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...
14-07-2024
5 Fascinating Facts On The Sleek USAF U-2 Dragon Lady Spy Plane
5 Fascinating Facts On The Sleek USAF U-2 Dragon Lady Spy Plane
Secretive U-2 test flights caused a spike in UFO sightings, baffling pilots.
U-2 pilots wear NASA-like space suits & must endure challenging takeoff and landing.
U-2 pilots eat through a feeding port to avoid instant death from blood boiling.
With its sleek design and technological prowess, the U-2 spy plane, often referred to as the "Dragon Lady," represents one of the most iconic aircraft in military aviation history. Developed in the early 1950s in response to increasing nuclear and long-range nuclear missile threats from the USSR during the Cold War, the high-flying aircraft changed the landscape of aerial reconnaissance and espionage, providing the United States with unmatched intelligence-gathering capabilities. In this article, we take a look at a healthy handful of interesting facts about the legendary Dragon Lady.
1. Secretive U-2 test flights caused a spike in UFO sightings
Fiery objects in the sky baffle pilots below
When given just eight months to design an aircraft capable of flight above 70,000 feet (21,336 m), Lockheed Chief Engineer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson (pictured below) and his team at the secret Skunk Works plant in California delivered what was essentially a jet-powered glider, the CL-282, which would later be dubbed the U-2. As time was of the essence, the design was quickly approved by the CIA, and production was immediately underway.
Photo: US Air Force
The "U" in U-2 stands for "utility," a deliberately misleading categorization of the then-secretive aircraft's purpose.
Completed units were delivered to the highly classified Nevada Test and Training Range, also known as Area 51, for testing under tremendous secrecy. According to the CIA, high-altitude testing of the aircraft led to a significant spike in UFO reports. With most commercial flights flying under 20,000 ft (6,096 m) and military aircraft below 40,000 ft (12,192 m), pilots of these aircraft were dumbfounded by the object flying above them at 60,000 ft (18,288 m), a feat considered impossible at the time
Under certain conditions, the sun would reflect off the then-silver wings of the U-2, which made them appear as "fiery objects" flying high above to pilots below. The overwhelming reports of UFOs led to the USAF's Operation Blue Book, also known asProject Blue Book, based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
Photo: US Air Force
Operation Blue Book gathered all the reports of UFOs and cross-referenced them against U-2 flight logs. USAF investigators would subsequently dismiss the reports as "natural phenomena," unable to reveal the truth behind these sightings. U-2 (and later OXCART) are believed to have been the source of over half of the UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s.
The U-2 spy plane has had a long career, although it appears to be finally approaching the end of it.
Photo: US Air Force
2. Suited for space travel
U-2 pilots wear space suits similar to those worn by NASA astronauts
Photo: Senior Airman Alexander Recupero | US Air Force
Soaring to the edge of space at altitudes over 70,000 feet (21,336 m), U-2 pilots are required to wear specialized space suits, also known as full-pressure suits, made by the same company that supplies NASA, to ensure their survival in the harsh environment of the upper atmosphere. The model S1034 space suit serve as a personal life support system, should the cockpit pressurization system fail, and are key to safeguarding the pilots against decompression sickness, hypoxia, and exposure to the near-vacuum conditions of high altitudes.
Photo: US Air Force
The suit's engineering is nothing short of remarkable, meticulously designed to balance safety, functionality, and comfort, highlighting the extreme conditions U-2 pilots face. It features a distinct helmet equipped with a communications system, a visor that can be heated to prevent fogging and an oxygen supply system that guarantees the pilot has a steady flow of breathable air. Furthermore, the suit includes a cooling garment integrated with tubing to circulate temperature-controlled water, ensuring the pilot remains comfortable during long missions.
The space suit worn by U-2 pilots costs about $250,000.
3. It's like riding a bicycle...that weighs 16,000 pounds with massive wings
The U-2 has a very unique set of wheels
Photo: US Air Force
Designed to minimize aircraft weight and promote higher altitude, the U-2's unique landing gear configuration distinguishes it from most conventional aircraft. Unlike typical aircraft that utilize a tricycle arrangement, the U-2 employs a bicycle-style arrangement with two sets of wheels positioned along the longitudinal axis of the fuselage.
This setup includes a forward main landing gear located just behind the cockpit and an aft main landing gear near the tail and connected to the rudder to provide steering functionality during taxiing.
The U-2 was named "The Dragon Lady" after a character in the comic strip, "Terry and the Pirates," drawn by Milton Caniff in 1934.
To maintain balance during takeoff, the U-2 utilizes outrigger gears, known colloquially as "pogos." These removable wheels are attached to mid-wing sockets and jettisoned during takeoff, falling to the runway. Upon landing, once the aircraft comes to rest on its wingtip, the pogos are reinstalled for taxiing. Suffice it to say that U-2 takeoff and landing procedures are not for the faint of heart, as shown in the X link below.
The U-2 is widely considered the most difficult airplane to fly. Mastery of the U-2 requires an exceptional level of expertise, dexterity, and resilience, qualities that define the elite group of pilots (fewer than 1500) capable of taming the "Dragon Lady." There are several factors contributing to its notoriously difficult handling, making it a true test of a pilot's skill and endurance.
Firstly, the U-2 operates at extreme altitudes, often above 70,000 ft (21,336 m), where the air is thin and the margin for error is minimal. The aircraft's design prioritizes performance at these altitudes over ease of control, leading to a unique combination of a highly sensitive control system and low maneuverability.
"A lot of the earlier guys described it as like, wrestling the dragon...I describe it as like trying to fly a dump truck with wings."
Secondly, the U-2's takeoff and landing phases are particularly challenging. During takeoff, the aircraft's massive wings and lightweight frame make it highly susceptible to crosswinds and other atmospheric disturbances.
Landing the U-2 is equally daunting due to the bicycle-like landing gear configuration, as described above. Landing the U-2 requires exceptional skill and coordination, as the pilot must balance on the bicycle gear while reducing speed and altitude, with the assistance of a chase car driven by another pilot as shown below, providing real-time feedback and assistance. To make matters worse, visibility is limited during the landing because of the plane's unique design.
Moreover, pilots must endure long missions that can extend beyond ten hours, confined to a pressurized suit similar to those worn by astronauts. This suit is necessary due to the harsh conditions at cruising altitude and introduces additional challenges in terms of physical comfort, fatigue management, and sustenance.
The U-2 is still in service but the US Air Force plans to retire the iconic aircraft in 2026.
5. What do U-2 pilots eat during flight?
Hint: The Dragon Lady isn't much of a cook
Photo: David Kamm | US Army
Flying sorties up to and beyond ten hours, U-2 pilots often need to eat and drink during flight. However, at such extreme altitudes, doing so isn't as simple as it sounds. According to U-2 Support Launch and Recovery Supervisor Staff Sergeant David Labarge, U-2 pilots are instructed that once their helmet is locked down, they are not to open it until they land. Failure to heed this warning could have disastrous consequences.
As long as the cockpit is pressurized, theoretically, a U-2 pilot could safely open their helmet to eat, scratch their nose, or have a sip of water. However, Sgt. Labarge cautions that, at such high altitudes, were a pilot to open their helmet and the cockpit pressurization system suddenly failed, "the blood in their body would instantaneously boil, leading to instantaneous death."
"The blood in their body would instantaneously boil, leading to instantaneous death."
As such, the helmet is designed with a feeding port through which pilots can drink from a gravity-fed water bottle and eat "tube food, made by the same people who make traditional meals-ready-to-eat (MRE).
Photo: Airman 1st Class Drew Buchanan | US Air Force
The food is squeezed from a toothpaste-like tube through the helmet's feeding port directly into the pilot's mouth.
Photo: Jeff Sisto | US Army
Dinner service aboard a U-2 offers a variety of choices, including beef stroganoff, truffle mac and cheese, chicken alfredo, peaches, pears, chocolate pudding, and even caffeinated cinnamon applesauce. A heater inside the aircraft ensures their meatloaf-in-a-tube is nice and hot. Bon Appétit!
The Starliner crew is on the International Space Station for the long haul, according to NASA in a press conference today.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is already on day 35 of what was originally supposed to be a nine-day mission, and it won’t leave the International Space Station (ISS) before the end of July, NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich and Boeing VP for commercial crew Mark Nappi told the press during a call earlier today. Engineers and technicians on the ground are finishing tests — and analyzing a mountain of data — on the spacecraft’s thrusters and a helium leak, and it could be at least another two or three weeks before they’re ready to bring Starliner home for anything short of an (unlikely) emergency evacuation from ISS.
Inverse has all the details about why it’s taking so long to bring Starliner home, how the not-stranded-but-definitely-delayed crew is spending their time in orbit, and why the spacecraft has to leave ISS by mid-August.
A satellite in orbit took this photo of the Starliner capsule docked to the forward port of the International Space Station. We live in the future.
MAXAR/MAXAR/GETTY IMAGES
AN ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION
Boeing and NASA don’t believe that any of Starliner’s thrusters are damaged, say Stich and Nappi speaking at a press conference on Wednesday. If Starliner had to leave the International Space Station immediately (maybe because of a collision with a piece of satellite debris, like the near-miss that caused the crew to take shelter aboard Starliner earlier this week), the ship could get its crew home safely, according to Nappi.
“If we were to have to do that today, we would just perform a nominal undocking and return,” Nappi told reporters during a press conference on Wednesday.
The extensive tests keeping the spacecraft docked at ISS, they said at the press conference, are a chance for engineers to figure out exactly why five of Starliner’s 28 maneuvering thrusters (technically called the Reaction Control System, or RCS) failed while the spacecraft was docking with the International Space Station on June 6. Starliner’s service module — which houses the thrusters — is designed to burn up during re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere, so once the ship heads home, engineers will lose their chance to poke at the problem.
Boeing and NASA also want to be extremely sure there’s actually nothing wrong. “We don’t believe that we have damaged thrusters, but we want to fill in the blanks and run these tests to assure ourselves of this,” Nappi says.
Stich adds, “Really, what we're doing is just taking the time to make sure that we have looked under every rock and every stone, just to make sure that there's nothing that would surprise us.”
STARLINER RECAP: FAILED THRUSTERS AND HELIUM LEAKS
During its rendezvous with ISS on June 6, five of Starliner's 28 maneuvering thrusters failed. The crew and mission control managed to get four of them back online, but one (thruster B1A3) refused to cooperate, first sputtering out just 11 percent of its normal thrust, and then nothing at all. B1A3 will remain shut off for the rest of the mission.
The thruster issues appeared after Starliner had to fire its thruster more — and more often, in several short pulses — than engineers had expected.
And then there are the helium leaks. Starliner uses helium to pressurize its thrusters, and some of that helium is leaking out around the O-rings used to seal the area where the helium — and two lines that carry rocket propellant — pass through a flange and into the thruster.
"Helium was getting out from that flange area and somehow getting around that O-ring," says Nappi "The design should have been sufficient, but there's obviously something going on in that cavity that we don't understand."
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are the first crew to fly aboard Starliner.
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES NEWS/GETTY IMAGES
SO MUCH TESTING, SO LITTLE TIME
Last week, Starliner test-fired its thrusters while docked to the ISS, using the station’s flight control system to measure how much thrust the thrusters were actually thrusting (Inverse would certainly not like to apologize for that sentence, thank you).
Meanwhile, at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, engineers have test fired several thrusters, trying to re-create the extreme temperatures and workload Starliner’s thrusters faced during flight. Those tests are now complete, but engineers still need to physically check the tested thrusters for damage and analyze a tremendous collection of data about their performance. Next, engineers will be repeating the process — but this time they’ll be simulating the “downhill” phase of the mission, or the return to Earth.
“We really wanted to get that testing completed and actually physically inspect the thruster before we committed to the nominal undocking,” says Stich. “I think there's ways from what we've learned from this flight to change the number of pulses required for the rendezvous and docking phase to not put such demand on the thrusters.”
Engineers are also working on the helium leak, which means smearing grease on spare flanges, tossing debris into them, and blasting them with heat to test possible causes for the leak. They also need to make sure that the thrusters are still getting enough helium to keep them pressurized — at least enough to work reliably and safely.
“We would like to duplicate that flange design on the ground under a controlled test and see if we can't make it leak, and experiment with some larger seals or maybe a different seal material that might not be as susceptible to degradation from the propellant,” said Nappi.
“THE NATURE OF WHAT WE DO”
To bystanders, it seems like an alarming situation: a new spacecraft launches with its first crew, only for its thrusters to fail and start leaking helium pressurizer. But for test pilots like Starliner test commander Butch Wilmore, it’s another day at the office.
“Human spaceflight is not easy. There have been multiple issues with every spacecraft that has ever been designed, and that's the nature of what we do,” said Wilmore.
Nappi and Stich repeated a similar message to reporters.
“We knew that there would be some learning from this flight test. We've learned a great deal from how the hardware works, how our processes work, and how we can improve the things that we're doing,” said Nappi. “As engineers, we test, we learn, we fix, and that’s exactly what we’re going through.”
Starliner launched on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on June 5, following several delays.
ANADOLU/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM!
The testing and analysis are likely to take another couple of weeks, at least, which means Wilmore and Starliner test pilot Suni Williams probably won’t be bidding farewell to the ISS until at least the end of July – and Stich described that possible timeframe as optimistic. But Starliner needs to be on its way by mid-August, when a SpaceX Crew Dragon is set to bring a new quartet of spacefarers (astronauts Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, and Stephanie Wilson, as well as Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov) to the ISS.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that carried Crew-8 (astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, as well as Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin) to the ISS is still docked at the station, waiting for Crew-8 to hop aboard and fly it home. Before they leave, though, they need to meet and brief their replacements, a process NASA calls a handover. Crew-9 will dock their Crew Dragonwith ISS and come aboard before Crew-8 leaves. At the moment, that’s a problem, because Starliner is sitting in Crew-9’s parking spot.
That gives NASA and Boeing a deadline for finishing their tests and either deeming Starliner fit to fly home or making other arrangements.
“The beautiful thing about the commercial crew program is that we have two vehicles, two different systems, that we could use to return the crew,” said Stich, referring to Starliner and Crew Dragon. “We have a little more time to go through the data and decide whether we need to do anything different but the prime option today is to return Butch and Suni on Starliner.”
“LIKE COMING BACK HOME”
For now, Wilmore and Williams are safe and sound on the ISS, where they’ve been pitching in with maintenance and science experiments.
“Butch and I have been up here before, and it feels like coming back home,” says Williams. “We've been integrated right into Expedition 71. We've been doing science with them, maintenance, and some major maintenance that has been waiting for a little while.”
Wilmore recently tested NASA’s Moon Microscope, a handheld 3D-printed microscope that’s part of a medical kit that could help future lunar explorers diagnose illnesses and make sure their food, water, and quarters aren’t contaminated. And Williams sequenced DNA while zipping around Earth at 17,500 miles per hour. The pair also helped swap out a urine processor pump. (Never a dull moment aboard ISS, and no lack of variety, either.)
Stich says the whole ISS crew is comfortable and has plenty of supplies — including things like food and clothing — to last the duration. A Northrop-Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft is scheduled to launch in early August, bringing new supplies and probably some extra items from home for the Starliner crew, if they’re still aboard. Meanwhile, this isn’t even close to the most crowded the ISS has ever been.
In fact, situations like this one may become more common over the next few years. Stich, paraphrasing retired astronaut Ken Bowersox, said earlier today that now that ISS can provide electricity to docked spacecraft, it can serve as a sort of temporary hangar for engineers to troubleshoot spacecraft in orbit.
Meanwhile, Williams and Wilmore sound calm and confident – which is also part of their job.
“I have a really good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft will bring us home,” says Williams.
Astronomen hebben niet al te ver weg een veelbelovende superaarde ontdekt, waar het in ieder geval best lekker weer is. De exoplaneet is een ijs- of waterwereld, dat weten ze nog niet.
An artist’s impression of exoplanet LHS 1140 orbiting a red dwarf star 41 light-years distant. ESO/SpaceEngine.org
LHS 1140 b, die op zo’n 48 lichtjaar van de aarde staat, is een van de meest veelbelovende exoplaneten met een leefbare zone. Hij heeft zelfs mogelijk een atmosfeer en een oceaan met vloeibaar water, blijkt uit de data van de James Webb-telescoop.
Mogelijk water “Dit is de eerste keer dat we een hint van een atmosfeer hebben gezien op een rotsachtige of ijzige exoplaneet met een bewoonbare zone. Het vinden van een atmosfeer op kleine, rotsachtige werelden is een belangrijk doel voor James Webb, maar dat is veel moeilijker dan op grote planeten”, vertelt Ryan MacDonald van NASA. “LHS 1140 b is een van de beste kleine exoplaneten met een bewoonbare zone waar een dikke atmosfeer kan zijn, en we hebben daar mogelijk net bewijs van gevonden.”
LHS 1140 b, een exoplaneet die om een rode dwergster draait die ongeveer een vijfde zo groot is als onze zon, is zo interessant, omdat het een van de dichtstbijzijnde exoplaneten is die binnen de bewoonbare zone van zijn ster ligt. Dat wil zeggen dat de temperatuur dusdanig gematigd is dat er vloeibaar water kan bestaan, een cruciaal element voor leven.
Superaarde of mini-Neptunus? De vraag was in eerste instantie of LHS 1140 b een mini-Neptunus zou zijn of een superaarde, dus een kleine ijsreus met een waterstofrijke atmosfeer of een rotsachtige, waterrijke planeet, die groter is dan de aarde. Maar uit het onderzoek blijkt dat de pas ontdekte exoplaneet eigenlijk geen ijsreus kan zijn. Het lijkt er veel meer op dat LHS 1140 b inderdaad een superaarde is met mogelijk zelfs een stikstofrijke atmosfeer, zoals onze planeet ook heeft.
Maar er is meer: volgens de eerste metingen is de dichtheid van de planeet kleiner dan verwacht, wat erop kan wijzen dat 10 tot 20 procent van zijn massa uit water bestaat. Het maakt LHS 1140 b een overtuigende kandidaat als waterwereld. Mogelijk lijkt de planeet op een sneeuwbal of ijsplaneet met een vloeibare oceaan op het stuk dat altijd naar zijn ster wijst.
Beste gok op water “Van alle momenteel bekende gematigde exoplaneten zou LHS 1140 b wel eens onze beste gok kunnen zijn om op een dag vloeibaar water op het oppervlak van een wereld buiten ons zonnestelsel te vinden”, aldus hoofdonderzoeker Charles Cadieux van de Université de Montréal. “Dit zou een belangrijke mijlpaal zijn in de zoektocht naar potentieel bewoonbare exoplaneten.”
De aanwezigheid van stikstof toont aan dat de planeet wellicht een substantiële atmosfeer heeft behouden, waardoor omstandigheden ontstaan die vloeibaar water mogelijk maken. De huidige modellen laten zien dat als LHS 1140 b een aarde-achtige atmosfeer heeft, het een sneeuwbalplaneet zou zijn met een oceaan met een diameter van zo’n 4000 kilometer, ongeveer half zo groot als de Atlantische Oceaan. De oppervlaktetemperatuur in het midden van deze buitenaardse oceaan zou zelfs een comfortabele 20 graden Celsius kunnen zijn.
Uitzonderlijke planeet De potentiële atmosfeer en gunstige omstandigheden voor vloeibaar water maken de planeet een uitzonderlijk goede kandidaat voor mogelijk leven. “Dit is onze eerste glimp van een atmosfeer op een superaarde in de bewoonbare zone. Vergeleken met andere bekende exoplaneten, zoals die in het TRAPPIST-1-systeem, lijkt de ster LHS 1140 rustiger en minder actief, waardoor het minder ingewikkeld is om de atmosfeer te onderscheiden van signalen die worden veroorzaakt door sterrenvlekken”, vertelt MacDonald.
Volgens de wetenschapper is LHS 1140 b misschien wel de beste planeet met een bewoonbare zone die tot nu toe bekend is. “Hoewel we meer James Webb-waarnemingen nodig hebben om de stikstofrijke atmosfeer te bevestigen en om naar andere gassen te zoeken, is dit een heel veelbelovende start.”
SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket suffered a rare anomaly on Thursday night (July 11).
The incident occurred during a launch of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites fromVandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Falcon 9 performed well initially; its two stages separated on time, and the first stage came down for a landing on a drone ship about eight minutes after liftoff as planned.
But the rocket's upper stage, which was hauling 20 Starlink spacecraft to low Earth orbit, encountered a problem — a leak of liquid oxygen, which had serious repercussions for the mission.
Screenshot from the webcast of a SpaceX Starlink satellite launch on July 11, 2024, showing a buildup of liquid-oxygen ice on the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. (Image credit: SpaceX)
"After a planned relight of the upper-stage engine to raise perigee — or the lowest point of orbit — the Merlin Vacuum engine experienced an anomaly and was unable to complete its second burn," SpaceX wrote in an update today (July 12). (The Falcon 9's upper stage is powered by that single engine; the first stage sports nine Merlins, which explains the rocket's name.)
SpaceX engineers worked to get the 20 Starlink satellites — 13 of which were capable of beaming service directly to cell phones — to raise their orbits using their onboard ion thrusters. But the hill was too steep to climb, according to the company.
"At this level of drag, our maximum available thrust is unlikely to be enough to successfully raise the satellites," SpaceX wrote in the update. "As such, the satellites will reenter Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise. They do not pose a threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety."
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rests on the deck of a ship at sea shortly after launching 20 Starlink satellites to orbit from California on July 11, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX)
The Falcon 9 is the most prolific rocket flying today, with 69 launches under its belt already in 2024. It's known for its reliability; before Thursday night, the Falcon 9 had suffered only one full in-flight failure in its storied history, which occurred during the launch of a robotic Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2015.
The Falcon 9 is also human-rated; it has launched 13 crewed missions to date, nine of which have sent astronauts to the ISS for NASA. It's unclear how Thursday's failure will affect the rocket and its manifest at this point; SpaceX will first need to figure out exactly what happened and how to address the issue — an effort that's already underway.
"SpaceX will perform a full investigation in coordination with the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], determine root cause, and make corrective actions to ensure the success of future missions," SpaceX wrote in today's update. "With a robust satellite and rocket production capability, and a high launch cadence, we’re positioned to rapidly recover and continue our pace as the world’s most active launch services provider."
Most Falcon 9 missions these days service the giant and ever-growing Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 6,100 operational satellites; 49 of the 69 Falcon 9 launches so far in 2024 have been dedicated Starlink missions.
Editor's note:This story was updated at 4:30 p.m. ET on July 12 with the news from SpaceX that all 20 Starlink satellites will be lost due to the Falcon 9 upper-stage failure.
A stack of SpaceX Starlink satellites, which included the first six featuring Direct to Cell capabilities. The batch launched on the Starlink 7-9 mission, which lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Jan. 2, 2024.
Pentagon Publishes Report on Material From an Alleged Alien Aircraft
Pentagon Publishes Report on Material From an Alleged Alien Aircraft
Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists studied the scrap of metal and decided it’s just a failed 20th century experiment into magnesium alloys and not alien at all.
The branch of the Pentagon tasked with investigating UFOs published a new report on the origins of what’s long been thought to be a piece of an alien aircraft. Spoilers: it’s not.
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)—the DoD’s UFO investigators—sent a sample of an alleged extraterrestrial aircraft to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2022, according to a Thursday press release. Oak Ridge studied the material for two years and sent its report to the AARO in April, and the conclusion is that the sample is probably not alien at all. It’s likely just one in a long line of experimental materials from the 20th century crafted in an effort to make a lighter and stronger aircraft.
“This specimen has been publicly alleged to be a component recovered from a crashed extraterrestrial vehicle in 1947, and purportedly exhibits extraordinary properties, such as functioning as a terahertz waveguide to generate antigravity capabilities,” the AARO said in the press release. “Considering all available evidence, AARO assesses that this specimen is likely a test object, a manufacturing product or byproduct, or a material component of aerospace performance studies to evaluate the properties of [magnesium] alloys.”
According to the report, the speculated piece of a UFO aircraft is just a normal magnesium compound.
“Although the origin, chain of custody, and ultimate purpose of this specimen remain unclear, a modern and robust analysis of its chemical and structural composition and properties does not indicate that its origin is non-terrestrial, nor do the data indicate that the material examined ever had the pure single-crystalline bismuth layer that could possibly have acted as a terahertz waveguide,” Oak Ridge said in its report.
The source of the studied specimen is the To The Stars Academy, an independent research organization headed by Blink-182 frontman and UFO fanatic, Tom DeLonge. The organization said in a press release that “the material is clearly engineered with distinct layers of MgZn and Bi at structured thicknesses only microns thick” and “there is no precedent for this structured combination of materials.”
Oak Ridge agreed to look at the material after To The Stars consented to have it studied.
“Although the long chain of custody for this specimen cannot be verified, public and media interest in the specimen warranted a transparent investigation that adhered to the scientific method,” the report said. “The specimen’s physiochemical properties are claimed to make the material capable of “inertial mass reduction” (i.e., levitation or antigravity functionality), possibly attributable to the material’s bismuth and magnesium layers acting as a terahertz waveguide.”
The AARO and Oak Ridge say the material is likely an early test of new aerospace alloys from the 20th century. “There was widespread domestic research on [magnesium] alloys for airframes, engines, weapons, and delivery systems starting in 1915 and peaking during World War II,” the organizations reported.
“Many experimental [magnesium] alloys failed for reasons not well understood at the time of testing, e.g., stress corrosion cracking,” the AARO said in its press release. “Unsurprisingly, records of failed [magnesium] alloy designs are scant. Neither AARO nor ORNL could verify the specimen’s historical origin. Unverifiable, conflicting personal accounts complicate its undocumented chain of custody.”
Neither the press release nor the Oak Ridge report mention Roswell, New Mexico, but pinpointing the recovery date of the material to 1947 makes it likely that whoever gave the sample to To The Stars has claimed that’s where it came from.
The Roswell crash is a foundational myth among UFO fans and conspiracy theorists. The short version is that something crashed in the deserts outside of Roswell, New Mexico. The Air Force recovered pieces of it and said it was a weather balloon. But others have long believed it was an alien spacecraft.
That incident kicked off decades of panic and interest in strange lights in the sky. That interest picked up again in recent years after a number of high-profile sightings by U.S. Navy pilots and the publication of declassified videos of strange aerial phenomena. U.S. legislators tasked the Pentagon with figuring out why so many people reported seeing strange lights in the sky. In response, the Pentagon formed the AARO in 2022 and it’s been investigating what it called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) ever since.
It’s published several reports but has, as of yet, failed to uncover proof of extraterrestrial or interdimensional visitation of America.
Before 2013, Area-51 had only been in the conspiracies. People ridiculed those who claimed to have worked in this highly classified US Air Force facility. Thanks to archivist Jeffrey Richelson who made it possible for the government to finally admitted that Area-51 is a real place in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. A few years back, ApexTV, famous for their mysterious content, did an interview with a fellow named Robert Miller who piloted an alien spacecraft at Area-51 telepathically, before crashing and breaking both his legs.
His story is worth reading as who knows what secrets may open up later in the future and become the reality in our life. Area-51 is one of the world’s most secretive places controlled by the US Air Force, which is claimed to be the storehouse of alien spacecraft, where their technology is being developed. It has been actively working since 1955 (as officially stated), which was the study point of UFOs in the 50s. Since then, the place has become a pilgrimage for alien hunters and UFO researchers.
In December 2017, Robert Miller did an interview with ApexTV where he revealed secrets of the inner workings of Groom Lake. According to Miller, aliens and extraterrestrial crafts are being kept inside Area-51, and he alleged to have been part of a top-secret project in which he was chosen to pilot a reverse-engineered UFO.
The video shows a bald man in cargo shorts claiming he flew an alien spaceship telepathically, but the sound quality is terrible. Miller cliamed to have hidden the fact that he worked in Area-51 from his closest relatives, but his mother had the slightest that idea about his job. His purpose for recording the video is to remove this secret from his conscience, and he knew the circumstances of the reveal that the government would come after him.
Robert Miller claimed he worked at Area 51 as a testing pilot for a re-engineered alien spacecraft. Image credit: YouTube screencap
Miller grew up in a small town in Southern Nevada, and his father was an aerospace engineer who taught him to fly aircraft which helped him become a licensed pilot at the age of 15. He later joined Marine Corps as a pilot, where he was considered one of the top pilots. By the time he became 18, he was planning to retire from the Marine Corps and find a normal job back home and thinking to start a family.
Everything changed when he received an offer letter about his new job as a test pilot in a secret program. “I thought, great. It also said, a plane would be picking me up at the Las Vegas airport Friday the second at three AM to take me there. So we flew out there in the middle of the night and two men in black suits escorted me into an underground building. It was built on the side of a hill and yes, the men in black are real. Believe me, they’re real,” Miller said.
He continued explaining the place which had long hallways and many doors on each side. Miller added: “We went down several flights of stairs, must have been far underground at that point. They showed me into a small room with a single bed and a desk.” He was then locked inside the room by those men.
Miller looked in one of his drawers and found a booklet, titled something like “Working at Grim Lake” that mentioned that there were 1,200 other employees. He claimed only insiders decide whom to recruit to work in Area-51. “I assumed that my father invited me and this is where he had been working when I was a kid. He had long, long since retired by the time I got there, and I wasn’t sure what was in store for me now.”
Miller was appointed as a test pilot for the so-called alien technology that was allegedly recovered from the crafts that crashed in 1947. Like any other whistleblower, he also said that they had already reversed engineering the alien spacecraft technology. He was going to be the first person to pilot the craft.
“Also, they threatened me again, if I told anybody, even my family, there would be dire consequences for all. I asked them what were the origins of the craft they found and they really thought it just was from another country. They told me not of this world and the beings that engineered it were extra-dimensional. They said the beings were still alive and were being kept in an undisclosed location in a facility,” Miller revealed.
Miller described a large disc-shaped craft about “50 feet from end to end, edge to edge” standing in the middle of the warehouse. It had a transparent dome at the top. He assumed that it was his testing vehicle. The engineers who worked on the craft technology told him that it was powered by an anti-matter reactor. The reactor produced bursts of dense energy that could generate wormholes and make the craft travel near the speed of light.
“They then said that my test flight was going to be delayed until the next day because they had to explain to me everything I needed to know in order to be able to pilot this thing. Now I’m just going off of what I can remember. There was a lot of specifics, gauges, and things but as I’ve gotten older, so I’m telling you as much as I can possibly remember. I do remember they brought me inside the craft.”
According to Miller, the alien spacecraft had a room for only one person. The cockpit had a seat, no joystick, no steering wheel, and no other controls, only a helmet. He told that the craft operates only telepathically.
American scientist Boyd Bushman with a display of alleged UFO pictures from Area 51. Image Credit: YouTube screencap
“The helmet measured my brainwaves and
was to control the craft by simply thinking about it. After a hard night of trying to sleep, thinking about this, morning came. And it was finally time to take the craft for the first test flight. They brought out a tarp and ordered everyone working on the base to go inside. They wanted to keep everybody not knowing about this secret technology to a bare minimum.”
He put on the helmet and followed the guidance as the craft was only going to operate by analyzing his brain waves. He had to imagine the craft floating off the ground but instead, he imagined being a part of the craft. After that, he began thinking of himself floating off the ground. “I felt vibrations from the anti-matter reactor below me as it started to fire up.”
He was instructed to take the craft up to 1000 feet. He succeeded in taking it to 500 feet but shockingly, the engine stopped and Miller started losing altitude. He found no safety feature, and no seat ejection system was there in the craft. He kept imaging the craft floating but eventually, it hit the ground and Miller received serious injuries.
Miller said he fell unconscious and then woke up in the medical ward, where he was told by another man in a black suit that the craft mysteriously disappeared just before crashing and everyone at the base simply “called it a day” and went inside. Then in the middle of the night, they heard a loud crashing noise outside. Running out to see what happened, they saw the craft had crashed in the spot it was about to crash a while earlier during the day.
“I was inside the pilot’s seat unconscious, both my legs were shattered. The scientists had hypothesized that the craft had actually time traveled to a point in time, several hours later. They had me sign a non-disclosure, the third one, stating, since the first meeting, I would not tell anybody as long as I lived and making this video. Well, as you can see, I have gone against this NDA contract because I feel that the public needs to know about this.”
A similar claim of testing a re-engineered ET craft has another witness named Bill Uhouse who testified that it required a good amount of time for a person to train in order to operate the disc. Besides, its design was so exacting that nothing could be externally installed on it such as machine guns and bombs like in traditional aircraft.
Before 2013, Area-51 had only been in the conspiracies. People ridiculed those who claimed to have worked in this highly classified US Air Force facility. Thanks to archivist Jeffrey Richelson who made it possible for the government to finally admitted that Area-51 is a real place in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. A few years back, ApexTV, famous for their mysterious content, did an interview with a fellow named Robert Miller who piloted an alien spacecraft at Area-51 telepathically, before crashing and breaking both his legs.
His story is worth reading as who knows what secrets may open up later in the future and become the reality in our life. Area-51 is one of the world’s most secretive places controlled by the US Air Force, which is claimed to be the storehouse of alien spacecraft, where their technology is being developed. It has been actively working since 1955 (as officially stated), which was the study point of UFOs in the 50s. Since then, the place has become a pilgrimage for alien hunters and UFO researchers.
In December 2017, Robert Miller did an interview with ApexTV where he revealed secrets of the inner workings of Groom Lake. According to Miller, aliens and extraterrestrial crafts are being kept inside Area-51, and he alleged to have been part of a top-secret project in which he was chosen to pilot a reverse-engineered UFO.
The video shows a bald man in cargo shorts claiming he flew an alien spaceship telepathically, but the sound quality is terrible. Miller cliamed to have hidden the fact that he worked in Area-51 from his closest relatives, but his mother had the slightest that idea about his job. His purpose for recording the video is to remove this secret from his conscience, and he knew the circumstances of the reveal that the government would come after him.
Robert Miller claimed he worked at Area 51 as a testing pilot for a re-engineered alien spacecraft. Image credit: YouTube screencap
Miller grew up in a small town in Southern Nevada, and his father was an aerospace engineer who taught him to fly aircraft which helped him become a licensed pilot at the age of 15. He later joined Marine Corps as a pilot, where he was considered one of the top pilots. By the time he became 18, he was planning to retire from the Marine Corps and find a normal job back home and thinking to start a family.
Everything changed when he received an offer letter about his new job as a test pilot in a secret program. “I thought, great. It also said, a plane would be picking me up at the Las Vegas airport Friday the second at three AM to take me there. So we flew out there in the middle of the night and two men in black suits escorted me into an underground building. It was built on the side of a hill and yes, the men in black are real. Believe me, they’re real,” Miller said.
He continued explaining the place which had long hallways and many doors on each side. Miller added: “We went down several flights of stairs, must have been far underground at that point. They showed me into a small room with a single bed and a desk.” He was then locked inside the room by those men.
Miller looked in one of his drawers and found a booklet, titled something like “Working at Grim Lake” that mentioned that there were 1,200 other employees. He claimed only insiders decide whom to recruit to work in Area-51. “I assumed that my father invited me and this is where he had been working when I was a kid. He had long, long since retired by the time I got there, and I wasn’t sure what was in store for me now.”
Miller was appointed as a test pilot for the so-called alien technology that was allegedly recovered from the crafts that crashed in 1947. Like any other whistleblower, he also said that they had already reversed engineering the alien spacecraft technology. He was going to be the first person to pilot the craft.
“Also, they threatened me again, if I told anybody, even my family, there would be dire consequences for all. I asked them what were the origins of the craft they found and they really thought it just was from another country. They told me not of this world and the beings that engineered it were extra-dimensional. They said the beings were still alive and were being kept in an undisclosed location in a facility,” Miller revealed.
Miller described a large disc-shaped craft about “50 feet from end to end, edge to edge” standing in the middle of the warehouse. It had a transparent dome at the top. He assumed that it was his testing vehicle. The engineers who worked on the craft technology told him that it was powered by an anti-matter reactor. The reactor produced bursts of dense energy that could generate wormholes and make the craft travel near the speed of light.
“They then said that my test flight was going to be delayed until the next day because they had to explain to me everything I needed to know in order to be able to pilot this thing. Now I’m just going off of what I can remember. There was a lot of specifics, gauges, and things but as I’ve gotten older, so I’m telling you as much as I can possibly remember. I do remember they brought me inside the craft.”
According to Miller, the alien spacecraft had a room for only one person. The cockpit had a seat, no joystick, no steering wheel, and no other controls, only a helmet. He told that the craft operates only telepathically.
American scientist Boyd Bushman with a display of alleged UFO pictures from Area 51. Image Credit: YouTube screencap
“The helmet measured my brainwaves and
was to control the craft by simply thinking about it. After a hard night of trying to sleep, thinking about this, morning came. And it was finally time to take the craft for the first test flight. They brought out a tarp and ordered everyone working on the base to go inside. They wanted to keep everybody not knowing about this secret technology to a bare minimum.”
He put on the helmet and followed the guidance as the craft was only going to operate by analyzing his brain waves. He had to imagine the craft floating off the ground but instead, he imagined being a part of the craft. After that, he began thinking of himself floating off the ground. “I felt vibrations from the anti-matter reactor below me as it started to fire up.”
He was instructed to take the craft up to 1000 feet. He succeeded in taking it to 500 feet but shockingly, the engine stopped and Miller started losing altitude. He found no safety feature, and no seat ejection system was there in the craft. He kept imaging the craft floating but eventually, it hit the ground and Miller received serious injuries.
Miller said he fell unconscious and then woke up in the medical ward, where he was told by another man in a black suit that the craft mysteriously disappeared just before crashing and everyone at the base simply “called it a day” and went inside. Then in the middle of the night, they heard a loud crashing noise outside. Running out to see what happened, they saw the craft had crashed in the spot it was about to crash a while earlier during the day.
“I was inside the pilot’s seat unconscious, both my legs were shattered. The scientists had hypothesized that the craft had actually time traveled to a point in time, several hours later. They had me sign a non-disclosure, the third one, stating, since the first meeting, I would not tell anybody as long as I lived and making this video. Well, as you can see, I have gone against this NDA contract because I feel that the public needs to know about this.”
A similar claim of testing a re-engineered ET craft has another witness named Bill Uhouse who testified that it required a good amount of time for a person to train in order to operate the disc. Besides, its design was so exacting that nothing could be externally installed on it such as machine guns and bombs like in traditional aircraft.
The sci-fi landscape is littered with wormholes. From Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Rick and Morty to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, these theoretical constructs allow characters to zip between distant points in the universe as easy as stepping through a doorway.
An Einstein-Rosen bridge is the simplest kind of wormhole. And while it can, in theory, allow you to meet a new friend from a distant part of the universe, there are some important reasons why it won’t let you travel back in time.
Black Holes, White Holes and Wormholes
Let’s start with everybody’s favorite astronomical mystery: a black hole. Despite their fearsome reputation, they’re actually rather simple creature. They have a point of infinite density, known as the singularity, in their centers. They are surrounded by a boundary called the event horizon.
The event horizon doesn’t exist in the same way that the surface of a planet exists. Instead it’s just a mathematical line in the sand that tells you one thing: if you cross within that special distance, you’re trapped forever, because you’ll have to travel faster than the speed of light to escape.
And that’s it. That’s a black hole. A singularity and an event horizon. All things that cross the event horizon will never escape back into the universe – things go in and never come out.
Mathematically we can also define the polar opposite of a black hole, which is conveniently called a white hole. White holes also have a singularity, but their event horizons act differently. Anything already on the outside of a white hole (like, the entire universe) can never, ever cross within it, no matter how hard it tries. And anything already inside the white hole will find itself ejected from it faster than the speed of light.
Now when we take a black hole and a white hole and connect their singularities together, we get an entirely new kind of object: an Einstein-Rosen bridge, better known as a wormhole.
Wormholes are essentially hollow tubes through space and time that can connect very distant regions of the universe. A star may be thousands of light-years away, but a wormhole can connect that star to us with a tunnel only a few steps long.
Wormholes also have the somewhat mystical ability to allow backwards time travel. If you take one end of the wormhole and accelerate it to a speed close to that of light, it will experience time dilation — its internal “clock” will run slower than the rest of the universe.
That will cause the two ends of the wormhole to no longer be synchronized in time. Then you could walk in one end and end up in your own past. Voilà: time travel.
There's just one, tiny, teensy problem with this setup: Einstein-Rosen bridges are indeed wormholes, but the entrance to the wormhole sits behind the black hole event horizon. And the number one rule of black hole event horizons is that once you cross them, you’re never allowed to escape. Ever.
Once you pass through a black hole event horizon, you are forced towards the singularity, where you are guaranteed to meet your gruesome end. In other words, once you enter an Einstein-Rosen bridge, you will never escape.
So, the unfortunate truth with Einstein-Rosen bridges is that while they appear to be magical doorways to distant reaches of the universe, they are just as deadly as black holes. When you enter you can meet other travelers who have fallen in from the other side, and you could even carry on a conversation…briefly, before you both struck the singularity.
There have been attempts to stabilize Einstein-Rosen bridges and make them traversable by somehow getting their entrances to sit outside the event horizon. So far the only way we know how to do this is with exotic matter. If you threaded the wormhole tunnel with matter that had negative mass, then in principle you could have a not-deadly-at-all wormhole.
Alas, negative matter does not appear to exist in the universe, and so our wormhole — and time travel — dreams will have to remain as mere mathematical fantasies.
Milky Way's rarest black hole may lurk behind 7 stars that 'shouldn't be there'
Milky Way's rarest black hole may lurk behind 7 stars that 'shouldn't be there'
Story by Harry Baker
Astronomers may have found a rare "missing link" black hole in the Milky Way after spotting a group of improbably fast-moving stars at the heart of a nearby stellar cluster. If confirmed, the cosmic juggernaut, known as an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH), would be the second-largest black hole ever found in our galaxy.
IMBHs are an extremely rare subset of black holes that are larger than stellar-mass black holes but smaller than supermassive black holes. This means they can be anywhere between 100 and 100,000 times the mass of the sun, according to NASA.
In theory, IMBHs should be just as common as other black hole types. However, astronomers have struggled to locate potential IMBHs or confirm their existence — and they aren't sure why. As a result, IMBHs are often referred to as missing link black holes. While several promising candidates have been detected, none have been proven to be the real deal.
Now, in a recent study uploaded April 4 to the preprint server arXiv, researchers may have uncovered evidence of a large IMBH in the globular cluster Omega Centauri — a compact group of around 10 million stars in the Milky Way located around 17,000 light-years from Earth.
The team compared 500 photographs of Omega Centauri taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and mapped the movements of around 1.4 million stars at the cluster's center. This revealed at least seven stars that "should not be there," researchers wrote in a statement.
Omega Centauri is the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way.
This is because these stars were spotted whizzing around fast enough to escape the cluster's gravity and fly off into intergalactic space. But despite this, the stars continue to orbit at breakneck speed near the cluster's center.
"The most likely explanation [for this] is that a very massive object is gravitationally pulling on these stars and keeping them close to the [cluster's] centre," study lead author Maximilian Häberle, a doctoral candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Germany, said in the statement. "The only object that can be so massive is a black hole, with a mass at least 8,200 times that of our sun."
Omega Centauri is an unusual entity: It is around 10 times larger than most other globular clusters and is surprisingly flat. It is so massive that you can even see it with the naked eye on dark, clear nights, when it takes up almost as much of the night sky as the moon when viewed from Earth.
Researchers suspect that the cluster likely used to be a dwarf galaxy that orbited the Milky Way, before being pulled into the galaxy's middle. As a result, scientists have often wondered if there could have been a sizable black hole at its heart.
Researchers first proposed the idea of an IMBH in Omega Centauri in 2008, when Hubble revealed how tightly the cluster's stars are bunched at its center. However, at the time, other researchers argued that this could be caused by a swarm of several smaller, stellar-mass black holes.
But the superfast stars highlighted in the new study indicate the existence of an IMBH, the study authors argue.
"This discovery is the most direct evidence so far of an IMBH in Omega Centauri," study co-author Nadine Neumayer, an astronomer at MPIA, said in the statement. If confirmed, it would be the Milky Way's second-largest known black hole behind Sagittarius A* — the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy, she added. "This is exciting because there are only very few other black holes known with a similar mass."
However, the presence of an IMBH in Omega Centauri is not confirmed, and more data is needed to know for certain if it is really there. It is also unclear exactly how large the cosmic entity might be and where it is.
The researchers have been granted time in the future to use the powerful James Webb Space Telescope to peer deeper into the cluster, which means we may not have to wait too long for more evidence of the black hole's existence.
We kunnen exoplaneten, die zich buiten ons zonnestelsel bevinden, niet bereiken, maar we kunnen hun geur wel waarnemen: een van hen ruikt naar rotte eieren, zo heeft een nieuw onderzoek ontdekt.
HD 189733 b, de “warme Jupiter" op 64 lichtjaar afstand van ons
Mensen associëren de geur van zwavel met die van rotte eieren, en zouden hun neus moeten dichtknijpen voor de exoplaneet die volgens wetenschappers een atmosfeer heeft die aan deze “geur” doet denken. De buitenaardse wereld in kwestie is een hete exoplaneet van Jupiter genaamd HD 189733 b en is 64 lichtjaar van de aarde verwijderd: een relatief korte afstand, gezien de locatie buiten ons zonnestelsel.
Dankzij de James Webb-telescoop was het mogelijk om te ontdekken dat het omgeven is door een atmosfeer gevuld met waterstofsulfide, waardoor je je gemakkelijk de geur kunt voorstellen die je zou kunnen inademen. HD 189733 b staat dertien keer dichter bij zijn moederster dan Mercurius bij de zon, waardoor het een “helse” planeet is, zoals beschreven. Een bijzonder hete en gasvormige Jupiter in het sterrenbeeld Vosje, die in slechts twee aardse dagen een baan rond zijn ster voltooit. Dit betekent dat de temperatuur bijna 925°C bedraagt: uiteraard onleefbaar voor mensen, afgezien van de geur die het afgeeft. Maar dit is niet de enige bizarre eigenaardigheid van de exoplaneet in kwestie.
De exoplaneet die naar rotte eieren ruikt en waarop het gesmolten glas regent
Roberto Molar Candanosa/Johns Hopkins Univeristy
Voordat ze in het nieuwe onderzoek de geur van HD 189733 b ontdekten, hadden wetenschappers al onthuld dat er een grote kans bestaat dat er op de exoplaneet buien van gesmolten glas ontstaan, die het gevolg zouden kunnen zijn van winden die het materiaal met een snelheid die kan oplopen tot 800 km per uur zijwaarts duwen, drie keer zo snel als een orkaan van categorie 5 op aarde. Het zijn precies de “eigenaardigheden” van deze buitenaardse wereld die onderzoekers ertoe hebben aangezet er nieuwe aandacht aan te besteden met behulp van de James Webb.
De nieuwe waarnemingen maakten het mogelijk om koolstofdioxide, zware metalen in de atmosfeer, de hoeveelheid water en zuurstof te meten. Zo ontdekten ze de aanwezigheid van waterstofsulfide, dat op onze planeet wordt uitgestoten door vulkanen en ontbindend organisch materiaal. Het is een licht ontvlambaar, schadelijk en kleurloos gas. Voor wetenschappers was het geen echte verrassing: men vermoedde al dat HD 189733 b, als zijnde gasreus, dit molecuul zou kunnen bevatten, dat ook op Uranus en Jupiter aanwezig is. Tot nu toe is dit gas echter zelden buiten het zonnestelsel gedetecteerd, behalve in de ruimte tussen de sterren.
Op zoek naar andere werelden met waterstofsulfide
Guangwei Fu, een astrofysicus aan de Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, noemde de ontdekking van waterstofsulfide op de exoplaneet een belangrijke "opstap naar het vinden van dit molecuul op andere planeten en om beter te begrijpen hoe verschillende soorten werelden ontstaan." Zwavel, zo legde Fu uit, is een essentieel element voor het bouwen van complexe moleculen en is van fundamenteel belang voor de overgrote meerderheid van de levensvormen op aarde.
De aanwezigheid van buitenaards leven op HD 189733 b kan echter vrijwel zeker worden uitgesloten, vanwege de extreem hoge temperaturen, maar ook vanwege de meteorologische omstandigheden. Het feit dat er waterstofsulfide aanwezig is op de exoplaneet doet ons echter denken dat andere werelden buiten ons zonnestelsel dit zouden kunnen bevatten, samen met mogelijke buitenaardse levensvormen. De volgende stap van de onderzoekers zal zijn om andere hete planeten vergelijkbaar met Jupiter te observeren met behulp van de James Webb om de aanwezigheid van hetzelfde gas te evalueren.
Yalçin Yalman Speaks: Unveiling the Turkey UFO Phenomenon
Yalçin Yalman Speaks: Unveiling the Turkey UFO Phenomenon
The enigmatic Kumburgaz UFO sightings, recorded between 2007 and 2009, have captivated the imaginations of UFO enthusiasts worldwide. At the heart of this phenomenon is Yalçin Yalman, the man behind the camera. In a recent groundbreaking interview, Yalman has broken his silence, providing new insights into his extraordinary experiences, the beings he encountered, and his predictions for future sightings. This article delves into Yalman’s journey and the broader implications of the Turkey UFO phenomenon.
A Journey Begun in Childhood
Yalçin Yalman’s fascination with UFOs began at the tender age of 12. His early years were marked by vivid dreams and astral journeys, during which he claimed to encounter beings from the Zeta Reticuli star system. These experiences left a profound impact on him, laying the foundation for a lifelong quest to understand and document extraterrestrial phenomena.
At the age of 20, while serving in the military, Yalman had a pivotal encounter. He reported seeing a hexagonal craft in the sky that communicated with him telepathically, urging him to follow it. This incident, coupled with his earlier experiences, cemented his belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life and set him on a path of relentless pursuit.
Between 2007 and 2009, Yalman captured several significant UFO sightings in Kumburgaz, Turkey. Using a Canon XL1 mini DV camera and later a Sony handicam with a telescoping lens, he recorded footage of hexagonal and triangular crafts, some of which appeared to have humanoid figures inside. This footage gained substantial attention and was validated by Turkish authorities and scientists, including TÜBİTAK, Turkey’s scientific and technological research council.
Despite the recognition, Yalman’s journey was fraught with challenges. He faced severe financial difficulties and homelessness, which hindered his ability to continue his work. However, he felt an irresistible compulsion to document these sightings, often feeling as though he was under some form of hypnosis or guided influence.
Astral Contact and Beings from Zeta Reticuli
Yalman claimed to have had ongoing astral contact with beings from Zeta Reticuli. According to him, these beings chose him for a mission to share their existence and information with humanity. He believed these beings protected him from malevolent entities, specifically reptilians from the Orion constellation.
One of Yalman’s most startling revelations was a vision suggesting that an ancient spacecraft was buried under Mount Nemrut in Turkey. This vision, he claimed, could have profound implications for our understanding of extraterrestrial life and ancient human history.
Predictions for Future Sightings
In his interview, Yalman made bold predictions about future UFO sightings. He stated that two large spacecraft would be visible in regions such as Peru, Chile, Brazil, or northern New Mexico by specific dates: July 28 and between August 15-20. He believed these sightings would occur in cloudy weather and hoped that their occurrence would validate his experiences and insights.
Challenges and Validation
Yalman’s claims have been met with skepticism from some quarters. Detractors question the authenticity of his footage, suggesting it could be hoaxed. However, Yalman and his supporters emphasize the multiple witnesses and expert validations that corroborate his accounts.
Throughout his life, Yalman faced numerous personal hardships, including health issues like epilepsy and legal troubles that led to imprisonment. These challenges, however, did not deter him from his mission. He continued to document his experiences and share them with the world, driven by a deep-seated belief in the significance of his work.
VIDEO:
Chris Lehto – Yalçin Yalman Breaks Silence: Inside the Turkey UFO Phenomenon
Yalçin Yalman’s message to those interested in UFO phenomena is clear: faith and a pure heart are essential for making contact or capturing footage of extraterrestrial entities. He expressed a strong desire to share his knowledge and experiences with humanity before he dies, highlighting the potential role of extraterrestrial beings in shaping human history and future.
In conclusion, Yalçin Yalman’s revelations provide a fascinating glimpse into the Turkey UFO phenomenon. His experiences, while controversial, offer valuable insights into the potential existence of extraterrestrial life and its interaction with humanity. As the dates of his predicted sightings approach, the world will be watching closely to see if his extraordinary claims hold true.
Last September, the results of an assessment by an independent study team assembled by NASA, intended to provide recommendations on how the agency could better contribute to the U.S. government’s ongoing evaluation of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), concluded that better data and more of it will be required to make significant progress toward understanding mysterious aerial phenomena.
Coinciding with the release of the UAP Independent Study Team’s (UAPIST) report, NASA also revealed that it had appointed a new NASA Director of UAP Research to help lead the agency’s efforts and coordinate with the Department of Defense, whose All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is currently tasked with collection and analysis of UAP incidents reported by U.S. government personnel.
Notably, at the time of the NASA report’s release, the UAP Independent Study Team said that it had not examined or attempted to evaluate any actual incident reports. Instead, it focused on providing recommendations that could help improve future UAP studies while highlighting resources NASA can provide that may assist with such investigations.
Since the NASA report’s publication last year, little additional information has been made publicly available about what progress—if any—the American space agency and its recently appointed Director of UAP Research have made and to what degree NASA will remain involved in the U.S. government’s evaluation of UAP.
Now, almost a year after the NASA team’s findings were released, follow-up inquiries made by The Debrief appear to convey NASA officials’ reluctance to discuss the agency’s status regarding the UAP issue.
Beginning in June, The Debrief inquired with several NASA officials involved with the agency’s recent UAP efforts, seeking clarity on any progress that had been made since the release of the independent study team’s report.
“NASA continues to review the unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) independent study team’s report recommendations and determine next steps,” a NASA spokesperson told The Debrief in an official statement provided on June 5, 2024.
The spokesperson provided no additional guidance on why several months had been required for additional review of the report’s findings, nor any further indication of what the agency’s “next steps” on UAP might entail or whether any had already been determined by NASA at this time.
The Debrief also reached out to Mark McInerney, who was officially revealed as the agency’s new Director of UAP Research last September, shortly after NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced the new position within his agency last year. However, McInerney did not respond to The Debrief’s requests for an update on his agency’s progress on the matter.
Mark McInerney, NASA’s current Director of UAP Research, who has held the position since his appointment in September 2023
(Credit: NASA).
Altogether, few NASA officials The Debrief reached out to responded or were willing to speak on the record about any progress the agency has made regarding UAP since the release of last year’s report, although one individual speaking on background did acknowledge that the agency is not historically recognized for having significant involvement in the study of what have traditionally been called unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
The study team’s 36-page report issued last year, which featured several entire pages displaying colorful images of lightning, aurorae, and other luminous phenomena that may occasionally be mistaken for UAP, provided guidance on the types of information that the study team deemed to be most useful in helping to determine the nature and origin of UAPs.
The report also emphasized the importance of improving sensor calibration, obtaining multiple measurements, and leveraging NASA’s expertise in a comprehensive data acquisition strategy within a whole-of-government framework.
“Currently, UAP data analysis is hindered by poor sensor calibration, lack of multiple measurements, insufficient sensor metadata, and absence of baseline data,” the report states. To address these issues, the UAPIST members said NASA should contribute to data collection efforts, using well-calibrated sensors and possibly utilizing multispectral or hyperspectral data in a rigorous acquisition campaign.
The study team’s assessment also advocates for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) as essential tools for identifying and potentially resolving UAP occurrences, although emphasizing that better data will be needed than what currently exists in data made available publicly by both government and civilian agencies. Notably absent from the NASA report had been any investigations or analyses related to recent or past UAP sightings.
Coinciding with the release of its report last year, Daniel Evans, assistant deputy associate administrator for research with NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and one of the UAPIST team members, emphasized NASA’s commitment to understanding what UAP might represent.
Daniel Evans speaks at a public meeting held by NASA’s UAP Independent Study Team in 2023 (Credit: NASA)
“The presence of UAP raises serious concerns about the safety of our skies,” Evans said, adding that “by understanding the nature of UAP, we can ensure that our skies remain a safe space for all.”
The Debrief also contacted Evans last month for feedback on any progress NASA officials have made following the report’s release last September, but as of the time of publication, it had not yet received a response.
“The top takeaway from the study is that there is a lot more to learn,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said following the report’s release. “We will use NASA’s expertise to work with other agencies to analyze UAP,” Nelson added, stressing the importance of shifting the UAP dialogue from sensationalism to science and sharing findings globally.
Nelson also said that his agency will remain committed to transparency on the issue and to attempting to better understand what UAP might represent.
“We are open, and we’re going to be open about this,” Nelson also said in response to a question from filmmaker James Fox, who attended last September’s press conference.
“We don’t know what these UAP are,” Nelson said, “but we’re gonna try to find out.”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson (Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
However, in contrast to Nelson’s statements at the time, NASA has remained mostly silent on the UAP issue since the report’s release last year, providing few indications publicly that it plans to maintain any degree of active engagement with the matter, a reality that appeared to be reflected in the limited guidance agency officials and former members of NASA’s UAP study team were willing to provide in response to The Debrief’s inquiries over the last several weeks.
Following the publication of the UAPIST report last year, a short article published by Boston University’s Photonics Center quoted Joshua Semeter, a professor with the school’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a member of NASA’s UAP study team who was appointed to the group for his specialization in imaging and remote sensing observations.
“Even Professor Semeter was surprised to find the report focused more on mapping out next steps,” the article said of Semeter, who called UAP “a strangely polarizing topic.”
“One way to think about it is that whenever you’re faced with incomplete data, your brain fills in the rest, that’s our tendency,” Semeter was quoted saying of people’s tendency to exhibit biases regarding UAP, even when it involves academics studying the phenomenon. “The tendency of people looking into UAP is to fall on one side or the other with respect to an incomplete picture,” he added.
The Debrief reached out to Professor Semeter for further comment, but like with other study team members we contacted, received no response to our requests.
Earlier this year, astrophysicist David Spergel, President of the Simons Foundation and chair of NASA’s UAP study team, also spoke briefly about the group’s assessment during a NASA Future In-Space Operations seminar that was streamed on February 7, 2024.
David Spergel, chair of NASA’s independent study on unidentified anomalous phenomena (Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
Weeks later, in a document published online detailing the proceedings of the NASA Advisory Council Science Committee Spring Meeting on March 25, 2024, details outlining an earlier NASA Earth Science Advisory Committee (ESAC) meeting included a summary of the UAP report’s findings, given that UAPIST was a subcommittee formed under the ESAC.
“The ESAC finds that the UAPIST Subcommittee has addressed the questions outlined in the Statement of Task, and thereby has met its Terms of Reference,” the summary states. “The ESAC finds that the scope of the Subcommittee report, including any recommendations, is beyond NASA’s Earth Science program.”
A brief ESAC Procedural Recommendation also states that “The ESAC does not have the expertise to make detailed recommendations to ESD regarding the report,” concluding that “The ESAC accordingly recommends that the report be conveyed to agency leadership.”
No additional information has currently been made available by NASA regarding any data collection plan the agency may have implemented, nor any research methods, systems integration, budget appropriation, staffing, or other efforts being undertaken by NASA’s current Director of UAP Research. Further specific requests for updates on all these issues by The Debrief remained unanswered in our communications with NASA officials.
NASA’s lack of communication on the UAP subject following the release of last year’s report leaves more questions than answers about the agency’s current stance on the issue, as well as what plans, if any, it may have in terms of ongoing engagement and coordination with other federal agencies.
While the UAP Independent Study Team concluded its report last year by emphasizing there is currently no evidence credibly linking UAP sightings to extraterrestrial technologies, the authors nonetheless conceded that such possibilities at least remain on the table.
“At this point there is no reason to conclude that existing UAP reports have an extraterrestrial source. However, if we acknowledge that as one possibility, then those objects must have traveled through our solar system to get here,” the report’s authors wrote.
“Just as the galaxy does not stop at the outskirts of the solar system, the solar system also includes Earth and its environs. Thus, there is an intellectual continuum between extrasolar technosignatures, solar system SETI, and potential unknown alien technology operating in Earth’s atmosphere.”
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) are still a mystery.
Many people have learned helplessness, thinking they can't make a difference in solving that mystery.
In reality, everyone has the potential to help by filming what puzzles humanity in the sky.
Can any of us make a difference in finding an explanation for UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects), which are now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), or have we learned helplessness?
It seems that many people think in their heart of hearts that they cannot make a difference in helping identify UFOs or UAPs. Many even giggle when thinking about UFOs.
But what if we could help figure out what the mysterious UFOs are? For that, let’s examine what we know about UFOs:
UFOs or UAPs have been described as objects like orbs, spheres, ovals, tic-tac-shaped items, triangles, or simply lights that can go faster than the speed of sound without any sonic boom.
They can have sudden accelerations and decelerations with thousands of times the force of gravity, whereas the most agile jet fighters today can accelerate only at nine times the force of gravity.
They can go from one medium to another—underwater to midair to space and vice versa.
No detectable source of propulsion (no flaps, no rudder) has been detected to explain their movements.
They have mostly been observed at altitudes between 5,000 and 35,000 feet.
They have been reported around military bases and nuclear facilities. The Pentagon has had UFO or UAP reports from several states of the United States and also from the Middle East and Asia. Other reports have originated from England, Italy, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, and many other countries
What can be some possible explanations for UFOs?
In our recently released book, The New Science of UFOs, Dr. Eric Haseltine and I examine most of the possible explanations for UFOs, including optical illusions, natural phenomena, advanced human technology either from the U.S. or from a foreign country, deliberate fakes, and extraterrestrials. We also note that probably not all UAPs have the same explanation.
NASA and other parts of our government say they need more data to reach conclusions.
Could each of us help?
We definitely can help if we get over our learned helplessness and stigma about UFOs.
All over the world, billions of cell phone users can take photographs and videos of what they see. By paying attention to what we see in the sky, each of us can help solve the UFO mystery.
Because as Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.”
So, let’s be open to learning more about our universe, and let’s get over our learned helplessness. Let’s not make fun of people who say they have seen UFOs or UAPs. Instead, let’s be open to all possibilities. Let’s observe the sky, document what we see, and report our videos of UFOs to the National UFO Reporting Center, making sure that all the imagery has a date, time, and place stamped so that reporting can be cross-correlated with other reportings.
Awareness of ourselves, of others, of our surroundings, of what we see on Earth and in the sky during day and night is important for solving mysteries, whether those mysteries are about our body, about our Earth, or about the universe.
There's some interesting paintings inside the Vatican ... and it's worth taking a closer look at what's being depicted in the sky.
TMZ Studios has a new series, "Strange & Suspicious," now airing on a dozen FOX stations, where we explore unexplained and downright weird stories, and now we're combing over the artwork inside the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church.
In several paintings that are centuries old, there are some mysterious shapes in the heavens above ... sparking comparisons to flying saucers.
The potential references to extraterrestrial craft are hidden in plain sight ... some are subtle, and some are seemingly obvious ... like the objects appearing to shoot beams down from the sky.
Of course, there were no flying objects of any kind way back when painters were creating these works ... making this phenomenon even more interesting.
Some inside the Vatican are open to the possibility of alien life ... making these mysterious paintings worth another look.
We try to answer all these UFO questions and more on "Strange & Suspicious" ... plus bizarre phenomena and true crime.
Tachyons are not just the stuff of science fiction.
Tachyons are hypothetical particles that move faster than the speed of light and travel backwards through time.
(Image credit: Yuichiro Chino via Getty Images)
Traveling faster than light and time-travel could be real for tachyons. If one thing science fiction excels at, it's allowing us to marvel at the breaking of the physical laws of the universe. We watch and read in wonder as the warp engines of the starship Enterprise push it to beyond the speed of light, or as Barry or Wally — whoever is carrying the name of the Flash at the time — does the same in no more than a pair of yellow boots.
Likewise, we enjoy tales of adventurers like the Doctor, or Doc Brown, using weird seemingly antiquated machinery to violate the laws of causality. What if there was a fundamental particle that could do all these things? Moving faster than light like the Flash, and traveling back through time without the need for a TARDIS or a Delorian or yellow boots.
That’s a tachyon. But make no mistake, these particles aren’t just the idling's of science fiction writers. Tachyons are the stuff of "hard" science.
Tachyons are one of the most interesting elements arising from Einstein’s theory of special relativity. The 1905 theory is based on two postulates, nothing with mass moves faster than the speed of light (c), and physical laws remain the same in all non-inertial reference frames. A significant consequence of special relativity is the fact that space and time are united into a single entity; spacetime. That mean’s a particle’s journey through speed is linked to its journey through time.
The term "tachyon" first entered scientific literature in 1967, in a paper entitled "Possibility of faster-than-light particles" by Columbia University physicist Gerald Feinberg. Feinberg posited that tachyonic particles would arise from a quantum field with “imaginary mass” explaining why the first populate of special relativity doesn’t restrain their velocity.
This would lead to two types of particles existing in the universe; bradyons that travel slower than light and compose all the matter we see around us, and tachyons traveling faster than light, according to the University of Pittsburgh. One of the key differences between these particle types is as energy is added to bradyons, they speed up. But, with tachyons, as energy is taken away, their speed increases.
Xuanyu Han//Getty Images
TACHYONS AND TIME TRAVEL
One of the most important and meaningful results from Einstein’s theory of special relativity is the establishing universal speed limit of c; the speed of light in a vacuum.
Einstein suggested that as an object approaches c its mass becomes near-infinite, as does the energy required to accelerate it. This should mean that nothing can travel faster than light. But, imagine an anti-mass particle like a tachyon, its lowest energy state would see it speeding at c. But, why would this lead to backward time travel?
That all hinges on the concept that puts the "relative" into "special relativity."
A common tool used to explain special relativity is the spacetime diagram.
Spacetime is filled with events ranging from the cosmically powerful and violent, like the supernova explosion of a distant star, or the mundane, such as the cracking of an egg on your kitchen floor. And these are mapped onto the spacetime diagram. This diagram shows as a particle whizzes through spacetime, it traces out a worldline that maps its progress.
Also filling spacetime are observers, each of whom has their own reference frame. These observers may see the events that fill spacetime occurring in different orders. Observer 1 may see event A, the supernova, occur before event B the egg crack. Observer 2 however may see event B happening before event A.
Events within an observer's light cone can be linked by a signal slower than light. (Image credit: By SVG version: K. Aainsqatsi at en.wikipediaOriginal PNG version: Stib at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.(Original text: self-made), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2210907)
Each event has a light cone associated with it. If event B falls within the lightcone of event A then the two could be causally linked. The supernova could have knocked the egg off the kitchen counter — or maybe the falling breakfast item caused the complete gravitational collapse of a dying star, somehow. That’s because in the light cone a signal traveling slower than light can link the events. The edges of the light cone represent the speed of light. Linking an event outside the light cone with one inside it requires a signal that travels faster than light.
If event A is in the light cone and event B is outside it, then the supernova and egg-related tragedy can't be causally related. But, a tachyon traveling at a speed greater than the speed of light could violate causality by linking these events.
To see why this is a problem, consider it like this. Image event A is the sending of a signal, and event B is the receiving of that signal. If that signal is traveling at the speed of light, or slower all observers in different reference frames agree that A preceded B.
But, if that signal is carried by a tachyon and thus moves faster than light, there will be reference frames that say the signal was received before it was sent. Thus, to an observer in this frame, the tachyon traveled backward in time.
One of the fundamental postulates of special relativity is that the laws of physics should be the same in all non-accelerating reference frames. That means if tachyons can violate causality and move backward in time in one reference frame, it can do it in them all.
A diagram showing how events are viewed at different times in different reference frames. (Image credit: By User:Acdx - Self-made, based on Image:Relativity_of_Simultaneity.svg, source code: en:User:Acdx/Relativity_of_Simultaneity_Animation, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5560059)
TACHYONS PARADOXES
To see how this leads to problems called paradoxes, consider two observers, Stella aboard a spacecraft orbiting Earth, and Terra based on the surface of the planet. The two are communicating by sending messages with tachyons.
This means that if Stella sends a signal to Terra which moves faster than light in Stella’s frame but backward in time in Terra’s frame. Terra then sends a reply as ordered which moves faster than light in her frame but backward in time in Stella’s frame, Stella could receive the reply before sending the original signal.
What if this response signal from Terra says "do not send any signals"? Then Stella does not send the original signal, and Terra then has nothing to respond to and never sends the tachyon signal that says "don’t send any signals."
So not only do tachyons violate causality in every frame they open the door to severe logical paradoxes.
There are suggestions as to how these paradoxes could be avoided. Of course, the most simple solution is that tachyons don’t exist.
A less draconian suggestion is that observers in different reference frames can’t tell the difference between the emission and absorption of tachyons.
That means a tachyon traveling back in time could always be interpreted as a tachyon moving forward in time because receiving a tachyon from the future always creates the same tachyon and sends it forwards in time.
Another suggestion is that tachyons aren’t like any other particle we know of, in that they don't interact and can never be detected or observed. Meaning that the tachyon communication system used by Stella and Terra in the above example can’t exist.
Along similar lines, other researchers say that tachyons can’t be controlled. The receipt and emission of tachyons just happen at random. Thus, there’s no way to send a tachyon with a causality violating message.
Aside from the fact that like other particles, they are likely incomprehensibly tiny, because tachyons always travel faster than light it isn’t possible to detect one on its approach. That’s because it’s moving faster than any associated photons.
After it passes, an observer would see the image of the tachyon split into two distinct images. These would show it simultaneously arriving in one direction and disappearing in the opposite direction.
If detecting tachyons, at least of their approach, with light is out of the picture, is there another way we could detect these faster than light particles?
Possibly. Tachyons are proposed to have an "anti-mass" but this still constitutes mass energy. That means these particles should still have some gravitational effect. It’s possible highly sensitive detectors could spot this effect.
An alternative detection method could arise from their faster-than-light nature.
While the speed of light in a vacuum c is a universal speed limit, particles have been made to travel faster than light in other mediums. When electrically charged particles are accelerated up to and beyond the speed of light in certain mediums like water, they release a form of radiation called Cherenkov radiation, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
That means that if tachyons are electrically charged, one way of detecting them would be measuring Cherenkov radiation in the near-vacuum of space.
THE POWER OF IMAGINATION IN SCIENCE
What tachyons really demonstrate is the importance of imagination in our ongoing quest to understand the universe. They may not exist, and if they do we may have no hope of ever measuring one.
But what our technology can’t capture, our minds can. We can consider the possibility of a particle that journeys back through time and what that says about the nature of time, and the Universe, and the events that fill them.
In an interview with George Sylvester Viereck published in "The Saturday Evening Post"in 1929, Albert Einstein is believed to have said: "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Discover more about Tachyons with this informative YouTube video.
Explore the possible experimental evidence for the existence of tachyons with George Mason University.
Tachyons are hypothetical particles that always travel faster than light. Until recently, they were generally regarded as entities that did not fit into the special theory of relativity. According to a new paper in the journal Physical Review D, these faster-than-light particles are ‘not only not ruled out by the theory, but allow us to understand its causal structure better.’
An AI impression of tachyons.
“Motion at speeds beyond the speed of light is one of the most controversial issues in physics,” said Professor Andrzej Dragan from the University of Warsaw and National University of Singapore and his colleagues.
“Hypothetical particles that could move at superluminal speeds, called tachyons, are the enfant terrible of modern physics.”
“Until recently, they were widely regarded as creations that do not fit into the special theory of relativity.”
“At least three reasons for the non-existence of tachyons within quantum theory were known so far,” they added.
"The first is the ground state of the tachyon field was supposed to be unstable, which would mean that such superluminal particles would form avalanches.”
“The second is a change in the inertial observer was supposed to lead to a change in the number of particles observed in his reference system, yet the existence of, say, seven particles cannot depend on who is looking at them.”
“The third reason is the energy of the superluminal particles could take on negative values.”
“The difficulties with tachyons so far had a common cause,” the physicists said.
“It turned out that the boundary conditions that determine the course of physical processes include not only the initial state but also the final state of the system.”
“To put it simply: in order to calculate the probability of a quantum process involving tachyons, it is necessary to know not only its past initial state but also its future final state.”
“Once this fact was incorporated into the theory, all the difficulties mentioned earlier completely disappeared and tachyon theory became mathematically consistent.”
“It’s a bit like Internet advertising — one simple trick can solve your problems,” Professor Dragan said.
“The idea that the future can influence the present instead of the present determining the future is not new in physics.”
“However, until now, this type of view has at best been an unorthodox interpretation of certain quantum phenomena, and this time we were forced to this conclusion by the theory itself.”
“To make room for tachyons we had to expand the state space.”
“We also predict that the expansion of the boundary conditions has its consequences: a new kind of quantum entanglement appears in the theory, mixing past and future, which is not present in conventional particle theory.”
The team’s paper also raises the question of whether tachyons described in this way are purely a mathematical possibility or whether such particles are likely to be observed one day.
“Tachyons are not only a possibility but are, in fact, an indispensable component of the spontaneous breaking process responsible for the formation of matter,” the authors said.
“This hypothesis would mean that Higgs field excitations, before the symmetry was spontaneously broken, could travel at superluminal speeds in the vacuum.”
Jerzy Paczoset al. 2024. Covariant quantum field theory of tachyons.Phys. Rev. D110 (1): 015006; doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.110.015006
This article is a version of a press-release provided by the University of Warsaw
Ancient Mars was Cool and Relatively Wet, New Study Suggests
Ancient Mars was Cool and Relatively Wet, New Study Suggests
In a new study, planetary scientists found strong similarities between soils found in Gale Crater on Mars and those of Canada’s Newfoundland, a cold subarctic climate.
X-ray amorphous material comprises 15-73 wt.% of sedimentary rocks and eolian sediments in Gale Crater. This material is variably siliceous and iron rich but aluminum poor. The presence of volatiles is consistent with the existence of incipient weathering products. To better understand the implications of this material for past aqueous conditions on Mars, Feldman et al. investigated X-ray amorphous material formation and longevity within terrestrial iron rich soils with varying ages and environmental conditions using bulk and selective dissolution methods, X-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy.
Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.
Scientists often use soil to depict environmental history, as the minerals present can tell the story of landscape evolution through time.
Understanding more about how these materials formed could help answer long-standing questions about historical conditions on the red planet.
The soils and rocks of Gale Crater provide a record of Mars’ climate between 3 and 4 billion years ago, during a time of relatively abundant water on the planet — and the same time period that saw life first appear on Earth.
“Gale Crater is a paleo lakebed — there was obviously water present. But what were the environmental conditions when the water was there?” said Dr. Anthony Feldman, a soil scientist and geomorphologist at Desert Research Institute.
“We’re never going to find a direct analog to the Martian surface, because conditions are so different between Mars and Earth. But we can look at trends under terrestrial conditions and use those to try to extrapolate to Martian questions.”
NASA’s Curiosity Rover has been investigating Gale Crater since 2011, and has found a plethora of soil materials known as X-ray amorphous materials.
These components of the soil lack the typical repeating atomic structure that defines minerals, and therefore can’t be easily characterized using traditional techniques like X-ray diffraction.
When X-rays are shot at crystalline materials like a diamond, for example, the X-rays scatter at characteristic angles based on the mineral’s internal structure.
However, X-ray amorphous material does not produce these characteristic fingerprints.
This X-ray diffraction method was used by the Curiosity Rover to demonstrate that X-ray amorphous material comprised between 15 and 73% of the soil and rock samples tested in Gale Crater.
“You can think of X-Ray amorphous materials like Jello. It’s this soup of different elements and chemicals that just slide past each other,” Dr. Feldman said.
Curiosity also conducted chemical analyses on the soil and rock samples, finding that the amorphous material was rich in iron and silica but deficient in aluminum.
Beyond the limited chemical information, scientists don’t yet understand what the amorphous material is, or what its presence implies about Mars’ historical environment.
Uncovering more information about how these enigmatic materials form and persist on Earth could help answer persistent questions about the red planet.
Dr. Feldman and his colleagues visited three locations in search of similar X-ray amorphous material: the Tablelands of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, Northern California’s Klamath Mountains, and western Nevada.
These three sites had serpentine soils that the researchers expected to be chemically similar to the X-ray amorphous material at Gale Crater: rich in iron and silicon but lacking in aluminum.
The three locations also provided a range of rainfall, snowfall, and temperature that could help provide insight into the type of environmental conditions that produce amorphous material and encourage its preservation.
At each site, the research team examined the soils using X-ray diffraction analysis and transmission electron microscopy, which allowed them to see the soil materials at a more detailed level.
The subarctic conditions of Newfoundland produced materials chemically similar to those found in Gale Crater that also lacked in crystalline structure. The soils produced in warmer climates like California and Nevada did not.
“This shows that you need the water there in order to form these materials,” Dr. Feldman said.
“But it needs to be cold, near-freezing mean annual temperature conditions in order to preserve the amorphous material in the soils.”
Amorphous material is often considered to be relatively unstable, meaning that at an atomic level, the atoms haven’t yet organized into their final, more crystalline forms.
“There’s something going on in the kinetics — or the rate of reaction — that is slowing it down so that these materials can be preserved over geologic time scales,” Dr. Feldman said.
“What we’re suggesting is that very cold, close to freezing conditions, is one particular kinetic limiting factor that allows for these materials to form and be preserved.”
“This study improves our understanding of the climate of Mars.”
“The results suggest that the abundance of this material in Gale Crater is consistent with subarctic conditions, similar to what we would see in, for instance, Iceland.”
The team’s work appears in the journal Communications Earth and Environment.
A.D. Feldman et al. 2024, Fe-rich X-ray amorphous material records past climate and persistence of water on Mars. Commun Earth Environ 5, 364; doi: 10.1038/s43247-024-01495-4
This article is based on a press-release from Desert Research Institute.
Ariane 6 Rocket’s Debut Puts Europe Back in the Launch Game
Europe’s next-generation Ariane 6 rocket rose today for the first time from its South American spaceport, ending a yearlong launch gap caused by the Ariane 5’s retirement.
The heavy-lift launch vehicle’s demonstration flight began with liftoff at 4 p.m. local time (19:00 GMT) from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, and continued with satellite deployments in orbit.
“A completely new rocket is not launched often, and success is far from guaranteed,” Josef Aschbacher, the European Space Agency’s director general, said in a statement. “I am privileged to have witnessed this historic moment when Europe’s new generation of the Ariane family lifted off – successfully – effectively reinstating European access to space.”
ESA and its partners have been working on the two-stage Ariane 6 since the early 2010s as an upgrade to the Ariane 5 series, which lofted more than 100 spacecraft (including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope) into orbit beginning in 1998. Ariane 6 development cost is estimated at nearly $4 billion.
The first Ariane 6 was originally planned for 2020, but technical issues and the COVID-19 pandemic forced delays. After last year’s final Ariane 5 mission, Europe’s launch industry could offer only the Vega small-lift launch vehicle, leaving a gap in the medium- to heavy-lift market.
The market for the Ariane 6 is dramatically different from what it was when the Ariane 5 entered service more than a quarter-century ago. Thanks to SpaceX and other commercial ventures, rocket reusability is becoming the standard in the industry — raising questions about how competitive non-reusable rockets like the Ariane 6 can be.
ArianeGroup, a joint venture between Airbus and Safran, is counting on Ariane 6’s success. But in January, The Financial Times quoted Aschbacher as saying “there is no guarantee” that ArianeGroup would continue to be Europe’s launch company of choice.
The Ariane 6 line features a modular design that can be adapted for missions to low Earth orbit or to deep space. For today’s mission, known as VA262, the rocket’s core stage was augmented by two side-mounted solid rocket boosters. Another configuration calls for four strap-on boosters for heavy-lift missions. The four-booster configuration can deliver up to 21.6 metric tons to low Earth orbit.
An overview of Europe’s new rocket Ariane 6. Credit: ESA
Today’s launch sent the Ariane 6’s upper stage to an altitude of about 600 kilometers (373 miles). Nine satellites were deployed, and five onboard experiments were activated.
Another objective involved demonstrating the upper stage’s ability to relight its Vinci engine for orbital adjustments and deorbiting. Two experimental re-entry capsules were supposed to be released as the mission wound down. But in an update posted to the X social-media platform, ESA said the technology demonstration phase showed “an unexpected result which will only affect the end of the mission.”
During a follow-up briefing, mission managers said the upper stage’s auxiliary power unit suffered an anomaly that caused a premature engine shutdown. As a result, the re-entry capsules were not released, and the upper stage remained in orbit.
The next Ariane 6 mission is scheduled to put France’s CSO-3 spy satellite into orbit later this year. About 30 Ariane 6 launches are said to be booked already, including 18 launches for Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites. Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël said today’s end-of-mission anomaly would have “no consequence on the next launches.”
“We are perfectly on track now to make a second launch this year,” Israël said.
A Hopping Robot Could Explore Europa Using Locally Harvested Water
Various forms of hopping robots have crept into development for us[e in different space exploration missions. We’ve reported on their use on asteroids and even our own Moon. But a study funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) in 2018 planned a mission to a type of world where hopping may not be as noticeable an advantage—Europa.
The mission, developed by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Purdue University, and Honeybee Robotics, is known as the Steam Propelled Autonomous Retrieval Robot for Ocean Worlds, or SPARROW. It’s about the size and shape of a soccer ball, with the logic, power, and control systems inside a spherical outer hollow shell.
SPARROW wouldn’t be able to operate on its own, however. It would require a lander to deposit it onto the surface and serve as a refueling and sample collection storage base. Europa Clipper, the only currently planned NASA mission to the icy moon, would have been good for hitching a ride, but its lack of a lander made it unsuitable for SPARROW.
Budget constraints are always a problem for innovative missions – as Fraser explains with Dr. Manasvi Lingam.
However, the hopping robot itself is well suited for the environment in Europa. Its designers intended to make it “terrain agnostic,” meaning it could traverse even the harshest terrain the icy moon could throw at it. These would include penitentes, shards of ice that could be meters tall, and difficult for ground-based robots to traverse.
SPARROW could fly over them, collect interesting samples, and return to the lander to refuel and deposit them. Then, it could go out again in a different direction. To model this system architecture, the JPL team spent Phase I trying to determine the best propulsion system for the robot and modeling control algorithms for the flights.
First, let’s tackle the propulsion system. The lander accompanying SPARROW would have to mine ice off the moon’s surface, then heat it and store it as water. When SPARROW returned from a hop, it would use the water to refuel. Five different propulsion methods were considered as part of the study. Still, the best turned out to be a “hot water thruster,” where SPARROW would internally heat the water supplied by the lander, then eject that out in a burst of propulsive force to launch the robot off the surface.
Exploring the surface of Europa is only one part of its mystery – as Fraser explains.
The second major part of the paper was controlling that propulsion. Trajectory correction is critical to mission success, but in this case, the designers believe that no matter where the robot ends up, it will be able to collect a sample and return to the lander. This is due to its gimballed design, which allows the robot to consistently orient correctly, even after bouncing along a frozen surface for a while.
There is still much work to do before the mission is ready to go, though. Some of the most pressing questions are how to stop ice from forming in the robot’s propulsion nozzle and throughout its structural cage. Such blockages could easily throw off any existing trajectory calculations and theoretically immobilize the hopper entirely if they were severe enough.
However, no work is planned to solve those problems for now as the project has yet to receive Phase II funding from NIAC, and work on it appears to have stalled. Dr. Gareth Meirion-Griffith, the primary investigator on the project, has moved on from JPL to take a job at Collins Aerospace. Even so, someday, the author’s ideas might be integrated into a Europa lander mission—we’ll have to wait and see.
Ok, this is from 2021 in Las Vegas. I took a few screenshots of this strange dark UFO moving across the sky that Franc Pierre recorded and wow, it sent chills down my spine. This was not what I thought I would find. It's a rare jellyfish UFO and it looks bio-mechanical in form. Meaning it's part biological and part machine. It even changes shape as it moves...and at one point it looked like a dragon with its head looking outward...in the last screenshot in my video. Scary looking stuff, but 100% real. As I said, AI doesn't prove a UFO is real or not, it only cleans up the photos, so we as researchers can analyze them. But thats why I'm here...to tell you if this is or isn't a real jellyfish UFO from my decades of experience. Yes...it is real.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
