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

For decades, astrophysicists have theorized that the majority of matter in our Universe is made up of a mysterious invisible mass known as “Dark Matter” (DM). While scientists have not yet found any direct evidence of this invisible mass or confirmed what it looks like, there are several possible ways we could search for it soon. One theory is that Dark Matter particles could collide and annihilate each other to produce cosmic rays that proliferate throughout our galaxy – similar to how cosmic ray collisions with the interstellar medium (ISM) do.

This theory could be tested soon, thanks to research conducted using the A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE), one of several detector experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). ALICE is optimized to study the results from collisions between nuclei that travel very close to the speed of light (ultra-relativistic velocities). According to new research by the ALICE Collaboration, dedicated instruments could detect anti-helium-3 nuclei (the anti-matter counterpart to He₃) as they reach Earth’s atmosphere, thus providing evidence for DM.

The theory of Dark Matter emerged in the 1960s when astronomers were conducting observational tests of General Relativity (GR) using distant galaxies and galaxy clusters. A key prediction of GR is that the curvature of spacetime is altered in the presence of gravitational fields caused by massive objects. This can be observed with gravitational lenses, a phenomenon where light from a distant source is warped and amplified (leading to Einstein’s Rings, Crosses, and Arcs). However, when observing large structures in the Universe, astronomers noted that the curvature they observed was far greater than expected.

This suggested two possibilities: either Einstein was wrong (despite all the tests that have proven it to be correct), or there must be mass in the Universe that we cannot see. The challenge for astrophysicists and cosmologists ever since has been finding direct evidence of this elusive Dark Matter. As they indicated in their study, which recently appeared in the journal Nature Physics, antinuclei produced by DM annihilations could be detected (depending on the nature of DM itself). In this case, the ALICE Collaboration used the leading theoretical profile known as Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs).

Per the WIMPs theory, DM consists of particles that don’t emit or absorb light and only interact with other particles via the weak nuclear force. This same theory also states that interaction between these particles causes them to annihilate one another and produce anti-He₃ nuclei, composed of two antiprotons and one antineutron. These antinuclei would travel throughout our galaxy and could be measured as cosmic rays, high-energy particles that originate from beyond our Solar System and collide with our atmosphere (producing “showers” of elementary particles).

However, other types of cosmic rays (protons of helium nuclei) can also collide with the interstellar medium (ISM) to create anti-He₃ nuclei. Since this source of antinuclei is unrelated to DM, it would constitute the background for DM searches. As Laura Serksnyte – a researcher with the Technische Universitat of Munich and one of the experts on the study – told Universe Today via email:

“The expected number of low-energy antihelium-3 nuclei coming from dark matter annihilation is expected to be much larger than from the background contribution. Thus the detection of even a few low-energy antihelium-3 nuclei in cosmic rays would provide a smoking gun signal for the dark matter, meaning that the antihelium-3 is a very ‘clean’ probe for dark matter searches.”

However, this smoking gun could be difficult to track down, as anti-He₃ nuclei might also interact with gas in the ISM as they propagate throughout the Milky Way. This inelastic interaction would cause anti-He3 nuclei to disappear before they reached Earth’s atmosphere, where dedicated instruments could detect them. On Earth, the only way to produce and study antinuclei with high precision is to create them in high-energy particle accelerators. This, said Serksnyte, is where the LHC and the ALICE instrument came into play:

“Our experiment studied the inelastic interactions of antihelium-3 (produced in the collisions at the LHC) with matter, where ALICE detector itself is used as a target. Our work thus provided the first ever measurement of inelastic antihelium-3 cross-section, which constrains how probable it is for the antihelium-3 to disappear if it collides with matter.”

After measuring the anti-He3 produced in the LHC, the team then applied their measurements to see how these antinuclei would interact with the gas in the ISM – either as a result of DM annihilation or from ordinary cosmic ray collisions with ISM gas. By calculating the level of antinuclei that disappear while traveling from their point of origin to detectors in Earth’s atmosphere, they were able to estimate the fraction that would be detectable to our instruments. The results, said Serksnyte, were quite encouraging:

“Our results show that the transparency of our galaxy to the passage of antihelium-3 cosmic rays is high, and thus such antinuclei could indeed reach Earth and be measured by dedicated experiments. Thus confirming that antihelium-3 is a promising candidate for Dark Matter searches. Our measurement of the disappearance probability of the antihelium-3 nuclei interacting with matter will also be used by the scientists to understand the antihelium-3 cosmic ray fluxes once they are measured and to put constraints on the Dark Matter models.”

abell 611 and its galaxies and dark matter

Hubble Space Telescope offers a cosmic cobweb of galaxies and Dark Matter in the cluster Abell 611.

Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, P. Kelly, M. Postman, J. Richard, S. Allen

By placing tighter constraints on what scientists could be looking for, future surveys will help resolve one of the most pressing mysteries in astrophysics today. The detection of Dark Matter would not only confirm where 85% of the matter in the Universe is hiding. It would also validate a key part of the most widely-accepted theory of cosmology – the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model – and confirm that General Relativity (a staple of modern physics) is correct. While that won’t be the end of the cosmological mysteries, it will lead to a greater understanding of everything.

Further Reading:

Nature

It sometimes seems you can’t throw a stone in Central America without hitting a spot where there was once a Maya city, Maya temple or other hidden evidence of this civilization that once numbered in the millions and was noted for its architecture, highly developed writing system, art, mathematics, calendar and other amazing and advanced characteristics which were lost when their lands were invaded by the Europeans and their history was rewritten by them. While excavation and jungle clearing for development has revealed some of its lost past, much of the Maya culture is hidden under soil or thick vegetation.

Archaeologists Discover Huge Lost Civilization in Guatemala

2,000-year-old Mayan civilization discovered in the north of Guatemala

LiDAR image showing triadic structures in the civic center of El Mirador.

Richard D. Hansen et al.

That is why the new discovery in Guatemala is so significant – a geographically vast network of hundreds of long-lost settlements from 2,000 years ago has been found in the northern part of that country using LiDAR - "laser imaging, detection, and ranging" beamed from airplanes to create 3D images of hidden structures. This discover “challenges the old notion of sparse early human occupation” as it is comprised of roads, canals, a pyramid and dozens of ballcourts indicating this was a wealthy culture with leisure time for sports. What else is in this ancient Maya lost-and-found box called Guatemala?

The forests of Central America can hide a lot.

“LiDAR coverage of a large contiguous area within the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin (MCKB) of northern Guatemala has identified a concentration of Preclassic Maya sites (ca. 1000 B.C.–A.D. 150) connected by causeways, forming a web of implied social, political, and economic interactions.”

In a new study published recently in the journal Cambridge Core. Richard Hansen, an archaeologist at Idaho State University and the project director, introduces the Mirador Basin Project - one of the largest, contiguous, regional LiDAR studies ever done on the Maya Lowlands region of central America that includes parts of Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize. Hansen and his team spent years flying airborne LiDAR devices over the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin at altitudes of about 2,000 feet. The MCKB area is predominantly low-lying swamps, known as bajos, fed by rainfall on the surrounding hills. Infrared satellite images of the swampland taken in 1992 hinted that the bajo vegetation and the tropical forests on the hills were hiding something – but those same jungles and swamps made it nearly impossible for archeologists to get there, let alone do a proper job of excavating and searching for signs of Maya settlements. LiDAR has become a proven and valuable technique for penetrating this thick covers without damaging them and revealing detailed three-dimensional images of what lies underneath. And what lies underneath in the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin is much more than Hansen and his colleagues expected to find.

“The LiDAR survey revealed an extraordinary density and distribution of Maya sites concentrated in the MCKB, many of them linked directly or indirectly by a vast causeway network. Using hillshade models derived from a LiDAR DEM, at present 775 ancient Maya settlements (defined as an architectural cluster) have been identified within the southern lowland MCKB, of which 581 are unnamed. An additional 189 ancient Maya settlements of varying sizes were identified within the geomorphological borders of the southern MCKB, including the upland karst landscape along the Mirador Anticline, for a total of 964 settlements (of all periods), of which 645 are unnamed as yet.”

For starters, the LiDAR showed a network of 964 settlements in the basin, dating from around 1000 BCE to 150 CE – the Middle and Late Pre-Classic periods of the Maya civilization. The settlements or small villages were far from isolated from each other – the LiDAR shows them to be connected by causeways, dams, dikes, canals, common reservoirs, and common bajo areas in and around the center of the settlements as well as on their borders. The LiDAR scans showed that some settlements were so close and so well-connected to each other, as well as defined by swamp boundaries, they could be considered to be mega-settlements – cities, towns and larger villages numbering around 417. Besides the canals, the archeologists also identified 110 miles of raised roads which illustrated what a vast operation this was.

“(The) elevated Preclassic causeways suggest labor investments that defy organizational capabilities of lesser polities and potentially portray the strategies of governance in the Preclassic period. Settlement distributions, architectural continuities, chronological contemporaneity, and volumetric considerations of sites provide evidence for early centralized administrative and socio-economic strategies within a defined geographical region.”

But wait … there’s more!

The sites in the MCKB have a combined total of at least 30 ballcourts scattered throughout the settlements. The one excavated at Tintal is one of the larger ballcourts in the MCKB. The ballcourts in the MCKB consist of two parallel structures, often in a north–south axis, and measure between 30 and 60 feet long. The site of El Mirador has four small ballcourts and three larger ones in its Great Central Acropolis. IN addition to the numerous ballcourts, the LiDAR scan found a royal throne, specialized ceremonial sunken plazas, elaborate cosmological iconography, reservoirs and hydraulic systems, and massive platforms and constructions. All of this points to the Great Central Acropolis being the seat of power of the rulers in this area.

What else is hidden in the Guatemalan swamps and jungles?

Finally, the LiDAR revealed many more details of the pyramid of Danta in El Mirador. La Danta had three continuous elevated platforms and the archeologists estimated the surface was covered with 205,508 limestone blocks measuring an average size of 1.30 × 0.45 × 0.40 m (4.25 x 1.5 x 1.3 feet) – a mass that they estimate would have required 158 workers working continuously for five years just to quarry. Then, depending on the bedrock below the pyramid, it would have required 6 million to 10 million person-days of labor to build. That would need a high level of organization and management to accomplish – yet another trait of the Maya culture that has been lost in the retelling of its history. As the study concludes:

“The skeleton of the ancient political and economic structure as a kingdom-state in the Middle and Late Preclassic periods has a tantalizing presence in the Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin.”

Ancient Mayan drawings carved on the stone wall.

Ancient Mayan drawings carved on the stone wall.

A map of the sites

Pictured: a map of the sites in the Mirador–Calakmul Karst Basin (Image: Hansen et al. / Ancient Mesoamerica)

The pyramidal complex at La Danta

A 3D LiDAR view showing of the pyramidal complex at La Danta

(Image: Hansen et al. / Ancient Mesoamerica)

A map of the architectural elements

LiDAR revealed hundreds of settlements — some sporting pyramids, platforms and ball courts

(Image: Hansen et al. / Ancient Mesoamerica)

Some of the causeways between the sites

Pictured: Examples of some of the causeways linking the sites

(Image: Hansen et al. / Ancient Mesoamerica)

The Maya are so much more than a calendar and some ballcourts. Let’s hope these LiDAR studies are allowed to continue and result in the preservation of their ancient structures and their history.

This week, a human-made lander on Mars did a very human thing – it died. At the same time, a human-created rover on Mars did another very human thing – it left trash receptacles on the ground for someone else to pick up … maybe space sanitation engineers? Are we preparing Mars for colonization by making it look more like Earth with cemeteries, trash collections and landfills?

“I feel sad, but I also feel pretty good. We’ve been expecting this to come to an end for some time. I think that it’s been a great run.”

Bruce Banerdt, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, eulogized the Mars InSight spacecraft for The New York Times. The four-and-a-half years old (20 in human years?) lander spent its entire time on Mars in the Elysium Planitia near the planet’s equator in the northern hemisphere. The Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations lander used its time to take seismological measurements of marsquakes in an effort to get a better idea of the planet’s structure, composition and geological history. InSight was working right up until the end … in May, it measured its strongest marsquake ever - 4.7-magnitude. Unfortunately, the stress of living on Mars was too much for InSight – particularly dealing with the dust. (Check out its dust-covered photo above.) While allergies were not the problem, buildup on its solar panels was and InSight was declared battery-dead (space engineers refer to it as a “dead bus”) by NASA. InSight’s screen at mission control was surrounded by mission members and friends on its last day.

“I watched the launch and landing of this mission, and while saying goodbye to a spacecraft is always sad, the fascinating science InSight conducted is cause for celebration.”

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, made a moving statement at the wake. Since it is above ground, the lander will be its own grave marker in its Martian cemetery. Gather dust in peace, InSight.

Meanwhile, in the Jezero crater, another very human habit is occurring on Mars.

“A titanium tube containing a rock sample is resting on the Red Planet’s surface after being placed there on Dec. 21 by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Over the next two months, the rover will deposit a total of 10 tubes at the location, called “Three Forks,” building humanity’s first sample depot on another planet. The depot marks a historic early step in the Mars Sample Return campaign.”

Perseverance and Ingenuity selfie

The Perseverance rover was sent to Mars to carry the small robotic helicopter Ingenuity and to travel about digging with its robotic arm into the Martian surface in places that look interesting to the mission managers back on Earth. The primary plan is for another rover/lander/spacecraft to one day land on Mars, find Perseverance, empty the contents of its sample storage compartment, blast off into a Martian orbit, where it will meet another spacecraft and hand it the samples … whereupon that spacecraft will leave Martian orbit and return them to Earth where they will become the first Martian soil samples to be studied by humans.

What could possibly go wrong?

If you’ve been paying attention … quite a bit. That is why the Mars Sample Return campaign has a backup plan in case Perseverance dies like InSight before it can complete its mission. So, in addition to the 17 samples in its interior storage container for handing off to the return mission spacecraft, Perseverance has 10 titanium tubes it has also been filling with soil samples. The rover then sealed the tubes (that robotic arm must have huge biceps by now) and placed them in a carrier. Perseverance is now looking for suitable locations to drop these tubes on the surface where they could be picked up by a pair of Sample Recovery Helicopters dispatched from the Mars Sample Return lander.

Does that sound an awful lot like a Martian version of Earth trash collection to you? What could possibly go wrong?

“Perseverance’s complex Sampling and Caching System took almost an hour to retrieve the metal tube from inside the rover’s belly, view it one last time with its internal CacheCam, and drop the sample roughly 3 feet (89 centimeters) onto a carefully selected patch of Martian surface.”

A video of what looks an awful lot like what your dog does on its walks can be seen here. On Earth, the pet owner would then reach down with a scooper and place the dropping in a plastic bag. On Mars, Perseverance also has more things to do with the help of its “owners” back in mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Once they confirmed the tube had dropped, the team positioned the WATSON camera located at the end of Perseverance’s 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm to peer beneath the rover and check to make sure the tube hadn’t rolled under a wheel or in the path of one. They also made sure that the titanium tube did not land on an end and get stuck standing in the soil. This would make it difficult for the Sample Recovery Helicopters to grab onto the flat end piece or “glove” for pickup. It the tube is standing vertical, Perseverance will use the turret at the end of its robotic arm to carefully knock it over.

A tube in the proper position for pickup.

When will the trash collecting mission be sent to Mars to pick up the cans filled by Perseverance? A reasonable guess is not until the 2030s, which is why these are really more like trash containers than those old-fashioned office pneumatic tubes or Amazon packages. Those get icked up right away. Martians will be looking at these containers left by Earthlings for at least a decade and wondering how else this messy species will garbage up their pristine planet.

Perseverance knows how this writer thinks its mission looks, but it doesn’t care because it doesn’t want to end up like InSight. It turns out the primary mission of Perseverance is scheduled to end January 6, 2023 – just about two years after it landed. Fortunately, NASA extended its mission so it can continue to drop tubes, search for more signs of ancient life and keep tabs on the Ingenuity helicopter, which has also exceeded its planned lifespan.

Could NASA be testing some kind of artificial intelligence on Perseverance and Ingenuity to see how they respond to seeing the death of one of their fellow spacecrafts? Is this making them work harder? Will this motivate future astronauts to do the same?

For now, it still looks like we’re turning Mars into a graveyard and a trash bin.

There’s absolutely no doubt that had pilot Kenneth Arnold not encountered a veritable squadron of strange-looking aircraft near Mt. Rainier, Washington State on the afternoon of June 24, 1947, there would never have been an opportunity for the Russians – and for the United States, too, as we’ll soon see – to exploit a very real phenomenon of mystifying origins and nature for psychological and military gain. But, as history has shown, Arnold most assuredly did have that now-legendary encounter. Whether Arnold encountered a number of extraterrestrial craft, advanced creations of the Soviet Union, or the then-latest developments of the U.S. military, remains unknown.

The theories are many. The hard answers are scant. Let’s take a look at what happened to Arnold on that particular day which changed the world. Arnold said: "The following story of what I observed over the Cascade Mountains, as impossible as it may seem, is positively true. I never asked nor wanted any notoriety for just accidentally being in the right spot at the right time to observe what I did. I reported something that I know any pilot would have reported. I don't think that in any way my observation was due to any sensitivity of eye sight or judgment than what is considered normal for any pilot.

On June 24th, Tuesday, 1947, I had finished my work for the Central Air Service at Chehalis, Washington, and at about two o'clock I took off from Chehalis, Washington, airport with the intention of going to Yakima, Wash. My trip was delayed for an hour to search for a large marine transport that supposedly went down near or around the southwest side of Mt. Rainier in the state of Washington and to date has never been found." Arnold had more to say. For a short period, Arnold pondered on the possibility that the craft were created by the Russians. He soon dropped the idea, though.

(Nick Redfern)

Flying Discs: Russian? Probably not.

In fact, things had only just begun: "I flew directly toward Mt. Rainier after reaching an altitude of about 9,500 feet, which is the approximate elevation of the high plateau from which Mt. Rainier rises. I had made one sweep of this high plateau to the westward, searching all of the various ridges for this marine ship and flew to the west down and near the ridge side of the canyon where Ashford, Washington, is located. Unable to see anything that looked like the lost ship, I made a 360 degree turn to the right and above the little city of Mineral, starting again toward Mt. Rainier. I climbed back up to an altitude of approximately 9,200 feet. The air was so smooth that day that it was a real pleasure flying and, as most pilots do when the air is smooth and they are flying at a higher altitude, I trimmed out my airplane in the direction of Yakima, Washington, which was almost directly east of my position and simply sat in my plane observing the sky and the terrain. There was a DC-4 to the left and to the rear of me approximately fifteen miles distance, and I should judge, at 14,000 foot elevation. The sky and air was clear as crystal. I hadn't flown more than two or three minutes on my course when a bright flash reflected on my airplane. It startled me as I thought I was too close to some other aircraft. I looked every place in the sky and couldn't find where the reflection had come from until I looked to the left and the north of Mt. Rainier where I observed a chain of nine peculiar looking aircraft flying from north to south at approximately 9,500 foot elevation and going, seemingly, in a definite direction of about 170 degrees."

There was more to come, in Arnold's own words: "They were approaching Mt. Rainier very rapidly, and I merely assumed they were jet planes. Anyhow, I discovered that this was where the reflection had come from, as two or three of them every few seconds would dip or change their course slightly, just enough for the sun to strike them at an angle that reflected brightly on my plane. These objects being quite far away, I was unable for a few seconds to make out their shape or their formation. Very shortly they approached Mt. Rainier, and I observed their outline against the snow quite plainly. I thought it was very peculiar that I couldn't find their tails but assumed they were some type of jet plane. I was determined to clock their speed, as I had two definite points I could clock them by; the air was so clear that it was very easy to see objects and determine their approximate shape and size at almost fifty miles that day. I remember distinctly that my sweep second hand on my eight day clock, which is located on my instrument panel, read one minute to 3 P.M. as the first object of this formation passed the southern edge of Mt. Rainier. I watched these objects with great interest as I had never before observed airplanes flying so close to the mountain tops, flying directly south to southeast down the hog's back of a mountain range. I would estimate their elevation could have varied a thousand feet one way or another up or down, but they were pretty much on the horizon to me which would indicate they were near the same elevation as I was."

(Nick Redfern)

The Roswell affair, also of 1947, was right behind.

The sighting grew for Arnold: "They flew like many times I have observed geese to fly in a rather diagonal chain-like line as if they were linked together. They seemed to hold a definite direction but rather swerved in and out of the high mountain peaks. Their speed at the time did not impress me particularly, because I knew that our army and air forces had planes that went very fast. What kept bothering me as I watched them flip and flash in the sun right along their path was the fact that I couldn't make out any tail on them, and I am sure that any pilot would justify more than a second look at such a plane. I observed them quite plainly, and I estimate my distance from them, which was almost at right angles, to be between twenty to twenty-five miles. I knew they must be very large to observe their shape at that distance, even on as clear a day as it was that Tuesday, In fact I compared a zeus [sic: it should be “Dzus”] fastener or cowling tool I had in my pocket with them - holding it up on them and holding it up on the DC-4 - that I could observe at quite a distance to my left, and they seemed smaller than the DC-4; but, I should judge their span would have been as wide as the furtherest [sic] engines on each side of the fuselage of the DC-4.

"The more I observed these objects the more upset I became, as I am accustomed and familiar with most all objects flying whether I am close to the ground or at higher altitudes. I observed the chain of these objects passing another high snow-covered ridge in between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams and as, the first one was passing the south crest of this ridge the last object was entering the northern crest of the ridge. As I was flying in the direction of this particular ridge, I measured it and found it to be approximately five miles so I could safely assume that the chain of these saucer like objects were at least five miles long. I could quite accurately determine their pathway due to the fact that there were several high peaks that were a little this side of them as well as higher peaks on the other side of their pathway."

Arnold wasn't going to stop telling all the people who were fascinated by his amazing sighting: "As the last unit of this formation passed the southern-most high snow-covered crest of Mt. Adams, I looked at my sweep second hand and it showed that they had travelled the distance in one minute and forty-two seconds. Even at the time this timing did not upset me as I felt confident after I would land there would be some explanation of what I saw. A number of news men and experts suggested that I might have been seeing reflections or even a mirage. This I know to be absolutely false, as I observed these objects not only through the glass of my airplane but turned my airplane sideways where I could open my window and observe them with a completely unobstructed view. (Without sun glasses.) Even though two minutes seems like a very short time to one on the ground, in the air in two minutes time a pilot can observe a great many things and anything within his sight of vision probably as many as fifty or sixty times."

Things were not done yet: "I continued my search for the marine plane for another fifteen or twenty minutes and while searching for this marine plane, what I had just observed kept going through my mind. I became more disturbed, so after taking a last look at Tieton Reservoir I headed for Yakima. I might add that my complete observation of these objects, which I could even follow by their flashes as they passed Mt. Adams, was around two and one-half or three minutes -- although, by the time they reached Mt. Adams they were out of my range of vision as far as determining shape or form. Of course, when the sun reflected from one or two or three of these units, they appeared to be completely round; but, I am making a drawing to the best of my ability, which I am including, as to the shape I observed these objects to be as they passed the snow covered ridges as well as Mt. Rainier. When these objects were flying approximately straight and level, they were just a black thin line and when they flipped was the only time I could get a judgment as to their size. These objects were holding an almost constant elevation; they did not seem to be going up or coming down, such as would be the case of rockets or artillery shells. I am convinced in my own mind that they were some type of airplane, even though they didn't conform with the many aspects of the conventional type of planes that I know."

Arnold quickly realized that something amazing was going on: "Although these objects have been reported by many other observers throughout the United States, there have been six or seven other accounts written by some of these observers that I can truthfully say must have observed the same thing that I did; particularly, the descriptions of the three Western [Cedar City, Utah] Air Lines employees, the gentleman [pilot] from Oklahoma City and the locomotive engineer from Illinois, plus Capt. Smith and Co-Pilot Stevens of United Air Lines. Some descriptions could not be very accurate taken from the ground unless these saucer-like disks were at a great height and there is a possibility that all of the people who observed peculiar objects could have seen the same thing I did, but, it would have been very difficult from the ground to observe these for more than four or five seconds, and there is always the possibility of atmospheric moisture and dust near the ground which could distort one's vision.

"I have in my possession letters from all over the Unites States and people who profess that these objects have been observed over other portions of the world, principally Sweden, Bermuda, and California. I would have given almost anything that day to have had a movie camera with a telephoto lens and from now on I will never be without one - - but, to continue further with my story. When I landed at Yakima, Wash., airport I described what I had seen to my very good friend, Al Baxter, who listened patiently and was very courteous but in a joking way didn't believe me. I did not accurately measure the distance between these two mountains until I landed at Pendleton, Oregon, that same day where I told a number of pilot friends of mine what I had observed and they did not scoff or laugh but suggested they might be guided missiles or something new. In fact several former Army pilots informed me that they had been briefed before going into combat overseas that they might see objects of similar shape and design as I described and assured me that I wasn't dreaming or going crazy.

And, finally, for Arnold: "I quote Sonny Robinson, a former Army Air Forces pilot who is now operating dusting operations at Pendleton, Oregon, “that what you observed, I am convinced, is some type of jet or rocket propelled ship that is in the process of being tested by our government or even it could possibly be by some foreign government.” Anyhow, the news that I had observed these spread very rapidly and before the night was over I was receiving telephone calls from all parts of the world; and, to date, I have not received one telephone call or one letter of scoffing or disbelief. The only disbelief that I know of was what was printed in the papers. I look at this whole ordeal as not something funny as some people have made it out to be. To me it is mighty serious and since I evidently did observe something that at least Mr. John Doe on the street corner or Pete Andrews on the ranch has never heard about, is no reason that it does not exist.

"Even though I openly invited an investigation by the Army and the FBI as to the authenticity of my story or a mental or a physical examination as to my capabilities, I have received no interest from these two important protective forces of our country; I will go so far as to assume that any report I gave to the United and Associated Press and over the radio on two different occasions which apparently set the nation buzzing, if our Military intelligence was not aware of what I observed, they would be the very first people that I could expect as visitors. I have received lots of requests from people who told me to make a lot of wild guesses. I have based what I have written here in this article on positive facts and as far as guessing what it was I observed, it is just as much a mystery to me as it is to the rest of the world." In essence, that is the story of Kenneth Arnold and Flying Saucers. But, a lot of people don't know there were far more better Saucer cases in that exciting period of the summer of 1947. In other words, Arnold was the most famous one in 1947. But, there were greater incidents. So, let's have a look at some of those other summer 1947 events.

(Nick Redfern)

The FBI took a significant role in the early 1947 Saucer cases.

The U.S. military noted the following in its “Analysis of Flying Objects in the US” document: “During April 1947, two employees of the Weather Bureau Station at Richmond, Virginia, reported seeing a strange metallic disk on three occasions…One observation was at 15,000 feet when a disk was followed for 15 seconds. The disk appeared metallic, shaped like an ellipse with a flat bottom and a round top…The disk appeared to be moving rather rapidly, although it was impossible to estimate its speed.” Then, there is the following from the USAF, which describes a notable encounter on June 28, 1947, just four days after Kenneth Arnold’s historic encounter. According to the Air Force, “While flying at 10,000 feet on a course of 300 degrees, 30 miles northwest of Lake Mead, Nevada, an Air Force lieutenant reported seeing five or six while circular objects in close formation and traveling at an estimated speed of 285 miles per hour.” Less than twenty-four hours later, the Air Force documentation shows, “…a party of three, two of them scientists, were motoring along Highway 17 toward the White Sands, New Mexico, V-2 firing grounds and reported seeing a large disk or sphere moving horizontally at a high speed and an estimated altitude of 10,000 feet. It was of uniform shape and had no protruding surfaces such as wings. The object was in sight for about 60 seconds before it disappeared to the northeast. The three observers agreed on the details of the sighting except that one thought he had seen vapor trails.

(Nick Redfern)

Encounters at White Sands, 1947.

Then there are the events which occurred on July 7, also referenced in the Air Force documentation: “On 7 July 1947, five Portland, Oregon police officers reported varying numbers of disks flying over different parts of the city. All observations were made within a minute or two of 1305 hours. On the same day, William Rhodes of Phoenix, Arizona allegedly saw a disk circling his locality during sunset and took two photographs. The resulting pictures…show a disk-like object with a round front and a square tail in plan form. These photographs have been examined by experts who state they are true photographic images and do not appear to be imperfection in the emulsion or imperfections in the lens.” And the reports just kept coming and coming: “On 10 July 1947, Mr. Woodruff, a Pan-American Airways mechanic reported a circular object flying at high velocity, paralleling the earth's surface and leaving a trail which appeared as a ‘burning up’ of the cloud formation. The sighting occurred near Harmon Field, Newfoundland. Two other persons also saw the trail which remained in the sky for about an hour and was photographed by another PAA employee. The resulting photographs support Mr. Woodruff'’s observation as far as the sky cleavage is concerned.” There's no doubt that Kenneth Arnold started the era of the Flying Saucer; but, as the data above shows, there were certainly far greater cases.

Black holes are confounding objects that stretch physics to its limits. The most massive ones lurk in the centers of large galaxies like ours. They dominate the galactic center, and when a star gets too close, the black hole’s powerful gravitational force tears the star apart as they feed on it. Not even the most massive stars can resist.

But supermassive black holes (SMBHs) didn’t start out that massive. They attained their gargantuan mass by accreting material over vast spans of time and by merging with other black holes.

There are large voids in our understanding of how SMBHs grow and evolve, and one way astrophysicists fill those voids is by watching black holes as they consume stars.

Everyone knows we can’t directly observe black holes because not even light can escape them. But black holes exert near total control over their immediate surroundings, and as they bend matter near them to their will, that matter creates a spectacle of light across multiple wavelengths.

Astronomers have powerful tools to observe all that light. One of them is NASA’s NuSTAR, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array. It’s a space telescope that was launched in 2012. It observes the x-rays from astrophysical sources like SMBHs.

NuSTAR played a critical role in a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal. Its title is “The Tidal Disruption Event AT2021ehb: Evidence of Relativistic Disk Reflection and Rapid Evolution of the Disk–Corona System.” The lead author is Yuhan Yao, a graduate student at Caltech.

When a black hole tears apart a star that gets too close, it’s called a tidal disruption event (TDE.) AT2021ehb is the name of a TDE that occurred at an SMBH in a galaxy about 250 million light-years from Earth. The SMBH is about 10 million times more massive than our Sun. It’s the fifth-closest example of a black hole destroying a star, and it gave astrophysicists an advantageous opportunity to study TDEs with NuSTAR and other telescopes.

Black holes are sometimes surrounded by vast disks of material called accretion disks. The disks are accumulations of gas that have formed over long periods of time, sometimes millennia. The disks can be billions of miles wide, and as they swirl toward the black hole, the gas heats up and can outshine entire galaxies. These are the black holes that astrophysicists can observe because, without the disk and its light, the black hole is just a black hole.

Even though the disk is bright, when the black hole tears apart a star and consumes it, the light from that TDE is still visible. The TDE can take as little as a few weeks or months from start to finish, which makes them viable targets for observation. Astrophysicists are especially interested in events that they can observe in their entirety for obvious reasons.

When the black hole in this TDE tore apart the doomed star, there was a delayed but dramatic rise in x-ray emissions. The x-rays are a signal that the TDE was creating super-heated material in a structure above the black hole called a corona. This is where NuSTAR comes in. When it comes to space telescopes, NuSTAR is best at observing x-rays in detail, and AT2021ehb’s proximity to us gave astrophysicists a remarkable opportunity to observe the corona and what happens to stellar material before a black hole totally devours it.

The region nearest the black hole is tightly-packed. This heats the gas to extreme temperatures, stripping electrons from atoms and creating plasma. The corona is made of this billion-degree plasma. The exact cause of its formation is still being studied, but it likely has something to do with the magnetic field lines in the accretion disk. The lines are predictable in the outer regions of the disk, but closer in, the field lines might tangle and break and reconnect. That activity could accelerate particles so much that they form the superheated corona and emit x-rays.

This image illustrates how magnetic field lines are arranged around a black hole. A 2022 study showed that black holes form coronas before they can emit jets. Image Credit: M. Weiss/CfA

This image illustrates how magnetic field lines are arranged around a black hole. A 2022 study showed that black holes form coronas before they can emit jets.

Image Credit: M. Weiss/CfA

“Tidal disruption events are a sort of cosmic laboratory,” said study co-author Suvi Gezari, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “They’re our window into the real-time feeding of a massive black hole lurking in the center of a galaxy.”

A previous 2022 study in Nature Astronomy showed that when a black hole emits its jets, it carries material from the corona with them. “It sounds logical, but there has been a debate for twenty years about whether the corona and the jet were simply the same thing,” said astrophysicist Mariano Méndez, who was the lead author of that study. “Now we see that they arise one after the other and that the jet follows from the corona.”

But that study wasn’t based on observations of a TDE. This study took our understanding even further, showing the link between a star that got too close to a black hole and the formation of the corona, the precursor to a black hole’s relativistic jets.

When a star gets too close to a black hole, the side of the star nearest the hole gets torn apart first. That destroys the star’s spherical form and creates a stream of gas that flows to the black hole’s accretion disk and starts swirling around the hole. As the stream of material whips around the hole, it collides with itself. Scientists think the collisions create shockwaves and outward flows of gas. Those flows emit light across the spectrum, including UV and X-rays.

This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star, torn to shreds as it was being devoured by a supermassive black hole. NASA/JPL-Caltech

This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star, torn to shreds as it was being devoured by a supermassive black hole.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Eventually, the material settles down, and its light emissions quiet down, too. It took about 100 days for the star to be torn apart, for the material to heat up, and then to cool down. The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) was the first to spot the TDE on March 1st, 2021. Then NASA’s Swift Observatory and Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope performed their own observations. Each of them is more sensitive to different wavelengths of light, and when they work together, they give more complete pictures of complex astrophysical events like TDEs.

But after the initial period of heating up and then cooling down, something unexpected happened.

About 300 days after ZTF first spotted the black hole destroying the star, NASA’s NuSTAR performed its own observations. NuSTAR found the hot corona, but scientists were surprised when there were no jets. Coronae usually appear with relativistic jets coming from opposite sides of a black hole.

“We’ve never seen a tidal disruption event with X-ray emission like this without a jet present, and that’s really spectacular because it means we can potentially disentangle what causes jets and what causes coronae,” said lead author Yuhan Yao. “Our observations of AT2021ehb are in agreement with the idea that magnetic fields have something to do with how the corona forms, and we want to know what’s causing that magnetic field to get so strong.”

This figure from the study shows some of the light from the TDE detected in different wavelengths by different observatories. The top panel shows UV and Optical light spiking near the beginning of the event and then evening out. But the middle panel shows the spike in X-ray emissions that NuSTAR observed (purple.) The hot corona created the X-ray emissions. Image Credit: Yuhan Yao et al 2022

Image Credit: Yuhan Yao et al 2022 ApJ 937 8

AT2021ehb is different from other observed TDEs. It’s brighter than any other non-jetted TDE. The brightness peaked at 30 keV, which is 300 million degrees. Its brightness allowed the researchers to “… obtain a series of high-quality X-ray spectra, including the first hard X-ray spectrum of a non-jetted TDE up to 30 keV,” the authors write in their paper.

This figure from the study shows how much brighter AT2021ehb is than 30 other non-jetted TDEs also detected by the ZTF. It compares the brightness in what’s called the g-band. The g-band is the optical wavelength of light that we see as green. The y-axis shows absolute magnitude, which is a reverse logarithmic scale. So though AT2021ehb appears below the others on the graph, it’s actually much brighter.

Image Credit: Yuhan Yao et al 2022 ApJ 937 8

The intricate behaviour of light across the spectrum paints the picture of what’s going on in these complex events. This study ties TDEs to the formation of a black hole’s corona and then, eventually, its jets. But it’s only one TDE, and astrophysicists need more observations of TDEs to build their understanding of the relationships between all three.

Lead author Yao is leading an effort to find more TDEs. Only more data from telescopes like NuSTAR and others can strengthen our understanding of black holes, TDEs, coronae, and jets.

“We want to find as many as we can,” Yao said.