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
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
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 Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
13-04-2023
The Accidental Truth, a new UFO documentary being released on April 18, 2023.
The Accidental Truth, a new UFO documentary being released onApril 18, 2023
Here’s the first trailer released by 1091 Distribution. More related content will be dropping into the playlist below, so check back often!
Nick POPE : "Excitement is building about The Accidental Truth, a new UFO documentary being released on April 18. I'm in it, as are Lue Elizondo, Chris Mellon, Rep. Tim Burchett, Dr. Michio Kaku, Dr. Garry Nolan, Col. John Alexander, Ralph Blumenthal and many more."
The truth can no longer be contained by those duty-bound to hide it.
What if there was one film that will bring a mainstream audience up to speed on the modern UFO Reality?
Now there is. “Accidental Truth – UFO Revelations” pulls no punches.
Officials who interact with the public regarding the UFO question openly acknowledge that they know things that they can’t reveal. In “Accidental Truth,” the reality of an advanced intelligence engaging humanity becomes undeniably clear.
You will witness revelations on UFOs / UAPs from government insiders that have never been previously shared with the public. From many years of interviews and investigation, Ron James painstakingly connects the dots.
Colonel John Alexander, Lue Elizondo, Christopher Mellon, Nick Pope, Dr. Garry Nolan, Ralph Blumenthal, Congressman Tim Burchett and others help to “accidentally” weave a story that leaves no doubt that another intelligence is somehow operating around us, above us in our atmosphere, beneath our seas and in outer space. Decades of official denial and debunking are irrevocably put to rest in what is being called “one of the best UFO films of all time”.
Dr. Michio Kaku provides scientific analysis and commentary specific to what we know. Never before has a world-class scientist weighed in so deeply on the topic. Until now. A collection of contributors from across the field all come together to settle the question. The subject is no longer up for debate. You will experience the proof. The acknowledgement of another advanced intelligence is only the beginning.
This irrefutable truth creates more questions than you can possibly imagine.
“Accidental Truth – UFO Revelations” is being called “a masterpiece” and “one of the best UFO documentaries of all time” by early reviewers. It has been accepted into 12 film festivals so far and won 7 awards. It comes out on April 18, 2023.
RELATED
Get the SWAG! Although the film is done, we still need your help. Our animation team is in the Ukraine. Despite the war, the guys kept working as best they could. They endured power outages, defense deployments, missile flying over their homes, and still managed to deliver some of the best custom animation ever in an independent UFO Documentary.
Both team members lost equipment due to missile attacks and power fluctuations. They need new computers and additional support.
A portion of the proceeds from our SWAG sales will go to getting this done for them.
The “Accidental Truth” collection is coming online. We are adding new merch daily. Our movie poster art is really cool and people are loving the T-shirts! The shirts are 100% Soft ringspun Gildan Cotton. You’ll love yours! FREE SHIPPING IN THE US! Get your SWAG now and we’ll throw in a free month of access to MUFON TV. You’ll also get access to the “Accidental Truth Insider” section, where deeper interviews and extra material will be found.
The Cast:
Congressman Tim Burchett Ralph Blumenthal Lue Elizondo Dr. Michio Kaku Dr. Garry Nolan Col. John Alexander Christopher Mellon Richard Dolan Dave MacDonald Nick Pope Paul Hynek Don Schmitt Mike Bara Katie Griboski (Paige) Melinda Leslie Elizabeth April Cheryll Jones Danny Sheehan Jimmy Church Richard Lang James Fox Ron James
There has been a rise in the number of reported UFO sightings across many places in the United States since 2020. Moreover, officials have expressed concerns regarding the repeated occurrence of UFO sightings over military bases. Is there any possibility that these UFOs are controlling military actions?
Not so long ago, former US Air Force Captain Robert Salas claimed that UFOs are real and interfere in the military’s nuclear program. Additionally, former head of AATIP Luis Elizondo revealed that the U.S. Military created environments to attract UFOs to study them. He noted that there was much data that showed UFOs are interested in nuclear activities and the latest weaponry systems.
The UFO activity over US army bases has been observed since 1948, with the majority of incidents occurring at Malmstrom, Minot, F.E. Warren, Ellsworth, Vandenberg, and Walker AFBs between 1963 and 1996. Other sources stationed at Wurtsmith and Loring AFBs, where B-52 nuclear bombers were based during the Cold War era, also reported incidents.
In 1967, Captain Salas was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, when he received reports of a red glowing object hovering outside the front gate of the base. A security guard reported that the object had a saucer shape and was constantly hovering near the front gate.
At the same time, the missile system suffered a complete failure, with ten intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) going offline due to a “No-Go” (inoperable) condition, which caused several alarms to go off. After investigating the incident, a team of engineers from Boeing could not find any significant failures, engineering data, or findings that would explain how the missiles had been knocked off alert.
The cause of the failure remains unknown, but it was suggested that it could have been due to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sent from an unknown source. Despite the severity of the situation, Salas believed that the UFO did not have hostile intentions because it could have caused permanent damage to the weapons system if it wanted to.
The incident was reported by a UFO researcher Robert L. Hastings, who collected information from various army personnel, including Staff Sgt. Louis D. Kenneweg, Airman 1st Class David Hughes, Staff Sgt. Joseph M. Chassey, and Lt. Col. Robert Peisher (USAF Ret.) in his 30 years of investigation.
A similar attraction of UFOs toward nuclear bases was noticed in Canada as well. A report from Winnipeg reveals that over 200 years, there have been 2,000 UFO sightings reported in the Canadian province of Manitoba.
In the mid-1970s, there were numerous UFO sightings all along the US-Canadian border, with Manitoba being one of the places where a large number of sightings occurred. These sightings included a high number of cattle mutilations and were often seen over restricted areas where nuclear activities were conducted.
Chris A. Rutkowski, a Canadian UFO researcher, has studied UFO sightings in Canada for over 25 years and concluded that Manitoba has a long history of close encounters with aliens. His UFO research, which contains 30,000 reports, has been donated to the University of Manitoba.
In 2017, author Grant Cameron published a book entitled “Charlie Red Star: True Reports of One of North America’s Biggest UFO Sightings,” in which he described in detail the largest UFO sightings in history witnessed by Manitobans. The province was stunned by the object known as “Charlie’s Red Star,” which was seen almost every night in 1975.
Cameron claims that Manitoba UFO sightings have connections to nuclear weapons because 35 years later, he found out that the government secretly installed nuclear missiles and other weapons in restricted areas just south of the border. He believes that the sightings stopped after the missiles had been removed in November. The author thinks that the nuclear technology that humans possess could be created after extraterrestrial contact. (click here to read the full article)
Strange Occurrences Near Nuclear Bases
The Reddit user “BumblebeeExpensive” claimed to have worked at a now-closed nuclear weapons storage depot in Nevada for six years and shared various strange occurrences. “When people say UFOs are attracted to nukes, they are telling the truth. But so much more goes on,” the user writes. (Source)
The user claimed to have seen a ball of light triggering a sensor on the fence line, causing security to respond and witnessed three mutilated donkeys that were dropped off out of nowhere with various organs removed. The user also claimed to have witnessed a figure on the roof of a structure. He writes it was “30 meters from me and 14 other personnel. I took a spotlight and shined it up there and as soon as the light hit the figure it disappeared – we all saw it happen.”
“I heard a man laughing maniacally once, nothing there. Sweep with night vision and thermals revealed nothing, three other witnesses. We wrote it off as the ‘laughing Colonel,’ an urban legend passed down by the security personnel for ages.”
The user and his partner also heard a soft cooing sound coming from a hot pad loaded with 500 lbs bombs, seemingly luring them past the pad and into the pitch-black desert, but they did not pursue. Dur ing a training exercise, their machine gun overwatch team spotted two figures on thermals in the desert behind them, but their sweep revealed nothing.
The user claimed to have experienced the weirdest event when they were responding to a truck approaching on the side of a nearby mountain. They visually confirmed the truck on NVGs, but suddenly the headlights disappeared, and they believed the occupants had turned them off and were then approaching on foot. They called for K9 and moved to a blocking position where they waited for ten minutes, but their radios died, and they were out of contact for twice as long as they thought.
“We are there for about ten minutes when one by one patrol members overwatching us from high points on the inside call in lights appearing at our 12, 3, and 9 o’clock- in effect flanking us (with fence line about 300 meters behind us). We see and hear nothing, not even on NVGs or thermals, dog never reacts. Suddenly panicked patrol calls in that the lights are ‘rushing’ us. We are already locked and loaded, I tell my partner to put a grenade in the tube. Nothing happens, dog never indicates. Our radios die and after ten minutes we hike back to fence line only to discover we were out of contact for twice as long as I thought we were. Very paraphrased event cuz on phone, but our radios only started working when we were back at fence line.”
The user claimed that those events, combined with the belief that UFOs are attracted to nukes. He says: “There’s more but these were the highlights or events I’m allowed to speak about. The world is not as normal as you believe it is.”
Many other users found the same story in the video published on “The Infographics Show” YouTube channel in 2020 and began doubting BumblebeeExpensive if he copied the story. But the user later clarified that was his story and added that he is the lead writer of the show. He also claimed to be the writer of the “100-day survival series” on the channel.
Haha. Nope, that's my story. I'm the lead writer of the show and when the topic came up I was like huh, I've got my own, I'll do this one.
If you follow the channel I also write the 100 day survival series and a lot of the character names in there are guys I served with at this facility and still stay in touch with. Kind of an easter egg between us.
“There’s things I can’t talk about as I signed a 30-year non-disclosure contract with pretty stiff penalties- but I’ll say this: I know people think that there’s these big conspiracies with the government hiding knowledge of this or knowledge of that. Truth is, yes there are big secrets. But overwhelmingly, the government isn’t actively hiding knowledge of this or that- it’s literally just ignoring it because it can’t do anything about it or it doesn’t pose a threat. It does spend some time and effort investigating it- you can see that there’s a greatly increased effort to investigate UAPs now. But the truth is that a long time ago a choice was made about certain things: do they affect national security, or could we stop it if it did? If the answer is no, we’ve got bigger or more immediate concerns like the Soviet Union starting a nuclear war,” explains Reddit user BumblebeeExpensive.(Source)
Mr. Elizondo suggested that those interested in more information about this subject read “UFOs and Nukes” by Robert Hastings. The book describes the reality of UFO incursions at American nuclear weapons facilities.
In “UFOs and Nukes,” there are documented incidents of UFO interference at the US nuclear weapons facilities. The book describes incidents where unidentified objects were seen hovering near nuclear facilities, causing malfunctions in nuclear missiles and communication systems.
Some of those incidents date back to as early as January 1945, months before the atomic bombings in Japan. Those events suggest that humans’ most dangerous weapons have been under scrutiny by unidentified observers with advanced technology. The author argues that the UFO-nukes connection is significant and may be the reason for the appearance of mysterious aerial crafts in the skies over the past 70 years. Mr. Elizondo recommends this book to those interested in learning more about this subject.
Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars
Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars
There's an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. This supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000-light-year-long "contrail" of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. It's likely the result of a rare, bizarre game of galactic billiards among three massive black holes.
Rather than gobbling up stars ahead of it, like a cosmic Pac-Man, the speedy black hole is plowing into gas in front of it to trigger new star formation along a narrow corridor. The black hole is streaking too fast to take time for a snack. Nothing like it has ever been seen before, but it was captured accidentally by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
This is an artist's impression of a runaway supermassive black hole that was ejected from its host galaxy as a result of a tussle between it and two other black holes. As the black hole plows through intergalactic space it compresses tenuous gas in front to it. This precipitates the birth of hot blue stars. This illustration is based on Hubble Space Telescope observations of a 200,000-light-year-long "contrail" of stars behind an escaping black hole.
"We think we're seeing a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and is able to form stars. So, we're looking at star formation trailing the black hole," said Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. "What we're seeing is the aftermath. Like the wake behind a ship we're seeing the wake behind the black hole." The trail must have lots of new stars, given that it is almost half as bright as the host galaxy it is linked to.
The black hole lies at one end of the column, which stretches back to its parent galaxy. There is a remarkably bright knot of ionized oxygen at the outermost tip of the column. Researchers believe gas is probably being shocked and heated from the motion of the black hole hitting the gas, or it could be radiation from an accretion disk around the black hole. "Gas in front of it gets shocked because of this supersonic, very high-velocity impact of the black hole moving through the gas. How it works exactly is not really known," said van Dokkum.
"This is pure serendipity that we stumbled across it," van Dokkum added. He was looking for globular star clusters in a nearby dwarf galaxy. "I was just scanning through the Hubble image and then I noticed that we have a little streak. I immediately thought, 'oh, a cosmic ray hitting the camera detector and causing a linear imaging artifact.' When we eliminated cosmic rays we realized it was still there. It didn't look like anything we've seen before."
This Hubble Space Telescope archival photo captures a curious linear feature that is so unusual it was first dismissed as an imaging artifact from Hubble's cameras. But follow-up spectroscopic observations reveal it is a 200,000-light-year-long chain of young blue stars. A supermassive black hole lies at the tip of the bridge at lower left. The black hole was ejected from the galaxy at upper right. It compressed gas in its wake to leave a long trail of young blue stars. Nothing like this has ever been seen before in the universe. This unusual event happened when the universe was approximately half its current age.
Credits: NASA, ESA, Pieter van Dokkum (Yale); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Because it was so weird, van Dokkum and his team did follow-up spectroscopy with the W. M. Keck Observatories in Hawaii. He describes the star trail as "quite astonishing, very, very bright and very unusual." This led to the conclusion that he was looking at the aftermath of a black hole flying through a halo of gas surrounding the host galaxy.
This intergalactic skyrocket is likely the result of multiple collisions of supermassive black holes. Astronomers suspect the first two galaxies merged perhaps 50 million years ago. That brought together two supermassive black holes at their centers. They whirled around each other as a binary black hole.
Then another galaxy came along with its own supermassive black hole. This follows the old idiom: "two's company and three's a crowd." The three black holes mixing it up led to a chaotic and unstable configuration. One of the black holes robbed momentum from the other two black holes and got thrown out of the host galaxy. The original binary may have remained intact, or the new interloper black hole may have replaced one of the two that were in the original binary, and kicked out the previous companion.
When the single black hole took off in one direction, the binary black holes shot off in the opposite direction. There is a feature seen on the opposite side of the host galaxy that might be the runaway binary black hole. Circumstantial evidence for this is that there is no sign of an active black hole remaining at the galaxy’s core. The next step is to do follow-up observations with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm the black hole explanation.
There’s an invisible monster on the loose! It’s barreling through intergalactic space fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 14 minutes. But don’t worry, luckily this beast is very, very far away! This potential supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, has left behind a never-before-seen 200,000 light-year-long trail of newborn stars. The streamer is twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. It’s likely the result of a rare, bizarre game of galactic billiards among three massive black holes.
Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Paul Morris
NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a wide-angle view of the universe with Hubble's exquisite resolution. As a survey telescope, the Roman observations might find more of these rare and improbable "star streaks" elsewhere in the universe. This may require machine learning using algorithms that are very good at finding specific weird shapes in a sea of other astronomical data, according to van Dokkum.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
A bizarre 'ultraluminous X-ray source' shines millions of times brighter than the sun, breaking a physical law called the Eddington limit, a new study finds.
An illustration of a neutron star -- an ultra-luminous X-ray source -- spinning around as tendrils of magnetic field whip through space.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Something in outer space is breaking the law — the laws of physics, that is.
Astronomers call these lawbreakers ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), and they exude about 10 million times more energy than the sun. This amount of energy breaks a physical law known as the Eddington limit, which determines how bright something of a given size can be. If something breaks the Eddington limit, scientists expect it to blow itself up into pieces. However, ULXs "regularly exceed this limit by 100 to 500 times, leaving scientists puzzled," according to a NASA statement(opens in new tab).
New observations published in The Astrophysical Journal(opens in new tab) from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which sees the universe in high-energy X-rays, confirmed that one particular ULX, called M82 X-2, is definitely too bright. Prior theories suggested that the extreme brightness could be some sort of optical illusion, but this new work shows that's not the case — this ULX is actually defying the Eddington limit somehow.
Astronomers used to believe ULXs could be black holes, but M82 X-2 is an object known as a neutron star. Neutron stars are the leftover, dead cores of stars like the sun. A neutron star is so dense that the gravity on its surface is about 100 trillion times stronger than that of Earth. This intense gravity means that any material pulled onto the dead star's surface will have an explosive effect.
"A marshmallow dropped on the surface of a neutron star would hit it with the energy of a thousand hydrogen bombs," according to NASA(opens in new tab).
The new study found that M82 X-2 consumes around 1.5 Earths' worth of material each year, siphoning it off of a neighboring star. When this amount of matter hits the neutron star's surface, it's enough to produce the off-the-charts brightness the astronomers observed.
The research team thinks this is evidence that something must be going on with M82 X-2 that lets it bend the rules and break the Eddington limit. Their current idea is that the intense magnetic field of the neutron star changes the shape of its atoms, allowing the star to stick together even as it gets brighter and brighter.
"These observations let us see the effects of these incredibly strong magnetic fields that we could never reproduce on Earth with current technology," lead study author Matteo Bachetti(opens in new tab), an astrophysicist at the Cagliari Astronomical Observatory in Italy, said in the statement. "This is the beauty of astronomy … we cannot really set up experiments to get quick answers; we have to wait for the universe to show us its secrets."
These odd binary systems go through multiple phases.
An artist's impression of a black-widow pulsar tearing material from a companion star.
(Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
Astronomers have identified a new kind of pulsar that consumes an orbiting companion, filling in a missing link about how some of the strangest systems in the universe evolve.
Astronomers found their first "black widow" system, named PSR B1957+20, in 1988. It consisted of a single pulsar with a small orbiting companion. This was not an unusual setup for pulsars, which are rapidly spinning neutron stars (the collapsed cores of stars that die in supernova explosions) that emit pulses of radiation at regular intervals. Indeed, many pulsars come in pairs. What was unusual about this system, however, was the presence of a significant amount of energetic material surrounding the pair.
The astronomers realized that the material surrounding the system came from the small companion and that, at one time, the companion was much larger. But the pulsar in the center was blasting out streams of extremely energetic radiation and particles. These blasts were so powerful that they were carving off pieces of the orbiting companion and shoving them out into space. Essentially, the pulsar was eating its companion alive, hence the "black widow" nickname, a reference to the spider that eats its mate.
Since then, astronomers have discovered several other pulsar systems that fit into the "spider" family. Technically, black widows have companions with very small masses, usually less than one-tenth the mass of the sun. Other systems include "redback" pulsars, which are actively destroying companions with masses up to half a solar mass. And "huntsman" pulsars have companions with enough mass to withstand the outbursts, and so those systems have much less material around them.
While astronomers have identified dozens of these "spider" systems, they have had difficulty explaining how the systems came to be. The problem is that ablation, the process of reducing a companion's mass by removing its outer layers via powerful radiation bursts, is a relatively inefficient process. It's too slow to explain how those companions can lose so much mass in such a short amount of time.
Now, a team of astronomers has proposed a solution by finding two systems that they believe provide an evolutionary link between normal binary systems and more evolved "spider" systems. They reported their results in January in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society(opens in new tab).
Initially in the evolution of a binary system, there are simply two stars orbiting each other. But one will inevitably be more massive than the other and will end its life sooner. If the star is massive enough, it will become a neutron star, the remnant core of compressed neutrons left over after a supernova explosion.
If the remaining companion has a low enough mass, the system will soon become what is dubbed a low-mass X-ray binary. In these systems, the companion has begun to overflow, either because it naturally swells as it enters the red giant stage, or because the extreme gravity of the neutron star pulls on its atmosphere. Either way, in this stage, the companion begins spilling its material onto the neutron star, causing it to speed up and flash in X-ray radiation.
Astronomers have long believed that these low-mass X-ray binary systems occasionally developed into black widow or redback spider systems, but the link has not been shown until now.
An artist's rendering of a pulsar surrounded by a glowing disk of matter. In 'black widow' pulsars, that matter comes from a smaller companion star that's slowly being irradiated out of existence. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The astronomers behind the study investigated two low-mass X-ray binary systems, named Swift J1858.6-0814 and EXO 0748-676. These two systems contain all the features of typical low-mass X-ray binaries: a neutron star with a small, overflowing companion.
But the researchers also found evidence for ablation, with highly energized material surrounding each pair. Their observations suggest that the "spider" phase may have already begun early on in the development of these systems. Even though ablation is inefficient, by pushing away material from the companion with strong outbursts early on, these systems had plenty of time to blow away enough gas to explain the spider system results.
The researchers dubbed these systems "false widows," adding to the arachnid-based classification scheme. Eventually, these false widows will evolve into true black widow and redback systems, and those systems, too, won't last forever. At some point, the companion will run out of material altogether, with all of its atmosphere either blown out into space or transferred onto the neutron star. That transfer causes a tremendous speed-up in the rotation rate of the neutron star, causing it to spin thousands of times every second.
With the new observations, the entire developmental process is clear: Binary systems emerge, then become low-mass X-ray binaries, then false widows, then black widow or redback systems, before finally settling down as millisecond pulsars.
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Expert says Humans are Aliens—and we were Brought to Earth Hundreds of Thousands of Years Ago
Expert says Humans are Aliens—and we were Brought to Earth Hundreds of Thousands of Years Ago
What if Humans are the aliens we’ve been looking for all along? According to experts, humans were most likely crossbred with another species, perhaps from the star system Alpha Centauri –which is one of the closest solar systems to Earth—in the distant past, giving birth to modern humans.
Tell Al-Uhaymir modern-day Iraq, where the ancient Sumerian city of Kish used to be, archaeologists found one of the oldest ancient documents on the planet, the tablet of Kish which is believed to date back to the year 3500 BC.The Sumerian king list states that Kish was the first city to have kings following the deluge, beginning with Jushur.Jushur’s successor is called Kullassina-bel, but this is actually a sentence in Akkadian meaning “All of them were lord”. Thus, some scholars have suggested that this may have been intended to signify the absence of a central authority in Kish for a time.
This ancient document is believed to precede the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians, and the Egyptian hieroglyphs for almost one hundred years.
Developing the ability to express thoughts through written language is one of the first ways in which man differed from the animal kingdom.Five thousand years since, humans have developed electricity, divided the atom, developed computers, and led man to the moon. We have achieved things that other species have still not.
No other species on earth can attribute such unique achievements in such a short period of time. Interestingly, compared to other species of the earth, our ‘evolution’ is relatively short.
It has been a short period of time, most likely a few million years since the first hominid walked on Earth. Precisely this is one of the biggest scientific questions of all times: Why have only our species emerged to this truly advanced technological intelligence?Evidently, there is nothing more advanced than humans on planet Earth.
While there are different ‘intelligent’ species on Earth, none of them makes use of technology like us. Just imagine for a second, if for some reason, mankind had to return to the jungle, and survive there. Many experts agree that most of them would not survive for a very long period of time.Many scientists agree that humans, in addition to their intelligence, are not very capable to occupy a wide range of environments. In other words, we are very limited when it comes to our planet.
In addition to our fascinating intelligence, biologists have also noticed contrasts between human physiology and that of other animals on earth. Many scientists agree that compared to other species on earth, humans are rather strange. For example, a baby horse when born is able to walk and function almost independently, but this a human baby cannot do, which makes us quite helpless. In other words, we are born before being neurologically ready for life.
Many researchers agree that there are many vulnerabilities that accompany our intelligence.Humans on earth eventually became bipeds, which freed up our superior extremities allowing us to manipulate objects, create tools and much more. But for all this, experts believe that our species has paid an expensive price. Lumbar pain a sign that according to many experts could tell us a lot about our species. Curiously, other animals on Earth do NOT have this problem. It’s as if only humans are affected by some of these problems.
So what does all of this mean? According to one expert, it means that we are the aliens we’ve we been looking for all along.
A new theory proposed by Dr. Ellis Silver states that there are several tell-tale signs present in the human race that suggest human beings did not evolve ALONGSIDE other lifeforms on Earth.
The book called ‘Humans are not from Earth: a scientific evaluation of the evidence’ is basically a resume of theories for and mostly against man’s evolution on Earth. In the book, leading environmentalist and ecologist Dr. Ellis Silver goes through an evaluation of thirteen leading hypothesis and seventeen factors which suggest HUMANS ARE NOT FROM EARTH.
Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more said Dr. Ellis in an interview.
According to Dr. Ellis, humans might suffer from back pain because our species initially evolved on another planet with a lower gravity, adding to the mysteries, Dr. Ellis also indicates that it is strange that newborns have large heads and make it difficult for mothers to give birth, which can result in fatalities for both mother and child.
So where do we come from? According to Dr. Ellis, Neanderthals were most likely crossbred with another species, perhaps from the star system Alpha Centauri –which is one of the closest solar systems to Earth— in the distant past, giving birth to modern humans.
According to Dr. Ellis, there are millions of people around the globe who ‘feel’ that they do not belong on Earth.Dr. Ellis explains: “This suggests (to me at least) that mankind may have evolved on a different planet, and we may have been brought here as a highly developed species. One reason for this … is that the Earth might be a prison planet since we seem to be a naturally violent species and we’re here until we learn to behave ourselves.”
Dr. Ellis concludes that mankind did not evolve from that particular strain of life, but evolved elsewhere and was transported to Earth (as fully evolved Homo sapiens) between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago.
Furthermore, as noted by Robert Sepher, according to modern DNA sequencing, it is demonstrated that humanity as we know it, isn’t just ONE single ‘race’ that descended from the same ancestor in Africa, but a hybridized species, with a far more enigmatic truth behind it all.
Many questions have been raised in the discussion about Rh negative blood. If mankind did, in fact, evolve from a mutual ancient African ancestor, theories state that everyone’s blood would be compatible, but regrettably, this is not the case. This raises numerous questions that science alone has not been able to fully answer. Where did Rh-negative blood come from? And why is it that a Rh-negative mother carrying Rh positive children tries rejecting her own offspring? Is it possible that this can be explained by a rather controversial theory? A theory which suggests that humanity isn’t in fact one race, but a hybridized species.
The book was written by Robert Sepehr, Species with Amnesia: Our Forbidden History tells us more about the enigmatic blood type Rh-negative. Not only does Species with Amnesia suggest mankind is, in fact, a hybridized species, the author suggests that highly advanced civilizations have been on Earth before us, just to be destroyed by some great global catastrophe, as mysteriously, history tells us.
Sepehr argues that for each race that has died out, another has taken its place, with a selected few holding on to the memories and sacred knowledge of the past race. In our vanity, we think we have discovered some of the great truths of science and technology, but we are in fact only just beginning to rediscover the profound wisdom of past civilizations. In many ways, we are like an awakening Species with Amnesia, yearning to reclaim our forgotten past. –
The Basque people of Spain and France have the highest percentage of Rh-negative blood. About 30% have (rr) Rh negative and about 60% carry one (r) negative gene.“There are 612 primate species and subspecies recognized by the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN), and not one has Rh-negative blood”. – Robert Sepehr, Species with Amnesia: Our Forbidden History
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We could feed one million people living in colonies on Mars
We could feed one million people living in colonies on Mars
With bugs, algae and other resource-efficient foods we could feed one million people on Mars within a century of arriving there. Scientists even invented a martian diet.
In the science fiction novel and movie The Martian, a stranded astronaut survives more than 500 days on Mars by growing potatoes. A permanent human settlement on Mars would need to do much better. And according to a computer model created by planetary scientists, that’s actually an attainable goal. With the right food sources, we could grow a million-person population on Mars that doesn’t depend on food shipped from Earth in about a hundred years, a recent paper in the journal New Space reports.
Companies like SpaceX have made exciting steps toward the possibility of humans on Mars, says Kevin Cannon, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida and lead author of the study. But beyond the challenge of getting humans to Mars in the first place, there’s a lot of work left to figure out how to make a self-sufficient, functioning society there.
“I think, looking in the long term, the real challenge is to start producing everything you need from the local materials on Mars,” Cannon says.
Farming on Mars
Cannon and colleagues modeled the food needs of a human population on Mars that grows to one million over about a hundred Earth years through a combination of immigration and reproduction. Though the settlement would need to import a lot of food at the start, it could transition to an entirely Martian-grown diet in about a century with the right food choices, they found.
The major limiting factor is space — or rather, the ability to create spaces suitable for growing food. On Earth, the amount of available arable land restricts our ability to grow food, whether plants, animals or something else. On Mars, we’d have to create these spaces — enclosed, pressurized and heated structures. For efficiency’s sake, a Martian society would need to choose food sources that are high in nutrients and calories relative to the space they need to grow.
Traditionally farmed animal products and certain plants need a lot of resources and may be impractical on Mars, Cannon says. But that doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing variety in Martian diets. His team’s models include three main categories of food sources: plant-based foods, edible insects and “cellular agriculture” — protein-rich foods like algae and lab-grown meats, dairy and eggs that we can grow from cells.
Cannon has created a website compiling a list of businesses working to create food in these ways today, often with the goal of more resource-efficient and sustainable food production on Earth in mind.
This includes eating plants like beans, tomato and potato, as well as GMO products modified to include more nutrients and grow more sustainably. A number of companies today make insect-based products — whether that’s whole crickets or powdered insects to use as flour — that aspiring Martians can sample as we “The limitations that Mars would put on you in producing food kind of forces you into practices that turn out to be more sustainable on the Earth,” Cannon says.
Einstein’s Genius Shines Bright: Star’s Enigmatic Path around Black Hole Validates Theory
Einstein’s Genius Shines Bright: Star’s Enigmatic Path around Black Hole Validates Theory
Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity has passed another test. Researchers have discovered a slight adjustment in the orbit of the nearest known star to the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way after almost three decades of monitoring—and the movement exactly confirms Einstein’s prediction.
The star, known as S2, has a 16-year elliptical orbit. It came near 20 billion kilometers of our black hole, Sagittarius A*, last year. If Isaac Newton’s traditional definition of gravity is correct, S2 should then continue on its previous orbit’s course through space. But it didn’t work.
Instead, it took a slightly divergent route, with the axis of its ellipse altering slightly, according to research published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics by a team employing the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. As predicted by general relativity, the process known as Schwarzschild precession will eventually force S2 to trace out a spirograph-like floral pattern in space (as illustrated above).
The researchers claim that their comprehensive monitoring of S2 will let them analyze how much unseen material, including dark matter and smaller black holes, exists near Sagittarius A*, in addition to another demanding test of relativity. This might aid them in understanding how such behemoths develop and evolve.
Scientists Puzzled Because James Webb is Seeing Things that are Unexpected.
Scientists Puzzled Because James Webb is Seeing Things that are Unexpected.
Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to peer back in time to the early days of the universe — and they spotted something unexpected.
NASA's super-powerful James Webb Telescope has provided the most distant glimpses of the universe ever since its launch.
It has given answers to questions that were still unresolved. But, this raised other questions as well.
Until now, astronomers believed that galaxies arose during the early universe (after the Big Bang) would be small in size and irregular in shape.
But James Webb Telescope disproved this hypothesis of astronomers.
The JWST has revealed these galaxies to be astonishingly massive as are well-balanced and well-shaped.
It is a discovery that challenges existing beliefs about the origin of the universe and stresses the need to change the current understanding of the origin of the infant universe.
"The models just don't predict this" Garth Illingworth, an astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz, told Washington Post.
"How do you do this in the universe at such an early time? How do you form so many stars so quickly?"
Old images of the universe taken by the Hubble Telescope, showed that early galaxies were misshapen and chaotic.
But the James Webb Telescope (JWST) debunks this assumption – those findings were an illusion based on the limited capabilities of the Hubble Telescope.
"We thought the infant universe was the chaotic place where there's all these clumps of star formation, and things are all a-jumble" the Space Telescope Science Institute's Dan Coe told WaPo.
Adding later that, before the JWST was launched into the orbit, Hubble Telescope's imagery was "missing all the colder stars and the older stars. We were really only seeing the hot young ones."
Although the findings from James Webb surprised astrophysicists, technological advances have a long history of leading to a period of large-scale scientific research into astronomy or beyond.
Discoveries made today can lay the foundation for future successes.
JWST is doing exactly what astronomers tell it to do.
It is exploring the exciting objects of the vast universe, while simultaneously answering old questions and generating new ones.
Perseverance is Turning Into That Friend That's Always Picking Up Rocks
On Thursday, March 30th, NASA’s Perseverance rover drilled and stored the first rock core sample of its newest science campaign. This is the sixteenth sample the rover has taken as part of the ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, a collaborative effort between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to retrieve Perseverance’s samples and bring them back to Earth. Once they arrive (expected to happen by 2033), scientists will analyze them using state-of-the-art machinery too heavy and cumbersome to send to Mars as part of a robotic mission.
Collecting samples as part of the first sample-return mission from Mars is one of the main objectives of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) program. It is hoped that these samples will provide new insight into the planet’s environment and the water cycle that shaped the surface and interior of Mars. Of particular interest is how Mars evolved from a warmer, wetter environment – as it was during the Noachian Era (ca. 4.1 – 3.7 billion years ago) – to the cold and dedicated place we see today. It is theorized that life could have emerged during this period. If true, then the analysis of these core samples could provide the first evidence that life once existed on Mars (and might still be there today).
Perseverance has also collected three witness tubes, similar to sample tubes but designed to capture molecular and particulate contaminants. These tubes are opened close to sample collection sites to “witness” the ambient environment, helping scientists to characterize the location where samples are obtained. Earlier this year, the rover deposited ten tubes as a backup cache on the Martian surface for retrieval by the MSR campaign. For this latest campaign, the rover is exploring a new formation at the top of the delta formation in the Jezero Crater.
Scientists have named this formation “Berea,” which they believe formed from rock sediment carried by a stream that once flowed into the crater. This stream was responsible for forming the fan-delta, which means that the material in this formation could have come from far beyond the Jezero Crater. This is one of the reasons why the science team considers it to be so promising. But as Katie Stack Morgan, the deputy project scientist for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), related in a NASA press release, there is another reason why the spot is attractive.
“The second reason is that the rock is rich in carbonate,” she said. “Carbonate rocks on Earth can be good at preserving fossilized lifeforms. If biosignatures were present in this part of Jezero Crater, it could be a rock like this one that could very well hold their secrets.”
Carbonates are a type of sedimentary rock that forms from chemical interactions between minerals and water. The presence of these and other minerals that form in the presence of water is why the Jezero Crater and the Gale Crater (where Curiosity is currently exploring) were selected as landing sites. Essentially, these mineral deposits could provide scientists with a record of what the climate once looked like, allowing them to create a more complete geological record of Mars. Said Ken Farley, the W.M. Keck Foundation Professor of Geochemistry at Caltech and Perseverance’s project scientist:
“The Berea core highlights the beauty of rover missions. Perseverance’s mobility has allowed us to collect igneous samples from the relatively flat crater floor during the first campaign, and then travel to the base of the crater’s delta, where we found fine-grained sedimentary rocks deposited in a dried lakebed. Now we are sampling from a geologic location where we find coarse-grained sedimentary rocks deposited in a river. With this diversity of environments to observe and collect from, we are confident that these samples will allow us to better understand what occurred here at Jezero Crater billions of years ago.”
This image shows the rocky outcrop the Perseverance science team calls “Berea” after the NASA Mars rover extracted a rock core (right) and abraded a circular patch (left).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Now that the Berea sample has been cored and placed into the rover’s internal cache, Perseverance will move to its next drill site along the delta fan – a place the science team has named “Castell Henllys.” In addition to the 16 samples it has collected, Perseverance has also collected rock samples with its wheels. In February of 2022, the science team noticed that the rover’s left front wheel had picked up a “pet rock” and managed to hold onto it for months! The entire sample cache will be retrieved starting in 2030 with the arrival of the NASA MSR elements.
This includes the Sample Retrieval Lander, which Perseverance will deliver all the samples contained in its cache. A pair of Sample Recovery Helicopters (the same design as Ingenuity) will gather the samples the rover left on the surface. Once loaded aboard the Lander, the samples will be sent into orbit via the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and then collected by the ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO). This spacecraft will return the sample cache to Earth (by 2033 at the earliest) for analysis. The results will lead to all kinds of scientific breakthroughs and even demonstrate that life did exist on Mars billions of years ago.
Perseverance Cores 'Berea': This animation shows NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover collecting a rock sample from an outcrop the science team calls “Berea” using a coring bit on the end of its robotic arm. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Download video ›
Fingers crossed, the data could also help resolve where Mars’ water (and any remaining life forms) can be found today!
It’s Time for Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A to Get the JWST Treatment
Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is a supernova remnant. It has been observed many times. This new image uses data from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to reveal Cas A in a new light. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, D. D. Milisavljevic (Purdue), T. Temim (Princeton), I. De Looze (Ghent University). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
It’s Time for Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A to Get the JWST Treatment
Ready for another stunning image from JWST? How about a peek inside a supernova remnant? Not just any stellar debris, but a highly detailed view of the leftovers from the explosion that created Cassiopeia A. The latest image is giving astronomers an up-close and personal look at what happened to a supermassive star some 11,000 light-years away from us. It may also help answer questions about the existence of cosmic dust, particularly in the early Universe.
The Cassiopeia A supernova remnant has been studied a lot. But, the new JWST view shows a great deal more detail that astronomers haven’t seen in other observations. And, that detail is opening up new windows on this stellar event. “Cas A represents our best opportunity to look at the debris field of an exploded star and run a kind of stellar autopsy to understand what type of star was there beforehand and how that star exploded,” said Danny Milisavljevic. He’s the principal investigator of the observing program that captured this view.
Exploring the Damage
This image tells a tale of sequential destruction when the supermassive star at the heart of Cas A died. First, as the aging star began its death process, it consumed heavier and heavier fuels in its core. That heated it up and the star expanded. It also ejected clouds of warm dust. They expanded slowly outward from the event. Then, when the star’s core began to consume iron, it took more energy than the star could supply. Burning stopped and the core collapsed. That brought the rest of the star inward. Then, it all rebounded, sending tendrils of stellar material racing away from the core. Eventually, that material collided with the slower-expanding dust shell.
All the colors in the image indicate the various parts of the explosion. The scene is pretty confusing at first. Astronomers are still working to figure out all the different sources of emissions in the remnant. The orange and red-hued material indicates emission from the warm outer shell. The tendrils are the starstuff rushing away from the collapsed core. They are bright pink and studded with knots and clumps. There’s a mix of elements generated in the star and by the explosion—including oxygen, neon, and argon. There is a collection of wispy star material closer to the center of the explosion site. The most prominent is a giant green loop that the team nicknamed the “Green Monster”. It’s an unexpected feature and nobody’s quite sure how or why it formed.
A closeup of the “Green Monster” (named after Boston’s Fenway Park). The JWST view shows incredible detail in this and other filaments at the heart of Cas A. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, D. D. Milisavljevic (Purdue), T. Temim (Princeton), I. De Looze (Ghent University). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
The Cas A Supernova Remnant and Cosmic Dust
Supernovae scatter huge amounts of dust in their wakes. So, this raises a question. Since astronomers see dusty galaxies in the early Universe, did supernovae make them that way? The answer is complicated. Certainly, the first supermassive stars existed pretty early in cosmic history. And, they died in supernova explosions. So, it might make sense to assume that they’d scatter dust as they died. Yet, observations of more “modern” supernovae and their dust output don’t always explain the huge amounts of dust in early times. So, where did the early dust come from, if not from supernovae?
The answer may be that they did provide all that dust. We just need the high-resolution infrared views that JWST is able to provide to find the evidence for that. “In Cas A, we can spatially resolve regions that have different gas compositions and look at what types of dust were formed in those regions,” said Temim. That means JWST can “see” what astronomers haven’t been able to detect using many other telescopes in the past.
Exploring supernova remnants like Cas A gives astronomers more than a view of what a dying star does to its environment. Doing it in high-resolution detailed infrared views allows astronomers to “see inside” dusty objects such as Cas A. Not only that, but it provides a window to the past. “By understanding the process of exploding stars, we’re reading our own origin story,” said Milisavljevic. “I’m going to spend the rest of my career trying to understand what’s in this data set.”
Past Views of Supernova Remant of Cas A
Cassiopeia A lies only about 11,000 light-years from us and stretches across 10 light-years of space. It was probably first observed in the late 1600s from Earth. With the advent of modern telescopes, it has been seen in visible light from the ground, as well as through radio observations, and from space by the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, NuSTAR, and others.
This Chandra X-ray Observatory image of Cas A shows chemical elements in the supernova remnant. The different colors mostly represent iron (orange), oxygen (purple), and the amount of silicon compared to magnesium (green). Titanium (light blue) detected previously by NASA’s NuSTAR telescope at higher X-ray energies is also shown. These Chandra and NuSTAR X-ray data have been overlaid on an optical-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope (yellow). Credit: Chandra: NASA/CXC/RIKEN/T. Sato et al.; NuSTAR: NASA/NuSTAR; Hubble: NASA/STScI
This lopsided stellar remnant itself is speeding out from the explosion site at a velocity between 4000-6000 kilometers per second. HST images showed knots and other ejecta moving away at up to 14,500 kilometers per second. Spitzer Space Telescope and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (both predecessors to JWST) detected an infrared echo from the explosion on nearby gas clouds.
All of these observations point to Cas A being a perfect target for further studies of supernova explosions and their role throughout cosmic time.
Inside this geometric structure is a demolished uranium mill and its radioactive tailings. Buried in 1992 by the Department of Energy, this mill near Grants, N.M. is one of about 20 uranium mill tailings sites in the U.S. that were remediated as part of the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action project (UMTRA).
Astronomers have developed a way to cheaply and easily measure the radiation exposure experienced by airline crews over Africa.
Cosmic radiation constantly bombards our atmosphere. Composed of tiny particles traveling at nearly the speed of light, cosmic rays originate from a variety of high energy processes throughout the universe, like quasars and supernovae.
These cosmic rays are a source of cancer in all living beings. The cosmic rays can slip between our cells and snip apart strands of DNA, which can lead to replication errors. We are safest on the ground because our atmosphere acts as an excellent safety blanket, blocking and absorbing all but the highest energy forms of cosmic rays.
But passengers on high-altitude flights suffer a slightly higher level of exposure. While casual passengers face no considerable additional risk, the same is not true for frequent travelers and especially for airline personnel. The governments of the United States and Europe have outlined safety standards for the maximum allowable radiation dose that aircraft crew can receive. Those governments have also set up monitoring systems over their airspaces to ensure that the cosmic ray environment does not pose a significant health hazard.
But the same is not true for Africa. We actually have no idea what the level of radiation risk is over that continent. To fix this, a team of astronomers tested a new idea. They mounted an especially sensitive Geiger counter to aircraft traveling from Germany to South Africa. They monitored the radiation level experienced by the aircraft during the long-haul flight.
Their initial measurements revealed that, thankfully, the radiation environment in the African skies was not unusually high. But this is just a test and the first development of a prototype. The researchers hope to deploy many more such instruments and piggyback on commercial aviation to build a much more robust map of the African radiation environment. This will ensure the health and safety of all the crews and passengers flying over that continent.
Unraveling the Mystery of the Purple Light Beam in Alaska
Unraveling the Mystery of the Purple Light Beam in Alaska
In a recent video from Anchorage, Alaska, a viewer captured an unusual purple light beam while filming the snow around his house. Although the region is known for its mysterious occurrences and numerous unexplained disappearances within the so-called Alaska Triangle, experts have now shed light on the true cause of the enigmatic purple beam.
Astrophysicist Hakima Lucia initially considered the possibility that the light beam was a spectrum of light captured by the camera sensor but not visible to the human eye. However, upon further examination, she concluded that the effect would likely be different if it were an invisible energy discharge.
Photography expert Andrew McCarthy provided a more plausible explanation, attributing the phenomenon to overexposure on the camera’s digital sensor. He pointed out that when a pixel on a digital camera sensor processes an exceptionally bright part of an image, it can overload and bleed into neighboring pixels, creating a line of light. The camera’s age, dating back to 2004, also played a role, as the sensor technology at that time was less advanced than today’s models.
n conclusion, the purple light beam captured in the video is likely a result of overexposure on the camera’s digital sensor and not directly related to the strange occurrences in the Alaska Triangle. Nonetheless, the region’s high rate of disappearances continues to intrigue and mystify.
Apocalypse 536 AD: The Catastrophic Event That Plunged the World into Darkness (Video)
Apocalypse 536 AD: The Catastrophic Event That Plunged the World into Darkness (Video)
In the year 536 AD,a mysterious event plunged the world into darkness for a year and a half. Constantinoplewriters of the time described the sun as dimmed and blotted out, causing crop failures, famine, and social upheaval across the globe.
Recent research suggests that a massive volcanic eruption , or series of simultaneous eruptions may have caused the catastrophic event, which created a volcanic winter and drastically changed the Earth's climate. The event is suggested to have been everything from the collapse of empires to the Plague of Justinian. However, the source of the eruption remains unknown, leaving scientists to unravel the mystery of one of the most significant environmental events in human history.
Jupiter is like an ogre, with one arm made of gravity, and the other made of radiation. These metaphorical arms stretch, squeeze, and bathe the menagerie of objects orbiting the giant planet. A pair of missions will soon go towards this planet to study ice-encrusted moons within its grasp that may harbor oceans where life might be huddled away — but will each use different strategies to avoid the ogre arms.
First up is the European Space Agency (ESA) JUICE mission, short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, which launches Thursday. After a seven-year-long trip to the outer Solar System, it will characterize the moons Callisto and Europa, and put its major focus on Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. Then next year, NASA’s Europa Clipper will launch toward the system to learn about Europa, the best Jovian candidate for life.
The missions will be able to complement each other in ways that will help us understand the origins of life on Earth, and if those conditions persist elsewhere.
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This NASA animation shows the space agency’s Europa Clipper spacecraft performing a flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa. The spacecraft will launch next year.
With the launch of JUICE just days away, Claire Vallat, operations scientist of the soon-to-fly JUICE mission and former scientist on Europe’s unprecedented 2014 comet mission Rosetta, eagerly awaits takeoff.
She describes JUICE’s two big goals. The first is putting Jupiter and its worlds in a broader perspective of the rest of the Milky Way, and, in turn, the Universe at large. Jupiter is a “mini-Solar System” that scientists can use as a laboratory to see how planetary formation works, she says. “With all the exoplanets that have been discovered in the past 20 or 30 years, there are a lot of Jupiter-like planets, so understanding how the Jovian system works will help us also to understand how other exoplanet systems might work,” Vallat tells Inverse.
JUICE’s other objective is related: honing in on “the emergence of habitable worlds” in particular, Vallat says. They’re gathering data on Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto to compare them to one another.
“Despite being born in the same kind of neighborhood, they have evolved completely differently,” Vallat says. Callisto is a battered shell, and Europa is relatively smooth. Ganymede is somewhere in between, meaning it has an intermediate level of activity, which shows in its so-so ability to fix superficial deformities. The surface features correspond, potentially, to the ability of any subsurface ocean to “repair” the surface.
This makes Ganymede valuable to science, according to Vallat. Europa likely has an ocean about 10 to 15 miles under its surface, while Ganymede likely has one 95 miles down. Callisto is believed to either have no ocean or one very, very far down. “Ganymede can give you an open book to the different stages that have taken place from the Jovian system formation to quite recently,” she says.
Ganymede stands out in the planetary rolodex in another major way: It is the only moon in the Solar System with its own magnetic field, capable of making auroras like Earth. But when it comes to resembling Earth for its most exceptional characteristic, the ability to host life, Europa comes closest. It’s why Clipper has dedicated its mission to this moon.
“Europa is super special,” Don Blankenship, senior research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas, tells Inverse. He is principal investigator of Clipper’s Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON) instrument, and a science team member of JUICE’s Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) instrument.
Blankenship says Europa has the right conditions to support anaerobic life, the sort that lives in oxygen-free environments. “What people are not really picking up on is how close Europa really is to things that exist on Earth now,” Blankenship says. According to him, there are ice shelves in Antarctica with pressure, temperature, and salt environments that are similar to what scientists predict exists below Europa’s frozen surface. Ganymede is less likely to harbor life. But it's a robust world that might help explain exoplanets around other stars.
These illustrations offer two possibilities for Europa’s ice thickness. In both, the subsurface ocean is depicted in direct contact with the silicate layer, allowing heat to move through the water through hydrothermal vents, and cause changes to Europa’s icy surface.
To learn about Europa’s possible lifeforms, the spacecraft must survive the most hazardous radiation belts in the Solar System, which are found around Jupiter.
Another way Juno sails as unscathed as possible is that it “threads the needle” just a few thousand kilometers above the gas giant’s clouds, principal Juno mission investigator Scott Bolton tells Inverse. Juno circles Jupiter’s poles rather than its middle section, a beneficial tactic because it evades the strongest radiation blows near Jupiter’s equator, Bolton says.
Juno may help guide both missions. “We're going through the regions now that both of those spacecraft will visit … that may also inform them, help them understand the radiation environment that they're going to experience, and how they might need to adjust science observation strategies or orbits to accommodate radiation as a formidable foe,” Bolton says.
Blankenship says Europa Clipper gets its name from the 50 radiation-defying dives it’ll take past Europa — effectively clipping the moon — as the spacecraft orbits Jupiter. Without this approach, “the radiation at Europa can be pretty dramatic and it's very difficult for spacecraft to survive for long periods,” Blankenship says.
JUICE, however, will endeavor to enter into a Ganymede orbit. Jupiter’s gravity will warp this path over time, according to ESA. But JUICE will make history when it does: the mission will become the first spacecraft to orbit another planet’s moon. JUICE saved the most radiation-intense segments of the trip — when it orbits Ganymede — for the end. It will fly an ambitious mission, and for that reason, the mission will last just four years. Justin Byrne, the head of ESA’s Science Programs at Airbus Defence and Space (which led the consortium building the JUICE spacecraft), told Space.com that JUICE will not survive 10 years like many other missions do.
A family portrait of Jupiter and the four Galilean moons. Distances are not to scale. At the top is the volcanic moon Io. Below it, to the right of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, is Europa. Bottom right shows Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System and where JUICE will orbit next decade. Bottom left shows the battered and unhealed surface of the icy moon Callisto.
Jupiter is harsh, but this could be what makes Europa habitable.
Its gravity, for instance, could be exerting so much damage on a nearby moon — the barren, volcanically active moon Io — that it spouts ingredients for life that reach other moons.
“Tidal forces are responsible for small deformations in the shape of the [moons], particularly for Io, which is so heated by this deformation that it generated interior heat … and multiple sets of sulfur-spewing volcanoes all over Io’s surface,” Glenn Orton, Juno co-investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, tells Inverse.
After the volcanoes release the sulfur, a chemical element that anaerobic microbes metabolized before Earth’s atmosphere became oxygenated, the particles travel through space and “get pasted all over the surface of Europa,” Blankenship says.
The ice of Europa creates a haven. Not only does it act like a barrier against Jupiter’s radiation, but it might be delivering these nutrients to the ocean below it. Clipper and JUICE may help to characterize the ice and ocean interplay.
Jupiter’s hefty influence could induce hydrothermal vents in Europa's silicate rock below the ocean, too, not unlike the ones found on our planet. “Learning more about oceans on the moons of Jupiter will provide a different perspective on vents here on Earth,” Brendan Smith, a Ph.D. candidate in acoustical oceanography at Dalhousie University in Canada, tells Inverse.
Smith says that Earth’s deep ocean is home to hydrothermal vents. It’s here that bacteria have developed the ability to make energy without sunlight. The process is called chemosynthesis, akin to photosynthesis, but substituting chemicals for light.
“It is hypothesized that these types of chemosynthetic bacteria may have been some of the first life to develop on Earth, and that this could have originated at hydrothermal vents,” Smith says. “As a result, the prospect of hydrothermal vents elsewhere in the Solar System provides an opportunity to investigate whether there could be similar chemosynthetic life outside Earth.”
Imagery from NASA’s Juno spacecraft are put to music and in sequence. This data comes from Juno’s flyby of Ganymede and Jupiter in June 2021.
WHEN THEY LAUNCH
JUICE will fly into space aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport, which is based near Kourou, French Guiana. The launch is scheduled for 8:15 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, April 13. It will arrive at Jupiter in 2031.
Europa Clipper will leave later, currently set to launch in October 2024, but will reach Jupiter earlier, in 2030. JUICE will cruise past several inner Solar System planets to gain the necessary gravity assists to reach Jupiter. Clipper will do a Mars-Earth gravity assist, skipping JUICE’s Venus flyby, to reach Jupiter.
To watch the JUICE launch, you can tune in to the ESA Web TV YouTube channel. The broadcast begins at 7:15 a.m. Eastern. On Twitter, ESA will share updates using the #ESAJuice hashtag and the @ESA_JUICE @esaoperations @ESA_STS and @esascience accounts, too.
NASA's Perseverance Collects First Mars Sample of New Science Campaign
NASA's Perseverance Collects First Mars Sample of New Science Campaign
Perseverance Samples 'Berea': This image shows the rocky outcrop the Perseverance science team calls “Berea” after the NASA Mars rover extracted a rock core (right) and abraded a circular patch (left).
The rover continues its hunt for rocks worthy of bringing to Earth for further study.
NASA’s Perseverance rover cored and stored the first sample of the mission’s newest science campaign on Thursday, March 30. With each campaign, the team explores and studies a new area. On this one, the rover is exploring the top of Jezero Crater’s delta. Perseverance has collected a total of 19 samples and three witness tubes, and it recently deposited 10 tubes as a backup cache on the Martian surface as part of the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign.
Scientists want to study Martian samples with powerful lab equipment on Earth to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to better understand the water cycle that has shaped the surface and interior of Mars.
Perseverance Cores 'Berea': This animation shows NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover collecting a rock sample from an outcrop the science team calls “Berea” using a coring bit on the end of its robotic arm. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. µDownload video ›
Cored from a rock the science team calls “Berea,” this latest sample is the 16th cored rock sample of the mission (there are also samples of regolith – or broken rock and dust – as well as Mars atmosphere; read more about the samples). The science team believes Berea formed from rock deposits that were carried downstream by an ancient river to this location. That would mean the material could have come from an area well beyond the confines of Jezero Crater, and it’s one reason why the team finds the rock so promising.
Perseverance's Rock Core From 'Berea' Outcrop: This image shows the rock core from “Berea” inside inside the drill of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS. Download image ›
“The second reason is that the rock is rich in carbonate,” said Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Carbonate rocks on Earth can be good at preserving fossilized lifeforms. If biosignatures were present in this part of Jezero Crater, it could be a rock like this one that could very well hold their secrets.”
A Climate Puzzle
One big puzzle is how Mars’ climate worked back when this area was covered with liquid water. Because carbonates form due to chemical interactions in liquid water, they can provide scientists a long-term record of changes in the planet’s climate. By studying the carbonate in the Berea sample, the science team could help fill in the gaps.
“The Berea core highlights the beauty of rover missions,” said Perseverance’s project scientist, Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena. “Perseverance’s mobility has allowed us to collect igneous samples from the relatively flat crater floor during the first campaign, and then travel to the base of the crater’s delta, where we found fine-grained sedimentary rocks deposited in a dried lakebed. Now we are sampling from a geologic location where we find coarse-grained sedimentary rocks deposited in a river. With this diversity of environments to observe and collect from, we are confident that these samples will allow us to better understand what occurred here at Jezero Crater billions of years ago.”
With this latest sample stored safely in a sample tube in the rover’s belly, the six-wheeler will continue to climb Jezero’s sedimentary fan toward the next bend in the dry riverbed, a location the science team is calling “Castell Henllys.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
More highlights of Perseverance’s first two years on Mars:
How Mars Rock Samples Would Make Their Way to Earth
How Mars Rock Samples Would Make Their Way to Earth
How on Earth will we get rock samples from Mars back to our planet? Find out how multiple spacecraft would work together to get the job done.
New video released today shows how NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are planning to bring the first samples of Mars material back to Earth for detailed study. The Mars Perseverance rover is the first leg of this international interplanetary relay team. Its job is to collect and cache samples on Mars. A Sample Return Lander would land near or in Jezero Crater, bringing a small rocket on which the samples collected by Perseverance would be loaded.
Two Ingenuity-like helicopters would provide a secondary capability to retrieve samples on the surface of Mars. Once the sample cache is launched off the Red Planet, another spacecraft would capture it in Mars orbit, and then bring it back to Earth safely and securely in the early to mid 2030s. These first collected and returned samples could answer a key question: did life ever exist on Mars? Only by bringing the samples back can we truly answer the question by using the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art labs, at a time when future generations can study them using techniques yet to be invented.
Who’s at work on the quest to return Mars samples to Earth? Explore this interactive map to see which institutions around the world are teaming up for this enormous challenge.
THIRTY THREE years ago, thousands of Belgian citizens reported mysterious platforms flying silently over rooftops. The Royal Belgian Air Force got involved and cooperated fully with civilian investigators. To this day, however, the origins of these craft remain unknown.
It’s hard to convey the excitement caused by the Belgian UFO wave if you were not following UFO news back in 1989 and the early 1990s. There was no shortage of UFO reports back then, and interest in the phenomenon was at a high. The sightings and photos from Gulf Breeze, Florida, dominated the American scene, wild UFO reports and stories coming out of the old Soviet Union received huge international media attention, and the Mexican video wave took off in 1991. Yet the Belgian wave seemed to top all of these stories for awhile. The reports out of this small country, headquarters of both the European Commission and NATO, received unprecedented coverage, making even the front page of the Wall Street Journal on October 10, 1990, with a story entitled, “Belgium Scientists Seriously Pursue A Triangular UFO.”
The classic triangular-shaped UFO described by hundreds of eyewitnesses during the Belgium wave: sketch by witness used to create reconstruction of the object seen at the top of story.
Credit: SOBEPS
There were many reasons for the interest generated by the Belgian wave. One was the quality of the reports themselves, the bulk of which were registered in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. There were no landings or humanoid sightings but lots of detailed multiple-witness sightings of flying platforms moving slowly and silently above rooftops. Shapes varied, but the predominant form was triangular or delta-shaped crafts. Some of the descriptions were so precise that traditional explanations of misidentified natural phenomena or conventional aircraft were ruled out. Instead, stealth fighters and other U.S. secret military aircraft became the favorite explanations suggested by skeptics, but these were quickly ruled out by the Royal Belgian Air Force (RBAF). Another reason for the wave’s importance was that it was carefully investigated and documented by a local UFO organization called SOBEPS (Belgian society for the study of space phenomena).
SOBEPS was formed in 1971 by Lucien Clerebaut, Michel Bougard, and others, and built a small but highly dedicated cadre of field investigators. By the end of the wave in 1993, SOBEPS had collected over two thousand eyewitness reports comprising twenty thousand pages, four hundred hours of audio tapes, and six hundred full inquiries. Five hundred and forty cases remained unexplained. SOBEPS also had the assistance of top-notch scientists, including Léon Brenig, a nonlinear dynamics theorist at the Free University in Brussels, and Professor Auguste Meessen, a physicist from Catholic University at Louvain. Regarding his work with SOBEPS, Dr. Brenig has said, “here is an opportunity where we can apply the scientific method.” Brenig himself became a witness of the so-called Belgian triangle while driving in the Ardennes on March 18, 1990. The whole dossier was eventually published by SOPEPS in two massive volumes, five hundred pages each, entitled Vague d’OVNI sur la Belgique (UFO Wave ver Belgium), published in 1991 and 1994 respectively. Due to financial difficulties, SOBEPS dissolved on December 31, 2007, but some of its members formed a new, smaller organization called COBEPS (Belgian committee for the study of space phenomena) to preserve the archives and work done for thirty-six years.
The two volumes published by SOBEPS entitled, “UFO Wavever OBelgium.”
Credit: SOBEPS
A final and key element in the credibility of the Belgian UFO wave was the participation and validation by the RBAF, which showed an unusual degree of openness. As the Belgian wave gained steam, the Belgian Ministry of Defence was deluged with queries from the public and the media. The task fell upon the chief of operations of the air force, Col. Wilfried De Brouwer, who was later promoted to major general and deputy chief of the RBAF. Now retired from the service, Gen. De Brouwer has continued to speak about the wave. He was one of the many international officials who spoke at the famous event at the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC, in November 2007, organized by filmmaker James Fox and journalist Leslie Kean. “The Belgian UFO wave was exceptional and the air force could not identify the nature, origin and intentions of the reported phenomena,” said De Brouwer at the NPC. He also gave a detailed presentation on the wave at the MUFON International UFO Symposium in San Jose, California, in July 2008, and was one of five generals to write an essay in Leslie Kean’s new book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record.
Although the RBAF scrambled jets on three occasions during the wave, Gen. De Brouwer has explained on various occasions that they didn’t have the manpower or resources to mount a full-fledged investigation of their own, so instead they took the unusual route of cooperating fully with SOBEPS. The radar data was turned to Prof. Meessen for analysis, and Gen. De Brouwer agreed to write the postface for SOBEPS’s first volume when he was still in the service. “I must acknowledge that I somewhat hesitated when SOBEPS asked me to contribute my share to this book,” he wrote. “Indeed, I am not a UFO specialist and, moreover, it is quite delicate for somebody who occupies an official function to put on paper his personal ideas on such a disputed issue. However, I estimate that I would not have been honest towards the SOBEPS if I had refused. The air force always played a fair game on this subject and I regard this postface as a complementary element to the exceptional file written by the people of SOBEPS.”
THE EUPEN INCIDENT
Although some sightings were reported in October 1989, the first important incident of the Belgian wave took place a month later on November 29 around the small town of Eupen, which is in a region of Belgium near the German border. This initial case put the so-called “Belgian triangle” on the map and led to the start of the RBAF’s involvement. There were both daytime and nighttime sightings, although the latter were lengthier and more detailed. Gen. De Brouwer explained in his essay for Leslie Kean’s book, “a total of seventy reported sightings made on November 29 were fully investigated and none of these sightings could be explained by conventional technology. The team of investigators and I estimate that approximately fifteen hundred people must have seen the phenomenon at more than seventy different locations from different angles during this afternoon and evening.” There were a total of thirteen gendarmes (policemen) who saw the UFO from eight different locations around Eupen. Prof. Meessen summarized the case in SOBEPS’s book:
On November 29, 1989, a large craft with triangular shape flew over the town of Eupen. The gendarmes von Montigny and Nicol found it near the road linking Aix-la-Chapelle and Eupen. It was stationary in the air, above a field which it illuminated with three powerful beams. The beams emanated from large circular surfaces near the triangle’s corners. In the center of the dark and flat understructure there was some kind of “red gyrating beacon.” The object did not make any noise. When it began to move, the gendarmes headed towards a small road in the area over which they expected the object to fly. Instead, it made a half-turn and continued slowly in the direction of Eupen, following the road at low altitude. It was seen by different witnesses as it flew above houses and near City Hall.
In his 2008 MUFON lecture, Gen. De Brouwer provided additional details on this sighting: “The UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon] emitted repeatedly and simultaneously two red light beams with a red light ball at the spearhead of the beam. Subsequently, the red balls returned to the craft.” There was also apparently a second triangular craft, which made “a forward tilting maneuver, exposing the upper side of the fuselage,” continued De Brouwer. “They [gendarmes] saw a dome with rectangular windows, lighted up at the inside. It then disappeared to the North.” Two more gendarmes saw one of the craft from a monastery nearby; “one is currently the head of the police in that area, he was scared like hell,” added De Brouwer.
Statistical chart of Belgian sightings between October 1989 and September 1990, showing peaks in the November-December period and a second one in April.
Credit: SOBEPS
The Eupen incident was followed by many other UFO sightings, including several reported on December 11, 1989. One of the witnesses that evening was a personal acquaintance of Gen. De Brouwer, Col. André Amond, a civil engineer in the Belgian Army. Col. Armond worked next door to Gen. De Brouwer and wrote a detailed report for the Ministry of Defence. Col. Armond was driving with his wife around 6:45 p.m., when they noticed a strange object with flashing red lights. They stopped the car and got out to see it better. “Suddenly, they saw a giant spotlight, about twice the size of the full moon, which approached them to an estimated distance of 100 meters,” wrote De Brouwer, adding that “the colonel’s wife was frightened and asked to leave.” In his report to the Ministry, Armond “ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized Ultra Light, or any other known aerial vehicle.”
Various shapes were reported throughout the wave, including round, rectangular, and cigar-shaped, but the majority were triangular objects. Gen. De Brouwer notes that the differences may also be due to the eyewitnesses’ viewing angles. Researcher Marc Valckenaers listed some of the characteristics of the UFOs in SOBEPS’s second volume about the wave, including: irregular displacement (zig-zag, instantaneous change of trajectory, etc.), displacement following the contours of the terrain; varying speeds of displacement (including very slow motion), stationary flight (hovering), overflight of urban and industrial centers, and sound effects (faint humming to total silence).
Reconstruction of the incredible rectangular flying platform seen by two factory workers on April 22, 1990, described as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.”
Credit: SOBEPS
One of the strangest reports came from two factory workers from the town of Basècles, southwest of Brussels, who saw a huge trapezoid flying platform (330 x 200 feet) just before midnight on April 22, 1990. The object moved slowly and silently, covering the entire factory courtyard. In the SOBEPS report, the factory workers described the UFO as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.” Despite the science-fiction quality of this sighting, an almost identical report was filed nearly a year later, on March 15, 1991, by an electronic engineer in Auderghem, near Brussels, who woke up in the middle of the night when he “heard a barely audible, high-frequency whistling tone. He looked out the window and saw a large rectangular craft at very low altitude with irregular structures on the bottom,” wrote Gen. De Brouwer.
One characteristic of the Belgian wave was how close the objects were flying above the rooftops, as shown with this flying rectangular platform.
Credit: SOBEPS
Another view of the rectangular flying platform above the rooftop and sketch showing where the witness saw it.
Credit: SOBEPS
THE F-16 SCRAMBLE EPISODE
If the Eupen multiple-witness sightings of November 1989 triggered the Belgian wave, the jet fighter scramble incident during the night of March 30, 1990 marked the peak of public interest and global media coverage. The Belgian Air Force had scrambled jets on two prior occasions without positive results. The December 5, 1989 scramble was unsuccessful; when the jet reached the sky, the UFO was gone. Additionally, the December 16, 1989 case turned out to be a false alarm; the authorities quickly determined that it was a laser projection reflected by a cloud layer. Following these two fiascos, the RBAF implemented a new policy that jets would be scrambled only when a sighting was detected on radar and was visually confirmed on the ground by the police.
The SOBEPS team visiting the Royal Belgian Air Force radar facility at Glons: in the center group, left, the Society’s chairman Lucien Clerebaut and right, physicist Prof. Auguste Meessen, next to military officer.
Credit: SOBEPS
As put in a preliminary report prepared by Major P. Lambrechts of the RBAF, entitled “Report Concerning the Observation of UFOs During the Night of March 30 to 31, 1990,” the incident began at 10:50 p.m. on March 30 when the gendarmerie telephoned the radar “master controller at Glons” to report “three unusual lights forming an equilateral triangle.” More gendarmes confirmed the lights. When the NATO facility at Semmerzake detected an unknown target at 11:49 p.m., a decision to scramble two F-16 fighters was made. The jets took off at 12:05 a.m. from Beauvechain, the nearest air base, and flew for just over an hour. According to Major Lambrechts’s report:
The aircraft had brief radar contacts on several occasions, [but the pilots]…at no time established visual contact with the UFOs…each time the pilots were able to secure a lock on one of the targets for a few seconds, there resulted a drastic change in the behavior of the detected targets…[During the first lock-on at 12:13 a.m.] their speed changed in a minimum of time from 150 to 970 knots [170 to 1,100 mph] and from 9,000 to 5,000 feet, returning then to 11,000 feet in order to change again to close to ground level.
When Col. De Brouwer showed the computerized radar images of the UFO tracked by the F-16 onboard radar system in a heavily attended press conference at the Ministry of Defence on July 11, 1990, the international media went into a frenzy. Transcripts of the radio communications between ace fighter pilots, Capt. Yves Meelbergs, Lt. Rudy Verrijt, and the Glons Control Reporting Center near Liege, were also released and provide some dramatic moments. The transcripts paint a picture of the jets chasing ghost radar echoes that appear and disappear and then reappear again, but at no time are the pilots able to establish visual contact with the supposed objects. Belgium’s Electronic War Center (EWC) eventually undertook a detailed technical analysis of the F-16 computerized radar tapes, completed by Col. Salmon and physicist M. Gilmard in 1992, and later reviewed by Prof. Meessen.
An F-16 jet fighter of the Royal Belgian Air Force like the ones scrambled on the night of March 30-31, 1990.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Although some aspects of this case still remain unexplained, Meessen and SOBEPS accepted the Gilmard-Salmon hypothesis that most of the radar contacts were really echoes caused by a rare meteorological phenomenon. This became evident in four lock-ons, explained Meessen, “where the object descended to the ground with calculations showing negative altitude…. It was evidently impossible that an object could penetrate the ground, but it was possible that the ground could act as a mirror.” Meessen explained how the high velocities measured by the Doppler radar of the F-16 fighters might result from interference effects. He pointed out, however, that there was another radar trace for which there is no explanation to date. As for the visual sightings of this event by the gendarmes and others, Meessen suggested that they could possibly have been caused by stars seen under conditions of “exceptional atmospheric refraction.”
One frame from the F-16 onboard radar system showing the UFO lock-on during the March 1990 scramble episode, shown by the RBAF at a famous press conference in July 1990.
Credit: RBAF/ Bernard Thouanel
In a 1995 telephone interview, Gen. De Brouwer summarized his reflections on this complex case: “We always look for possibilities which can cause errors in the radar systems. We can not exclude that there was electromagnetic interference, but of course we can not exclude the possibility that there were objects in the air. On at least one occasion there was a correlation between the radar contacts of one ground radar and one F-16 fighter. This weakens the theory that all radar contacts were caused by electromagnetic interference. If we add all the possibilities, the question is still open, so there is no final answer.” De Brouwer took a more detached view of the F-16 scramble episode, however, in his 2008 MUFON lecture and his 2010 essay included in Kean’s book: “The conclusion of the Air Force, therefore, was that the evidence was insufficient to prove that there were real crafts in the air on that occasion.”
THE PETIT-RECHAIN PHOTO
The famous color slide of the Belgian triangle photographed in Petit-Rechain in early April 1990.
Seldom has the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words become more true than in the case of the extraordinary photograph of a flying triangle taken in the small town of Petit-Rechain in April 1990. This color slide became the emblematic symbol of the Belgian UFO wave. It has been published and broadcast in television programs all over the world, and it appears on the cover of the two SOBEPS volumes on the Belgian wave. It’s also one of the most analyzed UFO photos in the history of ufology. During my trip to Brussels in 1995, I had the opportunity to talk at length with Patrick Ferryn, the investigator who researched the case initially and wrote the chapter about it in the SOBEPS book. Ferryn gave me copies of the photo and samples of computer enhancements made by Marc Acheroy, professor of electricity at the Royal Military School, where the image was analyzed by the Signal Treatment Center. The details of how the photo was taken are fairly simple and straightforward.
The photographer, P.M. (who wants privacy, but has fully cooperated with SOBEPS), was a twenty-year-old factory worker, who lived in the small community of Petit-Rechain, near Verviers. He was at home with his girlfriend on the night of either April 4 or 7, 1990 (he can’t pin down the exact date), when his girlfriend first noticed the object between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. as she took the dog to the courtyard. According to P.M.’s statement to Ferryn, he was alerted by his girlfriend, went outside, and “saw the object practically stationary towards the southwest, at about a forty-five-degree elevation. It consisted of three white round lights on a barely perceptible triangular surface. In the center there was a blinking spot of the same color, or maybe a bit more reddish than the other lights.” P.M. grabbed his camera, a Praktica model BX20 with a 55-200 mm zoom and a “Cokin” 1A 52 mm skylight filter. He shot the last two frames of a roll of 36-200 ASA Kodak color slide film. The UFO then moved slowly towards Petit-Rechain, until it was hidden by the roofs in the village. The entire episode took about five minutes.
The roll of film was sent by mail to a development house offering a special discount, and when P.M. received the slides, he noticed only frame #35 had captured the UFO; frame #36 was entirely black. Ferryn estimated that “the photo was probably taken with a focal distance between 55 and 200 mm, and with exposition time ranging from 1 to 2 seconds.” P.M. showed the photo to his factory coworkers (all of whom were later interviewed by Ferryn), but otherwise didn’t do anything to analyze or commercialize the picture. One of his coworkers knew a local photo-journalist from Verviers, Guy Mossay, who immediately saw the image’s potential value. P.M. sold the photo rights to Mossay for a small fee. Mossay then proceeded to copyright it with SOFAM (Belgium’s multimedia society for visual arts authors).
Skeptics have naturally pointed to the possibility of a hoax with profit motive. However, if that is the case, why did P.M. sell the rights to Mossay for a minor fee? Moreover, hoaxers never supply original slides or negatives for scientific analysis, as was done by P.M. Having checked his background, interviewed acquaintances, and so on, Ferryn noted that “the account of the main witnesses was coherent.” Gen. De Brouwer spent quite a bit of time explaining the details of this case during his MUFON lecture, saying of the witness that, “this guy is genuine, he is a guy who would not fake at all, I can assure you of that.” More importantly, the Petit-Rechain photo has been subjected to more scientific analysis than practically any other UFO photo in history.
When the Petit-Rechain photo is overexposed, the triangular outline of the object appears clearly.
The list of experts and institutions that have analyzed this photo include Prof. Acheroy of Belgium’s Royal Military Academy; Prof. François Louange, an expert in photo interpretation of satellite images for the French space agency, CNES; Dr. Richard Haines, a retired senior NASA scientist and respected UFO researcher; Belgium’s Royal Institute of Artistic Patrimony; and André Marion, a nuclear physicist with France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), who conducted an analysis in 2002 with improved technology. The technical details of these analyses are too numerous for this article, but suffice it to say that evidence of photographic trickery has never been found. Furthermore, of several efforts to duplicate the photo using a dark cardboard triangular model with holes and light bulbs, only one made by members of the Astrophysics Institute at Liege University somewhat resembled the Petit-Rechain photo. But the luminosity of the spots in the replica was uniform, while those in the original exhibited different shapes and spectral effects. The most recent CNRS study by Dr. Marion confirmed the previous analysis and found, as put by Gen. De Brouwer, a “halo around the craft with patterned structure,” which could have been caused by the object’s “propulsion system” of “magnetoplasma dynamic.” Marion also stated that “it would be extremely difficult to fake such a photograph.”
In the end, it’s almost impossible to guarantee the authenticity of a UFO image. There will always be a difference of opinions, but the verdict in the Petit-Rechain case appears highly favorable. Triangular UFOs were seen throughout Belgium during the early 1990s. Dozens of fuzzy videos and grainy photos were taken, but they were generally not impressive. Petit-Rechain was the great exception.
Note: Since the writing of this article, the photo turned out to be an admitted hoax.
NO EVIDENCE OF SECRET AIRCRAFT
Due to the high credibility of most witnesses in the Belgian wave and their descriptions of a silent, triangular craft being so precise, trying to explain the wave in terms of hoaxes, misidentified natural phenomena, or conventional aircraft seemed fruitless. Therefore, a number of skeptics and aviation journalists focused on trying to prove the hypothesis of secret U.S. aircraft flying over Belgium. A series of candidates were proposed, from the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to secret airships, from the F-117A stealth fighter to some other revolutionary U.S. secret military aircraft such as the alleged TR-3A Black Manta. First, you have to ponder why the U.S. would conduct tests of their most-secret aircraft in such a highly populated area like Wallonia, which is not only a U.S. ally, but also headquarters of the NATO alliance. Gen. De Brouwer put it bluntly in a 1991 interview with the French magazine, OVNI Présence: “Why would the Americans conduct tests here in Europe, without permission and with the risk of having an accident that could create a diplomatic incident on a global scale? This doesn’t involve only Belgium, but NATO, where its concept itself could be put in question. I don’t believe that the Americans could take such a risk, it’s evident.”
Major General (Ret.) Wilfried De Brouwer, who was the Royal Belgian Air Force point man for the UFO wave, during his trip to Washington, DC to participate at the National Press Club event in 2007.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Guy Coeme and Leo Delcroix, the two Belgian Ministers of Defence during the wave, denied emphatically the theory that the UFOs were actually U.S. aircraft and based their denial on official inquiries with the U.S. Embassy in Brussels. In a 1993 letter to French researcher Renaud Marhic, Minister Delcroix wrote: “Unfortunately, no explanation has been found to date. The nature and origin of the phenomenon remain unknown. One theory can, however, be definitely dismissed since the Belgian Armed Forces have been positively assured by American authorities that there has never been any sort of American aerial test flight.” A declassified 1990 document from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) entitled, “Belgium and the UFO Issue,” supports Delcroix’s position. After describing the basic events of the wave that had transpired up to that point, the unnamed U.S. official wrote at the very end of this memo: “The [U.S. Air Force (USAF)] did confirm to the [Belgian Air Force] and Belgian [Ministry of Defence] that no USAF stealth aircraft were operating in the Ardennes area during the periods in question. This was released to the Belgian press and received wide dissemination.”
Thirty years have now passed since the Belgian UFO wave, and no new significant evidence has been produced to prove that the sightings were caused by secret military aircraft. The reported cases remain unexplained. It seems certain that something massive and technologically advanced flew over Belgian territory during the 1989-93 period. Why and who was behind it are questions that remain to be answered. A suitable conclusion, for now, is to repeat what Gen. De Brouwer wrote at the end of his famous postface to the SOBEPS’s first volume: “The day will come undoubtedly when the phenomenon will be observed with technological means of detection and collection that won’t leave a single doubt about its origin. This should lift a part of the veil that has covered the mystery for a long time. A mystery that continues thus present. But it exists, it is real, and that in itself is an important conclusion.”
The author (left) with SOBEPS’ chairman Lucien Clerebaut at the Society’s headquarters in Brussels in 1995. The map in the background shows the locations of sightings in Belgium.
Credit: Antonio Huneeus
A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #5 (December/January 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence by mikemacmarketing Credits: Flickr/CC BY 2.0.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been making headlines for years as one of the most transformative technologies in the modern era. As AI growth continues to get bigger, its impact on the global economy and the job market is increasingly felt.
An artificial intelligence gold rush has begun over the past few months to extract the predicted business prospects from generative AI models like ChatGPT, whether it is founded on hallucinatory beliefs or not.
In an effort to understand the sensational text-generating bot that OpenAI unveiled last November, app developers, venture-backed companies, and some of the biggest organizations in the world are all frantically trying to understand it.
Although businesses and executives clearly perceive an opportunity to profit, it is much less clear how the technology will affect labor and the economy as a whole. ChatGPT and other recently released generative AI models promise to automate a variety of tasks previously thought to be solely within the realm of human creativity and reasoning, from writing to creating graphics to summarizing and analyzing data. Despite their limitations, chief among which is their propensity for making stuff up, ChatGPT and other recently released generative AI models are not without their own limitations. Because of this, economists are uncertain of how jobs and general productivity may be impacted.
Artificial Intelligence, AI, by mikemacmarketing. Credits: Flickr/CC BY 2.0.
The Global AI Market: Size and Growth
The global AI market has been growing rapidly, driven by advancements in machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing. According to a report by Grand View Research, the AI market size was valued at USD 62.35 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.2% from 2021 to 2028. The current value of the global AI market is $136.6 billion and is expected to reach $1.81 trillion by 2030!
Major Players in the AI Market
The AI market is dominated by several key players, including:
Google: Google’s AI subsidiary, DeepMind, has developed various AI solutions, including the well-known AlphaGo and AlphaFold systems. Google also offers AI services such as TensorFlow, an open-source machine learning framework.
IBM: IBM has been a significant player in AI research and development for decades, with its AI platform Watson being one of the most recognizable AI brands in the world.
Microsoft: Microsoft’s AI efforts include Azure AI, a suite of AI services and tools, as well as investments in AI research and development across various domains.
Amazon: Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a range of AI services, such as machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing, catering to businesses and developers alike.
NVIDIA: As a leading provider of GPU hardware, NVIDIA plays a vital role in enabling AI growth through its hardware solutions and software frameworks designed for machine learning and deep learning applications.
The Future of AI: What to Expect
Artificial Intelligence – Resembling Human Brain by deepakiqlect. Credits: Flickr/ CC BY-SA 2.0.
Already, generative AIs are able to converse, produce poetry, develop computer code, and respond to questions. They are initially being introduced in conversational formats like ChatGPT, Bing, and Google’s Bard, as the term “chatbot” suggests.
But that won’t last for very long. These AI technologies will already be present in Microsoft and Google goods, according to plans. These will enable you to accomplish a variety of cool feats, such as automatically summarizing meetings, crafting savvy marketing messages, and writing a rough copy of an email.
Other IT firms can integrate GPT-4 into their applications and products using the A.P.I. that OpenAI also provides. Additionally, it has developed a number of plug-ins that enhance ChatGPT’s functionality from businesses including Instacart, Expedia, and Wolfram Alpha, enabling future users to house a real personal assistant on their devices. AI applications are becoming more widespread across various sectors, such as healthcare, finance, retail, and manufacturing, driving the further market growth.
AI Growth and the Job Market: Opportunities and Threats
AI-Driven Job Opportunities
As AI continues to expand, new job opportunities are emerging in fields such as:
Data Science: Data scientists play a crucial role in training AI algorithms and interpreting the results of AI-driven analyses.
AI Engineering: AI engineers develop and maintain AI systems, ensuring their efficient operation and integration with other technologies.
AI Ethics and Policy: As AI growth raises ethical concerns, there is an increasing demand for professionals who can navigate the complexities of AI ethics and develop policies to ensure responsible AI development and use.
Jobs at Risk of Extinction
While AI growth presents new opportunities, it also threatens some jobs, particularly those that involve repetitive tasks and can be easily automated, like:
Manufacturing and Assembly: With the rise of AI-powered robots, many manual assembly jobs are at risk of being replaced by automated processes.
Over 50 Years of Production – The TMHE Production Line by Toyota Material Handling EU.Credits: Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Data Entry and Analysis: AI algorithms can process and analyze large amounts of data more quickly and accurately than humans, which may lead to a decline in demand for data entry and analysis positions.
Customer Service: AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants are increasingly handling customer service tasks, potentially reducing the need for human customer service representatives.
So, where is this going? How will the AI economy be shaped?
Kevin Roose, author of ‘Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humansin the Age of Automation’, discusses how AI is changing the nature of work, pointing out instances like “labor displacement that we traditionally think of when we think about automation, ” though he notes that this is occurring in a wider range of industries than it previously has, including white-collar workplaces. The replacement of management tasks is less well known: ” There’s now a whole industry of worker surveillance and performance tracking software, and in some cases automatically making decisions about hiring and firing.” By 2034, this may result in the replacement of 47% of all job functions.
The two-tiered economy predicted by Mr. Roose will consist of the machine economy and the human economy. The former’s goods will become incredibly affordable. He claims that AI will make it possible for the managers of those businesses to eliminate all waste and inefficiency.
The human economy, in contrast, will be made up of individuals who focus more on creating sensations and experiences than on producing goods and rendering services. Examples of such individuals include healthcare professionals, educators, and artists. Why end there then? Because their job is to make others feel comfortable, even those you wouldn’t consider irreplaceable, like bartenders, baristas, and flight attendants, fall into the category. The human touch is what makes everything so important.
According to Mr. Roose, this will lead to an increase in the creation of higher-touch versions of hyper-scale digital companies’ services, such as premium Netflix where movie curators choose movies for you. According to Mr. Roose, there will be layers within these businesses where customers pay more for human interaction on top of the fundamental layer. He foresees a new wave of businesses that scale human interaction without losing their humanity.
In conclusion, we have new jobs that will be born for AI, some jobs, especially manual ones will become extinct and we also have the ones that are in the middle: lawyers, digital marketers, content writers, journalists, etc.
While AI presents many opportunities for increased efficiency and cost-effectiveness, it also poses challenges and may require professionals to adapt their skills and roles. AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data quickly and accurately can be a game-changer for professions such as lawyers and digital marketers. For instance, AI-powered legal tools can streamline document review, case research, and contract analysis, allowing attorneys to focus on more strategic tasks and provide better client service. Similarly, AI algorithms can help digital marketers optimize campaigns, analyze consumer behavior, and predict trends, leading to more targeted and effective marketing strategies.
To stay relevant, professionals in these sectors must focus on developing skills that complement AI, such as creativity, empathy, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence. Moreover, as AI assumes a larger part in decision-making procedures, ethical considerations will become more crucial. To guarantee that AI technologies are used fairly and responsibly, experts will need to keep an eye on concerns like algorithmic bias, transparency, and data privacy.
The emergence of AI in the field of journalism has raised concerns about the future of the profession. AI-driven tools, such as natural language generation systems, can create news articles, summaries, and headlines in a fraction of the time it takes a human journalist. Moreover, these AI-generated articles can be tailored to suit specific audiences, further enhancing their appeal.
Artificial Intelligence & AI & Machine Learning by mikemacmarketing Credits: Flickr/CC BY 2.0.
However, it is essential to recognize that AI-driven journalism has its limitations. While AI can handle repetitive, data-driven reporting tasks, it struggles with more complex aspects of journalism that require critical thinking, empathy, and a deep understanding of context. Human journalists play a vital role in investigating stories, providing nuanced analysis, and holding the powerful accountable. Therefore, it is unlikely that AI will entirely replace journalism; instead, it may serve as a complement to human journalists, enabling them to focus on high-value tasks that AI cannot perform.
In the future, we can expect a more collaborative relationship between AI and journalists, with the technology taking on more mundane tasks and freeing up journalists to focus on in-depth reporting and analysis.
In conclusion, AI has the potential to transform non-manual positions in the service industries by presenting fresh chances for productivity and development. But, in order to succeed in this shifting environment, professionals will need to adapt and acquire new abilities. Professionals may use the power of AI to build a better future for their fields by embracing lifelong learning, emphasizing human-centric skills, and managing ethical dilemmas.
And with the addition of all the following tools, professionals will enjoy a kind of personal butler that does the “boring” tasks for them, so that they will have more time to be creative and develop their businesses.
Microsoft sign outside building 99 by Robert Scoble Credits: Flickr</CC BY 2.0.
Microsoft CoPilot and Google’s AI in Google Workspace
Microsoft CoPilot
Microsoft CoPilot is an AI-driven code completion tool designed to assist developers in writing code more efficiently. Recently Microsoft announced its expansion into its 365 platform, which is bound to revolutionize the way students, home users and professionals work.
In essence, in the near future a user can ask a virtual assistant to compose their emails based on their emailing history, craft pro-grade presentations or gather statistics and create graphs from complex Excel data, just based on natural language prompts; like asking your personal assistant.
Google’s AI in Google Workspace
Google Workspace, formerly known as G Suite, is a suite of cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools that includes applications like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Meet. Google has been integrating AI into these tools to enhance their functionality and improve user experience.
For example, Google Docs feature AI-driven features like Smart Compose for quite some time, which uses AI to predict and suggest phrases as users type, allowing for faster and more accurate typing. Google Workspace also utilizes AI for grammar and spell-checking, helping users create polished and professional documents.
Additionally, Google’s AI powers the “Explore” feature in Google Sheets, which enables users to ask natural language questions about their data and receive instant insights and visualizations. This feature simplifies data analysis and helps users make data-driven decisions more easily.
These AI-powered features in Microsoft CoPilot and Google Workspace showcase the potential for AI to enhance productivity and streamline tasks across various industries. As AI continues to advance, we can expect to see even more sophisticated AI-driven tools that help users work more efficiently and effectively.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer spacecraft will launch on April 13, 2023. Its mission is to search for alien life on Jupiter’s icy moons. Credit: Jason Major / Flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
On April 13, 2023, scientists will launch a spacecraft called Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) into space.
The mission of this spacecraft is to explore distant Jupiter and its icy moons in the hopes of finding signs of life beyond our planet. The cost of this mission is approximately $1.73 billion, and it will last for eight years.
Juice is unique because it will not explore planets close to Earth, like Mars. Instead, it will fly deep into space to search for water on distant worlds orbiting Jupiter and Saturn. Scientists believe that these worlds have the greatest reserves of water in our solar system, making them promising candidates for finding alien life.
Olivier Witasse, the project scientist for this mission, explained that they hope to find a place with internal energy and liquid water around Jupiter. They believe that the icy moons of Jupiter have more water than Earth, which is why they are a prime target for this mission.
Jupiter’s moons covered in ice
Probes showed that Jupiter’s moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, are covered in ice, hiding vast oceans of water. And in 2005, researchers discovered that Saturn’s moon Enceladus is spewing water and organic material from an underground ocean.
US astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson says, “If ever there was a next-best place to look for life, it’s here,” referring to these icy moons. But getting there is tough. It takes eight months to get to Mars, while the Juice mission, launching from French Guiana, will take eight years to reach Jupiter, with flybys of Earth and Venus to keep it moving.
Juice to orbit Jupiter by 2031
In July of 2031, Juice will go into orbit around Jupiter. However, before that happens, another probe, Nasa’s Europa Clipper, will surpass Juice. Europa Clipper will take a shorter route, flying by Earth and Mars to reach Jupiter’s moon, Europa, by April of 2030.
As its name implies, Europa Clipper will concentrate on studying Europa. It is planned to make close approaches to the moon on 50 occasions, flying only a few hundred miles above its surface. This will allow scientists to search for areas that could potentially support life.
One of the reasons Europa Clipper is so intriguing is because of the likelihood of an ocean beneath the moon’s surface. This ocean is thought to be in contact with a rocky seafloor. If this is true, then scientists expect to find hydrothermal vents similar to those found in Earth’s oceans.
These vents are known to support a variety of thriving ecosystems, so it’s possible that Europa could host similar life forms. “Hydrothermal vents support thriving ecosystems on Earth, so they might be doing the same on Europa,” said Marshall Styczinski, a Europa Clipper scientist.
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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