remove all hurdles that the Starship project can potentially face.
SpaceX themselves are also dependent on Starship’s success. It’s the only way to launch Starlink V2, as they are too big and heavy to fit in Falcon rockets. SpaceX doesn’t explicitly say whether Starshield will share a platform with the first or the second generation of Starlinks; the latter might likely be the case. If so, then Starshield will tighten the knot of the US government’s dependency on Starship even harder.
He Who Fights Too Long Against Dragons Becomes A Dragon Himself
Image credit: SpaceX
SpaceX is now in a very dominant position in the space industry. Falcon rockets are responsible for over a third of all successful launches in 2022 in the world. Starlink has a huge head start over its competition, with over 3200 active satellites already in orbit. Without SpaceX, there will be no human landings on the Moon.
If Starship delivers on its promises of 100 tons to LEO with rapid reusability, it will significantly drop the launch costs for SpaceX. This will allow them to further increase their dominance in the markets they are already in and possibly get into new ones. And with the US government and NASA being so dependent on Starship because of Artemis and potentially Starshield, the regulators will have a stimulus to support SpaceX’s monopoly instead of properly regulating it and encouraging completion.
Monopolies are never good in the long term. And SpaceX is clearly on the course of becoming a very strong one. So, no matter how great SpaceX may seem, we desperately need NASA and other government structures to support the competition and encourage its success. Only this way the entire industry can benefit in long term.
Meteorites Bathed in Gamma Rays Produce More Amino Acids and Could Have Helped Life get Going on Earth
Carbonaceous chondrites like the Allende meteorite contain significant amounts of water and amino acids. Could they have delivered amino acids to early Earth and spurred on the development of life?
Meteorites Bathed in Gamma Rays Produce More Amino Acids and Could Have Helped Life get Going on Earth
Our moderntelescopes are more powerful than their predecessors, and our research is more focused than ever. We keep discovering new things about the Solar System and finding answers to long-standing questions. But one of the big questions we still don’t have an answer for is: ‘How did life on Earth begin?’
We won’t answer the question of life’s origins in one dramatic act. Instead, we’re chipping away at it, slowly piecing together an answer over generations. We know life has building blocks, molecules critical to life gaining a foothold here on Earth and, hopefully, elsewhere. Amino acids are some of those building blocks.
Amino acids play a critical role in life on Earth, though we don’t know exactly how they fit into a timeline of life’s origins. We’ve found them in space, which has led to speculation that they originated there and then found their way to Earth as biological building blocks.
A new study fills in part of the picture by showing that meteorites bathed in gamma rays produce more amino acids.
There are hundreds of amino acids, but only 22 appear in the genetic code. Glycine is one of the simplest amino acids in the genetic code, and scientists have found glycine in objects in space. They’ve seen it in comets, interstellar dust clouds, and meteorites that fell to Earth, which led to the idea that meteorites contributed to the appearance of life on Earth.
A new study shows that when meteorites are bathed in gamma rays, they produce more amino acids. The study is “Gamma-Ray-Induced Amino Acid Formation in Aqueous Small Bodies in the Early Solar System,” and it was published in ACS Central Science, the journal of the American Chemical Society. The lead author is Yoko Kebukawa, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry at Yokohama National University.
When Earth formed, the Solar System was a much more chaotic place. Meteorites flew through space, slamming into things like particles in an accelerator. Many of them struck Earth. There are fewer of them now, though they still fall to Earth. When they do, people find some of them, and many have found their way to scientists’ labs. Over time, scientists have classified meteorites into different families.
There are three top-level categories of meteorites: stony meteorites, iron meteorites, and stony-iron meteorites which are a combination of both types. There are further classifications based on chemical compositions, isotopes, and mineralogy.
Carbonaceous chondrites (CCs) are a type of stony meteorite and are some of the most primitive. The name is a bit confusing. Scientists thought they contained carbon because of their dark and grey appearance, but they actually contain less carbon than other meteorites. However, CCs contain something more important than carbon: they’re known for containing water and other molecules, including amino acids.
That, along with their ancient age, makes them important because they hold clues to the early Solar System, back when Earth was settling down, and life was getting started.
There seems little doubt that carbonaceous chondrites contained amino acids back then and that they would’ve delivered them to the young Earth. But how did the amino acids form?
That’s the question behind the new study.
Artist’s concept of a meteorite entering Earth’s atmosphere. There were more meteorites striking Earth billions of years ago. Could they have delivered building blocks like amino acids to Earth, spurring on the appearance of life?Image Credit: University of Oxford
Lead author Kebukawa showed in previous research that reactions between simple molecules such as ammonia and formaldehyde could create macromolecules, including amino acids. But only in the presence of liquid water and only when there’s heat to drive reactions. We know carbonaceous chondrites contain water, but where did the heat come from?
It could’ve come from one of the two naturally-occurring isotopes of aluminum: 26Al.
26Al is cosmogenic, meaning it was created when cosmic rays bombarded meteor fragments. It was relatively abundant back when the Solar System was forming but has now decayed.
26Al is unstable and releases gamma rays as it decays. Scientists think the heat from that decay is responsible for the melting and differentiation of some asteroids after they formed in the early Solar System. But the heat could’ve also driven the production of amino acids in meteors.
Kebukawa and her colleagues tested this idea in their laboratory. They combined compounds like formaldehyde and ammonia, both common chemicals in space, and exposed them to gamma rays. Not gamma rays from 26Al but from more readily available 60Co (cobalt-60). 60Co is a synthetic radioisotope produced in nuclear reactors. It’s used in radiation therapy, sterilizing medical instruments, and other things.
Since it produces gamma rays as it decays, the researchers used60Co as a proxy for primordial26Al.
The experiment showed that the rays melted ice in carbonaceous chondrites when 26Al decayed and released gamma rays. In the presence of liquid water and the energy from the 26Al, simple chemicals like ammonia (NH3) and methanol (CH3OH) formed amino acids. Image Credit: Kebukawa et al. 2022.
The researchers found that the gamma rays increased the production of some amino acids as the gamma-ray exposure increased.
This figure from the study shows how gamma rays produced different amino acids. Gamma rays are measured in kGy, kilo-Grays (1 kGy. = 1,000 J/kg). The zero kGy rows on the bottom are the control group. The colour-coded legend explains how much of each amino acid was produced. Glycine, the simplest and most common amino acid, is shown in blue at the bottom of the legend. Image Credit: Kebukawa et al. 2022.
Amino acids are divided into four categories: alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. Alpha amino acids are the most essential amino acids because they’re used to synthesize proteins. Glycine (Gly), Alanine (Ala), Leucine (Leu), Serine (Ser), Asparagine (Asp), Isoleucine (Ile), and Glutamine (Glu) are all alpha amino acids produced in the experiment. The quantities of these essential amino acids rose in the irradiation solutions as the total gamma-ray dose increased.
What do these laboratory results mean in the real world?
The researchers took their results and calculated a plausible level of amino acid production in meteorites. They focused on a specific family of meteorites called CM chondrites, the most commonly recovered carbonaceous chondrite type. The M stands for the Mighei meteorite, and their calculations are for the parent body of all CM chondrites. Their analyses also take into account the decay of amino acids over time.
The team calculated the production of alpha-alanine and beta-alanine, a component of things like vitamin B5. They calculated the yields of amino acids in the liquid phase and the whole rock. Their work shows that it would’ve taken between 1,000 and 100,000 years to produce the amount of alanine and ?-alanine found in the Murchison meteorite, the most well-studied Mighei meteorite.
This figure from the study shows the calculated yields of alpha-alanine (green) and beta-alanine (pink) in the CM parent body. The top row shows (a) the Gamma-ray dose rate expected in the parent bodies of CM chondrites and calculated yields of alanine and beta-alanine per year (b) in the liquid phase, and (c) in the whole rock. The bottom row shows (d) the Total gamma-ray dose expected in the parent bodies of CM chondrites and calculated total yields of alanine and beta-alanine (e) in the liquid phase and (f) in the whole rock. Image Credit: Kebukawa et al. 2022.
In the paper’s conclusion, the researchers explain their results. “Our findings point to the possibility of gamma-ray-induced amino acid formation from ubiquitous, simple molecules such as formaldehyde and ammonia in the presence of water inside small bodies during the early stages of the formation of the Solar System.” Note the prudent use of the word “possibility.”
“The gamma-ray-induced production of amino acids could be a novel prebiotic amino acid formation pathway that could have contributed to the origins of life on early Earth, as building blocks of life were delivered through the fall of meteorites.”
The idea that meteorites could’ve brought amino acids to the Earth and helped spur on life is not new. But this study strengthens that idea and is another piece of the intricate puzzle that is life on Earth.
Three Mile UFO Over Hanoi, Vietnam On Nov 30, 2022, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Three Mile UFO Over Hanoi, Vietnam On Nov 30, 2022, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Nov 30, 2022
Location of sighting: Hanoi, Vietnam
Often misidentified as a Linear cloud, this UFO is cloaked within a cloud, but the setting sun light hits its shields which contain the cloud within create an iridescent rainbow of colors. This ship is huge, about 3 miles across and could easily hold tens of thousands of alien occupants. I know what you are thinking, I was taught to believe its scientifically explainable, that its just a cloud. Don't be sheep. Even aliens are relying on you being predictable, its the unpredictable people who change this world.
Is An Alien Contact About To Happen In Porto Alegre, Brazil, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Is An Alien Contact About To Happen In Porto Alegre, Brazil, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Nov 9, 2022
Location of sighting: Porto Alegre, Brazil
Watch this great catch of a flashing UFO over Brazil last week. The eyewitness posted the video to Twitter. The UFO was seen five days in a row, always the same location. Absolute awesome and very beautiful to look at. It seems that there is going to be a direct contact coming very soon to Porto Alegre, sure hope they are ready for it.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
For the 5th night in a row, there are multiple reports of strange lights in the sky over Porto Alegre, Brazil. More aircraft pilots reported the appearance of these UFOs.
Here's something you don't see everyday. A huge rock gets lodged inside the wheel well of the Mars rover this week. With the metal wheels being hollow, its likely this rock has been there for weeks and will likely continue rolling inside the wheel for weeks to come. I'm not sure who designed the wheels but NASA really should have taken these kinds of things into account when designing them. Already I see the two scratch marks going down from where the rock slide down the wheel. Such things can seriously damage the wheel and in turn, damage the rover. If the rover can't move its wheels, the mission is basically over. I just wanted to show you something NASA doesn't want you to see, and something you wont see in the news.
The story of Bob Lazar. This was recently posted on YouTube to watch for free.
Bob Lazar, a former government physicist, revealed in 1989 that the US military had been secretly working on extraterrestrial spacecraft. He blew the whistle and shocked the world, but he had remained silent until now. His account was dramatized by Academy Award nominee Mickey Rourke.
Due to Lazar’s revelation, the public became aware of Area 51, which was a former secret military base. He was burdened with a revolutionary secret that required him to choose between his country’s interests and his conscience. His wife, his mother, and his close friends believed him, which is why his testimony has been regarded as one of the most controversial UFO stories of all time.
The film by Jeremy Corbell, which is about Lazar’s saga, offers a glimpse into the triumphs and struggles of a cosmic whistleblower. It follows Lazar’s claims about the government’s secret program to develop a powerful technology using recovered alien vehicles. His actions have affected his life significantly for the last three decades.
Due to his actions, his life has turned upside-down. He has tried to avoid the spotlight by maintaining a low-profile. This is why he has never allowed journalists or filmmakers into his private life.
The film by Corbell, which is about Lazar’s saga, offers a glimpse into the triumphs and struggles of a cosmic whistleblower. It will also change the way the public thinks about UFOs.
NASA Artemis 1 mission update - Moon flyby and splashdown preview
NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft performed an engine burn when it was just 79 miles (128 kilometers) above the lunar surface on Dec. 5, 2022. The burn set it on a trajectory to splashdown on Earth on Dec. 11.
Credit:NASA
See Mars get eclipsed by moon in rare occultation - time-lapse
The Griffith Observatory in California had a great view of the Mars-Moon occultation on Dec. 7, 2022. See the Red Planet slip behind the moon and re-emerge in this time-lapse.
Credit:Griffith Observatory | edited by Space.com's edited by [Steve Spaleta]
Wow! See Artemis 1 spacecraft's Earth-moon transit view in amazing time-lapse
Shortly before NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft performed its longest engine burn of the mission on Dec. 5, 2022, it captured this amazing view of the moon. [NASA's Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft completes crucial moon flyby maneuver for trip home]
Why Does The Trident Missile Have A Spike On Its Nose?
The Lesser known aerospike, the aerodynamic device found on the noses of missiles which have to have blunt noses to make them short enough to fit inside submarines. At supersonic speeds these reduce the drag by 50% and added 550km to the range of a Trident missile while still letting them fit in the same missile tubes designed for the original Polaris.
How NASA Will 3D Print Houses On The Moon!
How NASA Will 3D Print Houses On The Moon! Thanks, Pinecone, for sponsoring this video! Click my exclusive link https://www.influencerlink.org/SHEQZ to start earning cash on Pinecone!
Last Video: How We Will Build An Underground Civilization On Mars!
SpaceX upgrade everything for the massive engine testing and orbital flight incoming
SpaceX upgrade everything for the massive engine testing and orbital flight incoming
Work on Ship 24 Continues as Scaffolding is Removed | SpaceX Boca Chica
Crews worked on Ship 24 as the scaffolding around it was removed, work on the Orbital Launch Mount continued, and Ship 28, 29, and 30's nosecones were spotted in various stages of production.
Video and Pictures from Nic (@NicAnsuini), Nomadd (@Nomadd13), and Starbase Live. Edited by Jack (@theJackBeyer).
Scientists Have Just Landed A Probe On An Asteroid & It Sent Back Some Unreal Photographs
Humans have advanced to the stage where we can land spacecraft on the moon and other planets. However, scientists have managed a by far trickier landing; landing a probe on an asteroid!
This is a massive feat, but even more unreal are the photographs of the asteroid that the probe sent back! Which asteroid did scientists land a probe on, and what has the probe discovered on the asteroid? Stay tuned as we bring you how scientists managed to land a probe on an asteroid and the unreal photographs it sent back!
When you look up at the sky on a clear night and see many stars, you may get the impression that space is a crowded place. However, that is far from the case, as space is mostly an empty place. But it contains objects that are of interest to us! Some, like even the closest stars, are so far away that we may never be able to send a probe there, not to talk of human-crewed missions. However, some are relatively near, like asteroids, and scientists want to study them! We have studied asteroids for long with powerful telescopes. But how about sending a probe to investigate an asteroid? This was the thinking of NASA when it sent a probe to asteroid Bennu to get samples! But landing a probe on an asteroid is no joke! The mission is known as Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer! Thankfully, there is an acronym that, while not so short, is more manageable; OSIRIS-REx! OSIRIS-REx is quite expensive, with a budget of 800 million dollars. The mission won funding while pitched against other missions to study Venus and the moon. The mission took off in September 2016 and took more than two years to finally land on Bennu, where it took detailed measurements of the asteroid's shape and mass before returning to orbit
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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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.
