Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
25-05-2023
Lost Treasures of Chichen Itza: Maya Marvels Revealed (Video)
Lost Treasures of Chichen Itza: Maya Marvels Revealed (Video)
In a world where Europe languished in thedark ages , the splendor of the Maya civilization reached its zenith. Their majestic temples soared high into the heavens, their intricate hieroglyphic writing system captured the essence of their culture, and their breathtaking artworks showcased their impeccable sense of style. Nestled in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula , the grand city of Chichen Itzarose to prominence. Legends speak of sacrificial rituals, where victims were thrown into sacred wells to appease the rain god. The Maya's astronomical prowess shone through their observatory, where they meticulously tracked the stars and predicted solar eclipses.
Influenced by diverse cultures, Chichen Itza became a melting pot of civilizations. Its most renowned structure, El Castillo, an awe-inspiring pyramid with 365 steps, guarded a remarkable secret. During the equinoxes, a shadow descended upon the pyramid in the form of a slithering serpent, captivating all who witnessed this celestial spectacle. From the colossal ball court to the bustling trading center, Chichen Itza thrived for centuries until succumbing to the same forces that plagued other Maya cities. Now, amidst the encroaching rainforest, the remnants of this ancient metropolis endure, a testament to the proud and enigmatic Maya civilization that crafted it.
The exploding meteor, known as a bolide, also created a sonic boom that shook a nearby town.
(Image credit: Carins Airport)
An unusual green meteor recently exploded as it plummeted through the sky over Australia, giving off a brilliant flash of light that could be seen for miles and a loud bang that stunned local residents below.
Cameras at Cairns Airport in Queensland captured a video of the exploding meteor, known as a bolide, at 9:22 p.m. local time on May 20. Video footage uploaded to the airport's Facebook page shows an initial green flash lighting up the night sky before a secondary white flash.
Additional footage captured on smartphones, dashcams and security cameras showed that the flash was visible as far away as Normanton, which is around 370 miles (600 kilometers) west of Cairns, The Guardian reported. The sound of the explosion could be heard most clearly above the town of Croydon, which is around 60 miles (100 km) east of Normanton, suggesting that the meteor exploded somewhere overhead.
The space rock was likely quite small, between 1.6 and 3.2 feet (0.5 and 1 meter) across, and could have been traveling up to 93,000 mph (150,000 km/h), Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University in Canberra, told The Guardian. Any fragments that crashed to Earth would likely have been very small and were likely still frozen, he added.
Bolides are meteors that blow up in Earth's atmosphere due to a buildup of friction that eventually causes the space rocks to instantaneously shatter with enough force to trigger a sonic boom, according to the American Meteor Society.
The meteor "essentially does a belly flop," Tucker said. "The friction builds up and causes that glow and then it hits breaking point, which causes the huge flash and the sonic boom."
Most bolides emit a white or yellow light when they explode. The unusual green flash of the meteor that exploded above Croydon was caused by a high concentration of metals such as iron and nickel in the meteor, Tucker said.
Similar green light can also be given off by fireball meteors, which are extremely bright meteors that break apart in Earth's atmosphere but do not explode with the same intensity. In August 2022, a green fireball was spotted above New Zealand, and in November 2022, another one crashed into Lake Ontario.
Bolides occur in Earth's atmosphere relatively frequently. Between July 2017 and January 2022, astronomers detected around 3,000 bolides, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. But observers on the ground witness only a few of these blasts each year, because most of the explosions happen away from populated areas or above the ocean.
LIGO can detect gravitational waves that are generated when two black holes collide.
Credit: The SXS Project
After a three-year hiatus made longer by pandemic troubles, the search for gravitational waves — ripples in space-time that are the hallmarks of colliding black holes and other cosmic cataclysms — has resumed.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which has two massive detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, is now restarting with improved sensitivity after a multimillion-dollar upgrade. The improvements should allow the facility to pick up signals from colliding black holes every two to three days, compared with once a week or so during its previous run in 2019–20.
The Virgo detector near Pisa, Italy, which has undergone its own €8.4-million (US$9-million) upgrade, was meant to join in, but technical issues are forcing its team to extend its shutdown and perform further maintenance. “Our expectation is we’ll be able to restart by the end of summer or early autumn,” says Virgo spokesperson Gianluca Gemme, a physicist at Italy’s National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Genoa.
KAGRA, another gravitational-wave detector located under Mount Ikenoyama, Japan, is also restarting on 24 May. Its technology, although more advanced — it was inaugurated in 2020 — is being fine-tuned, and its sensitivity is still lower than LIGO’s was in 2015. Principal investigator Takaaki Kajita, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at the University of Tokyo, says that KAGRA will join LIGO’s run for a month and then shut down again for another period of commissioning. At that point, the team will cool the interferometer’s four main mirrors to 20 kelvin, Kajita says — a feature that sets KAGRA apart from the other detectors that will serve as the model for next-generation observatories.
Black-hole mergers
Gravitational waves are produced by large, accelerating masses, and the waves cyclically stretch and compress the fabric of space as they travel. Starting with LIGO’s historic first detection in 2015, most of the 90 or so gravitational-wave events recorded so far have been from the spiralling motion of pairs of black holes in the process of merging into one; a handful have been produced similarly by the merger of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole.
LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA are all based on the same interferometer concept, which involves splitting a laser beam into two and bouncing the resulting beams between two mirrors at either end of a long vacuum pipe. (At LIGO, the two ‘arms’ of the interferometer are each 4 kilometres long; at Virgo and KAGRA, they are 3 km.) The two beams then come back and are made to overlap at a sensor in the middle. In the absence of any disturbances to space-time, the beams’ oscillations cancel one another out. But the passage of gravitational waves causes the arms to change in length with respect to each other, so that the waves don’t overlap perfectly, and the sensor detects a signal.
Typical gravitational-wave events change the length of the arms by only a fraction of the width of a proton. Sensing such minute changes requires painstaking isolation from noise coming from the environment and from the lasers themselves.
In upgrades carried out before the 2019–20 run, LIGO and Virgo tackled some of this noise with a technique called light squeezing. This approach deals with inherent noise caused by the fact that light is made of individual particles: when the beams arrive at the sensor, each individual photon can arrive slightly too early or too late, which means that the laser waves don’t overlap and cancel out perfectly even in the absence of gravitational waves.
“It’s like dropping a bucket of BBs [lead pellets]: it’s going to make a loud hiss, but they all hit randomly,” physicist Lee McCuller explained while showing a prototype of the LIGO interferometers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. Light squeezing injects an auxiliary laser beam into the interferometer that reduces that effect. “Its photons arrive more regularly, with less noise,” said McCuller, who is now at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Quantum complications
The implementation of light squeezing has helped LIGO and Virgo to improve the detectors’ sensitivities to higher-frequency gravitational waves.
But because of the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics, reducing the uncertainty in the arrival time of the photons increases random fluctuations in the laser waves’ intensity. This causes the lasers to push on the interferometer mirrors and make them jitter, adding a different type of noise and potentially reducing their sensitivity to low-frequency gravitational waves. This is a “beautiful manifestation of nature”, says MIT experimentalist Nergis Mavalvala, who helped to lead the development of the squeezing technology. “You cannot make an infinitely precise measurement: you have to pay the price somewhere else,” she says.
To deal with this issue, an important change in the most-recent upgrades of both LIGO and Virgo has been to build extra 300-metre-long vacuum pipes with mirrors at the ends, to store the auxiliary ‘squeezing’ beam for 2.5 milliseconds before injecting it into the interferometer. The role of these pipes is to shift the waves of the auxiliary laser by distinct amounts depending on their wavelengths. This means that squeezing will be selective: it will decrease the noise at high frequency while also reducing mirror jitter at low frequencies.
MIT physicist Victoria Xu was part of the team that fine-tuned the new squeezing system at LIGO’s Hanford laboratory, and she recalls the pleasant surprise when it was first turned on last November. “Things worked almost exactly as you might expect,” she says.
Collapsing stars
With the improved sensitivity of the detectors, researchers will be able to extract more-detailed information about the spiralling objects that produce gravitational waves, including how each spins around its axis and how they revolve around each other. This means putting Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity — which predicts the existence of both black holes and gravitational waves — to stricter tests than ever before. The sheer number of observations will improve the big picture of how, and how often, black holes form from massive stars that collapse in on themselves.
Astrophysicists also anticipate that gravitational waves will reveal distinct types of signal in addition to those from black-hole mergers. One major hope is to pick up the gravitational signal of a collapsing star before it manifests as a supernova explosion — a feat that will be possible only if the collapse occurs somewhere in the Galaxy. Another ambition is to sense the continuous gravitational waves produced by ruggedness in the surface of a pulsar, a spinning neutron star that emits pulses of radiation.
The family of interferometers is due to expand by the end of the decade. The Indian government has announced that it will fund LIGO-India, a replica of the US observatories to be built in part with LIGO’s spare components.
This animated image shows the before and after comparison of the possible Hakuto-R impact site. Arrow A points to a prominent surface change with higher reflectance in the upper left and lower reflectance in the lower right (opposite of nearby surface rocks along the right side of the frame). Arrows B-D point to other changes around the impact site
New images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) appear to show the crash site where the Japanese Hakuto-R Mission 1 lunar lander impacted the surface of the Moon a month ago.
The refrigerator-sized HAKUTO-R was built by the startup company iSpace and was launched in December 2022 with the goal of becoming the first commercial lunar lander to touch down safely on the Moon. However, during landing operations on April 25, 2023, communications ceased just moments before touchdown should have occurred, and the lander was presumed lost.
A day later, LRO flew over Hakuto-R’s targeted landing area and took ten images around the landing site with its Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs). The LRO team said the images covered a region roughly 40 km by 45 km (25 X 28 miles). For a ‘before and after’ comparison, they were able to use a NAC image acquired before the landing to hunt for the remains of the lander by searching for any changes in the landscape.
Someone on the team must have eagle-eye vision, as the changes are quite subtle.
Hakuto-R was programmed to descend into the 86-km (54-mile) -wide Atlas Crater, located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon’s near side. The LRO Camera (LROC) team said they identified an unusual surface change near the intended landing site, noting at least four prominent pieces of debris and several small changes. In the center of the image above, a bright object appears in the ‘blink’ comparision, as well as several bright pixels and dark pixels surrounding it. The larger dark objects that are in both the before and after shot are nearby boulders. The camera team suggested the new objects could be a small crater at the center with different parts of the lander body surrounding it. They said this site will be analyzed more over the coming months as LROC has the opportunity to re-image the site under various lighting and viewing geometries.
This ratio image, below, which was created by dividing the data from the after and before images shows the impact site a little clearer. The LRO team said the impact created an area of higher reflectance, approximately 60-80 meters (200-270 ft) across.
The ispace Series 1 Lunar Lander stood about 2.3 meters tall (7.5 ft) and has four landing legs, and fully fueled with its payload, it weighed roughly 1000 kg (2,200 lbs). The main body is an octagonal prism, 1.6 meters high and about 1.6 meters (5.25 X 5.25 ft) across its widest diameter. It has one main landing thruster and six assist thrusters. Its electronics are powered by solar panels.
If it had been successful, it would have deployed two mini-rovers for surface exploration, and other payloads would have conducted scientific experiments for government and commercial space efforts.
Hakuto-R mission launched on Dec. 11, 2022 along with the Lunar Flashlight mission on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Hakuto-R was originally designed for the Google Lunar XPrize, but it got a chance to launch later, long after the competition was over.
iSpace is planning a second lunar lander mission perhaps in 2024, depending on the success of this first mission. In addition to launching lunar landers, the company aims to one day deploy satellites.
US Marines recorded a huge triangle UFO hovering over a military base in California
US Marines recorded a huge triangle UFO hovering over a military base in California
Investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp obtained and are revealing for the first time an exclusive footage of a huge UFO hovering over the active United States Twentynine Palms military base, California.
This event is according to a report considered a “mass UFO sighting” - with significant and diverse documentation in the form of videos, photos and recorded direct eyewitness testimony by active military personnel.
Date of sighting: 20 April 2021 over the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California. Over 50 US Marines witnessed and recorded with iPhones and infrared the huge triangle UFO for about 10 minutes before it disappeared.
According to the many eyewitness reports, the size of the UFO was between half the size of a football field and a three bedroom two story house and made no sound.
Video below: Jeremy Corbell on this MOJAVE TRIANGLE UFO case with Gadi Schwartz of NBC News. The audio/visual content presented here was collected within hours after the UFO encounter.
Astonishing UFO Sightings Over Huntington Park: A Spectacular Display of Aerial Phenomena
Astonishing UFO Sightings Over Huntington Park: A Spectacular Display of Aerial Phenomena
On a tranquil evening on May 10, 2023, the skies over Huntington Park, California, were illuminated with an enigmatic spectacle that left residents awestruck and eager for explanations. A series of unprecedentedUFO sightings, featuring hovering lights and intriguing geometric formations, have sparked a whirlwind of speculation and intrigue among both locals and UFO enthusiasts worldwide.
Witnesses to this extraordinary event reported an initial sighting of a cluster of lights hovering on the horizon. Without any apparent warning or pattern, these mysterious lights suddenly ascended vertically, tracing a path across the night sky that captivated every eye turned skyward.
Yet the spectacle was just beginning. In a breathtaking display, the lights converged to form a distinct triangular pattern. As if choreographed by an unseen hand, they held this formation briefly before they gradually faded, their luminescence merging with the dark canvas of the night sky.
No sooner had the first triangle of lights disappeared than a second set began its ascent. Following the same vertical trajectory as the first, this group of lights echoed its predecessors in a captivating dance. They too coalesced into a triangle formation, leaving onlookers spellbound at this twice-performed aerial spectacle.
A bird takes flight as the private spaceflight firm SpaceX launches a rocket from Vandenberg US Space Force Base in Lompoc, California.
Credit: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP Via Getty
Rocket launches are so thunderously loud that, even from kilometres away, they can feel like being at the front of the stage at a rock concert. That, plus the fact that launch numbers are booming, has prompted a physicist and biologist to team up to study the effects of noise pollution on wildlife — particularly endangered wildlife — at one of the busiest spaceports in the world.
“You can feel it in your chest — it’s like being in a vehicle that has really big speakers, and you can just feel the vibrations coming through your body,” says one of the researchers, Lucas Hall, a wildlife ecologist at California State University in Bakersfield. Hall remembers watching a launch at California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base from a safe distance. “It’s absolutely nuts.”
Hall, physical acoustician Kent Gee at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and their team have close to US$1 million in funding from the US Army Corps of Engineers over 3 years to measure the soundscape and monitor a host of endangered and threatened species living near the Vandenberg base. The project, which also includes Darryl York, conservation branch chief at Vandenberg, was presented on 8 May at the Acoustical Society of America annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois. The space base initiated the project, Gee says, because of the threatened species nearby, in the coastal area around Santa Barbara, California. “This is responsible stewardship, in my opinion,” he says.
Vandenberg has, for decades, sent up about 5–15 rockets per year, but with satellite launches from private companies such as SpaceX increasing, the number is set to rise sharply — to 50–100 per year by 2030. That would surpass Vandenburg’s previous record of about 45 launches per year in the mid-1960s, during the heyday of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Last year, there were a record 180 launches worldwide.
“If it’s happening every week, every few days, are there any implications of that?” asks Hall. “That has not been studied.”
This type of study is “incredibly important”, says acoustician Caroline Lubert at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, who has worked with Gee but isn’t involved with this project. “It needs to be a priority. We’re only going to have more launches, not less.”
Biodiversity concerns
There have long been concerns about the environmental impact of sparked fires, and debris and noise from rocket launches — especially at prominent sites in California, Florida and Texas that are close to US biodiversity hotspots.
SpaceX’s first Starship flight on 20 April unexpectedly blew up the launch pad at the spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas, scattering pulverized concrete and sparking a wildfire in a nature reserve. The incident has triggered a lawsuit from conservation groups, arguing that the Federal Aviation Authority should have subjected the company to a more stringent environmental assessment. The region around the spaceport hosts threatened populations of turtles and birds, including piping plovers (Charadrius melodus), whose numbers are declining, and Northern Aplomado falcons (Falco femoralis), which are endangered in Texas.
Sharon Wilcox, senior Texas representative for the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife, which is based in Washington DC, says the organization has “considerable concerns about the impacts of sound, concussion and vibration resulting from these launches”.
Although it is clear that rocket launches are extraordinarily loud, the details aren’t always predictable or well understood. For instance, Gee measured the noise from last year’s launch of the uncrewed Artemis I mission to the Moon at 127–136 decibels from several kilometres away1. The sound’s intensity was nearly two orders of magnitude greater than predicted by models used in environmental assessments, suggesting a need to revise those models.
It’s not just the volume of the launch noise that’s important for nearby creatures, Gee adds, but also the distribution of sound frequencies. “We have very little information about how animals perceive these sounds,” he says.
Noise tolerance
Chronic noise pollution — from cities, car or boat traffic, for example — is known to increase stress levels for animals ranging from whales2 to humans. It can also have an impact on birdsong3 and animal behaviour. But the impacts of recurring, extremely loud events such as rocket launches are not well known.
The team will be measuring the soundscape close to Vandenberg’s many launch sites and, as a control, at locations tens of kilometres away. Animals in these habitats include the western snowy plover (Charadrius alexandrinusnivosus), the California least tern (Sterna antillarum browni), the California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii) and the tidewater goby (Eucyclogobius newberryi). The team has weekly data on plover and tern numbers stretching back to the 1990s, collected by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Cameras will capture how animals react to rocket-launch sounds: for example, whether birds abandon their nests or change their foraging or mating behaviour. Audio monitors will pick up whether they alter their songs in response to the noise, in the same way that people yell after loud noise exposure. The birds will have some resilience, Hall says. “But at some point, there’s going to be a threshold where that resilience is overcome.”
Although Hall and Gee have secured funding for only three years, they hope to continue the work for more than a decade.
Space bases already dampen launch noise by dumping massive amounts of water onto the launch pad to absorb sound energy. The study will help to determine whether anything needs to change to protect wildlife, such as avoiding launches during certain sensitive times such as breeding seasons, or changing the shape or size of the fire trench designed to divert rocket fumes, heat and noise. “We have to focus on whether we’re trying to reduce noise, redirect noise or change the frequency of the noise,” Lubert says.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01713-7
References
Gee, K. L. et al.JASA Express Lett. 3, 023601 (2023).
While Uranus undeniably has the funniest name of all the planets in our solar system, it remains the most unexplored, with just one spacecraft flying past the planet back in the 1980s.
But advances in ground-based telescopes mean that we can now get unprecedented views of the ice giant, while comfortably still on Earth.
Using the Very Large Array, NASA scientists have spotted what they believe is a polar cyclone at Uranus' north pole for the very first time.
'These observations tell us a lot more about the story of Uranus. It's a much more dynamic world than you might think,' said Alex Akins, lead author of the study.
'It isn't just a plain blue ball of gas. There's a lot happening under the hood.'
Using the Very Large Array, NASA scientists have spotted what they believe is a polar cyclone at Uranus' north pole for the very first time
NASA has been urged to launch the first mission to giant Uranus, in a report by the National Academy of Sciences, outlining space priorities for the next decade
Scientists have long known that there is a swirling feature at Uranus' south pole.
During its flyby of the icy giant in 1986, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft took images of the south pole, showing winds at the polar centre spinning faster than over the rest of the pole.
However, until now, it's been unclear whether or not cyclones also exist at Uranus' north pole.
Using the Very Large Array, which is in New Mexico, the team was able to examine radio waves emitted from Uranus.
These revealed that beneath the planet's clouds, the circulating air at the north pole seems to be warmer and drier.
According to NASA, this is a hallmark of a strong cyclone.
Uranus takes 84 years to complete a full lap of the sun, and for the last few decades its poles haven't been pointed towards Earth.
However, since 2015 we've had a much better view, allowing scientists to look deeper into the polar atmosphere.
Uranus' cyclone is compactly shaped, with warm and dry air at its core – much like the storms on Saturn, according to NASA.
Overall, the discovery suggests that whether planets are composed mainly of rock or gas, their atmospheres show signs of a swirling vortex at the poles.
During its flyby of the icy giant in 1986, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft took images of the south pole, showing winds at the polar centre spinning faster than over the rest of the pole
Here on Earth, hurricanes form over water and drift, while on Uranus and Saturn, cyclones are locked in place at the poles.
NASA now hopes to monitor the cyclone to see how it evolves through the years.
'Does the warm core we observed represent the same high-speed circulation seen by Voyager?' Akins asked.
'Or are there stacked cyclones in Uranus' atmosphere?
'The fact that we're still finding out such simple things about how Uranus' atmosphere works really gets me excited to find out more about this mysterious planet.'
The report calls Uranus 'one of the most intriguing bodies in the solar system', and says studying it will improve our understanding of ice giants generally.
The group says the spacecraft should operate in the system over a number of years, orbiting the ice giant and sending a probe into its atmosphere.
HOW DOES URANUS'S MAGNETIC FIELD COMPARE TO EARTH'S?
A study analysing data collected more than 30 years ago by the Voyager 2 spacecraft has found that the Uranus's global magnetosphere is nothing like Earth’s, which is known to be aligned nearly with our planet’s spin axis.
A false-color view of Uranus captured by Hubble is pictured
According to the researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, this alignment would give rise to behaviour that is vastly different from what’s seen around Earth.
Uranus lies and rotates on its side, leaving its magnetic field tilted 60 degrees from its axis.
As a result, the magnetic field ‘tumbles’ asymmetrically relative to the solar wind.
As a result, the magnetic field ‘tumbles’ asymmetrically relative to the solar wind.
When the magnetosphere is open, it allows solar wind to flow in.
But, when it closes off, it creates a shield against these particles.
The researchers suspect solar wind reconnection takes place upstream of Uranus’s magnetosphere at different latitudes, causing magnetic flux to close in various parts.
Uranus takes 84 years to orbit the Sun, and so that last time that planet’s north polar region was pointed at Earth, radio telescope technology was in its infancy.
But now, scientists have been using radio telescopes like the Very Large Array (VLA) the past few years as Uranus has slowly revealing more and more of its north pole. VLA microwave observations from 2021 and 2022 show a giant cyclone swirling around this region, with a bright, compact spot centered at Uranus’ pole. Data also reveals patterns in temperature, zonal wind speed and trace gas variations consistent with a polar cyclone.
Scientists have long known that Uranus’ south pole has a swirling feature. When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, it detected high wind speeds there. However, the way the planet was tilted did not allow Voyager to see the north pole.
But the VLA in New Mexico has now been studying Uranus the past several years, and observations collected in 2015, 2021, and 2022 were able to peer deep into Uranus’ atmosphere. The thermal emission data showed that circulating air at the north pole seems to be warmer and drier, which are the hallmarks of a strong cyclone.
The researchers said the cyclone on Uranus is similar to the polar cyclones observed by the Cassini mission at Saturn. With the new findings, cyclones (which rotate in the same direction their planet rotates) or anti-cyclones (which rotate in the opposite direction) have now been identified at the poles on every planet in our solar system that has an atmosphere. The researchers said this confirms a broad truth that planets with substantial atmospheres – whether the worlds are made of rock or gas – all show signs of swirling vortexes at the poles.
Uranus’ north pole is now in springtime. As it continues into summer, astronomers hope to see even more changes in its atmosphere.
Mystery In The Sky: Black Triangle UFO Stuns 50 Marines At California Camp!! - Next News Network
Mystery In The Sky: Black Triangle UFO Stuns 50 Marines At California Camp!! - Next News Network
On the night of April 20, 2021, 50 US Marines stationed at Camp Wilson in California witnessed an extraordinary event. An enormous black triangular UFO with flashing red lights suddenly appeared in the night sky, suspending all belief. The craft hung in the air for nearly 10 minutes before vanishing without a trace. This incident, complete with stunning photos and videos, has left many baffled, even echoing the famous Phoenix Lights case.
Humans are one step closer to communicating with aliens.
The SETI Institute, a non-profit dedicated to understanding life in space, simulated an extraterrestrial signal that was beamed from a Mars orbiter at 3 pm ET.
The radio waves soared through space at the speed of light and were captured by three massive telescopes in 16 minutes.
The first-of-its-kind exercise was designed to prepare scientists for the 'profoundly transformational experience for all humankind' when otherworldly beings contact our planet.
Scientists in the US and Italy were overjoyed as the message appeared on computer screens, which downloaded the radio waves in sections.
People on Earth with a ham radio also picked it up at 8.4 gigahertz - although it was not the entire signal.
The team is keeping key details about the stunt secret - including the type of signal and what it includes.
The tight lid is because the encoded transmission will be shared with the public, allowing them to help with the decoding.
Telescopes on Earth have captured a simulated alien message. The first-of-its-kind exercise was designed to prepare scientists for the 'profoundly transformational experience for all humankind' when otherworldly beings contact our planet
Daniela dePaulis, the visionary artist behind the A Sign in Space project, said during the live-streamed event: 'It was very real. This is not the first time we have received a signal from TGO [ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter], but this one is a real message.'
The signal will be sent from the European Space Agency's TGO, which hangs over Mars, studying its atmosphere.
Three massive telescopes around the globe captured the transmission: The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in California, Robert C. Byrd at the Green Bank Observatory (GBO) in West Virginia and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station in northern Italy.
The signal cannot be heard on Earth or at the telescope stations.
Victoria Catlett, GBO software engineer, explained: 'A radio signal is not inherently sound, but a light wave.
'When we receive it with something like a car radio, that light wave gets translated into the up and down movement in the speaker - and that is what you hear.'
She said once the radio waves have been completely captured, the team will upload the data and let the public download it.
The teams will securely store the processed data in collaboration with Breakthrough Listen Open Data Archive and Filecoin, a decentralized storage network.
The signal will be sent from the European Space Agency's TGO, which hangs over Mars, studying its atmosphere
Scientists in the US and Italy (pictured) were overjoyed as the message appeared on computer screens, which downloaded the radio waves in sections
Three massive telescopes around the globe captured the transmission: The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in California, Robert C. Byrd at the Green Bank Observatory (GBO) in West Virginia (pictured) and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station in northern Italy
Researchers said the message will be uploaded sometime Wednesday evening and will share two links on SETI's social media platforms when it is completed.
Only one megahertz of bandwidth will be extracted and uploaded. The size of the recording is about five gigabits per telescope. There will be four files available.
The easiest file to work with is likely the one linked to GBO because the telescope captured the strongest signal, but all the files will contain the same information.
In 2002, NASA sent radio wave transmission to the Pioneer 10 probe in a routine protocol to send data and ensure communication was established.
Researchers are taking a collaborative approach to solving the message by allowing the public to access it and help decode what it reads.
And there is a submission form for anyone up to the challenge.
Humans crafted the alien message, so SETI notes that actual communication for life in space would look much different from what humans could muster up.
And the team knows that any transmission from the final frontier would come from worlds much farther away than Mars.
Earth has captured signals traveling through space.
'Much of the radio emission that comes from space is emitted by tiny electrically charged particles, known as electrons, moving through magnetic fields,' according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
'These electrons have usually been accelerated away from the shock waves of exploding stars, known as supernovae.'
One problem was that astronomers have always struggled to differentiate between potential extraterrestrial signals and human-caused ones.
This changed in February when a team of scientists led by the University of Toronto designed an algorithm capable of determining what signals are artificial and which could potentially be alien messages.
SETI's project, called 'A Sign in Space,' is a major part of the study into the possibility of Earth being contacted by extraterrestrials.
'Throughout history, humanity has searched for meaning in powerful and transformative phenomena,' said DePaulis.
'Receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilization would be a profoundly transformational experience for all humankind.
'A Sign in Space offers the unprecedented opportunity to tangibly rehearse and prepare for this scenario through global collaboration, fostering an open-ended search for meaning across all cultures and disciplines.'
Disk-shaped UFO seen flying over San Clemente California
Disk-shaped UFO seen flying over San Clemente California
A disk-shaped UFO has been filmed while flying over San Clemente California last month (April 2023).
The flat craft has no wings or other visible propulsion, except lights which are visible at the front and back of the flying disk.
An almost similar craft was captured from the cockpit of a private jet while flying over the Antioquia region of Colombia one month earlier (March 2023).
It is remarkable that we are seeing more and more of these types of flying objects and we may wonder where they come from and who is behind this advanced technology.
EXCLUSIVE: Black 'half-football-field-sized' triangular UFO is seen hovering over California military base for 10 minutes before vanishing in dramatic footage taken by Marines in 2021
EXCLUSIVE: Black 'half-football-field-sized' triangular UFO is seen hovering over California military base for 10 minutes before vanishing in dramatic footage taken by Marines in 2021
A black triangular shaped UFO with five red lights was seen hovering in the night sky at Camp Wilson in California on April 20, 2021
At least 50 Marines saw the phenomenon and recorded the craft hanging in the sky for about 10 minutes before it vanished without a trace
A giant 'black triangular shape' UFO hovering over a California military base was caught on six videos and witnessed by 50 US Marines in 2021.
One stunning picture shot by an officer at Camp Wilson in Twentynine Palms on April 20, 2021 shows the apparently triangular object with lights on its edges, above the desert mountains – where it hovered for 10 minutes according to witnesses.
Videos show the lights of what some of the Marines believe was a craft, hanging in the dark sky, shot between 8.24pm and 8.30pm.
At 8.29pm one video recorded troops shooting a flare into the sky in an attempt to illuminate the object, which had five red lights.
However, before they could fully illuminate the 'black triangle', it vanished without a trace.
A black triangular shaped UFO with five red lights was seen hovering in the night sky at Camp Wilson in California on April 20, 2021
At least 50 Marines saw the phenomenon and recorded the craft hanging in the sky for about 10 minutes before it vanished without a trace
One picture shot by an officer at Camp Wilson in Twentynine Palms on April 20, 2021 shows the apparently triangular object with lights on its edges
The footage, recorded by Marines using their smartphone cameras, appears to depict five lights arranged in a triangular formation
Soon after the encounter, Marines said dozens of trucks and multiple helicopters rushed to that area of the base, with choppers flying overhead until around 11.30pm that night.
Witnesses' estimates of the unidentified object's size ranged from the size of a stealth bomber, which has a wingspan of 172 feet, to approximately half the length of a football field.
Journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp acquired six pieces of film footage that captured the event from two angles, as well as an accompanying photograph, which they are releasing through their podcast, Weaponized.
The footage, recorded by Marines using their smartphone cameras, appears to depict five lights arranged in a triangular formation.
The incident has echoes of the infamous Phoenix Lights case, a well-known mass sighting of a giant triangular-shaped UFO that occurred over the city of Phoenix in 1997, with witnesses including then-Arizona governor Fife Symington.
A mortarman serving at Camp Wilson during the 2021 incident spoke with Corbell, and took a high-exposure photo on his smartphone which revealed the outline of an object.
The object appears to be triangular, surrounded by lights spaced evenly around its edge in a v-formation.
The mortarman, who DailyMail.com is keeping anonymous, described how one of his companions witnessed the object materialize from nowhere.
'One of my buddies was outside. He was looking at the sky and said that it just kind of appeared out of nowhere. And we all came out and looked and then slowly like 50-plus people started coming out and looking. Those lights appeared out of nowhere.'
He added that despite their military experience, none of the Marines could recognize the craft, and described their reaction as 'baffled.'
The incident has echoes of the infamous Phoenix Lights case, a well-known mass sighting of a giant triangular-shaped UFO that occurred over the city of Phoenix in 1997, with witnesses including then-Arizona governor Fife Symington
The mortarman, who filmed and photographed the object, said: 'If you look at the picture, you can see a black triangular shape.
'With the picture I took with the black triangular shape underneath the lights, it's definitely not any type of flare thing or illumination rounds.'
The witness said the apparent object remained stationary for approximately ten minutes. But a Marine can be overheard on one of the videos saying that the triangle appeared to be in motion.
Another Marine, who DailyMail.com is keeping anonymous, was serving as an artilleryman at the base when he saw the UFO.
He firmly rejected any suggestions that the lights could be attributed to illumination rounds fired by artillery – or any other mundane explanation he might have recognized.
'This was something none of us had ever seen before. It was a completely different color; the size [and] the illumination was different,' He said. 'When we shoot illumination rounds, it's one, you shoot in the air and let it drop, and then you shoot another one.
'This was like five right next to each other and they're kind of reddish, and our loom [illumination] rounds are a yellow-white color.'
This UFO sighting was at Camp Wilson in Twentynine Palms on April 20, 2021
One Marine, who DailyMail.com is keeping anonymous, was serving as an artilleryman at the base when he saw the UFO. 'This was something none of us had ever seen before,' he said
The artilleryman compared the UFO's size to a stealth bomber, while the mortarman described it as equivalent to the size of a three-bedroom house. Another witness who spoke with Corbell likened it to being approximately half the size of a football field.
Witnesses also reported additional peculiar lights circling the object throughout the encounter, which can be faintly observed in the footage.
Illumination rounds were eventually fired over the UFO by Marines, captured in one of the videos.
But before the object could be illuminated, it suddenly disappeared.
The mortarman described the event: 'Those two orange lights, the actual loom [illumination] rounds…went up over top of it [the UFO]. And then after that, it just disappeared. Like just straight went black and then helicopters started hauling a** towards it… and then started circling the area.'
The artilleryman said he witnessed a convoy of over 60 military trucks joining the helicopters traveling to the location.
'These helicopters were circling for a good bit afterwards. And there was a convoy as well that went out. A 60-plus truck convoy.'
The witnesses involved struggled to find explanations.
'I don't think it was anything US military,' the mortarman told Corbell. '[It was] definitely some type of UFO and the government was trying to look for it after it disappeared. I'm just trying to figure out what the hell that was.
'I've never seen anything like it.'
Journalists Jeremy Corbell (pictured) and George Knapp acquired six pieces of film footage that captured the event from two angles, as well as an accompanying photograph, which they are releasing through their podcast, Weaponized
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Corbell, who has spoken to numerous witnesses, claimed that the incident had not been reported to the US Government's UFO investigations office, known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
'Due to the location of this mass UFO sighting - within the restricted airspace of one of our active United States military installations - significant amounts of data was accumulated and includes radar, thermal, electro-optical and signature intelligence,' Corbell told DailyMail.com.
'On-base documentation is also presumed with high confidence to have been generated, due to protocol and witness observed response.
'This case had not been properly reported through the active United States UAP investigation channels; under the authority of the Department of Defense's AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office). AARO has now been informed of this presumed incursion.
'If the public wants to understand more about this UAP encounter - we will need to encourage our representatives to ask questions and push for answers.'
The Night a Giant UFO Stunned 50 Marines at Camp Wilson! 🛸 An Unresolved UFO Sighting Over a California Military Base
The Night a Giant UFO Stunned 50 Marines at Camp Wilson! An Unresolved UFO Sighting Over a California Military Base
On a spring night in 2021, the tranquility of Camp Wilson, the largest Marine Corps training base in the world, located in Twentynine Palms, California, was abruptly broken. This seemingly ordinary evening transformed into an extraordinary event when a massive, black, triangular-shaped object with five red lights mysteriously appeared in the sky, stunning the base’s occupants.
Witnessed by at least 50 Marines, the unidentified flying object (UFO) hung motionless in the night sky for about ten minutes. Multiple Marines were able to capture the mysterious event using their smartphones, with the footage revealing a fascinating arrangement of lights forming a triangular shape.
According to the Marines, the UFO was a colossal figure, with estimates ranging from the size of a stealth bomber, which has a wingspan of 172 feet, to approximately half the length of a football field. One Marine, in an attempt to provide a more relatable estimate, likened the size of the object to a three-bedroom, two-story house.
This incident was not just witnessed, but it was also captured in six videos and a high-exposure photo shot by an officer, revealing the apparent triangular shape of the object. All this material was acquired by investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, who later released it through their podcast, ‘Weaponized.’
VIDEO:
WEAPONIZED : EPISODE #18 : The Silent Triangle Of Twentynine Palms
The mysterious sighting at Camp Wilson draws parallels to the famous Phoenix Lights case in 1997, where residents of Phoenix, Arizona, reported witnessing a similar giant, triangular UFO. The Phoenix incident left an indelible mark on the UFO community and remains one of the most discussed and investigated cases to date.
In the 2021 Camp Wilson sighting, the Marines reported a baffling spectacle, observing peculiar lights circling the object throughout the encounter. The Marines took immediate action and fired illumination rounds in an attempt to expose the object’s nature further. However, just before the UFO could be fully illuminated, it vanished without leaving any trace.
Following the object’s disappearance, the base was a flurry of activity. Witnesses reported seeing dozens of trucks and multiple helicopters rushing to the area of the base where the UFO was sighted. The military vehicles continued their search operation until around 11:30 pm that night.
Corbell and Knapp’s documentation of the event and the subsequent analysis led them to refer to it as a “dream UFO case.” Notably, despite their military experience, none of the Marines could recognize the craft. They described their reaction as “baffled.”
VIDEO:
Investigating mystery triangle UFO spotted above U.S. marine base
Despite the intriguing footage and testimonies, this incident did not make its way up the chain of command for further investigation, at least according to publicly available information. It’s also noteworthy that this sighting was not initially reported to the US Government’s UFO investigations office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
This unexplained phenomenon leaves us with more questions than answers. It adds to the growing number of UFO sightings that are reshaping our understanding of these mysterious objects and their potential implications. The quest for definitive explanations continues, driven by curiosity, scientific inquiry, and the hope of unraveling one of the greatest enigmas of our time.
VIDEO:
New footage emerges of suspected UFO sighting over California military base
Discoveries of Ancient Underground Cities Around the World
Discoveries of Ancient Underground Cities Around the World
Beneath the surface of our world, hidden under layers of soil, stone, and history, lie remnants of ancient civilizations - vast networks of tunnels, expansive underground cities, and complex subterranean structures. Our ancestors demonstrated remarkable ingenuity, carving out these intricate labyrinths for reasons as diverse as their cultures. Whether born out of necessity, spirituality, or security, these underground marvels have been preserved, waiting to share the untold stories of our human past.
South and Central America
In the heart of Mexico, the ancient city of Teotihuacan houses an extensive labyrinth of tunnels beneath the Pyramid of the Sun. Discovered only in the 1970s, this intricate network of tunnels extends to over 5 kilometers, with rooms branching off in various directions. These chambers are believed to have been used for rituals and ceremonies, with artifacts such as sculptures, pottery, and even human remains unearthed during excavations. The tunnels of Teotihuacan offer a unique insight into the spiritual and cultural life of this ancient civilization.
In 2008, another remarkable discovery was made in Mexico that further underscored the importance of the underground in Mesoamerican cosmology and architecture. Archaeologists uncovered eleven stone temples inside an underground cave system beneath the Yucatan Peninsula, complete with an underground road which the Mayans believed led to the mythical underworld city known as Xibalba. The underworld was a crucial part of the Mayan spiritual belief system, with Xibalba often depicted as a dangerous place filled with deadly trials for deceased souls.
In Peru, the Qenqo Chico tunnel network is an impressive example of Incan engineering. These tunnels, part of the larger Qenqo archaeological complex near Cusco, were carved directly into the rock and are thought to have been used for religious and ceremonial purposes. Qenqo Chico and its subterranean passages continue to fascinate archaeologists and tourists alike, offering a glimpse into the spiritual life of the Inca civilization.
The sprawling Mayan pyramid complex at Tikal , located in present-day Guatemala, has also revealed an intricate system of underground tunnels. These tunnels, rediscovered in the late 20th century, appear to connect various parts of the vast city-state, suggesting an efficient transportation or communication system. However, their exact function remains the subject of ongoing study. What is clear, however, is that these subterranean structures provide significant insights into the city planning and architectural capabilities of the ancient Mayan civilization, which flourished at Tikal from around 200 to 900 AD.
In Ethiopia, the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela represent an impressive feat of subterranean architecture. Carved directly into solid rock in the 12th century, these 11 monolithic churches were reportedly created to represent a symbolic representation of Jerusalem. Each church was chiseled out of the ground, then further shaped into doors, windows, columns, and decorated with carvings. This UNESCO World Heritage site is a testament to the ingenuity of ancient African architects, and the underground network connecting the churches adds to the mystical aura of Lalibela.
In Egypt, the Giza Plateau has an enormous underground system that is a combination of manmade caverns and tunnels as well as subterranean rivers and passages. Since 1978 the caverns have been mapped using ground penetrating radar with explorations led by Dr Jim Hurtak who has allegedly entered massive chambers larger than our largest cathedrals. A few historians believe that the underground cave system in Giza, is the legendary ‘City of the Gods’, a massive underground city described by ancient writers Herodotus (5 th century BC) and Strabo (1 st Century AD). Herodotus wrote:
“There I saw twelve palaces regularly disposed, which had communication with each other, interspersed with terraces and arranged around twelve halls. It is hard to believe they are the work of man. The walls are covered with carved figures, and each court is exquisitely built of white marble and surrounded by a colonnade. Near the corner where the labyrinth ends, there is a pyramid, two hundred and forty feet in height, with great carved figures of animals on it and an underground passage by which it can be entered. I was told very credibly that underground chambers and passages connected this pyramid with the pyramids at Memphis.”
Furthermore, Herodotus spoke of the discovery of a multi-level megalithic metropolis under Giza that was 15,000 years old.
Many ancient writers supported Herodotus' record of underground passages connecting major pyramids. Lamblichus, a 4 th century AD Syrian representative of the Alexandrian School of mystical and philosophical studies, recorded information about an entranceway through the body of the Sphinx into the Great Pyramid:
“This entrance, obstructed in our day by sands and rubbish, may still be traced between the forelegs of the crouched colossus. It was formerly closed by a bronze gate whose secret spring could be operated only by the Magi. It was guarded by public respect, and a sort of religious fear maintained its inviolability better than armed protection would have done. In the belly of the Sphinx were cut out galleries leading to the subterranean part of the Great Pyramid. These galleries were so art-fully crisscrossed along their course to the Pyramid that, in setting forth into the passage without a guide throughout this network, one ceasingly and inevitably returned to the starting point.”
One of the most impressive underground constructions in Egypt is the Serapeum of Saqqara, a vast subterranean complex that housed the Apis bulls, considered incarnations of the god Ptah. Housing massive granite sarcophagi in crypt-like galleries, this labyrinthine network showcases the Egyptians' advanced engineering skills.
The discovery in 1992 of 24 man-made caves in China, known as the Longyou Caves , revealed an extraordinary feat of ancient engineering and craftsmanship. The caves, carved into solid siltstone, represent a massive undertaking that required the removal of an estimated 36,000 cubic meters of stone. The floor area of each grotto extends over two thousand square meters, with the highest point in the caves reaching over 30 meters. Interestingly, there are no historical records or legends pertaining to the caves, rendering their origin and purpose a mystery. The precision and symmetry of the carving, along with the sheer volume of excavated material, imply a level of planning and organization that challenge our understanding of ancient Chinese society and its capabilities. The absence of tool marks or signs of work, coupled with the scale and complexity of the caves, continue to perplex researchers and historians, making the Longyou Caves one of the most enigmatic archaeological sites in the world.
India, with its rich and ancient history, is also home to a number of fascinating underground structures. The city of Varanasi, believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, has an extensive network of underground passages and rooms that date back several centuries. These passages were used by the residents for various purposes including travel, trade, and religious ceremonies. Furthermore, the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ellora in Maharashtra , famous for its rock-cut temples, includes an intricate network of tunnels and chambers beneath the surface. One of the most astonishing of these underground marvels is the Kailasa Temple, which was carved from a single rock and extends into the earth, showcasing the advanced architectural and engineering skills of ancient Indian civilization. The purpose and full extent of these subterranean networks in India remain subjects of ongoing archaeological exploration and research.
Turkey, particularly the region of Cappadocia, is world-renowned for its ancient underground cities. These cities were primarily used as hideouts by early Christians to escape persecution. Derinkuyu, one of the most well-known of these underground cities, is an expansive network that extends approximately 60 meters deep and could accommodate an astonishing 20,000 people along with their livestock and food stores. It had more than 600 entrances to the surface. Another famous subterranean city is Kaymakli, which was believed to have been used as a large agricultural depot and trading hub. The cities contain numerous features such as ventilation shafts, wine and oil presses, stables, cellars, storage rooms, refectories, and chapels, showcasing a sophisticated understanding of underground construction. Turkey may have the greatest number of underground cities and networks in the work and more are being discovered every year.
Europe
In Italy, the legacy of the Etruscans , a pre-Roman civilization, is visible through an extensive network of underground tunnels known as "Vie Cave" or "Etruscan Ways." These narrow, canyon-like paths, which were dug into tuff stone, often reach staggering heights, creating an impressive spectacle. Their purpose remains largely a mystery, with theories ranging from a means of communication and transport between settlements, to having religious or ceremonial importance.
On the archipelago of Malta is home to a vast network of underground tunnels. The Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni , a UNESCO World Heritage site, is an extraordinary subterranean structure dating back to around 3300-3000 BC. This labyrinthine complex spans three levels, with rooms, halls, and passages hewn directly into the limestone. The Hypogeum was likely used as both a sanctuary and a necropolis, with remains of over 7,000 individuals discovered within its depths.
Elsewhere in Europe, the city of Odessa in Ukraine is known for its labyrinthine catacombs, which stretch approximately 2,500 kilometers, making them among the largest networks of tunnels anywhere in the world. Originally, these tunnels were the result of limestone mining in the 19th century, the same limestone used to build much of the city. Over time, the catacombs served various purposes – from a hideout for Soviet partisans during World War II to an illicit playground in more recent years. These varied examples underline Europe's rich history of utilizing subterranean spaces for an array of purposes, each of them contributing to our understanding of past civilizations.
The ability of ancient people to shape the earth, to build beneath the surface, and to create these complex subterranean networks across continents is a testament to their resilience, ingenuity, and adaptability. These underground cities, tunnels, and structures are more than just historical relics; they are enduring symbols of humanity's enduring desire to innovate, adapt, and survive.
Top image: Man standing in underground city of Derinkuyu, Turkey.
When the eruption of an underwater volcano near Tonga crescendoed into a fiery blast last year, it sent shock waves around the globe. Its eruption was stronger than an atomic bomb and set new records that have since dwarfed the power of most volcanic eruptions in recorded history.
The volcano, called Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, was the first ever observed to shoot ash 35 miles above ground into Earth’s mesosphere. It also sent out the fastest atmospheric pressure waves ever recorded and caused several rare tsunamis.
Even though it’s been over a year since the eruption, scientists are still making discoveries about the effects of the blast. One team of experts from Japan announced that the eruption was powerful enough to create a phenomenon in the atmospherethat could interrupt satellite and GPS communications. Their findings were published today in the journal Scientific Reports.
In Earth’s upper atmosphere, about 50 to 400 miles above ground, an important boundary called the ionosphere sits between our planet and outer space. It’s made of electrically charged particles that absorb dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. The movement of those particles is easily influenced by changing conditions on and around Earth’s atmosphere.
Upper atmospheric winds and electric fields can sometimes create bubbles in the ionosphere above the equator that form due to uneven particle densities. It might sound benign, but the bubbles can cause disruptions for GPS signals and satellite communications that use the ionosphere to bounce signals through this charged upper layer.
Scientists don’t know much about how events on (and below) Earth’s surface might cause these bubbles to form. But it’s clear that strong air pressure waves can shake up the ionosphere’s density. Given that Tonga’s eruption generated enormous waves of pressure, the researchers hypothesized that the blast could have potentially caused a plasma bubble to form.
Sure enough, data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Himawari-8 and Arase satellites revealed that the density of charged particles suddenly became higher in the ionosphere around the time the eruption took place.
Even hours before the Tonga volcano blew its top, changes in the ionosphere were already taking place. The data shows that it didn’t even take a full eruption to increase air pressure and cause significant changes far above the surface of Earth.
“The results of this research are significant not only from a scientific point of view but also from the point of view of space weather and disaster prevention,” said study author Atsuki Shinbori, a professor at Nagoya University, in a statement.
Knowing how powerful events like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes shake things up in the ionosphere could help predict future disruptions to GPS and satellite communications, especially in times of crisis.
Onze aarde ontvangt vandaag een “boodschap van aliens” en iedereen kan die mee helpen ontcijferen
Onze aarde ontvangt vandaag een “boodschap van aliens” en iedereen kan die mee helpen ontcijferen
Over de vraag of aliens echt bestaan wordt al jaar en dag gediscussieerd, maar vanavond zullen we eindelijk weten hoe het is om met buitenaardse wezens te communiceren. Zo zal een gesimuleerde boodschap van Mars naar onze aarde worden gestuurd. Het doel van het experiment is om aardbewoners voor te bereiden op “toekomstig contact met buitenaardse wezens”.
De Marsverkenner ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) van het Europees Ruimteagentschap (ESA) zal de boodschap rond 21.00 uur Belgische tijd versturen. Ongeveer een kwartier later wordt het bericht op aarde opgepikt. Drie observatoria vangen de boodschap op: de Allen Telescope Array van het SETI-instituut in Noord-Californië, de Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West-Virginia en het Medicina radio-observatorium in de Noord-Italiaanse stad Bologna.
De bedenker van het project is de visionaire kunstenares Daniela de Paulis van het SETI-instituut. Volgens haar is het experiment een goede oefening voor als we ooit een echte buitenaardse boodschap ontvangen. “Het zou een transformerende ervaring voor de mensheid zijn”, zegt ze.
Publiek kan bericht mee ontcijferen
De inhoud van de boodschap is niet vrijgegeven en daar is ook een specifieke reden voor. Zo hoopt het instituut dat ruimtewetenschappers de boodschap met behulp van het brede publiek kunnen ontcijferen. Geïnteresseerden krijgen toegang tot een speciale groep in de berichtenapp Discord. Daarin kunnen ze vervolgens naar hartenlust hun analyses en interpretaties van de alienboodschap delen. Wetenschappers zullen het buitenaardse bericht openbaar maken zodra ze het hebben ontvangen.
Er wordt ook een livestream georganiseerd voor al wie het experiment op de voet wil volgen.
“Dit soort project had al veel eerder moeten plaatsvinden. We zoeken al meer dan 60 jaar naar buitenaardse signalen, maar we hebben nooit echt nagedacht over hoe we zo’n signaal zouden ontvangen en decoderen”, zegt Franck Marchis, astronoom bij het SETI-instituut.
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23-05-2023
The Tonga Eruption Was So Powerful it Disrupted Satellites Half a World Away
The Tonga eruption in 2022 sent ash and water into the air and created an atmospheric pressure wave that helped create an equatorial plasma bubble that disrupted satellite communications that depend on the ionosphere.
The Tonga Eruption Was So Powerful it Disrupted Satellites Half a World Away
Remember the huge Tonga eruption in the South Pacific in January 2022? This underwater volcano sent tons of ash into the air. It also blew 146 teragrams of water into our atmosphere and the effect of the explosion reached space. It also made life very difficult for people on Tonga, wiping out their communications and sending tsunamis across the South Pacific.
Now, scientists report that it also sent an air pressure wave that produced a bubble of plasma in the ionosphere. That was enough to disrupt satellite communications around the world long before the pressure wave arrived.
For a team of researchers at Nagoya University in Japan, the Tonga event was a unique opportunity. It provided a chance to study the link between the atmosphere and terrestrial events such as volcanic eruptions. The team used satellites to detect the growth of equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs). Among other things, these EPBs can disrupt radio communications and degrade GPS signals.
EPBs form when plasma, electric fields, and neutral winds move through the ionosphere. Essentially, these bubbles are localized density gradients of plasma. Atmospheric waves disturb them. Since the volcanic blast created such a wave, the team theorized that a volcanic eruption is a trigger. The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai event was essentially a “volcanic hammer”. It pounded ten cubic kilometers of rock out in the form of ash and sediment from beneath the ocean waves. It was the biggest submarine eruption in known history.
Ionospheric Implications of the Tonga Eruption
Atsuki Shinbori and Yoshizumi Miyoshi used data from the Arase and Himawari-8 satellites to study air pressure waves from the eruption. They coordinated that with ground-based observations of something called the “total electron density” in the ionosphere. In that data, they were able to pinpoint an irregular structure of higher electron density across Earth’s equator. It occurred after the arrival of pressure waves from the eruption. “The results of this study showed EPBs generated in the equatorial to low-latitude ionosphere in Asia in response to the arrival of pressure waves caused by undersea volcanic eruptions off Tonga,” Shinbori said.
They also spotted something unusual. “Our new finding is that the ionospheric disturbances are observed several minutes to hours before the initial arrival of the shock waves triggered by the Tonga volcanic eruption,” Shinbori said. “This suggests that the propagation of the fast atmospheric waves in the ionosphere triggered the ionospheric disturbances before the initial arrival of the shock waves. Therefore, the model needs to be revised to account for these fast atmospheric waves in the ionosphere.”
Revising a Model?
This has important implications. It suggests that the long-held model of geosphere-atmosphere-cosmosphere coupling needs updating. The model says that ionospheric disturbances should only happen after the eruption. In addition, it now appears that the EPBs related to the eruption extended far beyond what people expect. “Previous studies have shown that the formation of plasma bubbles at such high altitudes is a rare occurrence, making this a very unusual phenomenon,” Shinbori said.
“We found that the EPB formed by this eruption reached space even beyond the ionosphere, suggesting that we should pay attention to the connection between the ionosphere and the cosmosphere when an extreme natural phenomenon, such as the Tonga event, occurs.”
Links to Spaceweather and Disaster Planning
Huge eruptions like the Tonga event, or space weather storms after coronal mass ejections offer new views of how our planet’s ionosphere reacts to such stressful occurrences. Essentially, a hole forms in the atmosphere. What would happen if such an event occurred during a space weather outburst? Shinbori suggests that disaster planners take them into account. “Such cases have not been incorporated into space weather forecast models,” he said. “This study will contribute to the prevention of satellite broadcasting and communication failures associated with ionospheric disturbances caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other events.”
Key to such planning is a better understanding of our ionosphere—which we depend on for communications. The ionosphere is a region of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. It’s where solar radiation ionizes molecules and atoms. That creates positively charged ions. The area with the highest concentration of these ionized particles is called the F-region, an area 150 to 800 km above the Earth’s surface. This area of the atmosphere plays a crucial role in long-distance radio communication, reflecting and refracting radio waves used by satellite and GPS tracking systems back to the Earth’s surface. Strong solar storms can disrupt the F-region. It’s happened in the past, and will continue to do so, especially during times of maximum solar activity (called “solar max”.)
It could be doubly disastrous if a volcanic eruption, for example, affects the ionosphere the way the Tongan eruption did. Theoretically, the damage to communications could be severe. That’s why Professor Shinbori calls for the addition of volcanic eruption effects on space weather disaster planning.
We all rely on technology for most of our daily tasks, but it really is a double-edged sword. On one hand, we have amazing tools that make life both easy and cool. But on the other hand, they’re trying to take our jobs! From newscasters to bartenders and even mecha pilots, here are 20 Robots That Compete With Humans!
Will Robots conquer Space?
WRC 2022 - China's largest robot exhibition | Robots and technologies at the exhibition in China
The World Robot Conference 2022 was held in Beijing. Due to the ongoing offline pandemic, only Chinese robotics companies were represented, and the rest of the world joined in the online format. But the Chinese booths were also, as always, a lot to see. We gathered for you all the most interesting things from the largest robot exhibition in one video!
Creepy NASA robot snake could one day slither on alien worlds
Meet NASA's EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor), a new robot snake that could one day explore moons and planets. It can "autonomously map, traverse, and explore previously inaccessible destinations" on Earth and beyond, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Exploring Space with NASA Astronaut Victor Glover (Live from the Smithsonian)
Exploring Space with NASA Astronaut Victor Glover Live from the Smithsonian
12 Female Robots Stealing your Husbands Men and Jobs
These are the Top 12 Artificial Intelligent Humanoid Female Robots on Earth, from India, United States, China and Japan
Technology is advancing at the speed of light… Every day we hear about more and more things being handed over to robots, but you’ve got to wonder, are we ever going to see Transformers level robots in real life? We might already be there… from, Robots with giant personalities and literal walking beasts, to robots that are the real transformers … In this video, we’re going to be taking a closer look at 12 of the most insane, giant robots on Earth!
Google's AI Robot TERRIFIES Officials Before It Was Quickly Shut Down
Google's AI Robot Terrifies Officials Before It Was Quickly Shut Down. Google engineer Blake Lemoine began talking to LaMDA as part of his job to test if the artificial intelligence used discriminatory or hate speech. But what followed, let Lemoine’s jaw open.
An Astronaut Will Be Controlling Several Robots on Earth… from Space
The European Space Agency has been hosting a series of robotic teleoperation experiments where an astronaut abroad the ISS controls a robot back on the ground. We’ve previously reported on some of their successes. Now it’s time for the next round of experiments, with one individual astronaut on the ISS controlling four separate robots to perform a task back on Earth.
Performing work on Earth, which humans could easily do, might raise the question of why bother with robots at all. Quite simply, the Surface Avatar experiments, as they are known, are designed to serve as a proof of concept for operating a robot on the surface of a body that is not so friendly to humans. For example, the Lunar Gateway will theoretically begin operations around the Moon sometime this decade. Astronauts operating on the Gateway could then control robots down on the surface, performing operations like building landing pads and taking samples to be returned to Earth.
There are plenty of things for robotic explorers to do, many of which would be much faster with even a little bit of human oversight. Surface Avatar is meant to mimic those missions, including the delay operators would experience by attempting to operate the robots with up to an 800-millisecond delay.
That delay can be frustrating, especially when operating some of the more advanced robots in Surface Avatar’s lineup. The astronauts will be operating four different robots as part of the mission. Three are set up and ready to go at the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. They include a lander with a robotic arm to load samples (think Mars Sample Return mission), a humanoid robot named Rollin’ Justin, who is meant to mimic the operations of a human on the surface, and a robot dog named Bert. A fourth robot, which doesn’t yet have a name, is under construction at another location in the Netherlands. It will be a rover with two robotic arms.
It’s not clear yet what each of these robots will have to do as part of the experiment, though assumedly Bert just looking cute might be enough to justify its design. The ambiguity is intentional, though, as ESA doesn’t want the astronauts to know beforehand what they will be working on, making it more similar to an actual mission where there wouldn’t necessarily be time to prepare much in advance.
Past iterations of Surface Avatar experiments have had some preparation time, though. Experiments like Haptics-1 and the Interact Centaur mission proved different concepts that would be helpful for teleoperation, such as haptic feedback on joysticks and the possibility of placing objects in specific locations. Even some of the robots planned for the current mission have been tested in previous rounds – such as Justin and Bert. However, this is the first time all four will be controlled simultaneously.
To help with that control, ESA researchers have a 7-degree-of-freedom joystick with force feedback meant to mimic gravity and the effect of pushing on objects. It should allow astronauts to control all four robots to the full extent of their capability.
They won’t have much time to prepare, even with their limited knowledge of the controls and the experiment’s goals. An unnamed astronaut currently residing on the space station will start performing some of the tasks for the Surface Avatar experiments sometime this summer. Another astronaut who has completed some of the previous Surface Avatar experiments, Andreas Mogensen, will help complete the work in early 2024 when he returns to the ISS. Both experiments will serve as another step for humans into the broader coordination with robots that will be a core part of our solar system exploration.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
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