James Webb zoomt in op een ‘saai’ stukje Jupiter – maar dat blijkt helemaal niet zo saai te zijn

Vivian Lammerse

De telescoop tuurde naar het gebied boven de beroemde Grote Rode Vlek van Jupiter en ontdekte een reeks nieuwe, nog nooit eerder waargenomen kenmerken.

Jupiter is zonder twijfel een van de meest opvallende objecten aan de nachtelijke hemel. Bovendien is de enorme gasreus op een heldere nacht eenvoudig te aanschouwen. Afgezien van de heldere noorder- en zuiderlichten in de poolgebieden van de planeet, is de gloed van Jupiters bovenste atmosfeer zwak, waardoor het moeilijk is om met aardse telescopen details te zien. Maar gelukkig hebben we de James Webb-telescoop, die dankzij zijn infraroodgevoeligheid in staat is om de bovenste atmosfeer van Jupiter direct boven de Grote Rode Vlek met ongeëvenaarde precisie te bestuderen.

Meer over Jupiter’s Grote Rode Vlek
Planeet Jupiter staat bekend om zijn kleurrijke banden en reusachtige, wervelende stormen. De bekendste storm is – misschien zelfs de bekendste in het hele zonnestelsel – de Grote Rode Vlek; een gigantische anticycloon die al heel wat jaren op de gasreus woedt. De Grote Rode Vlek is een immense atmosferische wervelwind, zo is hij bijna net zo groot als de aarde in diameter. Aan zijn buitenranden razen de winden met snelheden tot 450 kilometer per uur. De rode kleur ontstaat door chemische reacties in de atmosfeer, wat een opvallend contrast vormt met de bleke wolken van de gasreus. De Grote Rode Vlek heeft generaties van wetenschappers gefascineerd. Dat heeft onder andere met zijn omvang te maken, maar ook met het feit dat de storm zelfs zichtbaar is met kleine telescopen. Afgelopen week werd nog bekend dat de Grote Rode Vlek toch jonger is dan gedacht. Hoewel de immense storm met een respectabele leeftijd van 190 jaar nog altijd de langstlevende wervelwind in het zonnestelsel is, blijkt hij niet dezelfde te zijn als die astronoom Giovanni Cassini in 1665 waarnam.

De bovenste atmosfeer van Jupiter is de overgangslaag tussen het magnetisch veld van de planeet en de onderliggende atmosfeer. In dit gebied zijn de heldere en levendige noorder- en zuiderlichten te zien, aangedreven door vulkanisch materiaal dat wordt uitgestoten door Jupiters ‘pizzamaan’ Io. Dichter bij de evenaar wordt de structuur van deze atmosfeer beïnvloed door het binnenkomende zonlicht. Omdat Jupiter slechts 4 procent van het zonlicht ontvangt dat de aarde bereikt, dachten astronomen dat dit gebied vrij uniform zou zijn.

Saai
In juli 2022 werd Jupiters Grote Rode Vlek geobserveerd met Webb’s Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec), waarbij de Integral Field Unit van het instrument werd gebruikt. Het doel was om te bestuderen of het gebied direct boven de beroemde wervelstorm echt zo saai is als wetenschappers vermoedden. Maar tot hun verrassing hebben ze nu ontdekt dat de bovenste atmosfeer een verscheidenheid aan ingewikkelde structuren bevat, waaronder donkere bogen en heldere vlekken, zo valt er te lezen in Nature Astronomy. “We gingen er misschien wat naïef vanuit dat dit gebied echt saai zou zijn,” zegt teamleider Henrik Melin. “Maar het blijkt eigenlijk net zo interessant te zijn als de noorderlichten, zo niet interessanter. Jupiter blijft ons altijd verrassen.”

Zwaartekrachtsgolven
Kortom, het gebied dat vroeger als onopvallend werd beschouwd, blijkt nu dus een diverse verzameling van complexe structuren en activiteiten te bevatten. Hoewel de lichtuitstraling van dit gebied wordt veroorzaakt door zonlicht, suggereert het team dat er een ander mechanisme moet zijn dat de vorm en structuur van de bovenste atmosfeer beïnvloedt. “Een manier om deze structuur te veranderen is door zwaartekrachtsgolven,” legt Henrik uit. “Dit is vergelijkbaar met golven die op een strand breken en rimpelingen in het zand veroorzaken. Deze golven ontstaan diep in de turbulente lagere atmosfeer rondom de Grote Rode Vlek. Ze kunnen omhoog bewegen naar hogere lagen, wat leidt tot veranderingen in de structuur en uitstoot van de bovenste atmosfeer.” Dergelijke atmosferische golven kunnen soms ook op aarde worden gezien, maar ze zijn veel zwakker dan die waargenomen op Jupiter door Webb.

Jupiter’s atmosphere around the Great Red Spot (NIRSpec image)

Vervolgonderzoek
Het team hoopt in de toekomst vervolgonderzoek te doen met Webb naar Jupiters complexe golfpatronen. Zo willen ze bijvoorbeeld achterhalen hoe deze patronen zich in de bovenste atmosfeer van de planeet bewegen. Ook willen ze meer inzicht krijgen in de energiebalans in dit gebied en bestuderen hoe de kenmerken ervan in de loop van de tijd veranderen.

Juice
Maar dat niet alleen. Deze ontdekkingen kunnen ook van belang zijn voor de ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), die op 14 april 2023 werd gelanceerd. Juice zal uitgebreide waarnemingen doen van Jupiter en zijn drie grote manen met oceanen – Ganymedes, Callisto en Europa (lees hier meer over de missie). De missie heeft tot doel deze manen te karakteriseren, terwijl het ook Jupiters complexe omgeving in detail zal onderzoeken.

Dankzij de nieuw opgedane kennis van de atmosferische processen en dynamiek op Jupiter, krijgen we een steeds beter beeld van deze nog altijd raadselachtige planeet en zijn manen. En hopelijk zal dit niet alleen ons begrip van ons eigen zonnestelsel vergroten, maar ook bijdragen aan onze kennis van gasreuzen en hun manen elders in het universum.

LEES OOK

• NASA: thuiswereld van Spock gaat ook in het echt in rook op

• Alsof het nooit anders is geweest: wetenschappers geven mensen een extra duim - en die wennen daar vervolgens bizar snel aan

• Sterke aanwijzingen gevonden dat er ergens tussen 1990 en 1992 op Venus een vulkaan is uitgebarsten

Bronmateriaal

• "Jupiter’s upper atmosphere surprises astronomers" - ESA
  
• Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: GustavoAckles van Pixabay (via Canva Pro)

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

28-06-2024 om 20:53 geschreven door peter  

Tot daar dan die kolonisatie? Bijna dagelijks vallen meteorieten op Mars, die stevige kraters maken

Redelijk relevant nieuws voor toekomstige missies naar Mars: de planeet krijgt haast dagelijks te maken met inslagen door meteorieten. Uit onderzoek van Zwitserse en Britse wetenschappers blijkt dat de planeet zelfs ruim vijf keer meer inslagen kent dan eerder geschat. De meteorieten laten kraters achter met een diameter van minstens acht meter.

ADN 

Bron: Belga

Een internationaal team wetenschappers van de ETH in Zürich en het Imperial College in Londen heeft een nieuwe kijk op de zaak gebracht door geluiden in kaart te brengen. “Het lijkt efficiënter om te luisteren naar het geluid van de inslagen om te bepalen met welke frequentie ze gebeuren”, klinkt het bij Gareth Collins, mede-auteur van het artikel dat in ‘Nature Astronomy’ is verschenen.

De zogenaamde SEIS-seismograaf, een instrument geproduceerd onder toezicht van het Franse CNES (National Centre for Space Studies), werd in november 2018 op Mars geïnstalleerd dankzij de InSight-lander van NASA. Die seismograaf wordt nu gebruikt om de inslagen te meten op basis van hun geluid.

Jaarlijks tussen 280 en 360 meteorietinslagen

Uit het onderzoek blijkt dat Mars jaarlijks tussen 280 en 360 meteorietinslagen te verwerken krijgt, die een krater van minstens acht meter diep nalaten. Dat is vijf keer meer dan wat eerst werd gedacht. Elke maand zou de planeet getroffen worden door een meteorietinslag die een krater van dieper van dertig meter nalaat. Bijna dagelijks wordt Mars getroffen door meteorieten ongeveer zo groot als een basketbal. Kleinere inslagen meten is moeilijk aangezien de planeet te maken heeft met zandstormen die de minder diepe kraters vaak bedekken en onzichtbaar maken.

“Omdat inslagen met hoge snelheid explosiezones creëren die nog eens vaak minstens 100 keer groter zijn dan de krater, is het voor de veiligheid van missies - nu met robots, maar in de toekomst ook met mensen - belangrijk om het exacte aantal inslagen te kennen”, aldus de onderzoekers.

“De studie is de eerste in haar soort die seismologische gegevens gebruikt om de frequentie van meteorietinslagen te berekenen. Met de resultaten moet rekening gehouden worden bij het inplannen van toekomstige missies naar Mars”, beklemtoont professor Domenico Giardini van ETH Zürich.

KIJK OOK. 

• https://youtu.be/O1AtaSCyqJI

• https://youtu.be/37VMwfVhpRY

Zo heeft Curiosity op acht november een opname gemaakt van zonsopgang tot zonsondergang.

Beelden van de voorkant van de rover.

Credit: NASA

Beelden van de achterkant van de rover.

Credit: NASA

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

28-06-2024 om 18:30 geschreven door peter  

“It’s a very interesting proposal that we hope gets picked up,” Rusty Schweickart said.

DeMartini’s concept for what he calls the Sunward NEO Surveillance and Early Twilight detection collaboration — or SUNSET for short — was judged the top entry in the competition for the Schweickart Prize. The award, which is a program of the California-based B612 Foundation, recognizes graduate students who come up with innovative ideas for planetary defense. As the prize winner, DeMartini will receive a $10,000 cash prize and a trophy topped by an authenticated meteorite during a ceremony on June 29 at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, Calif.

“The thing that actually got me to put my idea forward was the meteorite fragment,” said DeMartini, who’s earning his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. “I saw that and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really want that.’ But maybe that’s just me being an asteroid nerd.”

DeMartini said the idea behind SUNSET came out of discussions he had with a colleague about the asteroid that sparked the Chelyabinsk blast. “The reason we didn’t have any warning was because it came from the direction of the sun, and we can’t look in the direction of the sun,” he said. “That got me thinking, ‘Wow, that’s a region we should really monitor.'”

It turns out that the Rubin Observatory is looking into conducting just such a monitoring effort after it gets up and running next year. DeMartini suggests that the SUNSET network could augment the sightings made at the Rubin Observatory, and confirm the precise orbits traced by sunward NEOs.

“If these other telescopes know where to point in advance, then they can follow up on anything that Rubin discovers in a night, and then we can get these confirmations more easily,” he said.

The current focus of DeMartini’s research actually has to do with a different topic: numerical simulations of asteroid surfaces and interiors, and how close encounters with Earth might change those values. But when his faculty adviser told him about the Schweickart Prize, DeMartini decided to enter the competition.

It should come as no surprise that Rusty Schweickart himself was one of the judges. In his post-NASA career, he has focused on the challenges of asteroid threat detection and mitigation. He’s the founder and past president of the Association of Space Explorers, which took up the NEO threat as one of its causes. He’s also a co-founder of the B612 Foundation, which raises awareness about planetary defense, and a co-founder of Asteroid Day as well.

“What we’re talking about here in planetary defense is having the capability to ever so slightly, but critically, reshape the solar system to enhance the future of life on Earth,” Schweickart said. “To prevent this existential threat — that is what I’ve dedicated the last 20 years of my life to bringing about.”

Thanks in part to a congressional mandate, more than 90% of the biggest near-Earth asteroids, exceeding a kilometer (0.6 mile) in diameter, are thought to have been identified and are being tracked. That’s the kind of asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs roughly 66 million years ago. “But it’s the ones that are the city-killers — the 40- to 50-meter-diameter guys — that you can’t see until they’re pretty close to the Earth,” Schweickart said. “That means looking interior [to Earth’s orbit] is going to be more productive than looking exterior.”

DeMartini’s proposal was selected as the winner because it addresses one of the biggest gaps in asteroid monitoring, and because it takes advantage of advances in observational firepower.

The Rubin Observatory’s Survey Cadence Optimization Committee, or SCOC, says doing the kind of twilight sky survey that DeMartini discusses in his SUNSET proposal would be “scientifically compelling.” It recommends starting such a survey soon after the telescope begins science operations next year.

“We currently are simulating the effect of adding low-solar-elongation observations during the start and end of twilight, spending about 15 to 20 minutes of the start and end of about a quarter of the survey nights observing at high airmass toward the sun,” Lynne Jones, an astronomer who’s part of the Rubin team, said in an email. “This gives us the opportunity to detect asteroids interior to the Earth, even down to parts of the sky which are closer than 40 degrees from the sun.”

This time-lapse simulation illustrates how the Rubin Observatory could focus on twilight zones at the start and end of a survey night.

Credit: Lynne Jones / Aerotek / Rubin Observatory.

DeMartini said the Rubin Observatory’s twilight survey campaign would be “step one” in his vision for the SUNSET collaboration. “The next bit, I suppose, would be networking. Hopefully, this event that I’ll be going to when I’m receiving the prize will be a good opportunity for that. And that’s something that B612 can really help with,” he said.

“If it takes off, I don’t know what it looks like in 10 years. But my hope is that we’re safer because of it,” DeMartini added.

Randy Schweickart, who is one of Rusty’s sons and the chair of the prize program’s judging committee, said he and other family members are committed to funding the Schweickart Prize for at least five years. “The hope is that — similar to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which has expanded tremendously from its beginnings — there would be support from other sources as we move in time and are able to get more of the word out,” he said.

Rusty Schweickart said that the prize is meant for more than astronomers. “The really toughest problems related to planetary defense are the governance issues — the non-technical, geopolitical and legal issues,” he said. “So, in the future, what we want to do is move more in that direction, and get law students, economics students, public-safety people, emergency-response people to be involved in this. Because in the end, they’re going to be very critical.”

Schweickart, who’ll turn 90 next year, hopes the prize will carry on his legacy when he’s “pushing up daisies.”

“It seems to me that that we have, as human beings, a special responsibility to do whatever we can to see that this evolutionary experiment that we’re having here on planet Earth continues,” he said. “I’m not quite sure why that’s the responsibility, but I think it is. And if so, I feel obligated to do what I could.”

Scores of events have been scheduled around the world to mark Asteroid Day, including a two-day festival in Luxembourg. The award ceremony for the Schweickart Prize will take place at 3:30 p.m. PT June 29 at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, Calif. The event will feature a presentation by Rusty Schweickart, plus comments from NASA astronauts Steve Smith and Nicole Stott, and from YouTube space commentator Scott Manley. Click to purchase tickets.

Founding Sponsors who have funded the Schweickart Prize program include Anousheh Ansari, Barringer Crater Company, B612 Foundation, Future Ventures, Geoffrey Notkin, Jurvetson Family Foundation, Meteor Crater, Randy Schweickart and Michelle Heng, and Rusty B. Schweickart and Joanne Keys.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

28-06-2024 om 17:40 geschreven door peter  

“Atmospheric pollutants such as chlorofluorocarbons and NO₂ have been proposed as potential remotely detectable atmospheric technosignature gases,” the authors write in their paper. “Here, we investigate the potential for artificial greenhouse gases, including CF₄, C₂F₆, C₃F₈, SF₆, and NF₃, to generate detectable atmospheric signatures.”

The first three are perfluorocarbons, potent and long-lived greenhouse gases (GHGs.) SF₆ is Sulfur hexafluoride, and NF₃ is Nitrogen trifluoride. They’re both greenhouse gases with global warming potentials 23,500 times greater and 17,200 times greater than CO₂ over a 100-year period.

These artificial GHGs could be a technosignature of a civilization actively trying to warm their planet. They’re long-lived, have low toxicities, and have low false-positive potential. They also occur only in small amounts naturally. Their presence indicates industrial production.

“For us, these gases are bad because we don’t want to increase warming. But they’d be good for a civilization that perhaps wanted to forestall an impending ice age or terraform an otherwise-uninhabitable planet in their system, as humans have proposed for Mars,” said UCR astrobiologist and lead author Edward Schwieterman.

These chemicals could persist in an atmosphere for up to 50,000 years, making them near ideal for a civilization facing a freezing future. “They wouldn’t need to be replenished too often for a hospitable climate to be maintained,” Schwieterman said in a press release.

Unlike CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), which damage the ozone layer, these chemicals are largely inert. Any civilization smart enough to engineer their atmosphere would avoid CFCs. CFCs also don’t last long in an oxygen atmosphere and wouldn’t be great technosignatures.

“If another civilization had an oxygen-rich atmosphere, they’d also have an ozone layer they’d want to protect,” Schwieterman said. “CFCs would be broken apart in the ozone layer even as they catalyzed its destruction.”

But from our ETI-seeking viewpoint, the best thing about the chemicals the researchers are studying is their prominent infrared signatures at extremely low concentrations.

“With an atmosphere like Earth’s, only one out of every million molecules could be one of these gases, and it would be potentially detectable,” Schwieterman said. “That gas concentration would also be sufficient to modify the climate.”

To understand these chemicals and their detectability, the research team simulated the atmosphere of TRAPPIST 1-f. This well-studied rocky exoplanet is in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star about 40 light-years away, making it a realistic observational target at that distance.

This study is based on the potential results of the LIFE telescope, which is still a concept. Its purpose is to examine the atmospheres of dozens of warm, terrestrial exoplanets. LIFE builds on telescope concepts from a couple of decades ago, like the European Space Agency’s Darwin spacecraft. Darwin wasn’t built, but the idea behind it was two-fold: to both find Earth-like exoplanets and to search for evidence of life.

Darwin was conceived as an interferometer, and so is LIFE. LIFE would have four separate space telescopes acting as one.

With LIFE, the GHGs would be easier to see than other standard biosignatures like O₂, O₃, CH₄, and N₂O. But unlike these chemicals, which can give false positives without a planetary context, the GHGs are more akin to technosignatures, which can be understood more independently from atmospheric chemistry. “In contrast to biosignatures, many technosignatures may provide greater specificity (less “false positive” potential), as many putative technosignatures have more limited abiotic formation channels when compared to biosignatures,” the authors explain in their research.

One desirable aspect of the search for these technosignature GHGs is that astronomers can find them as part of a general effort to study atmospheres.

“You wouldn’t need extra effort to look for these technosignatures, if your telescope is already characterizing the planet for other reasons,” said Schwieterman. “And it would be jaw-droppingly amazing to find them.”

This is not a futuristic scenario awaiting the development of new technology. We have the capability to do this soon, according to Daniel Angerhausen. Angerhausen is from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology/PlanetS, a collaborating organization on LIFE.

“Our thought experiment shows how powerful our next-generation telescopes will be. We are the first generation in history that has the technology to systematically look for life and intelligence in our galactic neighborhood,” said Angerhausen.

“While all technosignature scenarios are speculative, we argue that it is unlikely fluorine-bearing technosignature gases will accumulate to detectable levels in a technosphere due only to inadvertent emission of industrial pollutants (or volcanic production),” the authors write.

They also explain that before individual GHG technosignatures were identified, anomalous MIR or NIR absorption signatures “… would be consistent with the presence of artificial greenhouse gases in a candidate technosphere.”

In their conclusion, they say that GHGs are viable technosignatures that can be found during routine exoplanet characterizations. “Both positive or negative results would meaningfully inform the search for life elsewhere,” they conclude.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

28-06-2024 om 17:28 geschreven door peter  

One of the easiest ways to find exoplanets is using the transit method. It relies upon monitoring the brightness of a star which will then dim as a planet passes in front of it. It is of course possible that other objects could pass between us and a star; perhaps binary planets, tidally distorted planets, exocomets and, ready for it…. alien megastructures! A transit simulator has been created by a team of researchers and it can predict the brightness change from different transiting objects, even Dyson Swarms in construction. 

51 Pegasi-b was the first exoplanet discovered in 1995 and it sparked the development of numerous ground-based and space-based instruments. The launch of the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2018 popularised the transit method, leading to the discovery of over 4,000 exoplanets. As instruments have become increasingly sensitive and precise, research has progressed from simply detecting exoplanets to studying their detailed characteristics.

Transit photometry has uncovered signatures of many interesting phenomena beyond the detection of exoplanets and eclipsing binaries. This technique has been instrumental in identifying features such as star-spots, and signatures of tidal interactions between host stars and exoplanets leading to significant growth in the sub-field of Asteroseismology

The study of transiting exoplanets and their timing variations has led to many discoveries. Non-transiting planets in distant solar systems have been found, orbital decay, disintegrating planets, exocomets and exomoon candidates has all been identified. Additionally, and perhaps of particular interest is that transit photometry has detected signals that have sparked interest in the search for technosignatures for the evidence of advanced civilizations.

It is important to note that no technosignatures have been confirmed yet but such signatures would not arise form natural processes and would demonstrate the presence of intelligent life. The signatures would come from a wide range of astroengineering projects like Dyson Spheres (a theoretical shell surrounding a star to capture its energy output) or the newly conceptualised Dyson Swarms (habitable satellites and energy collectors that orbit the star in formation. 

The research team led by Ushasi Bhowmick from the Indian based Space Application Centre has reported that they have developed a transit simulator that can not only generate light curves for exoplanets but also for any object of any size or shape! The simulation uses the Monte-Carlo technique that predicts all possible outcomes of an uncertain event. In this instance it can predict the light curve when an object of any shape or size transits across the disk of star. 

When the simulation was tested against actual exoplanet systems such as Trappist-1 it nicely predicted the light curve. It can also be used to model tidal distortions in binary star systems and even predict the light curve of non-natural objects such as the alien megastructures. The simulator has shown itself to be an invaluable method for understanding a wide range of transit phenomena. 

Source : 

• A General-Purpose Transit Simulator for Arbitrary Shaped Objects Orbiting Stars

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

28-06-2024 om 17:16 geschreven door peter  

The RASSOR 2.0 prototype had several design goals, but it’s probably most helpful to walk through a use-case scenario. According to the soil samples collected by Curiosity and other rovers, around 2% of the regolith on Mars is water, even in the relatively “dry” regions outside the poles. Collecting that water could help refuel rockets and supply settlements with drinking water, radiation shielding, or water for agriculture.

NASA commonly uses a mission structure involving four astronauts on a journey to Mars. In a paper describing the 2.0 version of the robot back in 2016, the authors, including Robert Mueller, the founder of the Swamp Works facility and a doyen of ISRU research, describe a mission structure that would see RASSOR mining 1,000,000 kg of Martian regolith per year and supplying 10,000 kilograms of oxygen to the mission.

To do so, it would utilize a lander with processing capabilities for separating the useful parts from the chaff and would trek from the lander site to the regolith collection site about 35 times a day. With a charging cycle that would take about 8 hours a day, that would leave upwards of 16 hours to continuously mine the surface of Mars for these valuable materials.

The paper goes on to describe the design process for the RASSOR’s various subsystems, including the powerful actuators that make up the majority of the weight of the system. They also used 3D-printed titanium to make the bucket drum excavating tools, which required some ingenious machining by Swamp Work’s machinists. 

But in the end, they did make a working prototype. They tested it with improvements like a 50% drop in weight and an autonomous mode that utilizes simple stereo-vision cameras. The team believes this project is ready to move on to the next phase, taking a step closer to making it a reality.

That paper, however, was published eight years ago. A relatively detailed internet search doesn’t produce any results for RASSOR 3.0 other than a brief mention at the end of the 2.0 paper. So, for now, it seems the project is on hold. However, another NASA project, the Lunabotics Challenge, keeps university teams working toward effectively mining regolith for us in ISRU systems. Maybe one of those teams will pick up where the RASSOR team left off – or come up with a completely new design. We’ll have to wait and see.

Learn More:

• Mueller et al. – Design of an Excavation Robot: Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR) 2.0
• UT – Japan Tests Robotic Earth-Moving Equipment in a Simulated Lunar Jobsite
• UT – NASA Wants to Learn to Live Off the Land on the Moon
• UT – What is ISRU, and How Will it Help Human Space Exploration?

Lead Image:

• CAD model of the RASSOR 2.0 excavating robot.
  Credit – Mueller et al.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

28-06-2024 om 00:27 geschreven door peter  

The next step would be to complete a full 3D model of the asteroid’s surface, followed by using a high-powered laser to force the dust off the surface and into a storage tank. In the storage tank, the dust would be pulverized even more, with a thruster motor pushing the dust out from the rover in a direction that causes thrust against the asteroid’s surface, thereby changing its orbit.

The dust thrust deflection would be monitored from Earth, and an orbiting probe would be used to close the loop. If necessary, several other autonomous rovers could make their way along the asteroid’s surface, coordinating their thrusting efforts to increase the deflection force. 

All this requires a lot of new technologies, coordination, and testing to become a reality. The authors suggest a potential test case to be ready for the close approach of Apophis in 2029. However, even if a lander is prepared and ready for that time, it could take upwards of 20 years for a perceptible deflection to happen – assuming that nothing goes wrong with the system in that time frame. Any engineer will tell you that having a system operate non-stop for 20 years is almost unheard of, though admittedly, some space probes are the exception to that.

One major advantage of this technique, though, would be its dual use as a proof of concept for asteroid deflection and mining. Many of the technologies would overlap, and there would be an incentive for governments and non-profits to invest in a potentially world-saving technology—at least more so than for them to invest in an as-yet unproven mining technology.

For now, this idea remains on the drawing board. But, if there is ever a real push to try out different methods of asteroid redirection, it could crop up again, especially if it’s supported by one of the major space agencies. And humanity might even get the benefit of a fully functional asteroid miner out of it.

Learn More:

• Santos et al. – Conceptual Design for Deflecting a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid with a Space Duster
• UT – How to Deflect an Asteroid with Today’s Technology
• UT – Asteroid Detection, Deflection Needs More Money, Report Says
• UT – If You’re Trying to Prevent an Asteroid Impact, the Technical and Political Challenges are Staggering

Lead Image:

• Artist’s conception of the mission architecture, including the asteroid space duster (ASD).
  Credit – Santos et al.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

28-06-2024 om 00:19 geschreven door peter  

Your Body Is Awash In Microplastics — Should You Be Worried?

Microplastics are all around us. The real question is what harm do they actually do?

BY MICHAEL RICHARDSON, MEIRU WANG AND THE CONVERSATION

 

Kinga Krzeminska/Moment/Getty Images

When plastic trash is dumped in a landfill or the sea, it breaks down very slowly. Sunlight and waves cause the surface of the plastic to become brittle, and particles are shed into the environment. Collectively known as “small plastic particles,” they range in size from five millimeters or smaller (microplastics) to less than one-thousandth of a millimeter (nano plastics). The smallest can only be detected with special scientific instruments.

It remains unclear how microplastics and nanoplastics get inside living things, but several entry points have been suggested. For example, they might pass through the gut from food or drink contaminated with small plastic particles. Or they may be breathed in, or absorbed through the skin.

Our research suggests that, for some animals, nanoplastics are bad news. We injected plastic nanoparticles into chicken embryos. We found that the particles traveled quickly in the blood to all tissues, especially the heart, liver, and kidneys. They were also excreted by the embryonic kidneys.

We noticed, too, that plastic nanoparticles tend to stick to a certain type of stem cell in the embryo. These cells are essential for the normal development of the nervous system and other structures. Any damage to stem cells could put the development of the embryo in jeopardy.

We suspect that the chicken embryo stem cells have substances on their surface called “cell-adhesion molecules,” which stick to the polystyrene nanoparticles that we used. We are following up on this finding because when nanoplastics stick to cells and get inside them, they can cause cell death and even serious birth defects in chickens and mice.

Similar studies cannot, of course, be carried out on people, so it is not yet possible to say what the implications of our animal research are for humans. What we know is that nanoplastics are found in the blood of human beings, in other bodily fluids, and in several major organs and key body tissues.

In recent years, microplastics and nanoplastics have been found in the brains, hearts, and lungs of humans. They have been discovered in the arteries of people with arterial disease, suggesting they may be a potential risk factor for cardiovascular disease. And they have been detected in breast milk, the placenta, and, most recently, penises.

Chinese researchers reported earlier this year that they had found microplastics in human and dog testes. More recently, another Chinese team found microplastics in all 40 samples of human semen they tested. This follows an Italian study that found microplastics in six out of ten samples of human semen.

Our fear is that microplastics and nanoplastics might act in a similar way to deadly asbestos fibers. Like asbestos, they are not broken down in the body and can be taken up into cells, killing them and then being released to damage yet more cells.

Nanoplastics have even been found in breastmilk. 

Dzmitry Kliapitski / Alamy Stock Photo

REASSURING, FOR NOW

But there is a need for caution here. There is no evidence that nanoplastics can cross the placenta and get into the human embryo.

Also, even if nanoplastics do cross the placenta and in sufficient numbers to damage the embryo, we would expect to have seen a big increase in abnormal pregnancies in recent years. That is because the problem of plastic waste in the environment has been growing enormously over the years. But we are not aware of any evidence of a corresponding, large increase in birth defects or miscarriages.

That, for now, is reassuring.

It may be that microplastics and nanoplastics if they cause harm to our bodies, do so in a subtle way that we have not yet detected. Whatever the case, scientists are working hard to discover what the risks might be.

One promising avenue of research would involve the use of human placental tissue grown in the laboratory. Special artificial placenta tissues, called “trophoblast organoids,” have been developed to study how harmful substances cross the placenta.

Researchers are also investigating potentially beneficial uses for nanoplastics. Although they are not yet licensed for clinical use, the idea is that they could be used to deliver drugs to specific body tissues that need them. Cancer cells could, in this way, be targeted for destruction without damaging other healthy tissue.

Whatever the outcome of nanoplastics research, we and many other scientists will continue trying to find out what nanoplastics are doing to ourselves and the environment.

• This article was originally published on The Conversation by Michael Richardson and Meiru Wang at Leiden University. Read the original article here.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

27-06-2024 om 23:40 geschreven door peter  

Why the World of Humanoid Robots Is on Fire Right Now

It’s not just you — there’s a robot renaissance upon us.

BY JAMES PERO

 

Figure

THAT [OPTIMUS] IS SO HOT RIGHT NOW

A glut of humanoid robots was not on my 2024 bingo, but here we are. Every time I scroll through X, there’s something — for instance, a new partnership, an exciting demo, or whatever this is.

There are a lot of humanoid bots now and a lot more seemingly on the way — Figure’s AI robot, Unitree’s speed demon, Agility’s workhorse — but arguably most important of all is Tesla’s Optimus.

I don’t mean that Optimus is necessarily more advanced than the rest of the aforementioned — in fact, Tesla’s competition is pretty fierce right now — but Optimus has something that the other robots don’t: clout.

As some of you may already know, Elon Musk, despite Optimus’ nascency, has been bullish on the robot’s future. In fact, this year, Musk went as far as to suggest that Optimus could make Tesla a $25 trillion company. I know, I know...

If you’re rolling your eyes, you’re justified. Musk is often (and not infrequently wrongly) optimistic about future technologies. But his carnival barking is a huge asset, not just for Tesla, but for the prospects of functional, real-world humanoid robots writ large.

What I mean is that, for better or worse, since Tesla awkwardly introduced Optimus on stage last year with a weird interpretive dance, a lot has happened. When Tesla and Musk talk, people, regardless of their opinion of the pair, listen. If Musk says robots are on the way, maybe they actually are, and that added confidence gives other non-Tesla upstarts more opportunities as well.

While Musk and Tesla have paved the way with their own fuel to the humanoid robot fire, AI is an equally powerful hype train that is doing the same thing concurrently.

AI, specifically large language models (LLMs) like the ones that power ChatGPT, is opening up a world of possibilities for what people think humanoid robots are capable of. That means making them more collaborative, helping them understand commands more easily, and maybe more importantly, making them feel more human.

Take Figure’s robot, for example — in lots of ways, it functions like every other humanoid robot of its ilk. But when paired with ChatGPT, things start to look truly futuristic.

It’s crucial to take Figure’s demo with a grain of salt. Right now, chatbots have a way of making things look functional on the surface, but in practice, the results are rocky. But even as a proof of concept, it’s clear AI has a place in the humanoid robot future and there’s interest in figuring out what that place is.

And sure, being conversational isn’t as important as say, making a robot with the fine motor skills to fold a shirt properly, but if these things are going to be in your home, they better have some manners, right?

READY FOR THE SBOTLIGHT

There are obviously a lot more factors than just Tesla and AI at play when it comes to the popularity of humanoid robots. Research paved years ago by companies like Boston Dynamics and the prospect of bots’ applications in factories have been equally pivotal.

But this time around, humanoid robots feel as though they’ve found themselves in front of an even bigger and brighter spotlight; it’s not just Tesla that’s putting them there. Nvidia is getting in on the game, providing its own expertise with systems like GR00T which is meant to help robots train themselves. Similarly, OpenAI seems to be interested in the robotics game and there’s a job opening as proof.

It’s hard to say what will come of all the attention, but if history is an example, money and hype usually mean progress. And if that means I don’t have to haul my own dirty clothes to the laundromat, then consider me a humanoid robot truther.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

27-06-2024 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

While the Earth is often called “the Pale Blue Dot” thanks to its bountiful oceans, most of the planet’s land masses are dominated by the color green. Plants use chlorophyll (which absorbs red and blue light but, reflects green light) to captures solar energy, and use carbon and water to make food through a process known as photosynthesis. While this fourth grade biology lesson outlines the predominant way plant life thrives on our planet, life on other Earth-like exoplanets (especially those orbiting red dwarf stars) could use a different method entirely—one that would turn the whole world purple.

Scientists from Cornell University analyzed how alien plants that rely on infrared radiation for photosynthesis might transform the hues of alien worlds. These kinds of bacteria, which include phototrophic anoxygenic bacteria and photoheterotrophic bacteria, could emit a distinctive “light fingerprint” that could be detectable by upcoming observatories, including the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope. The results of the study were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“Purple bacteria can thrive under a wide range of conditions, making it one of the primary contenders for life that could dominate a variety of worlds,” Cornell University Ph.D. student Lígia Fonseca Coelho said in a press statement. “They already thrive here in certain niches… just imagine if they were not competing with green plants, algae and bacteria: A red sun could give them the most favorable conditions for photosynthesis.”

To understand the color and chemical signature such a world would emit, Coelho and her colleagues gathered 20 specimens of purple sulfur and purple non-sulfur bacteria from various places around the world—including hydrothermal vents and even ponds near Cornell’s campus. These bacteria rely on low-energy red and infrared right for a photosynthesis-like process, and while purple bacteria might be a biological niche today, some scientists theorize that an ancient Earth was likely much more purple than it is today.

A 2022 study from the University of Maryland explored why plants reflect the color green when technically the Sun emits the most light in the blue-green spectrum. The scientists argued that a light-sensitive molecule called retinal (which first appeared on Earth before chlorophyll) absorbed green light and reflect red and violet—which, to the human eye, would’ve looked purple.

When the molecule chlorophyll evolved on Earth—thanks in no small part to a rise in oxygen levels—the Sun’s green light was already being absorbed by retinal-leveraging plants. So, instead, the molecule absorbed all other available light. Even though the Sun emits less light in that spectrum, chlorophyll were part of a more advanced, efficient system at producing photosynthesis, and Earth’s green hue began to take shape.

But on oxygen-poor exoplanets orbiting cool, red dwarf stars, things might be drastically different. Coelho developed various models of Earth-like planets across a range of wet and dry environments, and many of the simulated “light fingerprints” came back purple.

“If purple bacteria are thriving on the surface of a frozen Earth, an ocean world, a snowball Earth or a modern Earth orbiting a cooler star,” Coelho said in a press statement. “We now have the tools to search for them.”

So, when aliens finally do reach Earth, don’t count on “little green men.” As for flying purple people-eaters... well, now we’re on to something.

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/ }

27-06-2024 om 23:18 geschreven door peter  

Space is a big place.

But despite our diminutive size among the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way (which is itself among hundreds of billions of galaxies), scientists have slowly pieced together a long list of all the strange stuff we might encounter throughout the cosmos. However, sometimes humanity’s collection of orbital space telescopes, ground-based arrays, and interplanetary spacecraft come across something that’s a bit of a head-scratcher.

Meet the latest one—the millimeter ultra-broad-line object, or the MUBLO for short.

Identified in a new paper published last week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the object in question lies near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which the researchers describe as containing “tens of millions of solar masses of gas, a supermassive black hole, a tenth of our Galaxy’s ongoing star formation, and an extensive graveyard of stellar remnants.”

Although it’s a cosmic mess, it’s among this interstellar chaos where new celestial objects will be discovered, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) interferometer is one of the most powerful tools in humanity’s star-gazing arsenal. Composed of 66 radio telescopes, this array (as its name suggests) can analyze electromagnetic radiation emanating from space at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.

While gazing at our galaxy’s center, researchers stumbled upon a compact source subsequently labeled “G0.02467–0.0727,” otherwise known as the MUBLO. Made of cold dust and fast-moving gas, the MUBLO also exhibited another strange behavior—it only emitted microwave radiation. Adam Ginsburg, the lead author on the paper, and his team went through the long list of celestial explanations and came up short.

“We consider several explanations for the [MUBLO], including protostellar outflow, explosive outflow, a collapsing cloud, an evolved star, a stellar merger, a high-velocity compact cloud, an intermediate-mass black hole, and a background galaxy,” the paper reads. “Most of these conceptual models are either inconsistent with the data or do not fully explain them. The MUBLO is, at present, an observationally unique object.”

According to Nature, the gas molecules are also not traveling in a simple ring, which could point to having been blown away by a stellar explosion. But the MUBLO lacks certain chemicals that would be tell-tale signs of such an event.

Among the various celestial phenomena examined in the paper, the authors point out two that could explain the MUBLO—a stellar merger or an intermediate-mass black hole (IMHO). However, neither of these hypotheses are perfect. While the stellar merger idea is compelling, the MUBLO has “dust mass is substantially larger, by more than an order of magnitude, than observed toward any other merger remnant.” As for the IMHO suggestion, it “does not explain all of the observed features of the MUBLO.”

To understand this new phenomenon—or, perhaps, a well-disguised known object— uture millimeters and mid-infrared studies will need to analyze the MUBLO and discern previously unseens features that, hopefully, will point toward what it is.

For now, add another galactic mystery to the list.

• https://youtu.be/8tnozMn4rWY

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/ }

27-06-2024 om 23:10 geschreven door peter  

Nu in Las Vegas * Mythische en mysterieuze monoliet duikt weer op: toeval of niet?

In de natuur bij Las Vegas is er weer eentje verschenen: een zilveren monoliet. Zo reflecterend, dat de zuil bijna opgaat in het landschap eromheen. De afgelopen jaren doken zulke zuilen al vaker op, dus echt nieuw zijn ze niet meer. Hoe komt het dat we deze voorwerpen in de vrije natuur dan toch nog ervaren als mysterieus?

{ https://www.rtl.nl/ }

27-06-2024 om 22:39 geschreven door peter  

Een mysterieuze monoliet is verschenen in de woestijn van Las Vegas: niemand weet hoe hij daar is gekomen

 Door Janine

LVMPD/X

Een mysterieuze monoliet is verschenen in een bergketen in de buurt van Las Vegas, Nevada, maar niemand kan verklaren hoe hij daar is gekomen. Laten we er meer over te weten komen.

Monoliet ontdekt bij Las Vegas: waar komt hij vandaan?

LVMPD/X

De mysterieuze monoliet die in de bergen van Las Vegas is gevonden, stak uit de rotsen, maar zijn verschijning moet nog worden verklaard. Monolieten zijn solide geologische structuren die meestal uit één steen of rots bestaan en die door erosie aan het licht komen. De herkomst van het object in kwestie is echter onbekend.

Lokale autoriteiten hebben besloten om de formatie te verwijderen. Op de X-pagina van de Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department staat in een bericht van 21 juni 2024: "Velen van jullie hebben vragen gesteld over de mysterieuze monoliet die onlangs is gezien in het noorden van Las Vegas. Gistermiddag hebben we geassisteerd bij het verwijderen van het object omwille van de openbare veiligheid en het milieu." De politie heeft bekendgemaakt dat "het onbekend is hoe het object op zijn locatie is gekomen of wie er verantwoordelijk voor zou kunnen zijn." De afmeting van de monoliet is 19,5 meter.

Monolieten over de hele wereld, een mysterie begonnen in 2020

Meteen na de ontdekking werd de monoliet weggehaald, maar het bracht een mysterie aan het licht dat teruggaat tot 2020, toen deze vreemde lichtgevende objecten over de hele wereld begonnen op te duiken. De monoliet in kwestie werd gevonden door het zoek- en reddingsteam van de politie van Las Vegas in de buurt van Gass Peak, dat deel uitmaakt van het uitgestrekte Desert National Wildlife Refuge.

Momenteel is dit de laatste verschijning van deze mysterieuze gespiegelde zuilen. In november 2020 verscheen een soortgelijke monoliet in de rode rotswoestijn van Utah, Mountain West, VS. Daarna zijn er monolieten gezien in Californië, New Mexico, Roemenië en zelfs in het centrum van Las Vegas op Fremont Street. Het gemeenschappelijke kenmerk is dat ze plotseling verschenen en net zo snel weer verdwenen. Nick Street, de luitenant van het Utah Department of Public Safety, verklaarde: "Dit ding komt niet van een andere wereld".

Waarom de monoliet van Las Vegas werd verwijderd

LVMPD/X

De formatie in Utah was ingebed in de rotsen in een gebied dat zo verspreid lag dat de locatie aanvankelijk verborgen werd gehouden, om te voorkomen dat mensen erop uit zouden trekken om ernaar te zoeken en het risico liepen te verdwalen. De coördinaten werden echter ontdekt en veel nieuwsgierige toeristen gingen er met de auto naartoe, waarbij ze de natuur beschadigden en veel afval achterlieten. De reden waarom de autoriteiten besloten de monoliet uit Las Vegas te verwijderen, is om te voorkomen dat dezelfde dynamiek zich herhaalt.

Het Desert National Wildlife Refuge, een federaal gebied, is een enorm natuurreservaat waar dikhoornschapen, schildpadden en zeldzame planten leven, allemaal soorten die hier beschermd zijn. Op dit moment bevindt de monoliet, die bestaat uit een plaat reflecterend metaal gemodelleerd naar een prisma en gelast met betonijzer en beton, zich na uit de grond te zijn getrokken waar het een diep gat achterliet, in een geheime opslagplaats, in afwachting van een beslissing van de autoriteiten over de beste manier om zich ervan te ontdoen.

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

27-06-2024 om 22:27 geschreven door peter  

In this interview from the Vetted podcast, Ron James, Director of Media Relations for MUFON and filmmaker of "The Accidental Truth," shares shocking new UFO evidence. xxx 

Discover the latest findings from MUFON's upcoming symposium, including mysterious metals received by a Russian experiencer, the compelling 1955 Oregon UFO shootdown case, and a cryogenically frozen alien. 

The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is set to reveal findings from a study on alleged UFO material. In a surprising announcement, MUFON has declared that it will present "the most important UAP-related presentation it has ever made" at a live event on July 13th. 

The presentation will focus on alleged UAP material received from a Russian UFO investigator, which was reportedly part of an attempted cover-up. According to the press release, the material was tested in Russia and at a U.S. lab, with both investigations concluding it is "of unknown origin." 

Some samples of the material were allegedly stolen from a U.S. Post Office Box before MUFON Investigator Robert Spearing could retrieve them. The investigation into the theft was hindered by tampered CCTV cameras. 

"This is typical with evidence of this nature," said MUFON Media Relations Director Ron James. "We believe that this material was deliberately taken by someone who could hack into a locked Post Office Box to prevent further testing. Who did it is anybody's guess." 

According to MUFON: "The evidence that supports this story, and others that we will share at the Symposium, could make this the biggest UFO-related news event of the year. We have physical materials and more evidence of non-human technology." 

But, I wouldn't hold out much hope for anything coming from this. 

For example the UAP material received from a Russian UFO investigator: One commenter @FAA-DPE on Chris Letho's YouTube channel stated: I recognize that material from years of working in petrochemical plants. Shell Norco LA, Union Carbide Taft LA, etc. And it's IDENTICAL to the byproduct of "Fluid Coking" Hydrocarbons. It makes a very unique and strange byproduct material that does not exist in nature and would confuse most of today's lab techs. if they were not given some idea. 

About the photo previewed by Ron James on the podcast of the supposedly shot down disk, commenter @zimzimma5688 on Chris Letho's YouTube channel stated: It took all of about 24 hours before that photo previewed by Ron James on the podcast of the supposedly shot down disk in the woods with the two "army men" retrieving it that was going to be a centerpiece at this Mufon conference, was shown to be fake. The two blurry army men exactly match a set of toy figurines. The disk is obviously a model of some sort. 

A lot of people in the community consider Mufon to be a compromised organization as well, essentially it functions as a tool for those responsible for the cover up/psy op. That I don't know to be true, but it would not surprise me. 

Here's the interview from the Vetted podcast. Be cautious about what you choose to believe.

  

{ https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

27-06-2024 om 22:11 geschreven door peter  

Unveiling the Unknown: Extraordinary Extraterrestrial Encounters You’ve Never Heard Of

Throughout history, the possibility of extraterrestrial life has fascinated humanity. While mainstream narratives often focus on well-known incidents like Roswell, there exists a myriad of lesser-known encounters that provide intriguing glimpses into potential interactions with beings from beyond our world. This article delves into some of these extraordinary, yet obscure encounters that defy conventional explanation and challenge our understanding of reality.

1. The Tarento Encounter

On a clear evening between March and April, Mr. Johan Franco Maroi and his son experienced an encounter that would change their lives. As they drove from Tarento to Mount Bernady, they noticed a bright, morphing light in the sky. This light, shifting from white to orange to red, eventually descended behind a nearby hill. Driven by curiosity, Maroi stopped the car and ventured towards the light.

Upon reaching the hilltop, Maroi encountered a tall, luminous being clad in a suit resembling medieval armor, but more advanced and meshed with light-emitting wires. As they approached each other, Maroi experienced a sudden vision of a spaceship, highlighting a technology that seemed to utilize light as energy. This vision was interrupted when sparks flew from the being’s hand, affecting Maroi’s hand in return. The encounter left him with severe, mysterious burns that healed only after he received an anonymous package containing a miraculous ointment. The incident, compounded by subsequent visits from mysterious men in black, left Maroi with lasting physical and psychological scars.

2. The Franco-Belgian Frontier Incident

In January 1974, on the Franco-Belgian frontier, Monier X experienced a bizarre encounter with mechanical-like beings. After his car malfunctioned, Monier noticed an unusual object in a nearby field. This object, initially appearing as a haystack, turned out to be a structured craft emitting patches of light. Two figures emerged, moving in a mechanical manner, wearing peculiar helmets and holding a device resembling a revolver.

These beings communicated through modulated sounds that bypassed normal sensory pathways, causing Monier to feel a faint shock. The beings abruptly retreated to their craft, which ascended and vanished. The arrival of another car, whose driver also witnessed the beings, added credibility to Monier’s account, marking this as one of the more corroborated yet mysterious encounters.

3. The Castal Encounter

In 1974, in Castal, Italy, Signoria Giovanna Seni witnessed a hovering figure while tending to her farm animals. This figure, seated in a swinging box-like structure, wore a multicolored suit and appeared to control the box with a rod emitting a humming sound. Despite her initial fear, Giovanna observed the figure and a subsequent bright light moving across the sky.

The figure and light circled a nearby cemetery before disappearing. Although Giovanna’s mother dismissed the phenomenon, Giovanna remained convinced of the extraordinary nature of the encounter. This event, marked by the figure’s unusual attire and behavior, contributed to the rich tapestry of unexplained sightings in rural Italy.

4. The Montville Encounter

In 1978, in Montville, New Jersey, three young boys witnessed a hovering, square-shaped object emitting lights and a red beam. The object remained stationary for several minutes before moving away. The boys then observed strange figures in yellow suits with hawk-like features. These figures, displaying stiff, mechanical movements, were accompanied by a woman who could disappear and reappear mysteriously.

The boys’ account was thoroughly investigated by UFO researchers, who found no conclusive explanation. The incident left the boys deeply shaken, adding to the credibility of their experience and highlighting the persistent enigma of such encounters.

5. The Bendini Encounter

In 1979, in Bendini, Brazil, Orlando Grado Santos experienced a series of encounters with various unidentified crafts and beings. While separated from his hunting group, he photographed a descending craft resembling a telephone booth. Subsequently, he witnessed other crafts and was eventually approached by helmeted humanoids.

These beings communicated with Orlando, assuring him of their peaceful intentions. Inside their craft, Orlando observed advanced technology and human-like figures operating unfamiliar machinery.

"On the evening of 28 July 1979, security guard Antonio Carlos Ferreira was allegedly abducted from his workplace - a furniture factory in Mirassol, São Paulo. According to his own accounts, he was approached by three humanoid figures who tranquilized and took him aboard a small ship which ferried him to a larger craft further away. There, he said he was positioned in front of a large television-like device and presented with a variety of images before being forced to mate with a female alien, after which he was tranquilized again and returned to the ground. Ferreira described the creatures as being approximately 1.2 metres (3.9 ft; 120 cm) tall with pointed ears, slanted eyes and human-like mouths. They lacked eyebrows or eyelashes and spoke in a language that superficially resembled Japanese. Some were said to have dark skin and red curly hair, while others had light skin and straight black hair. The ship was spherical with three undercarriage-like legs protruding from the bottom, with the interior lit by bright red and green lights. Ferreira states that he encountered the aliens again in 1982, with the craft supposedly landing close enough for him to see the female alien and a childlike alien observing him from a distance. He said he experienced a third encounter later in 1982 in which he was taken into the hangar of an alien craft via a green beam of light before being injected with a yellow substance. He said he was then taken to meet the two aliens once more, the younger of whom he was led to believe was his own child. Other encounters are said to have followed, to a total of 16 or 20 between 1979 and 1989 ''

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

27-06-2024 om 21:59 geschreven door peter  

CYBELE MAYES-OSTERMAN   USA TODAY

Asteroid moonlet Dimorphos as seen by NASA's DART spacecraft 11 seconds before the impact that shifted its path through space, in the first test of asteroid deflection.

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/NASA

Scientists and experts say there's work to be done.

When NASA posed the hypothetical scenario, devised by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, to a group of nearly 100 government representatives, they found their plan to combat an asteroid hurtling towards Earth had several "high-level gaps," according to a NASA slide presentation. Space officials have "limited readiness to quickly implement needed space missions," and methods to keep the public informed about a looming disaster are not fully developed.

Of the participants, from federal agencies like the State Department and international bodies like the U.N.'s Office for Outer Space Affairs, 33% said humanity was not prepared to launch a space mission to prevent an asteroid from impacting the planet, and 19% said "reconnaissance missions" were not ready.

Kelly Fast, NASA's acting planetary defense officer, said the exercise helped government agencies to plan out how they would work together to prepare for a future asteroid strike.

"In the unlikely event we ever face a scenario like this, it won't be the first time that anybody's talked about how to treat this," she said.

In the scenario posed by NASA, humanity has 14 years to face an asteroid with a 72% chance of hitting Earth.  

STEFANI REYNOLDS, AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

More: 

• Scientists probe a space mystery: Why do people age faster during space travel?

NASA runs fifth test to gauge asteroid preparedness

The exercise, designed to test government readiness for an asteroid headed towards Earth, was organized by NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency at an April meeting at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, according to a news release. It marked the fifth test to gauge whether authorities are prepared to defend Earth from space. This year's exercise was the first to include "international collaborators on planetary defense."

In the hypothetical scenario, an asteroid collides with the Earth in 2038. The collision would have a 47% chance of affecting more than 1,000 people, and an 8% chance of affecting more than a million. It could strike a swath of cities across the U.S., Europe, and Africa, including Washington, Dallas, Madrid, and Algiers.

In the scenario, participants weren't told "the asteroid’s size, composition, and long-term trajectory," according to the news release. Further observations about the asteroid would also hypothetically have to be delayed by at least seven months as the asteroid passed behind the Sun – "a critical loss of time."

Even with years to prepare, agencies would still have to work efficiently to respond to an approaching asteroid, Fast said. "When you talk about planning a mission, any kind of spacecraft mission, it doesn't happen on a dime," she said.

"Even though 14 years sounds like a long time, it actually might not be when you think of developing missions," Fast added.

Space officials have only one tested method of heading off an asteroid on its way toward Earth – "kinetic impact," or crashing a spacecraft into the asteroid to change its trajectory. In 2022, NASA crashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos, a small "moonlet" orbiting the asteroid Didymos around 6.8 million miles from Earth, successfully shortening the moonlet's orbit by 32 minutes, according to NASA.

Fast said scientists would need to tailor a space mission to respond to a particular asteroid collision scenario.

"It all depends on the asteroid," she said. "A single kinetic impactor might work for a smaller asteroid but not for something much larger."

Some participants were also skeptical that enough federal funding would be available to deal with the threat, according to the presentation. The decision-making process was "unclear," it said.

Authorities would also have a limited ability to gather more information about the incoming asteroid by flying a spacecraft close to it, evaluators concluded.

The presentation also warned that coordinating the release of information to the public about an asteroid flying towards the planet would pose problems. "Misinformation and disinformation would have to be dealt with," they wrote.

"Maintaining trust at the start of this event is critical and that means talking early – probably earlier than the scientists and lawyers are comfortable with," another unnamed participant said.

Fast said it would be important to "turn information into something that is understandable to the public, and not to be overly technical and jargon-y."

View |12 Photos

NASA successfully crashes DART spacecraft into asteroid

NASA successfully crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid Monday, marking a win for the agency's plan for when a devastating asteroid should ever threaten humanity.

The latest exercise, which used data from the test, recommended more tests on the new technology

Fast said people should be reassured that scientists and agencies are coming together to map out strategies in the unlikely event of an asteroid collision.

The scenario was "just a chance to continue to explore these possibilities and our own readiness, and to identify how we can do better in the future."

"This is actually a good thing, to be talking through this," she said.

• https://youtu.be/h_-RaILKeEI

{ https://eu.usatoday.com/news/ }

27-06-2024 om 21:11 geschreven door peter  

Story by Rosie Jempson

Asteroid hitting Earth

© Getty

An asteroid with a 72% chance of colliding with Earth on July 12, 2038 is the scenario that Nasa has just tested to see how humanity would handle a massive space rock impact.

NASA organised its fifth planetary defence interagency tabletop exercise, inviting more than 100 participants including the UN, the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Faced with the challenge of an asteroid between 60 and 200 metres wide likely to hit somewhere between North America and Saudi Arabia in 14 years' time, these organisations had to collaborate to save us or identify what might hinder the process and leave us bracing for the big impact.

Yes, it appears that even when faced with potential extinction, scientists and space leaders worry that politicians will fail to unite and work as a team to prevent it happening.

In September last year, Nasa's OSIRIS-REx mission successfully brought back samples of an asteroid, named Bennu, to Earth.

Bright comet tail. Ice evaporates from the comet's surface.

© Getty

Currently, it has about a 1 in 2,700 chance of colliding with Earth on Tuesday, September 24, 2182.

The chances of it hitting sometime between now and 2300 are even lower, at about 1 in 1,750.

While the most costly mission was estimated at just over $1 billion, global GDP is rapidly nearing $1 trillion, so it seems like a worthwhile investment although the NASA scenario predicted it was more likely between 1,000 and 100,000 people would die, rather than a mass extinction.

The change of day and night on planet earth a view from space. 3D render of Earth with a detailed night view showing city lights and shooting stars. 4

T© Getty

The lack of disaster management plans for survivors in the event of an asteroid strike is a major concern, suggesting that not only might politicians fail to prevent the asteroid, but we could also be left to fend for ourselves post-impact.

NASA has already demonstrated its ability to deflect an asteroid if necessary even though it inadvertently created dozens of smaller asteroids that may eventually collide with Mars

Related video: 

• What If an Asteroid Were on a Collision Course to Hit Earth? (Underknown)

While its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission has only been tested once, there's hope that it could be repeated if necessary provided there's sufficient funding from politicians.

Furthermore, NASA emphasised that its new Near-Earth Object (NEO) surveyor mission, a powerful infrared telescope designed to detect dangerous space rocks, is scheduled for launch in 2028.

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27-06-2024 om 20:39 geschreven door peter  

I remember April 1995 very well. It was the month that the stunning and iconic image that has been called ‘Pillars of Creation’ was released. It was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope but now the James Webb Telescope is getting in on the act. Webb snapped images of the Eagle Nebula (home to the ‘pillars’) early on but now astronomers have combined the data form Hubble and Webb to create an amazing 3D animation flight through the nebula. 

The Pillars of Creation are composed mostly of cool molecular hydrogen and dust. They are being worn away by strong winds and ultraviolet radiation emitted by nearby hot, young stars. The pillars, which resemble great big cosmic fingers have additional protrusions, that are larger than the solar system, extending from their tops. Embedded within these fingers are young hot stars. The tallest of the pillars measures three light-years from top to bottom.

The stunning new 3D movie takes viewers on a journey through the structures of the pillars, relying on real observational data from a scientific study led by Anna McLeod, an associate professor at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom. The video allows viewers to get a glimpse at how the two space telescopes can collaborate 

The new visualisation allows viewers to understand how two of the world’s most powerful space telescopes collaborate to deliver a more detailed view. Hubble captures objects glowing in visible light at thousands of degrees, while Webb’s infrared camera is sensitive to cooler objects at just hundreds of degrees and can penetrate the dust to reveal stars embedded within.

The movie does more than just create a fabulous video. It helps viewers to explore a number of different areas and stages of star formation. The central pillar for example is approached and can be observed with an infant protostar embedded at its top. It can be seen glowing bright red in the infrared image. Near the top of the left pillar is a diagonal jet of material that has been ejected from a newborn star. The hot young star cannot be seen but the jet gives away its presence. Finally at the tip of one of the left pillar’s protrusions is a brand new star that is shining brightly. 

Another wonderful benefit of the new 3D visualisation is the creation of a 3D printable model of the Pillars of Creation. The information has been converted into an STL file format that can be downloaded and printed at home using 3D printers. Not only will this be of fabulous interest to fellow geeks but it will also be of immense educational value to schools. 

The videos of the creation can be seen here

Source : 

• Pillars of Creation Star in New Visualisation from NASA’s Hubble and Webb Telescopes

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27-06-2024 om 19:01 geschreven door peter  

In a 2023 video, CBS News recaps lessons learned from the Chinese spy balloon’s flight:

The demonstration is described in a research paper written by Harvard University’s Eric Keto and Wellesley College’s Wesley Andres Watters, who proposed their image analysis technique in an earlier study. The new study was posted to the ArXiv pre-print server last week and has been submitted to the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation for review.

Keto and Watters started out with multispectral imagery captured by Planet’s SuperDove satellites during last year’s balloon flights. Such imagery isn’t captured all at once. Instead, the satellite’s sensors record a succession of exposures that reflect different spectral bands. That means an aerial object would be seen at a slightly different location in each of the images that are combined to produce a multispectral view, due to the parallax effect created by a moving satellite.

The researchers said the spy balloons were ideal subjects for their study. “High-altitude balloons are advantageous targets, because the motion of the balloon itself can be ignored in the analysis,” they said.

The aim of their study was to create a baseline for interpreting spectral-band images. The researchers conducted a detailed analysis of imagery that was acquired over British Columbia, Missouri and Colombia — and made a few educated guesses about the relative velocities involved. They took a variety of factors into account, including shifts in the background terrain and the potential effects of atmospheric distortion. (The British Columbia imagery wasn’t that useful, because snow and ice covered up the features that would typically be used for ground reference.)

The analysis not only provided a baseline for tracking moving objects using SuperDove satellite imagery, but also made it possible for the researchers to provide estimates for the altitudes of the balloons. They said one balloon flew over Missouri at a height of about 21,200 meters (69,500 feet), while the other balloon’s altitude was about 21,500 meters (70,500 feet) when it was spotted over Colombia.

Keto and Watters aren’t the only ones looking into how commercial satellite data could be used to track anomalous aerial objects. A team of researchers at RAIC Labs (formerly known as Synthetaic) used Planet’s data archive and RAIC Labs’ AI-based image analysis program to trace the infamous Chinese balloon’s route backward from the U.S. to its point of origin near Hainan.

A 2023 video focuses on how Planet and Synthetaic / RAIC Labs tracked the Chinese balloon:

Such techniques could be used to detect phenomena that are even more exotic than Chinese spy balloons: The study conducted by Keto and Watters is part of Harvard University’s Galileo Project, which is aimed at finding ways to collect high-quality data that could be useful in the search for objects of extraterrestrial origin.

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who heads up the Galileo Project, said last year in a blog posting that his team has been searching through Planet’s data archive for signs of unusual objects.

“Extraterrestrial equipment can be distinguished from a terrestrial object, not just by resolving unusual bolts or labels imprinted on its hardware but also based on its motion,” Loeb explained. “As mentioned in the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] reports in 2021 and 2022, unusual flight characteristics can serve as an indicator of an extraterrestrial origin.”

Will satellite data analysis become a standard tool for detecting anomalous aerial phenomena? Stay tuned: We’ve reached out to Loeb, Keto and Watters, and we’ll update this report with any additional information we can pass along.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

26-06-2024 om 23:36 geschreven door peter  

A 2-Mile Wide ‘Planet Killer’ Asteroid Is Headed Towards Earth At 58,000 MPH

BY DOUGLAS CHARLES

ISTOCKPHOTO

Mountain-sized “planet-killer” Asteroid 2011 UL21 is headed towards Earth this week and during its trip it will be making a very close approach to our planet.

The asteroid, classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) by NASA, is supposed to go zooming by Earth at 58,000 mph on June 27th.

Asteroid 2011 UL21 is also classified as a near-Earth object (NEO), which means that its orbit can move the space rock within 1.3 astronomical units (AU) of the sun. An AU is the average distance between Earth and the Sun, or about 93 million miles.

VIA NASA-JPL

This asteroid is no tiny space rock either. According to SpaceReference.org, it is comparable in size to Mount Everest – Earth’s highest mountain above sea level – and is between 1.1 and 2.4-miles wide.

Needless to say, a 2-mile wide rock traveling at 58,000 mph would definitely “kill” our planet.

Thankfully, the asteroid will only pass Earth at a distance of around 4.1 million miles. Still, that is the closest it will have come to Earth in the past 110 years, at least.

And while 4.1 million miles may sound like a great distance, in terms of space it isn’t so much. By comparison, Mars is 245.22 million miles from Earth.

According to Gianluca Masi, astrophysicist and director of the Virtual Telescope Project, “There is absolutely no risk for our planet.”

“The term ‘Potentially Hazardous Asteroid’ (PHA) is a precise formal definition, referring to minor planets larger than approximately 140 meters that can come within 7.5 million km from the Earth,” said Masi. “In other words, only the largest asteroids capable of approaching close enough to our planet are flagged as PHAs, which does not mean they are going to hit the Earth, but they nonetheless warrant a better monitoring.”

That being said, there is always the possibility that the gravitational tug of Earth could alter the “planet killer” asteroid’s orbit (called the Yarkovsky Effect). And if that were to ever occur there isn’t much we could do to stop it.

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26-06-2024 om 23:26 geschreven door peter