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 ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
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...
27-05-2023
The Latest UFO Sightings: Unexplained Lights Forming a Triangle Over Northern Phoenix
The Latest UFO Sightings: Unexplained Lights Forming a Triangle Over Northern Phoenix
Just when you thought the UFO sightings of 2023 couldn’t get any stranger, a new incident has sparked quite the conversation on Reddit. On the evening of the 25th of May, a Reddit user reported an enigmatic sighting over Northern Phoenix that has the UFO enthusiast community abuzz with speculation and curiosity.
Mysterious Lights Over Phoenix
The user was driving home through Peoria, a region defined by its picturesque mountains and tranquil landscapes. But what they encountered was far from the usual tranquil evening. Unexpectedly, the witness noticed an unusual set of blinking lights suspended in the sky above the mountains. The most intriguing detail? These lights were arranged in a triangle – a common pattern in numerous UFO sightings reports.
A Transient Phenomenon
The witness managed to capture some footage before the inexplicable lights vanished into the night, approximately five minutes after they first noticed them. The sheer brevity of the event and the absence of similar reports give this sighting an eerie air of mystery. Although no one else reported this sighting, it’s sparking a significant amount of interest on the internet.
Blinking into Oblivion
The blinking lights over Northern Phoenix will undoubtedly leave many asking questions about what’s happening in our skies. Are these sightings simply misidentified aircraft or natural phenomena? Or are they evidence of something more? The answers remain elusive, but the intrigue continues to grow.
Triangular Lights: A Common UFO Trait
The report’s mention of triangular lights aligns with many historical UFO sightings. This detail adds a layer of complexity and intrigue to the case. Could this be another piece of the puzzle in the world’s UFO sightings mystery?
The Phoenix sighting’s peculiarity doesn’t just lie in its isolation – it’s the lack of immediate explanation that makes it so intriguing. With no other reports or evidence, the blinking triangular lights over the Northern Phoenix mountains remain a captivating mystery.
The investigation into this peculiar UFO sighting is ongoing, and we will keep you updated on any developments. For now, it remains another chapter in the ever-growing book of unexplained UFO sightings that continue to fascinate people around the globe.
The truth might be out there, and until we find it, keep your eyes to the skies and your cameras ready. You never know when you might be the next person to spot something extraordinary.
Breaking! 💥 Unprecedented Display of UFOs over Niagara Falls! Witness the Cosmic Ballet!
Breaking! 💥 Unprecedented Display of UFOs over Niagara Falls! Witness the Cosmic Ballet!
On the night of May 25, 2023, the ordinarily tranquil city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, experienced an extraordinary spectacle – a vibrant display of unidentified flying objects). Described as bright, maneuvering orbs of light, these UFOs offered a riveting spectacle against the night sky. The local residents, usually engrossed with the majestic waterfall views, were this time captivated by a truly surreal aerial phenomenon.
An eyewitness reported seeing what seemed like “squadrons of something flying,” not once but for two consecutive days. The enigmatic nature of this event has sparked intrigue, leading to speculations ranging from secret military operations to the more captivating possibility – are these actual UFOs? A local resident recorded this extraordinary spectacle and was left pondering, “UFOs two days in a row. I’ve seen like 100; what is this?”
In the clear video footage, you can distinctly observe multiple bright objects maneuvering in the night sky. They move in a pattern that defies any known aircraft’s movements, catching the viewer’s eye with their seemingly choreographed aerial ballet. Each UFO glows intensely against the dark night sky, creating a mesmerizing tableau reminiscent of a cosmic light show.
These extraordinary UFO sightings over Niagara Falls have been shared widely on social media, making the location a buzzword among UFO enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists alike. The video has generated enormous traffic, leaving netizens with more questions than answers about the phenomenon that unfolded in the sky over Niagara Falls.
The increase in reported UFO sightings worldwide, coupled with this recent incident, has led to a resurgence of interest in the UFO phenomenon. The compelling evidence presented in this video could potentially herald a turning point in how we perceive UFO sightings, making the recent Niagara Falls incident a focal point for this ever-fascinating discourse.
While we may not yet have a definitive answer as to whether these bright, maneuvering UFOs are genuine extraterrestrial crafts, top-secret military drones, or an unexplained natural phenomenon, one thing is certain – the UFO sightings over Niagara Falls have captivated the world. They have sparked a renewed curiosity and wonderment, reminding us of the fascinating mysteries that our vast universe continues to hold.
If you are intrigued by the unknown and the mysteries that lay beyond our Earthly confines, join us in our exploration. Stay tuned for more information and updates on this and other UFO sightings around the world. Don’t forget to share your experiences and thoughts in the comments. Together, let’s continue the search for the truth that’s out there.
Communiceren we binnenkort via gedachten? Elon Musk mag breinimplantaat op mensen testen
Neuralink, een bedrijf van miljardair Elon Musk, heeft van de Amerikaanse gezondheidsautoriteiten toestemming gekregen om zijn hersenimplantaten te testen op mensen. Dat kondigde het bedrijf donderdag aan op Twitter. Neuralink is bezig met de ontwikkeling van een hersenimplantaat dat patiënten toelaat om te communiceren via hun gedachten.
“Dit is een belangrijke eerste stap waarmee onze technologie op een dag veel mensen kan helpen”, aldus het Californische bedrijf, eraan toevoegend “dat de werving voor de klinische proeven nog niet geopend is”.
Neuralink werkte al langer aan een implantaat - zo groot als een muntstuk - dat in de schedel wordt ingebracht. Bedoeling is om via het brein rechtstreeks te communiceren met een computer. Elon Musk zei eind vorig jaar al dat er gesprekken bezig waren met de Amerikaanse geneesmiddelenwaakhond FDA en verwachtte toen “binnen de zes maanden groen licht” voor een eerste test met mensen. De FDA heeft donderdag niet gereageerd op het bericht van Neuralink.
Het bedrijf wil met de technologie proberen verlamde mensen in staat te stellen hun spieren weer te bewegen en mensen die blind zijn geworden hun zicht terug te geven. Voor de verdere toekomst heeft Neuralink plannen om de implantaten te gebruiken om mensen die een beroerte hebben gehad of kampen met ziektes als amytrofische laterale sclerose (ALS) of Parkinson te laten communiceren via hun gedachten. In proeven met apen konden de dieren bijvoorbeeld een computerspel bedienen met hun hersenen.
Het bedrijf van Musk is niet het enige dat zich bezighoudt met technologie om de werking van de hersenen te monitoren: er wordt al decennialang wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar gevoerd. Maar de komst van Musk heeft er wel voor gezorgd dat andere investeerders interesse krijgen in het domein en het onderzoek sneller opschiet.
Al sinds 2019 voorspelde Musk meermaals dat zijn in 2016 opgerichte bedrijf “binnenkort” van de Amerikaanse gezondheidsautoriteiten toestemming zou krijgen voor proeven op mensen. Begin vorig jaar werd een aanvraag van het bedrijf om te mogen starten met klinisch onderzoek nog afgewezen door de Amerikaanse geneesmiddelenwaakhond FDA, vanwege zorgen over de veiligheid van het experimentele implantaat.
About one-fifth of academics who responded to a recent survey reported that they or someone they knew had seen what we now call unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), and more than a third were interested in doing serious academic research on the topic.
“I personally know three physicists who independently report seeing UFOs,” one scientist (whose field was omitted for privacy reasons) told social scientist Marissa Yingling, historian Charlton Yingling, and education researcher Bethany Bell. “They have no explanation for the phenomenon they observed, other than they observed it.”
That scientist is one of about 280 academic researchers who reported that they, or someone they know, have witnessed UAPs — the current, more respectable term for UFOs. They make up a fifth of the researchers who responded to Yingling and her colleagues’ recent survey on the subject. Responders included researchers in 14 academic fields, from art and design to physics, at 144 major U.S. universities. They published their results in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
According to Yingling and her colleagues, “Curiosity outweighed skepticism or indifference.”
WE DON’T TALK ABOUT UAP – BUT...
Only 1,460 researchers responded, out of more than 39,000 that Yingling and her colleagues contacted. A 4 percent response rate is extremely small to base a research study on, and it’s on the low end even for things like customer satisfaction surveys. In this case, researchers who were already interested in UAP, or who had an experience of their own, were probably more likely to answer the survey. The skeptics probably weeded themselves out by not responding.
“Not only did one faculty member write to communicate that simply receiving the email was ‘insulting,’ 14 faculty wrote seeking confirmation that the survey was not spam,” write Yingling and her colleagues. “One person sent a courtesy email to share that they feared our names were being used in a scam.”
If anything, the response rate and the worried emails emphasize reticence on the part of U.S. academics about UAP research. But among those who responded, there seems to be growing interest in serious academic research into UAP, which parallels recent interest from NASA, the Pentagon, and Congress.
J. Allen Hynek, an academic hired by the Air Force under Project Blue Book to investigate purported UFO sightings.
GETTY IMAGES/MOVIEPIX/GETTY IMAGES
“CURIOSITY OUTWEIGHED SKEPTICISM”
Thirty-nine percent of the researchers who responded to the survey said they didn’t know how to explain UAP. About 21 percent said there was bound to be a natural explanation, and a slew of individual answers pointed the finger at super-secret military technology, “cultural predilections,” drug-induced hallucinations, and, of course, weather balloons. On the other hand, 13 percent of participants — about 190 researchers — said that UAP are probably “devices of unknown intelligence.”
For comparison, 41 percent of U.S. adults in a 2021 Gallup poll believe at least some UAP are alien craft. About half believe UAP can be entirely explained by human activity or natural phenomena. So academics seem to be more skeptical than the general public about alien explanations for UAP, notwithstanding operations like the Galileo Project.
But at least some academic researchers are also curious. Only 4 percent of the survey participants had actually done UAP research, but another 36 percent showed interest, and 37 percent described UAP research as “very important or absolutely essential.” And 64 percent said that if UAP research is happening, it’s important for academia to be involved.
“Something is definitely out there,” one social scientist told Yingling and her colleagues, “and I just hope the mystery is solved to everyone’s satisfaction during my lifetime.”
Before His Death, NASA Astronaut Said “Aliens Arrived To Stop Nuclear War”
Before His Death, NASA Astronaut Said “Aliens Arrived To Stop Nuclear War”
After returning from the Moon, Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong (1969) and Edgar Mitchell (1971) changed their views on the origin of life on Earth. Both space pioneers tried to explore more about the Earth and spent much time understanding who could be behind everything. Without resisting, Armstrong accepted an invitation from the Hungarian explorer to go on a quest to the Amazon jungles to search for some information about aliens and previous civilizations. Besides, after returning to Earth, Mitchell left NASA and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which advocated exploring the universe by means of the inquiry that might lay outside science and religion.
Although there are conspiracy theories claiming that Armstrong saw aliens on the far side of the moon, he remained silent on the topic. His expedition to the Andes Cave with other top officials is the only information that hints that Armstong was interested in the extraterrestrial subject. On the other hand, Mitchell always expressed his views on alien life and got deeper into the theories about extraterrestrials.
“From looking at Earth from space you come up with the question, who are we, how did we get here and where’s all this going? And that’s an ancient, ancient question that humans have asked for a long time… My experience was to realize that perhaps our science is wrong at answering these questions and perhaps our religious cosmologies are archaic and flawed. And given that now we are an extraterrestrial civilization ourselves, we need to re-ask these questions, and do a lot more work to find the answers.”—Edgar Mitchell, 2016 Vice interview
Edgar Mitchell during an Apollo 14 training session in 1970
Why did Edgar Mitchell get so much into extraterrestrials? Probably the answer lies within the most famous Roswell UFO crash. In 1947, 16-year-old Mitchell lived on a ranch near the crash site. It was the moment that fueled the entire UFO theories around the globe. According to Blake Stilwell, a former Air Force combat photographer, Mitchell believed that the aliens had prevented the nuclear war between the Soviets and the Americans, and it is on record.
Stilwell wrote: “He [Mitchell] also claimed that top military officials had hidden evidence of UFOs, potentially alien spacecraft and that they were particularly fond of hovering over White Sands Testing Range in New Mexico. I have wondered if we are prepared for our own survival. The only way for humans to gain some control of the species’ mad trajectory, he believed, was “by questioning many fundamental assumptions underlying civilization,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell told the Mirror in 2015 “White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons – and that’s what the extraterrestrials were interested in… They wanted to know about our military capabilities. My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth.”He further stated that other military officials had confided in him that alien spacecraft were to blame for shooting down nuclear missiles over the Pacific Ocean and destroying them.
“I have spoken to many Air Force officers who worked at these silos during the Cold War,” Mitchell continued. “They told me UFOs were frequently seen overhead and often disabled their missiles. “Other officers from bases on the Pacific coast told me their [test] missiles were frequently shot down by alien spacecraft. “There was a lot of activity in those days.”
Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defence UFO researcher believed Mitchell was an honorable and truthful man. He said, “clearly, because of who he is, he’s had access to government, military, and intelligence community personnel at the highest level, but because – quite understandably – he won’t name his sources, we can’t be certain these people were being straight with him, or indeed that they were privy to any classified information about UFOs.”
In 2016, Wikileaks revealed thousands of emails that were allegedly linked to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. The emails unfolded secret information shared with Podesta about UFOs and ETs. In 2015, Podesta received emails from Mitchell that expressed his concern about the weaponization of space and its impact on the ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence). Despite the fact that aliens might be violent as shown in various sci-fi, the notable astronaut called them nonviolent in an email. (Source)
In January 2015, he sent an email to Podesta, asking him to have an urgent meeting to discuss Disclosure and Zero Point Energy (ZPE). He was concerned about the peace in space. Mitchell wrote: “My Catholic colleague Terri Mansfield will be there too, to bring us up to date on the Vatican’s awareness of ETI. Another colleague is working on a new Space Treaty, citing involvement with Russia and China. However, with Russia’s extreme interference in Ukraine, I believe we must pursue another route for peace in space and ZPE on Earth.”
Carol Rosin, one of Mitchell’s longtime collaborators, and Terri Mansfield confirmed to Geekwire Mitchell was indeed the author of the two emails. Rosin noted that Mitchell and Podesta shared an interest in extraterrestrial lore. “As you know, Dr. Mitchell was courageously educating people about the fact that ‘we are not alone,’ that there is no evidence of there being any hostile ETs here or coming to control, intervene or harm us, that we can have zero point energy, that there are no weapons based in space and that this is the unique time in history when our leaders can sign and ratify the ‘Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space’ that has been introduced by the leaders of Russia and China,” Rosin said.
Terri with Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, ScD, 2011 inductee honoree in the Leonardo da Vinci Society for the Study of Thinking. Image via terrimansfield.com
According to terrimansfield.com, “Terri (Terese) Mansfield is the Executive Vice President for Fundraising in the Public Interest (FPI), founded by President and CEO Suzanne Mendelssohn, Ph.D., Earth’s only ETI obedience healer as well as science intuitive for tau neutrino zero point energy (ZPE)”. In addition, Terese is the Director of the ETI (Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Peace Task Force.
Terri witnessed the Phoenix Lights event on March 13, 1997. She described the event as a peaceful ETI greeting to humanity. “Little did I know at the time that what I was witness to was the Mother Craft, a two-mile-wide craft that shared the night sky with multiple crafts, seen by thousands of witnesses in Arizona as a peaceful ETI Hello to Earth,” she explained. (Source)
Mitchell emailed Podesta again on September 18, 2015. He wrote: “Because the War in Space race is heating up, I felt you should be aware of several factors as you and I schedule our Skype talk. Remember, our nonviolent ETI from the contiguous universe are helping us bring zero point energy to Earth. They will not tolerate any forms of military violence on Earth or in space.”
It was confirmed by one of Mitchell’s collaborators that the meeting between Podesta and him never took place. During the 2016 election campaign, Podesta declared he would convince Clinton to declassify as many UFO files as possible. In 2014, he tweeted that his biggest failure during the Obama administration was not to ask them for the release of UFO files.
Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell died in 2016 but for his entire life, he was a pacifist and a promoter of ETI reality. According to him, ZPE is the ultimate energy source from which all matter derives.
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SETI Live: A Sign in Space - Simulating First Contact
SETI Live: A Sign in Space - Simulating First Contact
What would happen if we received a message from an extraterrestrial civilization? Daniela de Paulis, Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute and the Green Bank Observatory (GBO), brought a team of international experts together, including SETI researchers, space scientists, and artists, to stage her latest project, A Sign in Space.
On May 24, 2023, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), in orbit around Mars, will transmit an encoded message to Earth to simulate receiving a signal from extraterrestrial intelligence.
May 22, 2023, Mountain View, CA – What would happen if we received a message from an extraterrestrial civilization? Daniela de Paulis, an established interdisciplinary artist and licensed radio operator who currently serves as Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute and the Green Bank Observatory, has brought together a team of international experts, including SETI researchers, space scientists, and artists, to stage her latest project, A Sign in Space. This revolutionary presentation of global theater aims to explore the process of decoding and interpreting an extraterrestrial message by engaging the worldwide SETI community, professionals from different fields and the broader public. This process requires global cooperation, bridging a conversation around SETI, space research and society across multiple cultures and areas of expertise.
As part of the project, on May 24, 2023, the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in orbit around Mars will transmit an encoded message to Earth to simulate receiving a signal from an extraterrestrial intelligence.
“Throughout history, humanity has searched for meaning in powerful and transformative phenomena,” said Daniela de Paulis, the visionary artist behind the A Sign in Space project. “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.”
Three world-class radio astronomy observatories located across the globe will detect the encoded message. These include the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA), the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) at the Green Bank Observatory (GBO), and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station observatory managed by Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). The specific content of the encoded message, developed by de Paulis and her team, is currently undisclosed, allowing the public to contribute to decoding and interpreting the content.
The ESA ExoMars Orbiter will transmit the encoded message on May 24 at 19:00 UTC / 12:00 pm PDT, with receipt on Earth 16 minutes later. To engage the public, the SETI Institute will host a social media live stream event featuring interviews with key team members, including scientists, engineers, artists and more, joining the live stream from around the world, including control rooms from the ATA, the GBT, and Medicina. Hosted by the SETI Institute’s Dr. Franck Marchis and GBO’s Victoria Catlett, the live stream event will begin at 11:15 am PDT here.
“This experiment is an opportunity for the world to learn how the SETI community, in all its diversity, will work together to receive, process, analyze, and understand the meaning of a potential extraterrestrial signal,” said ATA Project Scientist Dr. Wael Farah. “More than astronomy, communicating with ET will require a breadth of knowledge. With “A Sign in Space,” we hope to make the initial steps towards bringing a community together to meet this challenge.”
Following the transmission, ATA, GBT, and Medicina teams will process the signal and then make it available to the public for decoding.
The SETI Institute will securely store the processed data in collaboration with Breakthrough Listen Open Data Archive and Filecoin, the world's largest decentralized storage network. This collaborative effort ensures the preservation and accessibility of the processed data, safeguarding its availability for further analysis and decoding endeavors.
"We're thrilled to partner with SETI on this groundbreaking project," said Stefaan Verveat, Head of Network Growth at Protocol Labs, the company behind Filecoin. "Our decentralized data storage solutions are ideally suited for the secure and reliable storage of the vast amounts of data generated by this project."
Anyone working to decode and interpret the message can discuss the process in the A Sign in SpaceDiscord server. Submissions of findings, thoughts, and artistic and scientific inputs may be made through the dedicated submission form on the project’s website: https://asignin.space/decode-the-message/
Following the transmission, the A Sign in Space team will host a series of Zoom-based discussions open to the public around topics that consider the societal implications of detecting a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization. The discussions will take place over 6-8 weeks after the transmission. A list of events with registration links is here.
More information about the project can be found at “A Sign in Space” website: https://asignin.space/.
Just like the replicator on Star Trek: The Next Generation, a new clean energy prototype promises to work wonders out of thin air.
The researchers call it Air-gen, a mobile electricity generation device that uses a network of protein nanowires to turn the ambient humidity in the air into contained, synthetic thunderstorms.
This 'human-built, small-scale cloud,' these scientists said, can produce electricity 'predictably and continuously' in a wider variety of conditions than sun-dependent solar cells or wind-dependent turbines.
The team hopes to see Air-gen scaled up for mass use across the world - in environments ranging from the Amazon rainforest to the Sahara.
The team's Air-gen effect replicates the conditions of an energy-rich thundercloud, trapping water vapor in a network of tiny, nano-scale pores to harvest and store its electric potential
In its ability to pull something out of thin air, the device resembles the replicator (above) from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which could produce almost anything from excess junk matter
'The air contains an enormous amount of electricity,' according to the study's senior author, Dr. Jun Yao of Massachusetts University Amherst. 'Think of a cloud, which is nothing more than a mass of water droplets.'
'Each of those droplets contains a charge, and when conditions are right, the cloud can produce a lightning bolt,' Dr. Yao said, 'but we don't know how to reliably capture electricity from lightning.'
Yao's Air-gen solves this problem by replicating the conditions of energy-rich thunderclouds, trapping that charged water vapor inside a network of tiny, nano-scale pores.
Luckily, Yao said, a lot of different materials can be used to harvest energy from this technique.
'It just needs to have holes smaller than 100 nm (nanometers) - or less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair.'
In fact, when his team first started testing this technology three years ago, they used a specialized material of protein nanowires generated from a bacterial culture of Geobacter sulfurreducens.
Essentially, Yao and his team confirmed that they could continuously harvest electricity off a petri dish using their 'Air-gen effect.'
The 100 nm-size is so important to the process, the team says, because it scales to what chemists know as the 'mean free path' - the distance a single molecule of water vapor can float in midair before it bumps into another.
With these tiny pores, the researchers realized that they could create a build-up of electrical charge as water molecules passed through their nanotubes. The effect is almost like balloons generating static electricity, if they were forced to pass through a tube made of thick carpeting.
The Air-gen system creates a charge imbalance, in essence, as the upper end of the pore system builds up a charge in contrast to the lower end, just like the two sides of a battery.
'The idea is simple,' Yao said, 'but it's never been discovered before - and it opens all kinds of possibilities.'
In this drawing of the Air-gen device, the team's thin film of tiny protein nano-pores is clamped between a pair of electrodes. The top electrode is small enough to expose the top pores to the humid air, creating the positive and negative charge difference needed for a battery-like effect
The scientists made their Air-gen device from a specialized material of protein nanowires, which they grew from the bacteria Geobacter sulfurreducens. Scanning electron microscopy shows the tiny protein nanotubes surfaces (above) at a scale of just a few micrometers (μm)
Unlike solar cells, which frequently require exotic and sometimes toxic advanced materials to collect the sun's rays, Air-gen's nano-pore system could be designed from a wide variety of more environmentally friendly materials.
'What we realized after making the Geobacter discovery,' Yao said, 'is the ability to generate electricity from the air - what we then called the "Air-gen effect" - turns out to be generic.'
'Literally any kind of material can harvest electricity from air, so long as it can be shaped into the tiny, 100 nm pore system,' he said.
Yao and his team hope that their ultra modular and portable concept could be deployed across the world in a wide variety of conditions.
'You could imagine harvesters made of one kind of material for rainforest environments, and another for more arid regions,' Yao said.
And because humidity is not exactly a rare weather phenomenon, Air-gen harvesters could run 24/7, day or night, in almost any weather.
By their estimates, as published this month in the journal Advanced Materials, the devices could be stacked on top of each other by the thousands and would be able to generate over 1 kilowatt of power per cubic meter of space.
'Imagine a future world in which clean electricity is available anywhere you go,' Yao said. 'The generic Air-gen effect means that this future world can become a reality.'
Taking a hint from the magician’s playbook, scientists have devised a way to pull electricityfrom thin air. A new study out today suggests a method in which any material can offer a steady supply of electricity from the humidity in the air.
All that’s required? A pair of electrodes and a special material engineered to have teeny tiny holes that are less than 100 nanometers in diameter. That’s less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair.
Here’s how it works: The itty-bitty holes allow water molecules to pass through and generate electricity from the buildup of charge carried by the water molecules, according to a new paper published in the journal Advanced Materials.
The scientist’s design mimics how lightning forms in clouds.
NURPHOTO/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
The process essentially mimics how clouds make the electricity that they release in lightning bolts.
Because humidity lingers in the air perpetually, this electricity harvester could run at any time of day regardless of weather conditions — unlike somewhat unreliable renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar.
“The technology may lead to truly ‘ubiquitous powering’ to electronics,” senior study author Jun Yao, an electrical engineer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, tells Inverse.
MAN-MADE “CLOUDS”
The recent discovery relies on the fact that the air is chock-full of electricity: Clouds contain a build-up of electric charge. However, it’s tough to capture and use electricity from these bolts.
Instead of trying to wrangle power from nature, Yao and his colleagues realized they could recreate it. The researchers previously created a device that uses a bacteria-derived protein to spark electricity from moisture in the air. But they realized afterward that many materials can get the job done, as long as they’re made with tiny enough holes. According to the new study, this type of energy-harvesting device — which the study authors have dubbed "Air-gen", referring to the ability to pluck electricity from the air — can be made of “a broad range of inorganic, organic, and biological materials.”
“The initial discovery was really a serendipitous one,” says Yao, “so the current work really followed our initial intuition and lead to the discovery of the Air-gen effect working with literally all kinds of materials.”
The Air-gen device only requires a pair of electrodes and a material engineered with tiny pores.
LIU ET AL., 10.1002/ADMA.202300748
Water molecules can travel around 100 nanometers in the air before bumping into each other. When water moves through a thin material that’s filled with these precisely sized holes, the charge tends to build up in the upper part of the material where they enter. Since fewer molecules reach the lower layer, this creates a charge imbalance that’s similar to the phenomenon in a cloud — essentially creating a battery that runs on humidity, which apparently isn’t just useful for making hair frizzy. Electrodes on both sides of the material then carry the electricity to whatever needs powering.
And since these materials are so thin, they can be stacked by the thousands and even generate multiple kilowatts of energy. In the future, Yao envisions everything from small-scale Air-gen devices that can power wearables to those that can offer enough juice for an entire household.
Before any of that can happen, though, Yao says his team needs to figure out how to collect electricity over a larger surface area and how best to stack the sheets vertically to increase the device’s power without taking up additional space. Still, he’s excited about the technology’s future potential. “My dream is that one day we can get clean electricity literally anywhere, anytime by using Air-gen technology,” he says.
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.
A still of the initial green flash given off by the meteor. (Image credit: Cairns Airport)
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.
The LIGO detector in Livingston, Louisiana, is one of a pair based in the United States.
Credit: Xinhua/Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab
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.
Before and after comparison of the impact site without annotations. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.
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.
Ratio image created by dividing the after (M1437131607R) and before (M192675639R) images. The impact created an area of higher reflectance, approximately 60-80 m across [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
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.
A screenshot from ispace’s webcast shows an animation of the the Hakuto-R lander descending as the mission team watches. Credit: ispace via YouTube.
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.
Piping plovers (Charadrius melodus) are among the birds that inhabit the area around a spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas, where a SpaceX rocket blew up last month.
Credit: Vicki Jauron, Babylon and Beyond Photography/Getty
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.
NASA scientists used microwave observations to spot the first polar cyclone on Uranus, seen here as a light-colored dot to the right of center in each image of the planet. The images use wavelength bands K, Ka, and Q, from left. To highlight cyclone features, a different color map was used for each. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/VLA.
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.
Uranus as seen by NASA’s Voyager 2. Credit: NASA/JPL
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.
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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 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.