Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
07-01-2023
Arecibo Studied 191 Asteroids That Flew Past the Earth. All the Data are Available in a new Paper
Arecibo Studied 191 Asteroids That Flew Past the Earth. All the Data are Available in a new Paper
Even from beyond the grave, Arecibo is still contributing to new discoveries. Back in October, researchers released a “treasure trove of data” from what was then the world’s most powerful radio telescope on the radar signatures of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). Not only will these observations help defend the planet if any of those asteroids happen to be hazardous, but they can also help the burgeoning asteroid mining industry scan for targets.
Even though this is the largest data dump of its kind, it still only covers 191 asteroids of the 30,000 known NEAs. Those asteroids were scanned between December 2017 and December 2019 using a technique known as delay-Doppler radar. Radar is one of the most important wavelengths to study these objects with, as it allows scientists to get a much higher resolution than other ground-based sensing techniques.
A resolution of 7.5m is pretty precise for the number of asteroids in the study – most had only been seen as faint dots on an image plate beforehand. It’s also helpful in understanding a few other interesting characteristics of the asteroids, such as spin periods and sizes. But what might be even more interesting is their polarization.
Astronomy Cast Episode paying homage to the Arecibo Observatory.
The polarization of an object is indicative of what is on the surface and potentially what is then under the surface of these bodies. That is of particular interest to asteroid mining companies, and the Arecibo release contains that data for 110 of the asteroids, and a few of them were particularly interesting.
There is a shortage of NEAs that are “metal rich,” which is one of the main characteristics that asteroid miners are looking for in a potential mining prospect. Two of the 110 asteroids studied seemed to have high albedos, indicating that they could be metal-rich – a rare find in the area around Earth.
Potentially more interesting, though, is one particular asteroid – or, more accurately, a binary pair of asteroids called 2017 YE5. This binary page has high albedo but relatively low density, leading scientists to believe that it might be full of ice rather than metal. Water is also of particular interest to asteroid miners, as it can be a key component in one of the most in-demand substances in space – rocket fuel.
UT video on what we could do with a NEA if we were able to capture it.
Another potentially exciting finding in the data set is the discovery of five E-type asteroids. These asteroids, which contain significant concentrations of a mineral called enstatite, could be a source of silicon, magnesium, and oxygen. Arecibo saw these asteroids for what they were; however, previous data sets didn’t identify the specific characteristics that mark them as E-type.
As with all of these data set releases, there’s still more work to be done, as there might be other misclassified asteroids lurking. But it shows that, even years after it collapsed into a pile of rubble, Arecibo still provides the scientific community with more and more insights.
LED Tech Makes UFOs Over Taiwan Building, Jan 6, 2022, UFO Sighting News. Video.
LED Tech Makes UFOs Over Taiwan Building, Jan 6, 2022, UFO Sighting News. Video.
I saw and recorded this over Taiwans tallest building, once the tallest building. Just LED technology, but it just goes to show whats possible with new modern lights, and could even be used on day for Project Blue Beam, which is a program to create fake UFOs over major cities worldwide in order to unite all countries into one world government. Also, some are saying Blue beam is not real, and yet, the three
US Air Force unveils B-21 Raider - dubbed the 'most advanced military aircraft ever built' - with cutting-edge stealth bombers costing $750 million apiece
US Air Force unveils B-21 Raider - dubbed the 'most advanced military aircraft ever built' - with cutting-edge stealth bombers costing $750 million apiece
US Air Force publicly unveiled its next-generation stealth bomber in Palmdale, California on Friday night
B-21 Raider is the most advanced long-range, stealth intercontinental strategic bomber in the world
Cutting-edge stealth technology makes it virtually 'invisible' to enemy radar and detection
Bomber, named for WWI's 'Doolittle Raiders,' is capable of conventional and thermonuclear strikes
The US Air Force has publicly unveiled its next-generation stealth bomber, which has been called the 'most advanced military aircraft ever built.'
Pentagon officials and representatives of contractor Northrop Grumman revealed the B-21 Raider at a dramatic ceremony in Palmdale, California on Friday night.
As a crew of airmen drew back the tarp covering the sophisticated bomber, a cheer went up from the crowd of invited guests, excited to get their first glimpse of the plane after years of anticipation.
The ceremony started with a flyover of the three US bombers still in service: the B-52 Stratofortress, the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit. Then the hangar doors slowly opened and the B-21 was towed partially out of the building.
'This isn't just another airplane,' Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. 'It's the embodiment of America's determination to defend the republic that we all love.'
Similar in shape to the B-2, a 'flying wing' design already in the Air Force's inventory, the B-21 be able to deliver both conventional and nuclear weapons around the world due to its long-range and mid-air refueling capabilities.
Each B-21, billed as a 'sixth generation bomber', was projected to cost approximately $550 million each in 2010 dollars, or about $750 million in today's inflation-adjusted dollars.
Pentagon officials and representatives of contractor Northrop Grumman revealed the B-21 Raider (seen under a large tarp) at a dramatic ceremony in Palmdale, California on Friday night
Each B-21, which can deliver both conventional and nuclear bombs, was projected to cost approximately $550 million each in 2010 dollars, or about $750 million in today's inflation-adjusted dollars
Similar in shape to the B-2, a 'flying wing' design already in the Air Force's inventory, the B-21 will also be able to deliver nuclear weapons around the world because of long-range and mid-air refueling capabilities
'This isn't just another airplane,' Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. 'It's the embodiment of America's determination to defend the republic that we all love.'
The Air Force planned to buy at least 100 of the planes and begin to replace B-1 and B-2 bombers.
The service has estimated that the program will likely cost at least $203 billion over 30 years to develop, purchase and maintain the B-21 fleet.
The B-21 is part of the Pentagon's efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which also includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China's rapid military modernization.
China is on track to have 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, and its gains in hypersonics, cyber warfare and space capabilities present 'the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and the free and open international system,' the Pentagon said this week in its annual China report.
Northrop is calling the plane a sixth generation aircraft given its ability to connect to other aircraft and easily integrate future weapons into its systems architecture.
Other changes include advanced materials used in coatings to make the bomber harder to detect, Austin said.
'Fifty years of advances in low-observable technology have gone into this aircraft,' Austin said. 'Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect a B-21 in the sky.'
Other advances likely include new ways to control electronic emissions, so the bomber could spoof adversary radars and disguise itself as another object, and use of new propulsion technologies, several defense analysts said.
It also features more durable stealth-enabling low observable surface material that will require less maintenance and keep operations costs and downtime to a minimum, Doug Young, sector vice president and general manager at Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems, told Reuters in an interview.
'This aircraft was possible because of American innovation,' said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the ceremony
As a crew of airmen drew back the tarp covering the sophisticated bomber, a cheer went up from the crowd of invited guests, excited to get their first glimpse of the plane after years of anticipation
Pentagon officials and representatives of contractor Northrop Grumman revealed the B-21 Raider at a dramatic ceremony in Palmdale, California on Friday night
The crowd of guests is seen at the unveiling ceremony where they caught the first glimpse of the plane
The US Air Force finally unveiled its secret B-21 stealth bomber aircraft on Friday in Palmdale, California, which is touted to be virtually 'invisible' to all enemy stealth radars and will included the latest features in military tech
While the Raider may resemble the B-2, once you get inside, the similarities stop, said Kathy Warden, chief executive of Northrop, which is building the bomber.
'The way it operates internally is extremely advanced compared to the B-2, because the technology has evolved so much in terms of the computing capability that we can now embed in the software of the B-21,' Warden said.
Northrop beat out a team comprised of Boeing and Lockheed Martin when it won the 2015 contract to make the bomber, alongside suppliers including engine maker Pratt & Whitney, Collins Aerospace, GKN Aerospace, BAE Systems and Spirit Aerosystems.
The rollout at Northrop's Plant 42 in Palmdale provided the first photographs of the new bomber. So far, only artist renderings have been published.
Six of the planes, which is to have its first flight in mid-2023, are in various stages of assembly. More than 8,000 people from Northrop Grumman, industry partners and the Air Force work on the program today which consists of more than 400 suppliers in 40 states.
THE B-21'S NEWEST FEATURES FOR MODERN WARFARE
The B-21's features groundbreaking stealth technology built on top of more than three decades and six generations of US bomber innovation.
Northrop boasts that the new aircraft will included advance materials that will greatly reduced infrared, acoustic, electromagnetic, visual and radar signatures, making it virtually undetectable.
The bomber's stealth tech is expected to counteract even the latest Russian and Chinese surface-to-air missiles, something '90 percent of the nation's current bomber fleet is incapable of doing,' the company said.
The B-21 will also include a 'digital bomb bay', which will allow the aircraft to integrate new weapons faster than ever before. It ensures that the bomber can be readily and affordably upgraded.
Northrop Grumman unveils the B-21 Raider, a new high-tech stealth bomber developed for the U.S. Air Force
The B-21 Raider is set to replace the $2bn per plane B-2 Spirit - and features a smaller wingspan and price tag of $639m. Unlike its predecessor, the B-21 will be able to go on unmanned bomber and surveillance missions anywhere in the world
An early artist rendering of the plane is seen. Developers Northrop Grumman said the aircraft will also use AI-controlled sensors to share data with all branches of the military in record time for coordinated strikes
The new system grants the aircraft the ability to be nuclear-capable and carry an estimated payload of 30,000 pounds of firepower.
Additionally, the B-21 will come with AI-controlled sensors, which Northrop said would be able to identify enemy targets and share intelligence with allies for coordinated strikes in record time.
The system will be able to share data with the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force.
'The B-21 provides utility to accomplish our nation's security objective in every scenario imaginable,' retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula told the Wall Street Journal. 'No other weapons system can do that.'
'The B-21 is America's China-deterrence bomber,' said Mark Gunzinger, a retired bomber pilot who flew the B-52.
A FULLY REMOTE STEALTH BOMBER
Unlike its predecessor, the B-2 Spirit, the B-21 Raider is expected to allow for unmanned missions.
While the current plans for the Raider include a crew of two, the Air Force has said that future aircraft must be able to be completely remote.
Representatives for Northrop called the B-21 'pioneering' and 'technological excellence.'
'The B-21 is the most advanced military aircraft ever built and is a product of pioneering innovation and technological excellence,' said Northrop sector vice president and general manager Dough Young.
A teaser for the unveiling of the B-21 Raider released by aerospace and technology contractor Northrop Grumman
HOW DOES IT COMPETE WITH RUSSIA AND CHINA?
The stealth aspect of the B-21 Raider is touted as its main asset against Russian and Chinese forces.
Like its predecessor, the B-21 is expected to be a subsonic aircraft, meaning it will fly slower than 768 mph.
That puts it at a notable disadvantage against China's J-20 stealth fighter, which flies at more than 1,300 mph and is capable of carrying 24,000 pounds of payload.
The B-21 will also be slower than Russia's SU-57, which can hit a top speed of 1,330 mph and reportedly saw its first operational use in November when officials claimed it downed a Ukrainian jet.
Despite the slow speed, Northup claims the B-21 will be among the most undetectable aircrafts in the sky, capable of hiding from foreign nation's radar system.
The Air Force is planning to buy at least 100 of the B-21 Raider. Pictured: A rendering of jet released by the US Air Force
Russia currently touts the most capable surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, which can shoot down stealth aircrafts from 250 miles away.
China currently employs is HQ-17 SAM system, which can track 24 different targets and shot two down at the same time from nine miles away.
Although there have been rumors that China has developed a new radar capable of detecting any and all stealth aircrafts, they have been rejected by military experts.
The Department of Defense has said that a new generation of stealth bombers are needed for America's national security imperative, which includes deterring conflicts in the South China Sea.
Earth has an 'evil twin' - Venus explained by NASA scientist
NASA Director of Planetary Science, Dr. Lori Glaze explains why Venus is known as Earth's evil twin. Venus: The scorching second planet from the sun: https://www.space.com/44-venus-second...
Credit: NASA
RELATED
See 133 days of the Sun in 2 minute time-lapse
Watch the Sun over the course of 133 days in 2022, as viewed by NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory. The time-lapse runs from August to December.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Orion is Back in Florida After Artemis I on This Week at NASA – January 6, 2023
The Orion spacecraft is back in Florida after Artemis I, a direct deposit on Mars, and an insightful mission comes to an end. These are a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!
Credit: NASA
SpaceX Starship Updates, Transporter 6, Stoke Space & A Crazy Future Awaits Compilation
Welcome to 2023, and a really interesting set of topics today to kick the year off. A bunch of neat new things to discuss at Starbase Texas. SpaceX Starship Updates of course, but the new device to ensure the Orbital Launch Mount can support the full 5,000 tonnes of a Fully Stacked and Loaded Starship. A very exciting launch and return to landing site for Falcon 9, but also some super interesting payloads to talk about within that Transporter 6 mission. A brand new fully reusable vehicle by Stoke Space with only a metal heat shield? How is that going to work? And then we worked hard on a new compilation to re-inspire and remind myself and all of us, why a Crazy Future Awaits if SpaceX can nail Starship and its future plans. This year is already looking very exciting as we count down to the biggest tests of the Starship yet.
What's Going On In This SpaceX Rocket Video?
NSF's John Galloway talks through interesting things you can see on the Falcon 9 rocket cam video released by SpaceX. The original video was found on SpaceX's Twitter feed, showing a single take of the booster launch and landing for the Transporter-6 mission from Cape Canaveral SLC-40. Twitter video source quality was 720p. Edited by Thomas Hayden.
If The Universe Was Created from Nothing, It Could Mean Physics Is Fake!?
There are a number of different theories about how the universe may have formed Some scientists believe that the universe may have come into being through a process known as cosmic inflation. In contrast, others think it may have arisen from the collapse of a previous universe. Still, others believe the universe has always existed and has no beginning or end. Ultimately, the question of how the universe came into being is one that remains the subject of much debate and study.
The Milky Way is a tremendous structure in space containing billions of stars and trillions of planets. In their turn, these objects are surrounded by gigantic clouds of interstellar dust and scorching hot gas streams. By mutually interacting, all these components make up the bizarre and fascinating picture called galaxy. And today we invite you on an exciting journey across it.
American FIRST B-21 Raider The Whole World Is Afraid Of
This is America's first extremely long-range intercontinental strategic bomber in three decades. A sixth-generation stealth aircraft that can carry both nuclear and conventional weapons, operate in both manned and unmanned modes, control a swarm of drones, and conduct electronic attacks. All eyes are on the spotlight of today’s video, the $200 billion B-21 Raider, the first prototypes of which will be presented as early as December, 2022.
Reports of 'UFO abduction rays' are sweeping across the US.
Residents in several states have been left in awe after witnessing the atmospheric phenomenon known as pillars of light that some liken to beams from alien spacecraft.
AccuWeather Meteorologist David Samuhel said in a statement: 'Typically, ice crystals are small enough to remain suspended in the air and only form when temperatures are below zero [F].
'In most instances, temperatures are minus 10 to 20 degrees or colder.'
Residents in several states, including Washington state (pictured), have been left in awe after witnessing the atmospheric phenomenon known as pillars of light that some liken to beams from alien spacecraft
Most of the pillars of light were observed in the past week as a deep freeze swept across much of the nation.
Some states, like Minnesota, saw temperatures drop to minus six degrees.
Witnesses have noted that the pillars seem brighter and taller than in years past, which might be a result of the extreme cold.
Light pillars are formed when light rays are reflected off of horizontally aligned ice crystals suspended in or falling slowly through the air.
The crystals act like a series of tiny mirrors in the sky, reflecting light as they slowly fall to the ground.
While the light is actually coming from ground level or higher in the sky, it appears to observers to come from various points above or below the natural source, forming the beam of light.
Although your brain may think the pillars are there, they are an optical illusion and form in the same way that virtual images and objects reflected in mirrors appear to exist behind the plane of the mirror.
Specific conditions are required for forming light pillars — it must be below freezing, and the air must be virtually wind-free.
Without this, the tiny hexagonal ice crystals would be disturbed, but in very calm conditions, they naturally orient themselves horizontally as they fall through the air.
The presence of horizontal crystals across various altitudes causes the light source's reflection to elongate into a column.
Most of the pillars of light were observed in the past week as a deep freeze swept across much of the nation. Pictured are the pillars in Oregon
Specific conditions are required for forming light pillars (like these in Iowa) — it must be below freezing, and the air must be virtually wind-free
Without this, the tiny hexagonal ice crystals would be disturbed, but in very calm conditions, they naturally orient themselves horizontally as they fall through the air. This image was taken in Iowa
Light pillars are often seen in colder climates in the autumn and winter when temperatures are low enough for ice to form in the atmosphere — typically when ground-level temperatures fall beneath 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Samuhel said the pillars occur under high pressure without any storm present.
'There is no tie between storms and the pillars,' he continued.
'A storm system would disrupt the pillar formation with wind and precipitation.
Light pillars are often seen in colder climates in the autumn and winter when temperatures are low enough for ice to form in the atmosphere — typically when ground-level temperatures fall beneath 10 degrees Fahrenheit
And while the pillars of light may mimic auroras, they differ because the beams are much smaller than the northern lights that can cover miles of the sky.
'Auroras are observed across a much wider area since they occur many miles up in the atmosphere,' Samuhel said.
'Light pillars occur close to the ground in the lowest levels of the atmosphere.'
Recently, the Pentagon’s new investigative UFO office said it had received “several hundred” reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, as they prefer to call them.
With recent UFO sightings in rural Wisconsin, in the skies above India, over central Florida, and now this latest report out of Las Vegas, the number of reports that the Pentagon is receiving won’t be slowing down anytime soon.
The aforementioned UFO sighting in Las Vegas took place around Christmas with numerous people taking to social media to share what they had witnessed and ask questions.
When people in Las Vegas are concerned about weird lights in the sky, then you know something is definitely off.
The witnesses stated that they saw random red and white glowing lights through the clouds in the night sky.
In a TikTok video that captured a good look at the lights, it almost appears as to be like the Upside Down from Stranger Things, only in real life.
The strange red and white glowing UFOs were also captured on video by others in the area.
Workers at the Sapphire Gentleman’s Club on Sammy Davis Jr. Drive posted the first videos of the phenomenon early on the morning of Friday, Dec. 23. From the parking lot, they filmed what appeared to be groups of red and white lights shining in the clouds.
“Honestly, this is really strange,” a voice can be heard remarking of the lights. “I mean, we’re here every night. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
The people recording the event speculated that it was a UFO hovering above the club, and they weren’t alone. Nexstar’s KLAS heard from a worker at a nearby marijuana-growing business who also saw the lights, claiming they stayed in place for more than an hour.
Of course, some buzzkill from the National Weather Service had to go and spoil the UFO party with his explanation for the red and white UFO lights.
Long pillars of multicolored light streaking the sky seem like the perfect backdrop for impending alien invasion, but in reality, light pillars are a common effect that can be found all over the world.
They do come from above — not extraterrestrials, but tiny crystals of ice hanging in the atmosphere. Ice is very thin, shaped like plates with hexagonal faces. When ice drifts down through the air, it falls close to horizontally. At the top and bottom are the faces with more area. Ice is very reflective, so when light hits those wider faces, it bounces around and reflects off more ice crystals.
That means we get these vertically stacked mirrors floating in the atmosphere. The light hitting it gets reflected up and up (or down and down, depending on the source), and becomes a radiant column in the sky.
Soooo… it was the Upside Down, but they’re blaming it on the atmosphere? Pffft….
"UFO" spotted over Las Vegas
Twitter user Brett Feinstein tweeted a video of the occurrence along with the caption, "There is a #ufo above Sapphire Las Vegas right now!"
In the video, Feinstein captured what looked to be clusters of white and red lights glowing in the skies from the parking lot of a club in Las Vegas. People in the video can be heard talking about the unlikely phenomenon.
Experts are now saying that it was not a UFO
Twitter Screengrab
The Hill reported that scientists said the strange lights were likely just a weather phenomenon. According to a meteorologist from the National Weather Service (NWS) in Las Vegas, there is a good chance that what visitors saw was a phenomenon known as "light pillars" because the lights in the clouds did not appear to move and the cloud temperature was low enough.
The NWS stated on its website that although long streaks of multicoloured light in the sky appear to be the ideal setting for an oncoming extraterrestrial invasion, light pillars are actually a typical phenomenon that may be seen all over the world.
The report further went on to explain that they do originate from above—but not from aliens, but rather from small ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.
"Ice is made of a very thin material that has plates-like hexagonal faces. Ice falls almost horizontally as it floats in the air. The faces with the most area are at the top and bottom. Because ice is highly reflective, light reflects off more ice crystals when it strikes those larger faces. This results in these mirrors that are vertically piled and floating in the sky," it added.
Unsplash
What do you think about this? Tell us in the comments.
Although the U.S. intelligence community, military and government has undertaken countless official (and off-the-record, too) projects pertaining to both mind-control and mind-manipulation, without any doubt whatsoever, the most notorious of all was Project MKUltra: a clandestine operation that operated out of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, and that had its beginnings in the Cold War era of the early 1950s (it should be noted tht. The date of the project’s actual termination is a somewhat hazy one; however, it is known that it was definitely in operation as late as the latter part of the 1960s – and, not surprisingly and regretfully, has since been replaced by far more controversial and deeply hidden projects.To demonstrate the level of secrecy that surrounded Project MKUltra, even though it had kicked off at the dawn of the fifties, its existence was largely unknown outside of the intelligence world until 1975 – when the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission began making their own investigations of the CIA’s mind-control-related activities – in part to determine if (a) the CIA had engaged in illegal activity, (b) the personal rights of citizens had been violated, and (c) if the projects at issue had resulted in fatalities – which they most assuredly and unfortunately did. With that said, let's see what all of this has to do with the Roswell affair of July 1947? And one other thing: before MK-Ultra was in place, mind-control was already in place. That's something I'll talk about soon.
The story that unfolded was both dark and disturbing – in equal degrees. Indeed, the scope of the project – and allied operations, too – was spelled out in an August 1977 document titled The Senate MK-Ultra Hearings that was prepared by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Human Resources, as a result of its probing into the secret world of the CIA. As the document explained: “Research and development programs to find materials which could be used to alter human behavior were initiated in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These experimental programs originally included testing of drugs involving witting human subjects, and culminated in tests using unwitting, non-volunteer human subjects. These tests were designed to determine the potential effects of chemical or biological agents when used operationally against individuals unaware that they had received a drug.” The Committee then turned its attention to the overwhelming secrecy that surrounded these early 1940s/1950s projects: “The testing programs were considered highly sensitive by the intelligence agencies administering them. Few people, even within the agencies, knew of the programs and there is no evidence that either the Executive Branch or Congress were ever informed of them.
(Central Intelligence Agency) The MK-Ultra files that are still around, are now in the public domain, thanks to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
“The highly compartmented nature of these programs may be explained in part by an observation made by the CIA Inspector General that, ‘the knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its missions. The research and development programs, and particularly the covert testing programs, resulted in massive abridgments of the rights of American citizens, and sometimes with tragic consequences, too. As prime evidence of this, the Committee uncovered details on the deaths of two Americans that were firmly attributed to the programs at issue; while other participants in the testing programs were said to still be suffering from the residual effects of the tests as late as the mid-1970s." And as the Committee starkly noted: “While some controlled testing of these substances might be defended, the nature of the tests, their scale, and the fact that they were continued for years after the danger of surreptitious administration of LSD to unwitting individuals was known, demonstrate a fundamental disregard for the value of human life.”
While MKUltra was certainly the most infamous of all the CIA-initiated mind-control programs, it was very far from being an isolated one. Indeed, numerous sub-projects, post-projects and operations initiated by other agencies were brought to the Committee’s attention. One was Project Chatter, which the Committee described thus: “Project Chatter was a Navy program that began in the fall of 1947. Responding to reports of amazing results achieved by the Soviets in using truth drugs, the program focused on the identification and the testing of such drugs for use in interrogations and in the recruitment of agents. The research included laboratory experiments on animals and human subjects involving Anabasis aphylla, scopolamine, and mescaline in order to determine their speech-inducing qualities. Overseas experiments were conducted as part of the project. The project expanded substantially during the Korean War, and ended shortly after the war, in 1953.” Then there was Projects Bluebird and Artichoke. Again, the Committee dug deep and uncovered some controversial and eye-opening data and testimony: “The earliest of the CIA’s major programs involving the use of chemical and biological agents, Project Bluebird, was approved by the Director in 1950. Its objectives were: (a) discovering means of conditioning personnel to prevent unauthorized extraction of information from them by known means, (b) investigating the possibility of control of an individual by application of special interrogation techniques, (c) memory enhancement, and (d) establishing defensive means for preventing hostile control of Agency personnel.”
(Nick Redfern) Mind-manipulation and the world's most famous UFO case.
Now, we come to the matter of the Roswell event and mind-control and manipulation. The late Frank Joyce was a well-known figure in the saga of what did, or didn't, happen on the Foster ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico in early July 1947. At the time of the Roswell event, Joyce was a radio announcer with KGFL, which covered Roswell. He was also the very first person in the media - local or national - to speak with rancher, W.W. Brazel, who found the curious materials. The story goes that Brazel told Joyce that it was not just a huge amount of debris he found, but a number of dead bodies, too. That's when all hell broke loose. Threats were made by a high-ranking officer somewhere in D.C. The staff at KGFL were warned to cease digging into Roswell, and to keep the story off the airwaves. As in permanently. The station's Walt Whitmore, Sr. and Jud Roberts were both threatened. As was Frank Joyce, who did not take kindly to being pushed around. The above issues aside, there is a lesser known - and much weirder - aspect to Joyce's claims. Yes, you can find the story/aspect if you look around (it actually goes back quite a while), but certain portions of the tale still remain shrouded in mystery. Roswell author-investigator Kevin Randle and I email back and forth and from time to time. On March 16 of this year, Kevin shared with me what he personally knew about that certain aspect of the Joyce story. It all revolves around a strange character that Joyce called "The Traveler." It goes like this...
In the wake of the threat made to the people at KGFL - we're talking about just a couple of days later - Walt Whitmore, Sr., had a strange request for Joyce. He asked Joyce to get in his (Whitmore's) car with him. Randle states that Jud Roberts may have been in the car too, but admittedly that's not precisely clear. Their destination, Joyce found out, was due to be the Roswell crash site, over in Lincoln County. Joyce sat in the front, with Whitmore driving. Joyce apparently didn't at first realize that there was someone else in the back-seat. It was the man who became known as "The Traveler." Very bizarrely, according to Joyce, "The Traveler" was dressed in either a gold-colored or bright-yellow suit; not unlike a flight-suit. As Kevin jokingly told me, a Man in Gold, rather than a Man in Black. Now, things get even more surreal. Could they get more surreal? Yep, for sure. Joyce found himself plunged into a definitively drugged-out state. A trance, even. In his mind-warped state, Joyce thought he was communicating with "The Traveler" by some kind of mind-to-mind process. Or, maybe, Joyce was so stoned that this was how it appeared to him.
On arrival, Kevin told me that Whitmore (and, of course, Roberts, if he was indeed with them) entered the Brazel home. Joyce, however, was instructed by Whitmore to hang out in a nearby shack, which drugged-out Joyce did. Brazel then entered the shack, begging Joyce not to say anything else about what happened on the ranch. Joyce, even though things probably still didn't feel quite right, could see how stressed out Brazel was and agreed to let matters rest. When Joyce got back to the car, "The Traveler" was nowhere to be seen. In their 2016 book, The Children of Roswell, Tom Carey and Don Schmitt state that the military was apparently "...still not sufficiently convinced by Joyce's pledge not to say anything, as he was shortly thereafter gathered up and physically removed to a military hospital in Texas for the next year." It all occurred under deeply unclear circumstances. Kevin states that Joyce was taken to a "mental hospital," which mirrors the story of Stanley Glickman, who reacted adversely to the mysterious drink that he gulped down and which left him with emotional problems for years. The story isn't finished, however. There is more about Roswell and mind-manipulation.
(Nick Redfern) From Roswell secrets to mind-control secrets.
Moving on, there is the even less well-known saga of a man named Conrad Zerbe. His name rarely surfaces and he is someone who even most Roswell researchers have failed to pay much attention to. Few researchers ever interviewed the now-dead Zerbe; although Bill Moore did in late 1983. Zerbe's link to the Roswell saga revolves around the matter of a certain, large number of photographs taken out at the crash site of the whatever-it-was that came down on the ranch in the summer of '47. A Roland S. Cliff, a Colonel Loomis, a Mr. Bohanon, and a Captain Ed Guill were in the know, when it came to (A) the matter of what happened and (B) who knew what the photos really showed. In 1980, when the Moore-Berlitz-Moore book, The Roswell Incident, was published and received publicity, Zerbe mused on the possibility of revealing what he knew. Before he had the chance to do so, however, one day in late 1980 there was a knock at the door of his California-based home. Zerbe opened the door and was confronted by a plain-clothes man who flashed government I.D. Thirty-three-years after Roswell, Zerbe was what is, today, termed a "person of interest." Zerbe was told he was not in any trouble, but (there's always a but in these situations...) the man added that he knew Zerbe had expressed a desire to go public (how he knew is anyone's guess). It would not be a wise move, Zerbe was told. He got the message - even though it was a very brief message. No explanation was given as to why Zerbe should stay silent, when people like retired Major Jesse Marcel had not been threatened. In all probability, it was due to the fact that Zerbe knew precisely what the photos showed, too - just like certain colleagues at the old Roswell base in '47.
Somewhat oddly the man in the suit had brought with him a couple of sodas. He significantly lightened up, too, and he quickly changed the subject to what Zerbe had been up to since he left the service, years earlier. Maybe five or six minutes after chugging back the soda Zerbe began to feel strange. He was spaced-out and found himself rambling on to the man and answering his every question without hesitation. He was hit by vertigo and vaguely heard voices in his head. It was whispered mumbling that he could not understand. And then? Nothing. Zerbe had no recollection of the rest of the conversation, or of what happened to the man. He never saw him again, though. It was as if around thirty minutes of time had been wiped from existence. Zerbe suspected, though, that as the soda was bottled, and with screw-tops, that something mind-warping had been surreptitiously put in the drink before the man called and the bottle-top had been carefully replaced and tightened. Zerbe also wondered if after the chemicals hit hard, the man returned the conversation back to Roswell. Although, admittedly, this was just Zerbe speculating. So, we have yet more stories of people finding themselves in curious situations and having their minds played with - all specifically "thanks" to certain drinks given to them by mysterious figures. Have we heard the end of all this? Probably not.
In a recent study published in Astronomy and Astrophysical Letters, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used various computer models to examine 69 confirmed binary black holes to help determine their origin, and found their data results changed based on the model’s configurations. Essentially, the input consistently altered the output, and the researchers wish to better understand both how and why this occurs and what steps can be taken to have more consistent results.
“When you change the model and make it more flexible or make different assumptions, you get a different answer about how black holes formed in the universe,” Sylvia Biscoveanu, an MIT graduate student working in the LIGO Laboratory, and a co-author on the study, said in a statement. “We show that people need to be careful because we are not yet at the stage with our data where we can believe what the model tells us.”
Like binary stars, binary black holes are two massive objects orbiting each other, with both having the ability to potentially collide—or merge—together, with another shared characteristic being black holes are sometimes born from the collapse of dying massive stars, also known as a supernova. But how binary black holes originated remains a mystery, as there are two current hypotheses regarding their formation: “field binary evolution” and “dynamical assembly”.
Field binary evolution involves when a pair of binary stars explode resulting in two black holes in their place, which continue orbiting each other the same as before. Since they initially orbited each other as binary stars, it is believed their spins and tilts should be aligned, as well. Scientists also hypothesize that their aligned spins indicate they originated from a galactic disk, given its relatively peaceful environment.
Dynamical assembly involves when two individual black holes, each with their own unique tilt and spin, are eventually brought together by extreme astrophysical processes, to form their own binary black hole system. It is currently hypothesized that this pairing would likely happen in a dense environment such as a globular cluster, where thousands of stars in close proximity could force two black holes together.
The real question is what fraction of binary black holes originate from each respective method? Astronomers believe this answer lies in the data, specifically black hole spin measurements. Using the 69 confirmed binary black holes, astronomers have determined these massive objects could originate from both globular clusters and galactic disks. The LIGO Laboratory in the United States has worked with its Italian counterpart, Virgo, to ascertain the spins (rotational periods) of the 69 confirmed binary black holes.
“But we wanted to know, do we have enough data to make this distinction?” said Biscoveanu. “And it turns out, things are messy and uncertain, and it’s harder than it looks.”
For the study, the researchers continuously tweaked a series of computer models to ascertain whether their results agreed with each model’s predictions. One such model was configured to assume only a fraction of binary black holes were produced with aligned spins, where the remainder have random spins. Another model was configured to predict a moderately contrasting spin orientation. In the end, their findings indicated the results consistently changed in accordance with the tweaked models. Essentially, results were consistently altered based on the model’s tweaks, meaning more data than the 69 confirmed binary black holes is likely needed to have more consistent results.
“Our paper shows that your result depends entirely on how you model your astrophysics, rather than the data itself,” said Biscoveanu.
“We need more data than we thought, if we want to make a claim that is independent of the astrophysical assumptions we make,” said Dr. Salvatore Vitale, who is an associate professor of physics, a member of the Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT, and lead author of the study.
But how much more data will the astronomers require? Dr. Vitale estimates the LIGO network will be able to detect one new binary black hole every few days, once the network returns to service in early 2023.
“The measurements of the spins we have now are very uncertain,” said Dr. Vitale. “But as we build up a lot of them, we can gain better information. Then we can say, no matter the detail of my model, the data always tells me the same story — a story that we could then believe.”
Trucker records a "Giant Humanoid Figure" on a hill in Aguascalientes, Mexico
Trucker records a "Giant Humanoid Figure" on a hill in Aguascalientes, Mexico
According to Inexplicata, this recording of a giant 'humanoid figure' on a hill in Aguascalientes, Mexico in 2003 was obtained by a trucker driving through the state of Aguascalientes, specifically a section of the road between the capital and Lagos de Moreno, before reaching the toll booth known as "La Chona".
Theories regarding the nature or origin of the creature began to arise among users and although it is unclear what exactly it could have been, the most popular theories were centered on the humanoid figure being a "giant".
Science says that races of giant humans do not exist and never have, but we know that the real history of humanity is deliberately being hidden from us, so could this humanoid figure be a giant from the past but still present on earth?
The video shows what look to be a giant human or humanoid figure walking along the summit of a hill in Aguascalientes, Mexico
Mystery object described as ‘UFO’ eliminated in southern Russia
Mystery object described as ‘UFO’ eliminated in southern Russia
Object spotted in sky above southern Russian region of Rostov on January 3, 2023″
On January 3, a mysterious object described as a “UFO” was shot down in the southern Russian region of Rostov. The governor of the region, Vasily Golubev, reported that the object was a “small-size object in the shape of a ball” flying at an altitude of around one and a half miles above the village of Sultan Sala. In response, the decision was made to “liquidate” the object, and all forces and means were deployed to ensure security, including anti-aircraft defenses.
Local news outlet Pivyet Rostov referred to the incident as a “UFO in the form of a ball” being shot down, and Telegram channels reported on the activation of air defense systems in Rostov. A video shared on the channel Ostorozhna, Novosti showed a shining object flying and then exploding in the sky, with someone heard saying “look, another one has gone.” Witnesses described a “very strong explosion” and their houses shaking due to the activity of the air defenses.
Rostov, located on the border of the Sea of Azov, has been the site of regular shelling and drone attacks during the ongoing war in Ukraine. In October, the region was designated as a “medium-response level” area, with restrictions on movement and increased public order measures put in place. The annexation of four regions in Ukraine, including Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk, has resulted in a “maximum response,” or martial law, being imposed.
**Update** Russia Claims It Shot Down a UFO Over The Rostov Oblast On January 3, 2023. (FOOTAGE)
Earlier today the story broke that Russia claimed to have shot down a UFO, after doing some digging i found 3 clips of this event. I believe that even if it is something offworld there will be a cover up but this is the story so far...
Thanks to the News website "Privet-rostov.ru" for the source of the footage UFO, OVNIs, UFO 2022, OVNI, UFOs, НЛО, UAP, UAPS, OVNI 2022, UAP 2022, GHOST, GHOST 2022
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Artist’s concept of South Korea’s first robotic lunar orbiter, called Danuri, in space.
Credit: Korea Aerospace Research Institute
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s first robotic lunar orbiter, Danuri, entered the lunar orbit after conducting its first lunar orbit insertion maneuver Dec. 16.
The orbiter is circling the moon in an elliptic orbit every 12.3 hours, with a perigee of 109 kilometers and an apogee of 8,920 kilometers, said the science ministry in a Dec. 19 statement.
The first maneuver, done with the firing of thrusters for thirteen minutes from 12:45 p.m. Eastern, “reduced the speed of Danuri from about 8,000 kilometers per hour to 7,500 kilometers per hour,” the ministry said in the statement. “It was confirmed that Danuri had been trapped in lunar gravity in a stable manner, which means it has become a genuine lunar orbiter.”
The ministry said the spacecraft would conduct four more propulsive maneuvers with its thrusters by Dec. 28 to steer it into a circular, low-altitude orbit about 100 kilometers from the lunar surface by Dec. 29. If successful, the 678-kilogram orbiter will go through a brief period of commissioning and tests to begin its yearlong mission from January, with six scientific instruments aboard, including NASA-funded hypersensitive optical camera ShadowCam. The camera is set to collect images of permanently shadowed regions near the moon’s poles to search for evidence of ice deposits, observe seasonal changes, and measure the terrain inside the craters. Collected data will be shared with NASA, which aims to send humans to the moon in the coming years under its Artemis program.
The Korean orbiter, also known as Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), launched into space Aug. 4 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 40. It flew to the moon on a ballistic lunar transfer trajectory, which initially took the spacecraft toward the sun and looped it back to the moon. The route, while much longer than traveling directly toward the moon, allows more fuel efficiency as it leverages the sun’s gravity for travel.
While going to the moon, the orbiter demonstrated “space internet” by sending video and photo files, including a popular Korean band’s music video, at a distance of more than 1.2 million kilometers to Earth. The demonstration was conducted twice — Aug. 25 and Oct. 28 — using a space internet demonstrator developed by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) here, validating an interplanetary internet connection using delay-disruption tolerant networking.
The spacecraft also sent photos of the Earth and the moon’s orbit it took between Sept. 15 and Oct. 15 using a built-in high-resolution camera at a distance of between 1.46 million kilometers and 1.548 million kilometers to Earth.
The Danuri mission marks the beginning of South Korea’s deep space exploration initiative. The country’s leader recently pledged to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon in 2032 and on Mars in 2045. To that end, the government is planning to invest 2.13 billion won ($1.63 billion) in developing a next-generation rocket, KSLV-3, a two-stage vehicle capable of putting up to seven tons of payload into sun-synchronous orbit, 3.7 tons into geostationary transfer orbit, and 1,8 tons into Earth-Moon transfer orbit. As part of this, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) is working to develop kerosene-fueled 100-ton thrust engines in five years.
The leader also promised to double the government’s space development budget in the next five years and funnel at least 100 trillion won ($76.7 billion) into the space sector by 2045. South Korea’s space budget for 2022 is 734 billion won ($563 million).
Somitogenesis is the process by which segmented body structures like vertebrae form in embryos. While the process is well understood in animals like mice or zebrafish it is difficult to study in humans.
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IS PLANET NINE OUT THERE? THIS NEW TELESCOPE COULD FINALLY SETTLE THE LONG-STANDING MYSTERY
IS PLANET NINE OUT THERE? THIS NEW TELESCOPE COULD FINALLY SETTLE THE LONG-STANDING MYSTERY
Its shiny new camera will capture the night sky like never before.
THE CAMERA RESTINGin an impeccably clean, lint-free room at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, resembles an extremely oversized version of the SLR lenses for Nikon or Canon cameras. But it won’t snap family holiday cards or pet portraits.
This massive device has a five-and-a-half foot aperture and a length of nearly 10 feet. Called the LSST Camera, which stands for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, it’s destined for the National Science Foundation’s Vera Rubin Observatory, which is now under construction atop Chile’s Cerro Pachón mountain.
By the end of 2024, the observatory is scheduled to kick off a 10-year project that aims to enhance our understanding of the universe.
Unlike the stunning vistas captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in space or the Subaru Telescope on the ground, the Vera Rubin Observatory won’t stare at just one small patch of sky at a time. As a survey telescope, it’s intended to take nightly wide-angle images of the sky, tracking each mote of light possible from its patch of deep-dark sky in the Atacama Desert.
This enormous camera is headed for the new Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile.
John Wenz
There, the telescope will take in unprecedented amounts of data, mapping the entire southern portion of the night sky. It may offer insight into both dark energy, which makes the universe expand, and dark matter, an elusive type of matter that makes up just over a quarter of the total mass (27 percent) of the universe. (The observatory’s namesake is credited with dark matter’s discovery.)
The telescope could also tell us more about our own home galaxy, the Milky Way, including the structure and the positions of stars — some perhaps too dim to appear in past surveys.
That’s a lot of work on the observatory’s plate. And it has another big task to perform much closer to home, in our own Solar System.
A rendering of the future Vera Rubin Observatory, which could help find new planets.
LSST Project Office
When I toured the SLAC facilities this past September, Aaron Roodman, deputy director of the Vera Rubin Observatory, suggested that astronomers could discover “something like 50 times more than the number of objects that have been observed in our Solar System.”
Some are going to be small — nearby, building-sized asteroids — but others will be distant comets and pluto-like dwarf planets. Overall, it could glimpse six million objects just in our cosmic backyard.
Some of those mysterious objects could even earn recognition as new, bona fide planets.
WHY ASTRONOMERS SUSPECT THERE’S A PLANET NINE OUT THERE
An artist’s concept of the elusive object Sedna.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
In 2003, a strange object called Sedna, which measures 300 miles in radius, was discovered in our Solar System. Sedna is big enough to be considered a dwarf planet and is one of the most distant known objects in the Solar System — it takes 11,400 years to complete one trip around the Sun. At its most distant point, Sedna can swing out an astonishing 937 times the distance between the Sun and Earth. That’s one of the most extreme known orbits of any Solar System body.
Scientists speculated as to what could have caused that unusual orbit, including the possibility that it was captured from another star system that was passing by. Then, in 2012, astronomers discovered 2012 VP113, another object with a Sedna-like orbit. They also found more objects, all clustering near the same area at their closest point to the Sun.
In 2015, some astronomers suggested that these orbits could be associated with a large, still-unidentified planet. A second group, Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), theorized in 2016 that an object with a mass somewhere between Neptune and Earth was behind it. They proposed an orbit and a provisional name: Planet Nine.
Astronomers have yet to find Planet Nine, and some are even growing a bit discouraged — some claim that the clustering of the distant objects doesn't even exist.
But the minds behind Planet Nine’s existence aren’t giving up. “We have been pretty careful about figuring out what the true predictions of the Planet Nine model is, and tracking them as the data set has grown,” Batygin tells Inverse.
At this point, Batygin says his team has found 24 to 25 objects that may be controlled by Planet Nine, compared to just sixfrom the original paper.
Brown and Batygin have examined a series of potential locations for Planet Nine, given that it might sit opposite Sedna and the other objects it bullied into new orbits. But that work has been performed with telescopes with a limited view of a patch of sky.
“THIS PROCESS OF SEARCHING FOR OBJECTS IN THE DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEM IS NOT THAT COMPLICATED.”
And that’s why the introduction of the Vera Rubin Observatory becomes exciting. Because Vera Rubin takes a wider picture of the sky, it could yield a discovery of a new Solar System object in just a few nights.
“Fundamentally, this process of searching for objects in the distant Solar System is not that complicated,” Batygin says. “You take pictures of the sky one out one night after another, and you look for something that has moved.”
It takes around three nights to figure out if an object is local or far away, he says, and then a telescope can begin to detect motion and acceleration.
From there, a fleet of observatories could inspect the new object and figure out what it is. This means that if all goes right, Planet Nine could be found in a matter of nights. But it may take much longer. Ultimately, though, it could be data from the Vera Rubin Observatory that tips scientists off to the mysterious maybe-planet.
“[Vera Rubin Observatory] has a good chance, actually, because we have the combination of light-collecting area and field of view,” Roodman says. “So [even] if it's a dim object, we should have a chance to see it.”
Still, there’s no guarantee that it’ll be immediately visible in the Southern Hemisphere. Indeed, by some projections, the Northern Hemisphere is the place to look. But if the Vera Rubin Observatory finds a ton of distant Solar System objects like Sedna clustered in the same kinds of orbits, it still points the way toward a planet.
That information can be used to make — or break — the Caltech team’s hypothesis.
“If there is no other model that can explain what we see in the night sky, then we're sort of left with no option, no logical option other than to kind of say, well, ‘Planet Nine is probably there,’” Batygin says. “Conversely, if Vera Rubin searches the night sky, and shows that there is no clustering whatsoever, and all of this has somehow been a weird conspiracy of telescope observing strategies or whatever, then we're just wrong.”
OTHER WORLDS TO FIND
The Vera Rubin Observatory could fill in a lot of gaps in our knowledge of the far outer Solar System.
Bruno C. Quint
Kat Volk, a University of Arizona planetary scientist, counts herself among the researchers who have never quite bought the Planet Nine hypothesis.
Partly, Volk thinks the observations may be biased — scientists aren’t seeing all the outer Solar System objects that don’t align, and there are plenty that don’t really fit into the Planet Nine model.
“The evidence for Planet Nine is very weak,” Volk tells Inverse, adding that the observatory could find out if something else is afoot in the outer Solar System.
In 2017, Volk and a colleague proposed an entirely different ninth planet: a Mars-sized object that accounts for other orbital irregularities in the outer Solar System. But Volk says subsequent data weakened the case for this object.
“THERE ARE SOME LARGE OBJECTS OUT THERE WAITING TO BE FOUND.”
The Vera Rubin Observatory could fill in a lot of gaps in our knowledge of the far outer Solar System. It may find out where some of the evidence for another planet is flimsy, and where such a scenario has a firmer footing.
“One of the best things about the Vera Rubin Observatory's [survey] is that it will provide one very large, coherent dataset of detected solar system small bodies,” Volk says. So far, scientists haven’t gotten a clear sense of what objects exist beyond Pluto, and our rough picture was painted from different surveys that each had different limitations.
All in all, a ninth planet may be possible, according to Volk. While she thinks the case for either Planet Nine or even her own hypothetical planet is weak, formation theories about our Solar System suggest that a population of small planets could exist still in its outskirts.
Based on models of planet and planetesimal formation in the early Solar System, it seems likely that some decently large planets “were scattered out during the dynamical upheaval that led to our current planet configuration,” Volk says.
“I don't think there is currently strong evidence for specific large objects in the [trans-Neptunian object] population,” she explains. “But I do think it's likely there are some large objects out there waiting to be found.”
Time Travel For Real This Time with Brian Greene & Neil deGrasse Tyson
Time Travel For Real This Time with Brian Greene & Neil deGrasse Tyson
What type of time travel is used in A Christmas Carol? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer fan questions on time travel, paradoxes, and wormholes with theoretical physicist, Brian Greene. Did Ebenezer Scrooge get pulled through a wormhole?
How did people think about time travel before Einstein? How did the special theory of relativity change how we think about time? Discover time dilation and how speed and gravity affects an object’s passage of time. What type of time travel was Charles Dickens using?
Learn about the possible paradoxes of traveling and meddling with the past. Is there one immutable timeline or many timelines in a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is time to a photon traveling at the speed of light? How would we police time travel if it were possible? Will we even have time travel in the future? If time travel gets invented, why are we not overrun by tourists from the future?
Which films depict time travel best? How are cells affected by time travel? We explore the movement of information in and out of black holes, string theory, and tachyons. Could we theoretically time travel to before the big bang? Finally, is there even a realm to travel to before the Big Bang?
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As we enter into 2023, what can we expect? At Inverse, we aren't in the business of fortune-telling, but the innovations we saw in the last 12 months can help us predict what might be in store for the next — from driver-free transportation to commercial space exploration to (finally) clean energy for all
5. CHEAPER EVS AND DRIVER-FREE SHIPPING
Cheaper options like the 2024 Chevrolet Equinox EV could make electric cars available to broader swaths of the population.
Chevrolet
This year will usher in more affordable EVs, allowing a bigger chunk of the population to drive sustainably. For example, GM is rolling out cheaper models that run for around $30,000, expanding the choices for drivers on a budget. Tesla’s least expensive offering, the Model 3, starts at around $46,990 — while it’s currently the best-selling electric car in the United States, some of these new models could knock the Model 3 off its throne.
If you don’t feel like driving, it may soon get easier to hail an autonomous car. In 2023, Uber plans to launch a fully driverless service, and GM’s robotaxi division (which now operates in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin) aims to enter a “large number of markets.”
Cars aren’t the only mode of transportation to ditch drivers. Autonomous semi-trucks could surge ahead in 2023 and, soon enough, forever change the way we get our goods.
In the coming months, self-driving trucks are planned to hit Texas highways. Companies like Aurora Innovation and TuSimple will start to test their wheels without any human backup drivers — which has concerned some safety advocates, Reutersreported. Driverless semis have already been tested out in Arizona and Arkansas, but Texas is particularly attractive for autonomous truck companies to set up hubs because it sits in the middle of one of the country’s busiest freight routes.
4. COMMERCIAL SPACE FIRSTS
If all goes well, SpaceX’s Starship could finally take off for an orbital test.
SpaceX
Just as in 2022, space magnates are still shooting for the Moon. But before SpaceX can take on lunar landings, it needs to send Starship on its first orbital test flight. Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, thinks that this is the year. SpaceX “will have its first successful orbital flight of the Starship, a game-changing rocket in the effort to get astronauts to the Moon and Mars within a decade,” he tells Inverse.
While it may be a few years before people step foot on the Moon again, uncrewed commercial landers could touch down within a few months. In December, the Japanese firm ispace launched a lunar lander that’s scheduled to touch down in March. If things work out, ispace will become the first private company to land on the Moon — that is, if it isn’t beaten by landers from the U.S.-based companies Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, which are slated to arrive around the same time.
In another victory for private space, SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission could accomplish the first-ever commercial spacewalk. It’s scheduled to take off no earlier than March 2023 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Four passengers, including billionaire mission funder Jared Isaacman, will travel to a maximum orbit of around 745 miles above Earth — the highest of any crewed vehicle since the Apollo missions.
Polaris Dawn will also offer crucial data to scientists on the ground: For example, the astronauts will wear smart contact lenses with tiny sensors that measure eye pressure while in microgravity (past NASA missions haverevealed that space travel affects people’s vision). They’ll also receive a brain scan just hours after splashing down to Earth to examine how microgravity impacts the brain.
Another potential breakthrough: The first methane-powered rocket could reach space this year if United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket aces its first orbital test (which was originally planned for 2020). Methane is more stable than the liquid hydrogen powering most rockets today. It can also be stored at more moderate temperatures than the super-cold ones required for liquid hydrogen. In fact, astronauts could even make methane fuel while on Mars for the journey back home.
3. U.S. WIND FARMS TAKE OFF
The Vineyard Wind 1 project off of Massachusetts is planned to go online this year.
GE Renewable Energy
Bringing offshore wind to the U.S. hasn’t exactly been a breeze, but this year wind energy could finally have its moment: The energy company Avangrid Renewables plans to take the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind project online in 2023. Its Vineyard Wind 1 project, which sits over 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, will offer a capacity of 800 megawatts. Plenty of other wind farms are in the works, including potential projects off the coasts of California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia.
We can also expect a huge win for nuclear energy. The nuclear waste company Posiva will begin operating the world’s first storage facility for nuclear fuel in Olkiluoto, an island off of Finland. The facility will hold up to around 7,000 tons of radioactive uranium, which will be put into copper canisters and buried over 1,300 feet underground. Fortunately for the people living above, the waste will sit guarded for millennia.
2. A DIFFERENT LOOK AT VIRTUAL REALITY
Companies will likely start to market VR and AR headsets for uses beyond gaming, like working from home and exercising.
Meta
If 2022 was the year of Metaverse fails, 2023 could herald its comeback — and improvements in VR and AR tech as a whole.
“I believe we will see virtual reality technology's continued refinement,” Christopher Ball, an assistant professor of augmented and virtual reality at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, tells Inverse.
The Meta Quest 3 headset will be announced later this year, and it will likely be more affordable than the Meta Quest Pro. But the new Quest could pack some advanced features now found exclusively in the Meta Quest Pro, according to Ball.
He also predicts that virtual reality companies may focus less on gaming and ramp up promotion of other uses to consumers, like working from home, exercising, and socializing. For example, the recent partnership between Meta and Microsoft will bring Office 365 apps to VR. And Meta is currently trying to buy Within, a VR company with a popular exercise app called Supernatural — against the wishes of the FTC.
“Hopefully, we will also learn more about Apple’s long-gestating mixed-reality headset. Apple has a strong record of refining consumer technologies with improved software integration,” Ball says. “Therefore, many observers are eagerly anticipating Apple’s entrance into the mixed-reality space, as they may become the trendsetters for extended reality technology and software over the next decade.”
1. A BIOTECH BREAKTHROUGH COULD GO MAINSTREAM
This year, CRISPR gene-editing therapy could finally be delivered to patients.
Shutterstock
After the miraculous success of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines from BioNTech and other pharmaceutical giants, scientists have doubled down on developing more mRNA jabs to protect against a range of potentially deadly diseases. In 2023, BioNTech plans to begin human trials for shots against tuberculosis, malaria, and genital herpes, as reported by Nature.
Another buzzy technology could make inroads this year. The Swiss-American biotechnology company CRISPR Therapeutics could make history by receiving the first-ever regulatory approval for a CRISPR gene-editing therapy in the U.S. and Europe. CRISPR Therapeutics is seeking FDA approval for a treatment for two genetic blood diseases — sickle cell disease and beta thalassaemia. If all goes well, it could even hit the market in the coming months.
THE INVERSE ANALYSIS
Of course, there's no telling how exactly 2023 will play out. But if recent years are any indication, developments that have been decades in the making could finally start to take off. After all, scientists did just manage to bombard hydrogen with lasers long enough to create some mysticalfusion energy.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
EXCLUSIVE: Pentagon ordered to re-investigate 1945 crash of mysterious 'avocado-shaped UFO' dubbed the 'Roswell before Roswell' - as expert reveals eyewitness accounts of the encounter
EXCLUSIVE: Pentagon ordered to re-investigate 1945 crash of mysterious 'avocado-shaped UFO' dubbed the 'Roswell before Roswell' - as expert reveals eyewitness accounts of the encounter
Last week President Biden signed a new military spending bill, amended to incorporate a UFO case from 1945
The sighting involved a crash in New Mexico, about 100 miles from Roswell
Jaques Vallée, a former contractor for the government's UFO office, wrote a book about the case and described it to DailyMail.com
Vallée was the inspiration for François Truffaut's character in Close Encounters
The government's UFO office has been ordered to re-investigate an alleged 1945 crash of a strange object in New Mexico – dubbed the 'Roswell before Roswell'.
A new military spending bill signed into law by President Biden last week was specifically amended to incorporate the intriguing case into a historic review of UFO incidents to be conducted by the Department of Defense.
Jaques Vallée, a former contractor for the government's UFO office and the co-author of a book on the 1945 case, gave an exclusive interview to DailyMail.com about it.
Vallée, a renowned scientist and UFO investigator, was the inspiration for the French scientist character in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, played by François Truffaut.
In his interview, he described the alleged August 1945 crash of an avocado-shaped 'craft' on the edge of the atomic bomb testing site near San Antonio, New Mexico – about 100 miles from the infamous Roswell crash two years later.
Jaques Vallée, a former contractor for the government's UFO office, gave an exclusive interview to DailyMail.com about the 1945 UFO crash
The National Defense Authorization Act, which passed Congress this month, includes a section requiring the Department of Defense's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to review and prepare a report on all previous government investigations of UFOs dating back to 1945.
The bill's text previously only went back to 1947, but a late amendment changed it to '45.
'I was not involved in the drafting of the legislation, but several of my DC friends were, and they got the date of the investigation pushed back to 1945,' Vallée told DailyMail.com.
'Several of the Congressmen involved have the book that Paola Harris and I wrote about our research at [the alleged crash site called] Trinity.'
Vallée and Italian UFO journalist Harris's 2021 book, Trinity: the Best-Kept Secret, was re-released this year with new information, and is mainly based around testimony of three witnesses: a B-52 bomber pilot, and two young sons of a rancher on whose land the UFO supposedly crashed.
An artist's impression of the crash site and UFO is pictured. 'There was a gouge in the earth as long as a football field, and a circular object at the end of it… It was the color of the old pot my mother was always trying to shine up, a dull metallic color,' one witness said
In August 1945 there was a crash of an avocado-shaped 'craft' on the edge of the atomic bomb testing site near San Antonio, New Mexico. Material recovered from the crash is pictured
The two researchers interviewed the family of Lt. Col William Brothy, who said he revealed in the years after the incident that he was sent out to survey the crash site on August 16, 1945.
Vallée and Italian UFO journalist Paola Harris' 2021 book, Trinity: the Best-Kept Secret, was re-released this year with new information
'The first witness was a bomber pilot who was coming in for landing at Alamogordo [the neighboring airbase],' Vallée told DailyMail.com. 'He was asked by the controllers to look at a communication tower that had lost signal.
'He told the story to his family. His son gave us the recollection of what his father had described.
'Flying over, he saw the tower was bent, as if it had been hit by something very hard. And then he saw in the vegetation some distance away a large egg-shaped object. And there were two little kids that he called little Indians, on their horses next to the object.'
Vallée says those two kids were Jose Padilla, 9, and Reme Baca, 7.
Padilla, now 86, became a Highway Patrol officer for 32 years, and Baca, who died in 2013, became a US Marine and later a senior staffer for Washington Governor Dixy Lee Ray.
They kept their story secret for more than 50 years, at last deciding to come forward in 2003 in an interview with a journalist from their hometown.
Joe Padilla pictured as a kid. He kept his story about the crash a secret for over 50 years
Padilla, now 86, became a Highway Patrol officer for 32 years
Interviews with Vallée and Harris decades after the crash saw them describe stumbling across the wreckage of a craft while looking for a lost cow on Padilla's father's ranch by the Rio Grande on August 16, 1945.
'We heard this sound and the ground shook,' Baca said in one interview. 'We saw smoke coming from maybe a couple of canyons down... We worked our way down the ridge.
'There was a gouge in the earth as long as a football field, and a circular object at the end of it… It was the color of the old pot my mother was always trying to shine up, a dull metallic color.'
He said he could feel the heat from the crash 'through the soles of your shoes'. Baca said he picked up a piece of foil-like metal that sprung back to its original shape when folded.
Reme Baca was seven at the time. He died in 2013. He was a Marine and later a senior staffer for Washington Governor Dixy Lee Ray
'Strange-looking creatures were moving around inside,' he added. 'They looked under stress. They moved fast, as if they were able to will themselves from one position to another in an instant. They were shadowy and expressionless, but definitely living beings.
'They had big bulgy eyes. Four foot tall, and they were real thin, needle-thin arms… Their heads looked like a campamocha [praying mantis].
'They seemed like us – children, not dangerous. But we were scared and exhausted.
The boys fled home on their horses and told Padilla's father what they had seen. Faustino Padillo told them it probably belonged to the Army and to ignore it. But they persuaded him to check out the site two days later with state policeman Eddie Apodaca.
Baca and Padillo said the 'craft' was still there, but the debris was gone, the object covered with dirt, and the ground appeared to have been raked.
The next day an Army sergeant named Avila, showed up at the ranch, asking Faustino if they could cut out his fence, put in a gate and grade a road to the crash site for a tractor-trailer, Baca said.
'We have one of our experimental weather balloons that inadvertently fell on your property,' Baca remembered the sergeant saying.
The crash was on the edge of the atomic bomb testing site near San Antonio, New Mexico – about 100 miles from the infamous Roswell crash two years later
In 2015 Vallée had a spectroscopy analysis performed on the metal panel they said they recovered from the wreckage. It points to a mundane, man-made origin. The samples are pictured
Over the following week, the two boys snuck out to the site and used binoculars to spy on a unit of Army officers who stood guard, loaded the 25 by 14 foot, roughly five ton 'avocado-shaped' object onto a flatbed truck, and covered it with blue tarpaulins, they told Harris.
Vallée was the inspiration for the scientist character in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind
There was no sign of the creatures they claimed they saw earlier.
On the last day, the boys plucked up the courage to sneak up and peek under the tarp while the young, bored soldiers were at lunch.
'Jose said, "I think they're going to take it tonight." I said, "Yeah, how about a souvenir?"' Baca told Harris.
'Jose pulls part of the tarp off, exposing the gash on the side of the craft, while I hold the tarp open. Jose climbs into the gash.'
They described 'ridges' inside every few feet, 'silvery colored strands' like angel hair decorations, and a 2.5ft metal panel attached to the rear wall with pins.
'No seats or anything,' Baca said. 'It must have been cleaned out, or maybe there weren't any. Couldn't see any instruments, like gauges, clocks, steering wheel, brake pedals, nothing like that.'
The plucky kids grabbed a crowbar from the tractor, used it to rip the large panel off the wall, and scurried off.
They said they hid the metal under the floorboards of a nearby building, and kept quiet about the case, fearing retribution by the Army against their families – especially after officers came to search Faustino's house.
In interviews with Vallée and Harris decades after the crash, Padilla described stumbling across the wreckage of a craft while looking for a lost cow on Padilla's father's ranch by the Rio Grande on August 16, 1945. Padilla and Vallee are pictured together at the crash site
Harris and Padilla are pictured together at the crash site
Baca and Padilla eventually moved away and lost contact until 2002, when Baca reconnected with his old friend via a genealogy search. It was then they decided to tell their story.
In 2015, Vallée had a spectroscopy analysis performed on the metal panel they said they recovered from the wreckage. It points to a mundane, man-made origin.
The metal is 'aluminum primarily alloyed to copper and silicon' the report by Frontier Analysis said, a mix often used for 'engine crankcases, gas and oil tanks, engine oil pans, typewriter frames, and engine parts.' The isotopic ratios for the metals in the panel are within the range found on Earth.
The foil-like metal that Baca claimed he picked up has been lost – after he allegedly used it to fix a leaking pipe on the ranch as a boy.
While other researchers have abandoned the case due to the lack of results and paper trail, Vallée says it did not diminish the mystery for him.
'We have yet to ask what an ordinary, human fragment of some low-tech aluminum gadget was doing aboard a fantastic craft dropping from the sky in the middle of a storm, shattering the Marconi Tower of the White Sands Missile Range as its crew of diminutive insectoids skidded weirdly through the cabin,' he wrote in his book.
'You can't nail an aluminum bracket to the interior wall of a weather balloon, no matter how sophisticated. Every nine-year-old kid in New Mexico knows that.'
Vallée, who worked as a contractor for a previous reincarnation of the government's UFO office, the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, told DailyMail.com he is hopeful that a review of the Trinity alleged crash by the new UFO office will turn up further evidence.
'It will re-open the research on a more historically accurate and significant time scale,' he said.
And the data scientist believes he knows where AARO investigators should go looking: the Department of Energy.
'Reme Baca assisted Dixy Lee Ray in winning the election as governor of Washington in 1976. She had been chair of the Atomic Energy Commission [1973 to 1975],' he said.
'She showed Reme when he was helping her in the campaign, a record of the recovery of the craft. It was secret, she did not leave it with him. But she indicated that there was a record in the files of the Atomic Energy Commission.'
Intriguingly, the new defense budget legislation signed into law last week also includes a whistleblower program for reporting 'deep black' UFO programs to Congress.
In May, the House Intelligence Committee held its first public hearing on UFOs in 54 years where panel members grilled Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray (left) and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie (right)
Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray plays a video of an 'unidentified aerial phenomena', commonly referred to as UFOs, at the May hearing
An amendment to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) gives protections to any whistleblowers coming forward to congress in classified briefings to disclose any previously hidden programs on 'unidentified anomalous phenomena' involving 'material retrieval, material analysis' and even 'reverse engineering' and 'developmental or operational testing'.
Former UFO office director Lue Elizondo told DailyMail.com: 'This language is truly revolutionary in terms of ensuring the American people can finally get to the bottom of a decades-old mystery.'
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Christopher Mellon, added that the new laws mean AARO is no longer a 'toothless organization, and now has 'personnel, authority, resources and strong support from Congress.'
Another NDAA amendment requires the UFO office to compile 'a written report detailing the historical record of the United States Government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena' going back to January 1 1945.
The review will include 'successful or unsuccessful efforts to identify and track unidentified anomalous phenomena', and 'any efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or otherwise provide incorrect unclassified or classified information.'
The light trail is seen in Goyang, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 30, 2022. (PC-AP) (AP)
Though the South Korean defence ministry had kept the launch a secret, they explained that they'd been test-firing a solid-fuelled rocket.
After fearing that a rocket test-fired by the military was a UFO or North Korean missile attack, hundreds of people called police in South Korea, said a report.
Though the South Korean defence ministry had kept the launch a secret, they explained that they'd been test-firing a solid-fuelled rocket, The Mirror reported.
Stating that the the rocket was part of the military's efforts to build a space-based surveillance capability, the South Korean defence ministry said that it was aimed to bolster its defences.
The ministry added that it did not notify the public of the launch in advance as it involved sensitive military security issues, the report said.
In parts of South Korea's sky, a white and red trail could be seen snaking behind a bright white light as users shared photos of the same on social media.
Across the country, the police and emergency offices received hundreds of reports of witnessing of a suspicious flying object and mysterious lights.
The new rocket test comes four days after South Korea accused North Korea of flying five drones across the border for the first time in five years.
Amid the escalation by South Korea and the West, the North Korea conducted a record number of missile tests this year.
Meanwhile, North Korea test-fired three short-range ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan on Saturday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. The missiles were launched from Chunghwa County in North Korea's North Hwanghae Province, Yonhap said, citing the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), reported Hindustan Times.
Light-toned fracture halos as seen crosscutting the bedrock extend into the subsurface. These fracture networks would have served as safe havens from harsh surface conditions in a modern period on Mars. Credit: Malin Space Science Systems/NASA/JPL-Caltech
A research team using new methods to analyze data from NASA's Curiosity rover and its neutron spectrometer Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, or DAN, on Mars was able to independently verify that fracture halos contained water-rich opal, potentially serving as an important resource for human exploration.
The study finds that the vast subsurface fracture networks would have provided water-rich and radiation-shielded conditions that were potentially more habitable than those on the surface.
In 2012, NASA sent the Curiosity rover to Mars to explore Gale Crater, a large impact basin with a massive, layered mountain in the middle. As Curiosity has traversed along the Mars surface, researchers have discovered light-toned rocks surrounding fractures that criss-cross certain parts of the Martian landscape, sometimes extending out far into the horizon of rover imagery. Recent work finds that these widespread halo networks served as one of the last, if not the last, water-rich environments in a modern era of Gale Crater. This water-rich environment in the subsurface would have also provided more habitable conditions when conditions on the surface were likely much more harsh.
As part of a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, led by former Arizona State University NewSpace Postdoctoral Fellow Travis Gabriel, now a research physicist for the U.S. government, archival data from several instruments were examined and showed considerable anomalies near light-toned rocks earlier in the traverse. By happenstance, Curiosity rover drove right over one of these fracture halos many years ago, long before Gabriel and ASU graduate student and co-author Sean Czarnecki joined the rover team.
Looking at the old images, they saw a huge expanse of fracture halos extending far into the distance. By applying new methods for analyzing instrument data, the research team found something curious. These halos not only looked like halos found much later in the mission, in completely different rock units, but were similar in their composition: a whole lot of silica and water.
"Our new analysis of archival data showed striking similarity between all of the fracture halos we've observed much later in the mission," Gabriel said. "Seeing that these fracture networks were so widespread and likely chock-full of opal was incredible."
Gabriel and his team of researchers studied the composition of light-colored rocks surrounding the fractures on the ground, or fracture halos, in Gale Crater. Previous studies Gabriel was involved in used the rover's laser-induced breakdown spectrometer, Chemistry and Camera, or ChemCam, to show that these halos may be composed of opal, a material that has important implications for the history of Gale Crater. Opal itself contains a large amount of water, which produced a strong signal in another instrument on the rover: the DAN spectrometer.
Observing drill cores taken at the Buckskin and Greenhorn drill sites many years into the mission, scientists confirmed that these light-toned rocks were very unique compared to anything the team had seen before.
"These light-toned rocks were lighting up in our neutron detector, producing anomalously high thermal neutron count rates," Gabriel said.
In addition to looking back through archival data, Gabriel and his team went searching for opportunities to study these light-toned rocks again. Once they arrived at the Lubango drill site, a bright-toned fracture halo, Gabriel led a dedicated measurement campaign using the neutron spectrometer, confirming the opal-rich composition of fracture halos.
The discovery of opal is noteworthy as it can form in scenarios where silica is in solution with water, a similar process to dissolving sugar or salt in water. If there is too much salt, or conditions change, it begins to settle at the bottom. On Earth, silica falls out of solution in places like lake and ocean bottoms and can form in hot springs and geysers, somewhat similar to the environments at Yellowstone National Park.
Water-rich environments in the subsurface of Mars could have provided a safe haven from the harsh conditions on Mars' surface, which is rather inhospitable compared to Earth. In Gale Crater, temperatures can go below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter night time, reaching only up to roughly 30 degrees Fahrenheit in the warmest of afternoons. Gale crater also experiences far more radiation than the surface of Earth due to our much thicker atmosphere. Every day spent in Gale crater would expose you to a cosmic-source radiation dose that roughly equates to a daily pelvis X-ray.
Since scientists expect that this opal in Gale Crater was formed in a modern Mars era, these subsurface networks of fractures could have been far more habitable than the harsh modern-day conditions at the surface.
Selfie taken by the Mars Rover Curiosity at a site called Murray Buttes
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
"Given the widespread fracture networks discovered in Gale Crater, it's reasonable to expect that these potentially habitable subsurface conditions extended to many other regions of Gale Crater as well, and perhaps in other regions of Mars," Gabriel said. "These environments would have formed long after the ancient lakes in Gale Crater dried up."
The significance of finding opal on Mars will have advantages for future astronauts, and exploration efforts could take advantage of these widespread water resources. Opal itself is made up of predominantly two components: silica and water, with minor amounts of impurities such as iron. Since opal is not a mineral, the water is not bound as tightly within a crystal structure. This means that if you grind it down and apply heat, the opal releases its water. In a previous study, Gabriel and other Curiosity rover scientists demonstrated this exact process.
Although Gabriel and his team aren't able to perform an exhaustive assessment of the water content in all halos, the dedicated neutron experiments they performed over two of these halos demonstrate that a single-meter halo could house roughly one to 1.5 gallons of water in the top foot of the surface.
New Martian water resource: Opal?
What does this research finding mean for future Mars exploration? The poles of Mars house a large amount of water ice among other volatiles like carbon dioxide. In the present day, the equator of Mars by comparison is water poor, showing no sign of widespread water ice resources in the near surface. The study suggests that water-rich opal may be lining many landscapes across regions of Mars where scientists otherwise don't expect water.
Surprisingly, the opal in Gale Crater retains water despite the dry conditions of the modern-day atmosphere. Combined with growing evidence from satellite data that shows the presence of opal elsewhere on Mars, these resilient materials may be a great resource for future exploration activities elsewhere on Mars—that is, if opal elsewhere on Mars also retains water to the same degree as the opal in Gale Crater.
Opal forms in water-rich environments; however, it was found in fractures that formed much later in geologic time compared to the majority of rocks in Gale Crater. Much of Gale Crater's rocks were formed in an ancient lake environment. This demonstrates that the water that formed the halos was around in the subsurface much later and that it was much more widespread than researchers thought.
Once opal forms, it tends to mature into a more crystalline form when exposed to water and fluctuating conditions. The fact that this opal was so well preserved suggests that once it was formed, there wasn't much interaction with water thereafter. In these ways, discoveries from the Curiosity rover help us understand the where, when and what about water on Mars.
"It's amazing to see Curiosity's neutron detector, the rover's only subsurface probe, which was originally only expected to survive for a few years into the mission, still providing fantastic results like these that reveal the nature of water and hydrated materials buried just below the Martian surface," said Craig Hardgrove, co-author of the work, associate professor at ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration and scientist on Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover's DAN team.
What's next?
Gabriel and the team continue to investigate the role of water in the formation and alteration of Martian rocks as the Curiosity rover heads up the central mound of Gale Crater, but no such luck has been made in discovering new halos at recent elevations. As a member of NASA's latest rover team, Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, Gabriel is eager to explore silica-rich features in a new location on Mars to understand the nature of water-rich environments elsewhere on the red planet.
More information:
Travis S. J. Gabriel et al, On an Extensive Late Hydrologic Event in Gale Crater as Indicated by Water‐Rich Fracture Halos, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets (2022). DOI: 10.1029/2020JE006600
For some people going to this planet would allow to study closely these celestial objects made of rocks and metals. For others, Mars could be the fallback planet, if we could no longer live on Earth. Myth for some, challenges for others, making a colony on Mars to make it habitable, the questions have not stopped talking. But our close cousin was not always an arid world, at the mercy of the solar wind. There was a time when water covered much of the Martian surface and potential life could have developed there...
Curiosity vindt opaal op Mars: potentiële waterbron voor toekomstige astronauten
Marsrover Curiosity heeft opaal gevonden op de rode planeet. Dat kan van groot belang zijn voor toekomstige Marsreizigers. Niet als sieraad, maar als potentiële bron van water.
We kennen opaal vooral als edelsteen. Het wordt gevormd door silicarijk gesteente dat in aanraking komt met water. De oplossing nestelt zich in de scheuren van het gesteente en verhardt na verloop van tijd. Opaal is vooral terug te vinden in Ethiopië en Australië, maar dus ook op Mars. Tot die conclusie komen onderzoekers van de Arizona State University. Zij hebben monsters van gesteenten, verzameld door Curiosity uit onder meer de Galekrater, geanalyseerd met nieuwe technieken. Het gesteente bleek vooral uit silica en water te bevatten, de belangrijkste bestanddelen van opaal. Opaal heeft een waterpercentage tot 20 procent.
Het is niet de eerste keer dat opaalachtig materiaal is aangetroffen op Mars, dat gebeurde acht jaar geleden ook al. Maar het blijkt nu toch veel wijder verspreid te zijn op de rode planeet dan tot nu toe gedacht.
De ontdekking suggereert dan ook dat er veel recenter dan men vermoedde water aanwezig was op Mars. De bodem van Mars droogde lang geleden op waardoor microben er niet meer konden overleven. Maar onder het Marsoppervlak zou leven misschien veel langer mogelijk zijn geweest. Wat goed nieuws is voor Curiosity’s opvolger Perseverance, de rover die momenteel op zoek is naar tekenen van leven in de Jezerokrater, een site die ook veel opaalachtig materiaal bevat.
Een andere implicatie is dat het opaal een nuttige waterbron zou kunnen zijn voor toekomstige menselijke bezoekers. Het water zou uit het materiaal kunnen vrijkomen als het wordt vermalen en verwarmd.
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.
