'There was no denying it': Retired fighter pilot and mother-of-three who saw Tic-Tac UFOs in 2004 says Navy crew kept quiet due to fears of being labeled 'kooky'

• Alex Dietrich, 41, was on patrol near San Diego in 2004 when she saw a Tic Tac-shaped UFO appear flying at pace and erratically
• When her Navy commander went into for a closer look, the object began mimicking its movements and then disappeared
• The mother of three and former Lt. Cmdr. says she feels a 'duty and obligation' to speak out about what she saw 
• She says other pilots were fearful of speaking about UFOs as they would be dismissed for being 'kooky' 
• The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is to release its report about unidentified aerial phenomena sightings by military personnel next month

By Bevan Hurley For Dailymail.Com

A former fighter pilot who saw Tic Tac-shaped UFOs in 2004 says her Navy colleagues stayed quiet for fear of being labeled 'kooky'.

Mother-of-three Alex Dietrich, 41, says she feels a 'duty' to speak up about her close encounter with unidentified aerial phenomena because she sees it as a vital matter of national security.

Dietrich appeared on a recent 60 Minutes special on unexplained aerial phenomena and also speaks regularly to House and Senate enquiries into UFOs, and says military pilots fear the stigma of being associated with UFOs.

'I do feel a duty and obligation,' the former Lt. Cmdr. told the Washington Post when asked why she was open to talking about her experiences, unlike many of her former colleagues.

'I was in a taxpayer-funded aircraft, doing my job as a military officer,' she told the Post. 

'Citizens have questions. It's not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will.'

The Director of National Intelligence and other agencies is due to release a highly-anticipated report on UFOs to Congress next month.

Former fighter pilot Alex Dietrich, 41, was on patrol near San Diego in 2004 when she saw a Tic Tac-shaped UFO appear flying at pace and erratically

When her Navy commander Dave Fravor went into for a closer look, the object began mimicking its movements and then disappeared

Dietrich was one of six Super Hornet pilots who saw the object, but says many fear being labeled 'kooky' for speaking out about what they saw

Last April, the infamous 'Tic Tac' incident was one of three videos released by the Pentagon which showed footage of 'unexplained aerial phenomena' taken by US Navy pilots.

At least six pilots, including Dietrich, encountered the mysterious object as it flew at speed over the Pacific near Mexico on November 14, 2004. The way it moved has led to speculation that it was a UFO and it has become a key piece of evidence for those who believe in extraterrestrials.

Recalling that day, Dietrich says she had recently got her stripes as a fighter pilot and was on a regular training flight in her Super Hornet with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group when she noticed an unfamiliar object flying at speed and erratically.

A video of the encounter, verified by the Pentagon as authentic, showed the astonished reactions of the pilots as they watch the objects fly at great speed and with sudden changes in direction. 

Her commanding officer Dave Fravor told Dietrich to stay back while he went closer to investigate. The object began to mimic his movements, and then flew off and disappeared.

These unidentified vehicles were reported to have descended 80,000 feet in less than a second. 

Seconds later, he said, it reappeared on the the USS Princeton's radar 60 miles away. 

Dietrich tweeted recently: 'Some days your boss asks you to swab the deck. Some days he asks you to keep high cover while he spars with a UFO.' 

While recounting the incident to 60 Minutes, Dietrich said other fighter pilots had struggled with how much to reveal to the public about what they had seen. 

'Over beers we've said, 'Hey man, if I saw this solo, I don't know that I would have come back and said anything,'' Dietrich said during the interview. 

'Because it sounds so crazy when I say it.'  

Now a tutor George Washington University and the US Naval Academy, Dietrich told 60 Minutes: 'I felt the vulnerability of not having anything to defend ourselves. And then I felt confused when it disappeared.'

Dietrich told the Washington Post that people had got in contact over the years with her wanting to know more about what she had seen.   

'I just was an eyewitness to something in the course of my normal duties . . . that somehow makes me a portal.'

Dietrich says she had recently got her stripes as a fighter pilot and was on a regular training flight in her Super Hornet with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group when she noticed an unfamiliar object flying at speed and erratically on November 14 2004 

 'Over beers we've said, 'Hey man, if I saw this solo, I don't know that I would have come back and said anything,'' Dietrich said during the interview. 'Because it sounds so crazy when I say it'

'Some days your boss asks you to swab the deck. Some days he asks you to keep high cover while he spars with a UFO' she tweeted recently

Why are people suddenly interested, Dietrich wondered in a tweet after the 60 Minutes special aired

The mother of three now teaches at the US Naval Academy and George Washington University

In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo, Sean Cahil - a retired US Navy Chief Master-at-Arms on the USS Princeton (pictured) - spoke about the sighting of a UFO that has become known as the 'Tic-Tac', because of its shape

Marco Rubio says many lawmakers in Congress 'giggle' when the topic of UFOs comes up, but that the national security threat needed to be taken seriously

Ahead of next month's blockbuster intelligence report to Congress on military sightings  of UFOs, retired Navy officers have been warning of the dire threat the mystery objects could pose.  

'The technology that we witnessed with the Tic Tac was something we would not have been able to defend our forces against at the time,' Sean Cahil - a retired US Navy Chief Master-at-Arms - told CNN's Chris Cuomo of one recently-released video.

'What we saw in the Tic Tac is the five observables. [These] indicate a technology that outstrips our arsenal by at least 100 to 1000 years at the moment.' 

Footage released recently week confirmed as real by the Pentagon appeared to show a UFO buzz a United States stealth ship near San Diego before diving under the water.

Commenting on the video, an ex-navy officer said that the technology on display is 100 to 1000 years ahead of that possessed by the United States.

'What we're seeing are a number of distinct and different things,' he said.

'Sometimes we're seeing a 50-foot object that can travel at hypersonic speeds and seemingly go into orbit or come down from altitudes of potentially above 100,000 feet.'

He added that the social stigma around reporting such events has for a long time kept witnesses of such phenomena quiet.  

The Department of Defense's watchdog is also expected to examine how the Pentagon has handled UFO reports, with a source telling CNN earlier this month that there will be more enquiries announced in the near future.

The Pentagon released three short videos from infrared cameras In April 2020 that appeared to show flying objects moving quickly, after the veracity of the videos had been acknowledged in September 2019 ahead of their official release.

It came as Senator Marco Rubio warned that UFOs pose a serious threat to national security and can no longer be laughed off by lawmakers. 

'Some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic and some kinda, you know, giggle when you bring it up. But I don't think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question.'

Rubio said the possibility that drones or aircraft from a rival military power - or from another civilization - were entering US airspace without permission should be getting more attention and resources.

'I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously,' Rubio told 60 Minutes.

'Tic Tac' UFO: US Navy pilot made visual contact with the object on November 14, 2004 

At least six Super Hornet pilots made visual or instrument contact with the UFO on November 14, 2004.

The encounters, which are documented in numerous interviews with first-hand witnesses, remain a mystery, and the object's incredible speed and movements have led to speculation that it was extraterrestrial in origin.

The original FLIR video from the USS Nimitz encounters leaked online as early as 2007.

Witnesses say that clips of the video had been circulated widely on the Navy's intranet - used to communicate between ships in the carrier group - and an unknown sailor in the group likely first leaked it.

The USS Nimitz, a US Navy aircraft carrier, was at the center of a bizarre UFO sighting saga in 2004.

The clip became one of the most-touted pieces of evidence in the UFO community when the Pentagon confirmed its authenticity in 2017.

In January, Chad Underwood, the former Navy aviator who shot the famous leaked video clip, broke his silence in an interview with New York Magazine.

He said the oblong, wingless 'Tic Tac' shaped object was spotted off the coast of Mexico over the Pacific.

He also revealed that for about two weeks, the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Princeton, part of Carrier Strike Group 11, had been tracking mysterious aircraft intermittently on an advanced AN/SPY-1B passive radar.

The radar contacts were so inexplicable that the system was even shut down and restarted to to check for bugs - but operators continued to track the unknown aircraft.

Then on November 14, Commander David Fravor says he was flying in an F/A-18F Super Hornet when he made visual contact with the object, which seemed to dive below the water, resurface, and speed out of sight when he tried to approach it.

As Fravor landed on the deck of the Nimitz, Underwood was just gearing up to take off on his own training run.

Fravor told Underwood about the bizarre encounter, and urged Underwood to keep his eyes open.

He recalls how he suddenly saw a blip on his radar before tracking it on his FLIR camera.

'The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving,' Underwood told the magazine.

'And what I mean by 'erratic' is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I've ever encountered before flying against other air targets.'

Underwood said the object wasn't obeying the laws of physics and dropped from 50,000 feet altitude to 100 feet in seconds, which he says, 'isn't possible'. He added that he saw no signs of an engine heat plume or any sign of propulsion.

The pilot refuses to speculate as to whether the object is an alien spacecraft or not, however.

'That's not my job. But I saw something. And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-08-2024 om 21:34 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE * Witnesses to 2004 Tic-Tac-shaped UFO sighting reveal shocking cover-up of infamous USS Nimitz encounter

•  READ MORE: Retired fighter pilot and mother-of-three who saw Tic-Tac UFOs in 2004 says Navy crew kept quiet due to fears of being labeled 'kooky

By Josh Boswell and Chris Sharp For Dailymail.Com

Witnesses to an infamous 2004 UFO incident reveal 'Tic-Tacs' spotted flying at incredible speeds by top Navy pilots off the California coast were also picked up on sonar speeding underwater.

Two Navy officers told DailyMail.com that masses of high-quality radar, sonar and other data of the strange craft were sent to a Naval base on shore – as they accuse the government of a cover up after the Pentagon claimed the data is nowhere to be found.

A source who investigated the incident for the Department of Defense told DailyMail.com that they were briefed about sonar data from a nearby submarine that tracked the UFOs moving at more than 460 mph underwater during the shocking November 2004 encounter.

Witnesses to an infamous 2004 Tic-Tac UFO incident have given shocking new information about the infamous incident to DailyMail.com. They include Kevin Day who was Senior Chief Operations Specialist aboard the USS Princeton at the time

Sean Cahill was a Chief Master-At-Arms on the Princeton, and from its deck he says he saw lights in the sky matching the movements of the objects Day saw on his radar

What he found was a roughly 40ft white object with no windows or wings, shaped like a Tic-Tac, flitting about above the sea that was roiling below it, disturbed by something large submerged beneath the surface.

Commander Fravor told Congress last year that as he circled the object, it turned to mirror his movements, then shot off past him at thousands of miles per hour, somehow stopping a second later at a secret pre-designated rendezvous point 60 miles away, that only he and a handful of Navy staff on his ship were given ahead of their training exercise.

Fellow F-18 pilot Lieutenant Chad Underwood then flew out and caught the object on video – footage that was published by the New York Times in 2017, igniting a firestorm of intrigue about the government's knowledge of UFOs.

Kevin Day was Senior Chief Operations Specialist aboard the USS Princeton at the time, in charge of monitoring the skies with radar to protect the Nimitz.

He told DailyMail.com that in the 10 days prior to the incident, he saw similar objects on his radar, behaving inexplicably.

F-18 pilot Lieutenant Chad Underwood

Day said groups of about 10 objects were repeatedly detected 80,000ft above them, where the Earth's atmosphere becomes space, dropping down to 20,000ft in less than a second, then following the ships by flying through the air at a relatively leisurely 115mph, before zooming off towards Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico where they seemed to disappear under the sea.

'They originated from sub-earth orbit. They came in groups of five to 10 at a time. If you added up all the groups, it was about 100 contacts,' Day said.

'The very first group had 10 objects. They sat right around 80,000ft or so, off the east coast of Catalina Island. They just sat there for a time. 

'Then they would drop down as a group, instantly, down to between 20,000 and 28,000ft off the coast of Catalina Island, about 10 miles east of it.

'The really weird thing was, a single object would leave that group and travel very slowly right over the top of us, at between 20-28,000ft at about 100 knots, which was really slow.

'It would just track above us, and then the next one would depart, and the next one,' he added. 'All the groups did that.

'All 100 of them, to the best of my knowledge, disappeared in the same spot in the sky. And that spot was about 60 miles north of an island off the coast of Mexico called Guadalupe Island.

'Everyone was looking at me like, what is this? And I didn't have good answers.

'We agreed just to track and report. Of course we made our intentions known to the admiral on the Nimitz.'

The 'Tic-Tac' UFOs disappeared from sight about 60 miles north of Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico, according to witnesses who spoke with DailyMail.com

A screenshot from the video of a Navy pilot tracking the space craft over the Pacific. US military personnel in California believe they saw UFOs off the coast on November 14, 2004

The story has become one of the strongest examples of other-worldly craft routinely encountered by the military in US airspace.

But the story gets stranger from there.

DailyMail.com can reveal that unknown objects were also allegedly recorded zooming around underwater during the incident.

A senior sonar officer on board the USS Princeton at the time told comrades that while Day was seeing objects dropping from space and Fravor was dogfighting with the 'Tic-Tac', his team were picking up sonar returns for objects in the water.

This shocking revelation marks a new element to the infamous story, 20 years after it occurred.

Sean Cahill was a Chief Master-At-Arms on the Princeton at the time of the sighting

Sean Cahill was a Chief Master-At-Arms on the Princeton, and from its deck he says he saw lights in the sky matching the movements of the objects Day saw on his radar.

He says a senior sonar officer on the Princeton later told him about the underwater data.

'I was shopping at the local Navy commissary about a mile from my house. I bumped into a former shipmate who worked in the sonar department and was active during the exercise.

'He said that they were practically all around us. He goes, 'Man, we were tracking things underwater, just as much as they were tracking them in the air during that exercise.'

The top sonar tech, who asked not to be named, did not dispute the story when contacted by DailyMail.com, but declined to elaborate.

A source who worked as a senior official in defense intelligence told DailyMail.com that they investigated the incident several years later, and were briefed on sonar data recorded by a US submarine in the area of the Nimitz carrier strike group.

The source said that the sub's sonar caught the UFOs traveling at more than 400 knots, or 460 mph, through the water in the vicinity of the ships.

Day said that the ships in the group built a three-dimensional picture from combining their sophisticated radar and sonar, and that all the data was combined and sent to a Naval base in San Diego.

'We shared all the combat information, put it on a data link and sent it back to the beach. So anybody who was interested in these things, they could see our data,' he said.

'There's underwater stations called SOSUS. And we also have towed array. So we have those three sonar devices going off for each ship. All the ships are feeding the composite picture. So we have a really good three-dimensional picture underneath the water.'

Sean Cahill was a Chief Master-At-Arms on the Princeton at the time of the TIc-Tac UFO sighting, and from its deck he says he saw lights in the sky matching the movements of the objects Day saw on his radar

Warships guarding the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz as well as a submarine in the area spotted a sttrange object on radar in the Pacific in November 2004

Cahill has spoken openly about the 2004 UFO sighting before – including during a 2001 appearance on Fox News 

He said these records would routinely be kept for decades.

But the Pentagon official charged with investigating UFO incidents claimed that he couldn't find any data on the Nimitz incident.

'My opinion is that one is going to remain unresolved because there is no data. There is no radar data,' Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the recently-retired head of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), said in a March 2024 interview.

'I think the Tic-Tac is so far back in time, there's no data. We went and looked for all of it.

I asked around for it.'

The seminal case was also glossed over in a historical report released by AARO, the Pentagon's UFO investigation office, on March 6 2024.

Cahill and Day say Kirkpatrick is wrong, and could even be deliberately trying to hide the truth.

'Those things are available for decades of the most mundane events that happened and everyday operations, they should be there for all these all the vessels that were there. But they're all missing,' said Cahill.

'It seems like purposeful obfuscation to me. It seems like a dereliction of duty for them not to investigate what is the most famous, well-documented case of UAP activity that we have, with the most amount of witnesses, the most amount of assets placed on it. And it's public now.

'They completely ignored it.'

'I think he should give all his money back that he took in salary,' Day said.

They said Kirkpatrick should have also had access to high fidelity radar and satellite data from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) that could have picked up the Tic-Tac and other UFOs tracked by the warships in November 2004.

Others on the ship at the time say that tapes with data of the incident were erased and taken by mysterious visitors in flight suits.

Petty Officer Gary Voorhis told engineering news site Popular Mechanics in 2019: 'These two guys show up on a helicopter, which wasn't uncommon, but shortly after they arrived, maybe 20 minutes, I was told by my chain of command to turn over all the data recordings for the AEGIS [radar] system.

'They even told me to erase everything that's in the shop—even the blank tapes.'

The men were spotted returning with 'a bunch of bags', another witness on the ship, Leading Petty Officer Ryan Weigelt, told Popular Mechanics.

Reports of objects moving rapidly and in inexplicable ways underwater – as they allegedly were around the Nimitz in 2004 – are less well-known frontier in the UFO topic.

But they are increasingly coming under scrutiny, and now even have their own name: Unidentified Submerged Objects, or USOs.

Retired Navy Commander David Fravor testifies before a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing about UFOs in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC in 2023

UFO expert and author Richard Dolan is set to release a book on the topic this year called The History of USOs: The True Story of Anomalous Craft in Earth's Bodies of Water.

It documents more than 600 cases, including extraordinary incidents of objects picked up by submarine radar moving faster than torpedoes and executing impossible right-angle turns, hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean.

'For every one of these USO stories, there's probably close to 100 you don't know. It's often sheer luck that they come out,' Dolan told DailyMail.com.

'One of the shocking things that I've seen in my last two years of USO research, is the number of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers encountering objects that were actually able to disable them for certain periods of time. I have at least 10.

'If you're the US Navy, I can't think of anything more important to you than your fleet of aircraft carriers,' he added. 'Anything that's going to shut down those aircraft carriers is going to be of supreme importance.

'Ronald Moultrie [former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security] spoke to the Senate a couple of years ago, saying we're confident that if we encounter these UAP we can identify and, if necessary, mitigate them.

'That's such a joke on every level. We know full well that this is a major problem, and they're not mitigating anything.'

Since retiring from government, former Rear Admiral and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administrator Tim Gallaudet has revealed that he was briefed on similar incidents of submarines picking up UFOs on sonar moving at rapid speeds underwater.

In a statement to DailyMail.com, Gallaudet cautioned that he has not spoken with any of the sonar operators involved in the 2004 tic tac incident, but added that in general: ‘We have to investigate undersea and transmedium UAP in the same way we do other UAP to get a more complete understanding of the phenomenon.’

 { https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-08-2024 om 21:19 geschreven door peter  

Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes Contain Much More Water than Previously Thought

Water is an important component of exoplanets, with its distribution, that is, whether at the surface or deep inside, fundamentally influencing the planetary properties. According to new research, for Earth-size planets and planets more massive than 6 times the mass of Earth, the majority of water resides deep in the cores of planets.

The majority of water can be stored deep within the exoplanet’s core and mantle, and not at the surface.

Image credit: Sci.News.

“Most of the exoplanets known today are located close to their star,” said ETH Zurich’s Professor Caroline Dorn.

“This means they primarily comprise hot worlds of oceans of molten magma that have not yet cooled to form a solid mantle of silicate bedrock like the Earth.”

“Water dissolves very well in these magma oceans — unlike, for instance, carbon dioxide, which quickly outgasses and rises into the atmosphere.”

“The iron core is located beneath the molten mantle of silicates. So how is the water distributed between the silicates and the iron?”

“The iron core takes time to develop. A large share of the iron is initially contained in the hot magma soup in the form of droplets.”

“The water sequestered in this soup combines with these iron droplets and sinks with them to the core. The iron droplets behave like a lift that is conveyed downwards by the water.”

Until now this behavior had only been known to be the case for moderate pressures of the sort that also prevail in the Earth.

It was not known what happens in the case of larger planets with higher pressure interior conditions.

“This is one of the key results of our study,” Professor Dorn said.

“The larger the planet and the greater its mass, the more the water tends to go with the iron droplets and become integrated in the core.”

“Under certain circumstances, iron can absorb up to 70 times more water than silicates.”

“However, owing to the enormous pressure at the core, the water no longer takes the form of water molecules but is present in hydrogen and oxygen.”

This study was triggered by investigations of the Earth’s water content, which yielded a surprising result four years ago: the oceans on the Earth’s surface only contain a small fraction of our planet’s overall water.

The content of more than 80 of the Earth’s oceans could be hidden in its interior.

This is shown by simulations calculating how water behaves under conditions of the kind that prevailed when the Earth was young. Experiments and seismological measurements are accordingly compatible.

The new findings concerning the distribution of water in planets have dramatic consequences for the interpretation of astronomical observation data.

Using their telescopes in space and on the Earth, astronomers can under certain conditions measure the weight and size of an exoplanet.

They use these calculations to draw up mass-radius diagrams that permit conclusions to be drawn about the planet’s composition.

“If in doing so — as has been the case so far — the solubility and distribution of water are ignored, the volume of water can be dramatically underestimated by up to ten times,” Professor Dorn said.

“Planets are much more water-abundant than previously assumed.”

Water distribution is also important if we wish to understand how planets form and develop. The water that has sunk to the core remains trapped there forever.

However, the water dissolved in the magma ocean of the mantle can degas and rise to the surface during mantle cooling.

“So if we find water in a planet’s atmosphere, there is probably a great deal more in its interior,” Professor Dorn said.

Water is one of the preconditions for life to develop. There has long been speculation about the potential habitability of water-rich super-Earths.

Then calculations suggested that too much water could be hostile to life. The argument was that in these water worlds a layer of exotic high-pressure ice would prevent the exchange of vital substances at the interface between the ocean and the planet’s mantle.

The current study reaches a different conclusion: planets with deep water layers are likely to be a rare occurrence as most of the water on super-Earths is not located on the surface, as has been assumed until now, but is trapped within the core.

This leads the astronomers to assume that even planets with a relatively high water content could have the potential to develop Earth-like habitable conditions.

“Their study thus casts a new light on the potential existence of water-abundant worlds that could support life,” the authors said.

• The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
• H. Luo et al. The interior as the dominant water reservoir in super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. Nat Astron, published online August 20, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02347-z

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

24-08-2024 om 17:57 geschreven door peter  

Cretaceous Amber Fossils Shed New Light on Evolutionary Origin of Tardigrades

Tardigrades are a diverse group of microscopic invertebrates widely known for their extreme survival capabilities. Molecular clocks suggest that tardigrades diverged from other panarthropods (arthropods, tardigrades, velvet worms and lobopodians) before the Cambrian period, but their fossil record is extremely sparse. Now, paleontologists have described a new species of tardigrade and redescribed a previously known species, Beorn leggi, both from Canadian Cretaceous-aged amber.

Artistic reconstruction of Beorn leggi (top) and Aerobius dactylus (bottom) in a hypothetical fossilization environment.

Image credit: Franz Anthony.

First discovered in 1773, tardigrades are a diverse group of microscopic invertebrates that are best known for their ability to survive extreme conditions.

Also known as water bears or moss piglets, these creatures can live for up to 60 years, and grow to a maximum size of 0.5 mm, best seen under a microscope.

They are able to survive for up to 30 years without food or water, for a few minutes at temperatures as low as minus 272 degrees Celsius or as high as 150 degrees Celsius, and minus 20 degrees Celsius for decades.

Tardigrades withstand pressures from virtually 0 atm in space up to 1,200 atm at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and are also resistant to radiation levels up to 5,000-6,200 Gy.

They survive by entering a state of suspended animation called biostasis, using proteins that form gels inside of cells and slow down life processes.

“Tardigrades are microscopic invertebrates characterized by a compact body plan with four pairs of typically claw-bearing lobopodous legs that are closely related to onychophorans and euarthropods as members of Panarthropoda,” said Harvard University Ph.D. candidate Marc Mapalo and colleagues.

“Tardigrades are popularly known for the cryptobiotic ability of some species that allow them to survive extreme conditions, such as space vacuum, ionizing radiation, and low subzero temperatures, as well as their worldwide distribution in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats.”

“Despite their ubiquitous nature in the present-day biosphere, tardigrades have a notoriously scarce fossil record, which limits the study of their macroevolution including the origin of their body plan, and the timing of their terrestrialization and acquisition of cryptobiotic capabilities.”

“Currently, there are only four known crown-group tardigrade fossils, all of which are preserved as amber inclusions, but only two of them have well-established taxonomic positions relative to extant tardigrades.”

Aerobius dactylus.

Image credit: Mapalo et al., doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-06643-2.

In their study, the authors looked at a piece of amber found in Canada in the 1960s that contains the known fossil tardigrade Beorn leggi and another presumed tardigrade that couldn’t be substantively described at the time.

Using confocal laser microscopy, a method usually employed for studying cell biology, they were able to examine the tiny structures of the fossil tardigrades in stunning detail.

The study provides not only a definitive classification of Beorn leggi in the tardigrade family tree, but the identification of a new species: Aerobius dactylus.

“Both of them are found in the same piece of amber that dates to the Cretaceous period, which means that these water bears lived alongside dinosaurs,” said Dr. Javier Ortega-Hernández, also from Harvard University.

“The images of Beorn leggi show seven well-preserved claws, with the claws that curve toward the body being smaller than those curving away from it, a pattern found in modern-day tardigrades.”

“The second, previously unidentified specimen, had claws of similar length on each of its first three pairs of legs, but longer outer claws on its fourth set of legs.”

Both species serve as critical calibration points for what’s called molecular clock analysis, which help scientists estimate the timing of key evolutionary events.

For example, the latest findings suggest that modern tardigrades likely diverged during the Cambrian period over 500 million years ago.

The study also sheds light on the origin of the remarkable ability of tardigrades to survive extreme conditions by entering a state of stasis.

“The study estimates that this survival mechanism likely evolved during the mid to Late Paleozoic, which may have played a crucial role in helping tardigrades endure the end-Permian mass extinction, one of the most severe extinction events in Earth’s history,” Dr. Ortega-Hernández said.

The results appear in the journal Communications Biology.

M.A. Mapalo et al. 2024. Cretaceous amber inclusions illuminate the evolutionary origin of tardigrades. Commun Biol 7, 953; doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-06643-2

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

24-08-2024 om 17:50 geschreven door peter  

AI Focused UFO Behind Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Jan 2016, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Jan 2016
Location of sighting: behind Nellis AFB, Nevada, USA

 

Guys, I decided to use ai to focus this old sighting from 2016 and wow it blew my mind! The detail is amazing, but I have to admit, I have never seen anything like it. This is different, it's unique unlike anything ever. And it's flying slowly over top secret USAF land that is dangerous to enter.

Scott C. Waring

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

24-08-2024 om 17:42 geschreven door peter  

AI Focused Sunken Shipwreck Off Wisteria Island, Florida Keys, UFO Sighting News. 4K HD.

Hey all, I was asked by many followers of mine on Youtube to use my ai focusing program on something different. So here we go. This is a ship I discovered in the Florida Keys, USA back in 2023. Watch the video, see for yourself if ai is capable of focusing all photos or just human faces. The proof is in the pudding. 

Scott C. Waring 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

24-08-2024 om 17:37 geschreven door peter  

AI corrects three UFO photos from 1927, 1957, 1958, two military! UAP Sighting News.

Please hit subscribe, like and tell me your thoughts about it, Thanks, Scott. 

1. 1927 at Cave Junction, Oregon, USA 
2. Sept 1957 at Edwards AFB, California, USA 
3. Jan 16, 1958 Trindade Island, Brazil

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

24-08-2024 om 17:33 geschreven door peter  

The world is full of mysterious places, and Vottovaara Mountain in Russia's Republic of Karelia is one of them. This site has been revered for thousands of years by ancient Saami tribes and shamans, who considered it a sacred place surrounded with powerful energy. 

Image credit: Universe Inside You

Vottovaara is home to numerous strange megalithic structures and ruins that many believe couldn't have formed naturally. Among these are around 1,600 sacred stones, known as "seids," arranged in a puzzling pattern. These stones, often unusually shaped, are precariously balanced on small rocks in ways that defy simple explanations. While scientists suggest that this was the result of natural processes during the Ice Age, the sheer number and precision of these balanced stones challenge the idea that they occurred by chance. 

Another intriguing feature of Vottovaara is a structure referred to as "the well," which locals believe to be an ancient, man-made water reservoir. 

As you climb Vottovaara, you'll notice an eerie transformation in the trees. None of the trees on the summit are older than a few decades, and while young pines and firs start growing normally, they soon begin to twist and deform in bizarre ways. This phenomenon is thought to be caused by some unknown energy affecting the trees. 

Known as Death Mountain, Vottovaara also is believed to be connected to ancient spirits that are said to inhabit the area, adding to its aura of mystery.

  

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

24-08-2024 om 17:28 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE:  Only people with high IQ can solve stargazer test in 30 seconds

By Nikki Main Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

An eye-popping video of seven suns taken from a hospital in China has captured the attention and baffled viewers around the world.

A woman was recording the sun’s descent over the horizon when something spectacular occurred - the image showed more than one sun in the sky.

However, the minute-long video which seemed like a cosmic miracle was actually an optical illusion created by the glass window through which it was filmed.

The phenomenon was caused by the light refracting through the window’s layered glass.

A woman in China captured an image of what appeared to be seven suns in the sky. The image was caused by refracted light through the paned glass window

The video was captured from the 11th floor of a hospital in Chengdu, China southwest of Sichuan on August 18, showing the sun duplicated with varying levels of intensity.

The woman who reportedly captured the video, known as Wang, said viewers were transfixed by the surreal display, according to Jam Press, as many have offered theories about how the phenomenon occurred.

‘This happened because of a magnetic field glitch that made parallel universes visibly manifest,’ one person wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.

‘The Cosmic Bureau has fixed the issue, and those responsible have been reprimanded,’ they added.

Read More

• NASA's James Webb snaps two galaxies coming together to form image of a beloved animal 

Others argued on Reddit that the fragmented suns were a sign of ‘immense pollution’ in China and another person wrote: ‘The truth about global warming has finally been revealed.

Meanwhile, one person simply joked: ‘Will the real Sun shady please rise up?’ in a nod to rapper Eminem’s famed hit ‘The Real Slim Shady.’

However, one commenter did correctly address the question of how a video showed seven suns, writing: ‘This is caused by the reflection/refraction in glass in a multi-pane window. Light from the sun bounces between layers causing the distinct visual separation of the reflections.’

Similar to how you would see a reflection in a mirror, the light refracted and reflected off the layered glass, with each layer creating another copy of the image.

Except for the brightest sun in the center, which is the real one, the others are part of the optical illusion.

Although there is a scientific explanation for the seven suns, some people still preferred to believe that the spectacle fell under the story of Hou Yi.

In Chinese mythology, Hou Yi was portrayed as the god of archery who was sent from the Heavens to help humans.

He is said to have stopped 10 suns from burning up the earth and according to the tale, shot them down with his magic bows and arrows.

The tenth sun begged for its life and agreed to separate the day from the night as punishment for attempting to burn up the earth.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-08-2024 om 17:22 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE*Scientists demand the Shroud of Turin to be re-analyzed amid growing evidence it could be authentic

• READ MORE:  New blood analysis of the Shroud of Turin supports the Bible

By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com

Scientists are calling for a new analysis of the Shroud of Turin amid a seemingly growing body of evidence that challenges the idea it's a fake.

There are also claims that bad data was used in a landmark 1988 UK study which found the shroud was a Medieval forgery and not the cloth Jesus was buried in.

A new review by researchers from France and Italy has revisited those 30-year-old findings and claims to have discovered discrepancies in the data which were not made public and raise doubts about the definitiveness of the results.

Tristan Casabianca, a French independent researcher, who made the find, told DailyMail.com that his findings do not confirm the shroud is older or the burial cloth used to lay Jesus to rest.

But Casabianca - who was an atheist until he began investigating the shroud 20 years ago - said those factors could not be ruled out 'without a re-analysis.' 

The research in question is a 1988 study that conducted radiocarbon dating on a piece of the shroud. Pictured are the sample containers that held strips of the cloth

Graphic designer Otangelo Grasso created a progression of what Jesus may have looked like based on the shroud image

The 1988 study used a technique known as carbon dating to determine the age of the controversial Shroud of Turin. 

The team determined with '95 percent confidence' the relic was manufactured sometime between 1260 and 1390 AD, long after the time of Christ's resurrection. 

The conclusion was reached after analyses performed on a corner of the ancient fabric by three different labs - at the universities of Arizona, Zürich and Oxford.

Read More

EXCLUSIVE

•  Atheist who set out to prove the Shroud of Turin was fake reveals why he's now 'convinced' it's the cloth Jesus was buried in 

But after obtaining the raw data, Casabianca found the results varied by decades.

One of Zürich's estimates in the Nature study said the cloth was up to 733 years old, but 595 years in the raw data.

Oxford's shroud sample was between 730 and 795 years old, but the raw data featured estimates that were off by up to 55 years.

Arizona's linen was between 591 and 701 years old, with the raw data showing a difference of up to 59 years.

Even though that would still places the cloth in the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after Jesus, Casabianca said it raises doubts.

He continued to explained that 'the lack of precision seriously affects the reliability of the 95 percent,' suggesting it was no more than 41 percent.

Anything lower than 60 percent suggests that there is a lot of disagreement or inconsistency among the results, according to the 2019 study published in Archaeometry. 

'We can say with confidence that the 1988 radiocarbon dating process led to a failure,' said Casabianca, who is an independent researcher in France.

'It was supposed to close a book, and it has only opened a new chapter. This failure could have been avoided with a better protocol.'

The raw data obtained by Casabianca showed it varied by decades than what was published in the Nature study. The red are changes made by the laboratories between their raw radiocarbon dates and the radiocarbon dates mentioned in the Nature article

The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long piece of linen featuring a faint image of the front and back of a man who Christians believe to be Jesus

The 1988 research was conducted in three laboratories: The University of Arizona, Zürich in Switzerland and Oxford University in the UK. Each lab received a strip from the original piece cut, which were then reduced to smaller sizes for the research

But Dr AJ Timothy Jull, who worked on the 1988 analysis, told DailyMail.com that even if the teams did re-run the analysis, 'The results would be the same, but the data would be less scattered.' 

Dr Jull was part of the team at the University of Arizona.

'Zürich was close to ours, but Oxford was a bit different,' Dr Jull said.

'But that does not change the results. Others use this argument to say there is something wrong with the measurements, Casabianca tries to do this.'

The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long piece of linen featuring a faint image of the front and back of a man who Christians believe to be Jesus.

The cloth was first presented to the public in the 1350s when it was exhibited in the small collegiate church in Lirey, a village in northern France.

Christians believe those wounds were miraculously imprinted on the burial shroud after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, scorched into the fibers by a burst of energy when he came back to life.   

Some believe it to be a Medieval fake, which Dr Jull and his team determined in the 1980s.

The piece was cut from the bottom corner on the back of the shroud, which experts said was not mended in the Middle Ages

However, a research involved with the 1988 study said that the radiocarbon dating of the shroud was done correctly

The cloth was first presented to the public in the 1350s when it was exhibited in the small collegiate church in Lirey, a village in northern France

The 1988 study saw scientists take a 10 mm by 70 mm piece of the shroud from the corner, which was cut into smaller pieces and distributed to the different labs.

Co-author Emanuela Marinelli, an independent researcher in Italy, told DailyMail.com: 'The sample was not representative of the full cloth because it is different [from one corner from another].

'The [1988] study found dating was more or less 150 years, so it is impossible to say the age of the entire 14-foot cloth.

'But for us, it was the statistical analysis that is the reason to reject to carbon dating.'

This technique estimates the age of organic materials based on the amount of radioactive isotope of carbon in them. 

The results were collected and collated by London's British Museum, which held on to the raw data until Casabianca and his team issued a legal request under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the raw information for the first time.

'I received a reply from the British Museum with more than 200 pages of documents,' Casabianca said.

'Our access to the documentation kept in the archives of the British Museum showed that the statistical analysis is supported by the documentation. 

'In it, we find that the samples were contaminated (including cotton and rogue fibers). This suggests that the sampling was suboptimal, to say the least.'

Dr Jull told DailyMail.com that he conducted another in 2010 to characterize the shroud samples, finding 'odd bits of cotton.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-08-2024 om 17:12 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE / New blood analysis of the Shroud of Turin 'supports Biblical story about Jesus' crucifixion'

• READ MORE:  Scientists make new discovery after analyzing Shroud of Turin

By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com

The agonizing crucifixion of Jesus from the Bible details how he endured severe beatings, punctures and nails driven into his hands and feet.

Christians believe those wounds were miraculously imprinted on the burial shroud after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, scorched into the fibers by a burst of energy when he came back to life.

Now, a new analysis of the Shroud of Turin - also known as the Holy Shroud - claims to have uncovered evidence that the crucifixion may be historically accurate.

An engineer from the University of Padua in Italy used modern technology to reanalyze samples taken from the cloth in the 1970s, finding tiny blood particles showing signs of organ failure, trauma, disease and radiation. 

Materials that were typical in ancient Jerusalem were also said to be discovered, suggesting that the shroud may have originated in the region and not in Europe where many skeptics think it was created as a medieval forgery.

The new study analyzed blood samples taken from the shroud in 1978, which were collected using adhesive tape. This blood, according to the study, showed signs of disease, trauma and radiation

Independent experts dismissed the findings, however, saying blood could have contaminated the cloth at any point in the past 700 years.

The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long piece of linen featuring a faint image of the front and back of a man who Christians believe to be Jesus.

The cloth was first presented to the public in the 1350s, when it was exhibited in small collegiate church in Lirey, a village in northern France. Some believe it to be a Medieval fake.

It was not until 1978 when the first physical samples were removed from the cloth, done using adhesive tape to carefully lift particles from the front fibers and a vacuum to collect dust from the back.

Read More

EXCLUSIVE

•  Atheist who set out to prove the Shroud of Turin was fake reveals why he's now 'convinced' it's the cloth Jesus was buried in 

But, back then, the results were inconclusive about whether or not blood had been present in the samples.

Now, University of Padua professor Giulio Fanti has placed those samples under modern-day microscopes capable of highlighting details down to the size of individual particles.

His study was published in Archives of Hematology Case Reports and Reviews, which peer-reviewed his research.

The reanalyzed particles showed the presence of hemoglobin, which is a key component of blood, and also two different types of blood that Fanti labeled Type A and Type B. 

Fanti says this suggests the cloth was used on someone with bloody injuries, rather than forged using ink, dye, paint or other techniques.

Traces of creatine were also identified in the shroud sample, which is released into the blood stream when a person undergoes muscle breakdown or some type of trauma.    

Your body produces creatine from amino acids in your liver, kidneys, and pancreas. It is also present in foods.

The body releases the chemical into the bloodstream when cells in the brain, heart or skeletal muscles are damaged.

It was not until 1978 when the first physical samples were allowed to be taken from the cloth, which was done using adhesive tape to carefully remove particles off the front fibers. Dr. Max Frei, a Swiss criminologist, can be seen taking samples from the shroud

The Shroud of Turin features hundreds of reddish spots, varying in shapes and sizes, across the imprinted body image

The expert found another type of blood that was shed while Jesus was still alive. It also contained signs of radiation, which Christians believe was released when Jesus rose from the dead

'The high percentage of creatinine found in [the sticky tape samples], may be explained, especially during Jesus' last hour before dying on the cross, by a reduced blood flow to the kidneys also caused by hypovolemia and by severe dehydration,' the study reads.

Fanti claimed that his findings align with John 19:28 that states 'Jesus said, I thirst.'

The samples also featured signs the person whose blood allegedly stained the shroud had suffered from uremic syndrome which occurs when the kidneys are unable to eliminate waste products.

While the condition typically happens from kidney disease, it can also be brought on by blunt trauma to the organ, which Fanti believes may have occurred when Jesus was whipped. 

John 12:1 reads, 'Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.'

'I would refer to Type A blood as that which came out of the corpse and therefore postmortem blood; it consists of microcytes which indicate the respiratory suffering of Jesus on the cross,' Fanti, a Christian who has been studying the shroud for 25 years, told DailyMail.com.

While the testing cannot prove whose blood litters the cloth, a new recent study claimed to find evidence that the shroud dates back 2,000 years. 

This new finding came in stark contrast to a 1988 study which found the shroud to be a fake, after researchers determined it had been produced between 1260 and 1390 AD.

The study analyzed samples taken from the 1970s. Researchers collected particles using adhesive tape. Pictured are the samples zoomed in 1,500 times

The 1970s research also collected samples from the back of the shroud using a vacuum. Pictured are dust particles with traces of blood attached

In his study, Fanti found the blood particles he labled 'Type B' to mostly have a darker color than the 'Type A' blood and sharper edges.

He claims this suggests Type B came from before Jesus had died, with the differences being due to clotting characteristics.

'Type B consists of coagulated blood crusts probably formed when Jesus was on the cross or ascended Calvary,' said Fanti.

Both types of blood also had traces of earth materials that Fanti said are typically found in Jerusalem, such as clay and limestone, suggesting that the shroud may have originated in the region.

Mark 15:46 explains how Joseph, one of Jesus' disciples, removed Christ from the cross and 'bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock.'

Some believe that Jesus' body was not washed during that time, but quickly placed in the tomb, which means he was not cleaned of earthy materials before being wrapped.

'When I went to Jerusalem to analyze the earthy material taken from the Holy Shroud, geologist Amir Sandler of the Geological Survey Of Jerusalem recognized among other things, like smectite and illite, which are typical of the Jerusalem soil as well as other material coming from the Sahara winds,' Fanti explained. 

The blood detected by Fanti was also said to have evidence of possible radiation in different forms.

The Type A blood contained Beta particles that are electrons of great kinetic energy emitted by some radioactive nuclei, such as Potassium-40 used in explosives and fireworks.

Photon radiation particles were identified in the Type B samples - these are also known as Gamma rays, which are typically formed by a nuclear reaction.

However, Dr Lawrence Kobilinsky, a forensic scientist who is a professor emeritus at John Jay College, told DailyMail.com that the 'blood' was likely a 'secondary thought.'

'Earlier work... found a pigment [coloring agent] constituted the image,' he said.

Indeed, American chemist Dr Walter McCrone, who analyzed the tape strips in 1978, found the image consisted of red ochre and a gelatin solution.

'The simplest explanation is that this shroud was placed over a statue covered with pigment in certain areas, which transferred to the cloth, and gave it this three-dimensional configuration when you do the right kind of photography,' Dr Kobilinsky said.

The shroud features a faint image of a man with long hair and a beard, which many believe is the face of Jesus

The burial cloth has captivated the imagination of historians, church chiefs, skeptics and Catholics since it was first presented to the public in the 1350s. It is housed in Turin, Italy inside this chapel

Both types of blood had earth materials that Fanti said are typically found in Jerusalem, such as clay and limestone, suggesting that the shroud may have originated in the region. The image shows elements captured from the surface of the fibers

A study in 2018 also determined the shroud to be a fake after a new forensic investigation showed that its bloodstains were left by someone who had been standing – rather than crucified.

Researchers concluded that the bloodstain patterns were also not consistent with a face-down corpse.

Dr Matteo Borrini, a forensic scientist at Liverpool John Moores University, worked with chemist Luigi Garlaschelli, of the University of Pavia in Italy, looking at the orientation of the shroud's stains. 

They sought to answer whether the crucifixion shown on the shroud was T-shaped, Y-shaped, or revealed another type of ancient Roman execution.

What they found, however, was that the bloodstains were not consistent with any one pose in particular. This suggested that someone who had been standing was used to imprint the famous patterns at different angles for the hands, chest and back.

Christians have claimed the imprints were created by energy released from Christ's body at the moment of resurrection.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-08-2024 om 16:57 geschreven door peter  

Scientists analyse the famous 'WOW!' signal first detected in 1977 - and finally reveal the truth about the mysterious flash

• Scientists have new found evidence that the signal was not sent by aliens
• The signal could have been caused by a natural microwave laser hitting Earth  

By Wiliam Hunter

In 1977, the Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope captured a signal from space so strange that scientists are still baffled by it almost 50 years later.

For decades, scientists have struggled to find any natural process capable of producing the 72-second burst which prompted astronomer Jerry Ehman to write 'WOW!' on the telescope's readout.

Now, new analysis of the so-called WOW! signal has revealed that it might have been caused by a hugely powerful laser slamming into Earth.

Experts say this was not the first salvo of an alien invasion, but rather the entirely natural product of a rare alignment between a collapsed star and a cloud of cool hydrogen.

Unfortunately for alien-hunters, scientists from the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo say this new evidence shows that the WOW! signal is not evidence of life beyond Earth.

For decades, scientists have struggled to find any natural process capable of producing the 72-second burst which prompted astronomer Jerry Ehman to write 'WOW!' on the telescope's readout

What are the theories to explain the WOW! signal?

There have been many theories over the years for what could have been the source for the short-lived, narrow band radio signal that became known as the Wow! signal.

At the time, it was seen has having all the traits of having come from a distant planet, but the inability to pick it up again has frustrated astronomers.

While some have taken it to be a radio message broadcast by an alien beacon into space, others have looked for other astronomical sources. 

Theories have included collisions between asteroids and stars, flares from stars, merging white dwarfs and colliding neutron stars. 

Now, experts suggest that it could have been caused by energy from a neutron star trigger a cloud of atomic hydrogen gas to release a laser burst. 

When the WOW! signal hit Earth, many scientists put forward the idea that this could have been the first 'hello' from a distant alien civilisation.

The signal was not only uniquely powerful but also arrived in an unusually narrow band of frequencies around 1420 MHz - similar to those produced by atomic hydrogen.

Since hydrogen is so abundant in the universe, some suggested that advanced civilisations might be using its frequency as a calling card for signalling to other intelligent species.

Other natural explanations for the signature have been proposed, such as passing comets releasing clouds of gas.

In the absence of any good natural explanation, the idea that the WOW! signal was a 'technosignature' from another world became widespread.

Now, Professor Abel Méndez and his colleagues believe they have identified a series of similar signals which could explain the WOW! signal's origin.

The made the discovery by combing through the archives of the now-collapsed Arecibo Observatory's Radio Emissions from Red Dwarf Stars (REDS) project.

Since this telescope had a similar experimental set-up to the Big Ear radio telescope, he hoped that it would be able to reveal if anything like the WOW! signal had ever been spotted.

The researchers spotted several signals which appeared to be extremely similar to the WOW! signal, albeit considerably fainter. 

In 1977, the Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope (pictured) captured a signal from space so strange that scientists are still baffled by it almost 50 years later 

Researchers have used data from the now defunct Arecibo Observatory (pictured) to find signals that match the original WOW! signal. This evidence suggests it could be been the product of a giant space laser 

Read More

• Amateur astronomer traces possible source of notorious 'WOW!' signal first detected in 1977 to a sun-like star 1,800 light years from Earth  

Four of those originated from the tiny red dwarf star, Teegarden's Star, which is just 12.5 light-years from Earth.

Professor Méndez says: 'Our latest observations, made between February and May 2020, have revealed similar narrowband signals near the hydrogen line, though less intense than the original Wow! signal.'

What makes Teegarden's star unique, however, is that it is surrounded by clouds of cool atomic hydrogen.

When intense light from the red dwarf hits these clouds of hydrogen atoms, they are stimulated to produce a powerful burst of microwave energy in the 1420 MHz. 

Researchers spotted similar bands of energy (pictured) being produced at fainter levels from a nearby red dwarf star called Teegarden's Star. Importantly this star is surrounded by clouds of atomic hydrogen 

Read More

• Signals from outer space: The FOUR times scientists have believed we were contacted by aliens... as 'impossible' spinning object 4,000 light years away sends repeated radio bleeps to earth  

The result is an entirely natural microwave laser, or maser, within the hydrogen range which looks extremely similar to that of the WOW! signal.

The researchers argue that the WOW! signal was likely produced when an even more powerful burst of energy collided with a similar hydrogen cloud, producing an even bigger maser.

A burst that powerful is rare, but could have been produced by a type of neutron star called a magnetar.

These are formed when a star collapses and explodes into a supernova, leaving behind an ultra-dense, fast-spinning core with an extremely powerful magnetic field.

If the burst from a neutron star hit a cloud of cool hydrogen gas it could trigger a colossal maser burst just like the WOW! signal.

The signal may have been produced by a microwave laser triggered by the collision of energy from a magnetar (artists impression pictured) and a cloud of hydrogen gas. This means that the Wow! signal is not evidence for alien life 

Since it would be extremely rare for a magnetar to line up with a hydrogen cloud in just the right way, this also explains why we haven't heard the signal again.

If true, this would mean there is no need to suppose that the WOW! signal is evidence of alien life.

In their paper, published on arXiv, Professor Méndez and his colleagues write: 'Our hypothesis accounts for all observed characteristics of the Wow! signal introduces another source of false positives in technosignature searches, and suggests that this signal represented the first recorded astronomical maser flare in the hydrogen line.

'We will continue with Arecibo Wow! exploring our extensive sets of observations from Arecibo REDS. Future studies will incorporate archival data from the Arecibo Observatory.'

WHAT IS THE FERMI PARADOX?

The Fermi Paradox questions why, given the estimated 200bn-400bn stars and at least 100bn planets in our galaxy, there have been no signs of alien life. 

The contradiction is named after its creator, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.

He first posed the question back in 1950.

Fermi believed it was too extraordinary that a single extraterrestrial signal or engineering project has yet to be detected in the universe — despite its immense vastness. 

Fermi concluded there must a barrier that limits the rise of intelligent, self-aware, technologically advanced space-colonising civilisations.

This barrier is sometimes referred to as the 'Great Filter'.

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi devised the so-called Fermi Paradox in the 1950s. It explores why there is no sign of alien life, despite the 100 billions planets in our galaxy

If the main obstacle preventing the colonisation of other planets is not in our past, then the barrier that will stop humanity's prospects of reaching other worlds must lie in our future, scientists have theorised.  

Professor Brian Cox believes the advances in science and engineering required by a civilisation to start conquering the stars ultimately lead to its destruction.

 He said: 'One solution to the Fermi paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself and that needs global collaborative solutions to prevent that.

‘It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster.'

Other possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox include that no other intelligent species have arisen in the universe, intelligent alien species are out there — but lack the necessary technology to communicate with Earth.

Some believe that the distances between intelligent civilsations are too great to allow any kind of two-way communication.

If two worlds are separated by several thousand light-years, it's possible that one or both civilisation will be extinct before a dialogue can be established. 

The so-called Zoo hypothesis claims intelligent alien life is out there, but deliberately avoids any contact with life on Earth to allow its natural evolution.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-08-2024 om 16:44 geschreven door peter  

I witnessed a UFO crash and aliens flee the ship - and I have a piece of the craft to prove it

• READ MORE:  Ex-Pentagon official claims US has recovered alien bodies

By Ellyn Lapointe For Dailymail.Com

A man from Los Angeles claims that he witnessed aliens fleeing from a UFO after it crashed landed in the desert - and he has a piece of the spacecraft to prove it.

Jose Padilla was just a nine-year-old boy growing up in San Antonio, New Mexico, when he and his friend discovered the 'avocado-shaped' UFO.

To this day, he swears that what he witnessed was real. 

Jose Padilla claims to have had a real alien encounter as a young boy living in San Antonio, New Mexico - he even has a piece of the UFO to prove it. 

The encounter occurred while the two boys were horseback riding in the desert just 13 miles from the Trinity nuclear test site, Robert Oppenheimer and other members of the Manhattan Project detonated the world's first nuclear bomb in 1945.

The encounter occurred that very same year, and at first, Padilla thought the sound of the crash was just another bomb test, he told CBS News Los Angeles. 

'I told my friend, 'it must be another test from the bomb' and he said, 'no, it's not a bomb, look at the smoke coming out of the ground,'' Padilla said.

Upon closer inspection, the smoke appeared to be coming from a crashed aircraft.

Then, all of a sudden, three extraterrestrials emerged from the aircraft and began 'sashaying and running in circles,' he said. 

But Padilla wasn't afraid of these creatures. 

'They had crashed at my father's ranch, and they needed help,' he said. 

Over the next ten days, the military cleaned up the wreckage while Padilla and his friend watched from a nearby ridge, despite being warned to stay away.

An artist's rendering of the crashed spacecraft that Padilla claims to have discovered in San Antonio, New Mexico in 1945.

'We were hiding behind cactuses,' he said.

Read More

EXCLUSIVE

•  US Congress to investigate controversial Peru 'alien' mummies amid fears they could be linked to UFOs 

When the soldiers took a break from cleaning up the wreckage, Padilla and his friends entered the aircraft.

The 'extraterrestrials' were gone, giving Padilla the perfect opportunity to extract a souvenir from inside. 

He pulled a small 'dial' off the wall, brought it home and hid it in his garage. 

Frontier Analysis, a chemical testing lab based in Ohio, analyzed the artifact in 2015. Their report revealed that it was made of aluminum mixed with silicon and copper, CBS Los Angeles reported.

This mix of metals is commonly found in engine parts, and the report stated that the isotopic ratios were terrestrial.

An artist's rendering of the 'dial' that Padilla extracted from the inner wall of the crashed spacecraft.

But an extraterrestrial source for the metals could not be ruled out, the report stated.

'No one knows what it is,' Padilla said.

The years passed, and Padilla moved from San Antonio to Rowland Heights, an unincorporated area of Los Angeles, California, and quietly raised a family.

But he always held onto that strange artifact from his childhood.

Padilla has held onto the strange metal artifact for all these years, claiming that it's proof of his alien encounter. 

In 2012, Padilla and the friend who was with him when he witnessed the UFO were interviewed by investigative journalist and UFO researcher Paola Harris. 

At the time, Harris was investigating a claim by the son of World War II army pilot William Brophy.

Brophy's son told Harris that one of his father's last missions was to fly over the area that Padilla claims the UFO crash landed in. During one such flight, he saw two young boys on horseback, Harris told CBS Los Angeles.

She believes those two little boys were Padilla and his friend. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-08-2024 om 16:30 geschreven door peter  

Since landing on June 1, Chang’e 6 has been carrying out a robotic lunar exploration mission launched by China’s National Space Administration. The Chinese probe was initially launched in early May.

Nearly a week after Chang’e 6 touched down in the Apollo basin, NASA’s LRO passed above its landing site, allowing it an opportunity to capture images that revealed the Chinese spacecraft’s location near the rim of a 50-meter crater.

With the new imagery in hand, LRO imaging experts were quickly able to determine the coordinates of Chang’e 6’s position to be roughly 42 degrees south latitude, 206 degrees east longitude, and placing the probe at an elevation of about minus 5,256 meters.

The new imagery obtained by the LRO was released amid a flood of recent social media posts that falsely link earlier imagery obtained by NASA, some dating as far back as 2010, to the recent landing of Chang’e 6.

Land of the Ancient Lunar Lava Flows

Billions of years ago, the area where Chang’e 6 is carrying out its mission was the site of basaltic lava flows that made their way to the area, where they likely subsided once they met a geological fault believed to exist in the area.

Chang’e 6’s landing site is roughly halfway between a pair of prominent dorsum or “wrinkle ridges,” features that are ubiquitous on lunar basalt plains and can sometimes reach several hundreds of kilometres in length. The basaltic flow in this region appears to overlap with an earlier one located to the west, which lacks the iron oxide and titanium dioxide that is evidenced by the adjacent younger basaltic formation.

NASA’s Spy in Lunar Orbit

Since June 18, 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been observing the moon from its unique eccentric mapping orbit, providing crucial imagery for creating a 3D map of the lunar surface.

Although the LRO was initially planned for a two-year mission, its operation was extended to gather data addressing various scientific questions, including the evolution of the moon’s crust and regolith.

The recent photos the LRO obtained of China’s Chang’ e 6 spacecraft aren’t the first time NASA’s ever-watchful eye in lunar orbit has successfully spotted operations on the lunar surface undertaken by other countries. Last September, the LRO captured images of India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft at its landing site. Also, in April of this year, the LRO managed to capture images of the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), an orbital spacecraft operated by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).

Mapping the Moon and Beyond

Apart from photographing spacecraft sent to the Moon by other nations, the LRO has provided an unprecedented amount of information that has helped scientists expand our knowledge of Earth’s natural satellite. With a suite of high-resolution cameras and other powerful instruments, the LRO has succeeded at mapping the surface of the Moon with an impressive amount of detail, imagery which NASA has made available for viewing online.

Artist’s concept of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in orbit around the Moon

(Credit: NASA).

The LRO has played a significant role in several major discoveries, including the confirmation of water ice in craters on the Moon that remain in permanent shadow. Last December, the LRO also transmitted a laser beam from its laser altimeter instrument toward a tiny device on the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Vikram lander, proving that the LRO could be used to locate retroreflectors on the surface of the Moon.

Currently, Chang’e 6 is carrying out China’s second sample return mission. The samples collected by the lander were transferred to an ascender module and carried to an orbiter where it docked on June 6 for their transfer back to Earth. The Chang’e 6 lander and its associated rover have also conducted experiments while operating on the lunar surface.

Additional information on China’s Chang’e 6 mission can be found here, and more about the ongoing operations of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissaince Orbiter can be found on NASA’s official LRO mission webpage.

• Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.

• https://youtu.be/7kagUc6kDho

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/  }

24-08-2024 om 01:39 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

24-08-2024 om 00:41 geschreven door peter  

Planetary scientists want to know more about the moon’s geological processes. Io is considered a high heat flux world, and scientists want to learn more about its tidal dissipation. Studying Io can also tell us more about primitive planetary bodies that were once more volcanic, which Earth likely was early in its history.

Io can also tell us more about volcanogenic atmospheres, which can play a vital role in shaping a planet’s environment. This 2020 paper draws a link between Earth’s volcanic activity and the Great Oxygenation Event, a critical period when oxygen accumulated in Earth’s atmosphere. A better understanding of the link between volcanic activity and atmospheric evolution will help us better understand exoplanets and habitability.

Scientists know that the Galilean moons exchange material with Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. They also know that material ejected from Io’s volcanoes can reach the surfaces of the other moons. Some of it can be turned into plasma by Jupiter’s powerful magnetosphere, forming Io’s plasma torus. They’re curious about this mass exchange in the Jupiter system and how it’s shaped the moons.

These are the reasons for a dedicated mission to Io.

In 2010, scientists at the University of Arizona and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory first proposed the Io Volcano Observer (IVO) as part of NASA’s Discovery Program. IVO was proposed as a low-cost mission to explore Jupiter’s volcanic Moon. It was proposed again in 2015 and in 2019. In 2020, IVO was selected with two other missions for further study but ultimately lost out to the DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions to Venus.

Now, there’s another proposal for the Io Volcano Observer, but this time, it’s under NASA’s New Frontiers Program. The new proposal shows that the desire for an Io-focused mission won’t go away. Instead, it’s gaining steam.

In a new paper still subject to peer review, a group of mostly American scientists present their case for the New Frontiers IVO. It’s titled “Comparing NASA Discovery and New Frontiers Class Mission Concepts for the Io Volcano Observer (IVO).” The first author is Christopher Hamilton from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona.

The IVO NF would address our scientific questions by reaching three goals, according to the authors:

• Determine how and where tidal heat is generated inside Io;
• Understand how tidal heat is transported to the surface of Io;
• Understand how Io is evolving.

The original IVO proposal had the spacecraft encounter Io ten times in four years after reaching the moon in 2033. It would’ve carried five instruments, with a sixth under consideration. The IVO would’ve crossed Io from pole to pole, passing over the equator at an altitude of between 200 and 500 kilometres (124 and 310 miles.)

The closest approaches were carefully designed to give the spacecraft the best observations of the moon’s magnetic field, gravity field, and libration amplitude. The approaches also would’ve allowed for both sunlit and dark views of volcanoes, allowing the spacecraft to study the composition of lava. The polar perspective would’ve provided new views of heat emanating from the moon that were unavailable to Galileo and unobservable from Earth.

The new IVO NF proposal maintains the polar orbit of the original IVO but improves it in several ways. Universe Today talked with lead author Christopher Hamilton about the new proposal. His remarks have been lightly edited for clarity.

The first change in the new proposal concerns the number of flybys, which would increase from 10 to 20.

“10 flybys for the original Discovery-level IVO mission would fill important gaps in image coverage that remain unfilled after the Voyager and Galileo era,” Hamilton said. So why double it?

“The new tour not only doubles the image coverage of Io’s surface with high-resolution imaging but also enables more flybys of active volcanoes, like Loki, Loki Patera, and Pillian Patera,” Hamilton said. “These are highly dynamic volcanic systems that include active lava lakes and explosive eruptions—one pass over the volcanic systems is simply not enough to constrain their time-variability and eruption dynamics.”

Like Earth’s Moon, Io is tidally locked to Jupiter, with one side more readily available for study than the Jupiter-facing side. But Jupiter’s effect on Io is much stronger than Earth’s effect on the Moon. “However, tidal interactions between Jupiter and Io are much stronger, exciting tides in solid rock with an amplitude of about 100 m (328 feet), which is taller than the Statue of Liberty!” Hamilton said. These tidal interactions drive Io’s powerful volcanism. “However, studies of the past decade have suggested that this heat has also melted a layer within Io to form a subsurface ‘”‘magma ocean,'” Hamilton said.

The original IVO’s ten orbits, with its magnetometer instrument, would have confirmed or excluded this hypothesis. The new proposal will carry an improved version of this instrument, and with more orbits, it could answer questions about Io’s magma ocean.

“IVO-NF would also carry a fluxgate magnetometer and with the repeat passes, carefully timed to measure Io’s induced magnetic field at different times in its orbit, would greatly reduce the uncertainty in estimating a potential magma oceans depth,” Hamilton said. The current uncertainty is ±10 km, but IVO NF would reduce it to ±3 km. This “would revolutionize our understanding of Io’s interior and the links between tidal heating and volcanism,” Hamilton told Universe Today.

“Both IVO and IVO-NF are great missions, but doubling the number of flybys more than doubles the scienctific return from an Io mission!” Hamilton said.

IVO-NF would also approach Io much closer than the original IVO. The original mission called for an altitude of 200 and 500 kilometres (124 and 310 miles) above Io’s surface. IVO-NF would begin its mission with high-altitude fly-bys, but as the mission progressed and objectives were reached, it would come much closer.

“With 20 flybys, IVO-NF can be more daring, flying closer to Io’s surface and even flying through its volcanic plumes to determine the chemistry of its erupted products in unprecedented detail,” Hamilton told Universe Today.

Initial flybys would be at about 200 km, “but as the mission progresses and Baseline objectives are achieved, we will be able to lower the altitude of later flybys over active volcanoes like Pele Patera,” Hamilton said.

“Nonetheless, we would image and analyze these volcanoes first, making use of repeat coverage to further constrain the safety of the close approach, and take precautions like reorienting the spacecraft’s solar panels so that they fly through the plume side-on rather than exposing the full cross-sectional area,” Hamilton told Universe Today. “Plume flythroughs for Io would also open the door to other sampling opportunities for plumes on Saturn’s active moon, Enceladus.”

“This may seem dangerous, but even at altitudes of 50 km, there would be very few particles,” Hamilton said. But before the spacecraft comes that close, it’ll use its Surface Dust Analyzer to understand the hazard. This instrument was added to the IVO-NF as a top priority. It will measure surface dust composition and the composition of nanograins in the volcanic plumes. Overall, it will give scientists a better understanding of Io’s dust environment and inform them if it’s safe to approach within 50 km.

According to Hamilton, we’re experiencing a renaissance in exploring the Jovian system.

“This is an important time in Planetary Exploration, and exploration of the Jupiter System is undergoing a renaissance, with Juno, Europa Clipper, and JUICE examining Jupiter, Europa, and Ganymede at the same time,” Hamilton told Universe Today. Io is a critical part of Jupiter’s moon system. It’s at the heart of the orbital resonance configuration between Io, Europa, and Ganymede, and the resonance drives geological activity on all three moons, including volcanism, tectonic activity, and the formation of surface features.

“Juno has filled some important gaps left after the end of the Galileo mission (1995–2003), but IVO and IVO-NF would be the first to have an instrument suite that is optimized specifically for Io,” said Hamilton.

To the intellectually curious, everything in nature is worthy of study and deeper understanding. An extraordinary world like Io is certainly no exception, with everything it has to tell us about itself, its sibling moons, and even about the early Earth and Moon.

“Our paper makes the case that Io is a priority target for exploration that should be considered in the next New Frontier Announcement of Opportunity,” Hamilton told Universe Today. He acknowledges that the original IVO mission at the Discovery level is possible, but the IVO New Frontiers mission would accomplish a lot more and would more thoroughly address our outstanding questions about Io.

“A larger mission to Io via New Frontiers would more than double the scientific return of the mission and would offer the best approach to understanding not just Io, but the Jupiter System as a whole, and the origins of high-heat flux worlds like the early Earth, early Moon, and other terrestrial planets in the Solar System and beyond,” Hamilton concluded.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

24-08-2024 om 00:35 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE: 'compelling evidence' at Roswell site may prove alien craft crashed

By Matthew Phelan Senior Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

A former top Pentagon spy claims that the US has recovered 'aliens.'

Former US counterintelligence official and onetime Pentagon UFO investigator Luis Elizondo told reporters that he can confirm one of two 'vehicles of unknown origin' were recovered from the now legendary Roswell UFO crash of 1947.

More shocking still, Elizondo said, 'We, as a nation have, been interested in not only the vehicles themselves but the occupants,' which he called 'biological specimens.'

Elizondo helped release three of the most famous UFO videos in history after leaving his role in the US Department of Defense in late 2017. His new explosive allegations come amid the ex-spy's press tour for his new memoir. They'll be broadcast in NewsNation's Special Report: Confessions of a UFO Hunter at 9PM ET on Friday August 23. 

'We're not alone,' former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo (pictured) told Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart in an advanced clip of TC channel NewsNation's upcoming special. 'It is a simple fact,' he added. 'The US government has been aware of that fact for decades' 

Elizondo first rose to national prominence in 2017 in the pages of the New York Times, after he helped release three US Navy infra-red UFO videos - including the GOFAST video (above)

The book contains, among its many incredible revelations, details on a 2016 plan hatched by Elizondo and his military colleagues to catch a UFO in the ocean. 

'The United States has been involved in the recovery of objects,' Elizondo told cable network NewsNation in the new interview, 'vehicles of unknown origin that are neither from our country or any other foreign country that we're aware of.'

'We're not alone,' the former Pentagon official told Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart in an advanced clip of the channel's upcoming special report.

'We are not alone in this universe and it is a simple fact,' Elizondo continued. 'The US government has been aware of that fact for decades.. 

Elizondo first rose to national prominence in late 2017 in the pages of the New York Times — where he blew the whistle on the US military and intelligence community's pervasive mismanagement and excessive secrecy on the topic of UFOs.

His public resignation and opaque role within the Pentagon's UFO-hunting portfolio, known to its Senate backers as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), brought fame and a lead role in a History channel docu-series.

Read More

EXCLUSIVE

•  New Pentagon report on Roswell UFO crash is 'bogus' says former NASA scientists and Air Force veterans 

In April 2020, the Pentagon officially released three videos that Elizondo had helped leak in 2017, each taken by US Navy fighter pilots who had reportedly witnessed 'unexplained aerial phenomena' (UAP) as UFOs are now more technically known.

The videos depict, as Elizondo told CNN, 'things that don't have any obvious flight sufaces, any obvious forms of propulsion [...] maneuvering in ways that include extreme maneuverability beyond, I would submit, the healthy G-forces of a human or anything biological.

Despite corroboration from his peers and the late Senate Majority leader who helped create AATIP, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, the Department of Defense has maintained that Elizondo's military role had no official UFO-hunting duties.

Pentagon officials denied the existence of any 'credible evidence of extraterrestrial activity,' in a statement responding to NewsNation's forthcoming interview.

'As we have stated previously, Luis Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) while assigned to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security,' DoD spokesperson Sue Gough told NewsNation.

Critics of Gough have pointed to a 2003 research paper on psychological warfare that she wrote for the US Army War College, implying the Pentagon spokesperson might be part of a coordinated campaign to undermine Elizondo's credibility.  

And, in May 2021, Elizondo filed a 64-page complaint to the DoD's Office of the Inspector General accusing high-ranking military officials of attempting to silence him by threatening his security clearances and obfuscating of his work with AATIP.

DailyMail.com obtained an advance copy of Elizondo's book, Imminent, in which he shockingly and unequivocally stated that a 'Legacy Program' is 'in possession of advanced technology made off-world by nonhuman intelligence'

Elizondo said he endured 'malicious activities, coordinated disinformation, professional misconduct, whistleblower reprisal and explicit threats perpetrated by certain senior-level Pentagon officials.' 

These actions, he and his attorneys said, suggested 'a coordinated effort to obfuscate the truth from the American people, while impugning my reputation as a former intelligence officer at the Pentagon.'

His new memoir, Imminent, sees the former Pentagon official opening up about much more incredible personal accounts — including the story of his own family's disturbing experience with 'green orbs' floating through their house. 

In the book, Elizondo also details he and another AATIP member's plan to catch UFOs on the high seas.

He told DailyMail.com that their investigations pointed to these craft having an apparent interest in military operations, nuclear power, and were often seen around bodies of water.

So they coordinated with the Navy and other branches to create 'Project Interloper': an attempt to lure the mysterious craft and record them with high-tech equipment.

Above, veteran Australian TV news broadcaster and investigative reporter Ross Coulthart - who conducted the first televised interview with government UFO whistleblower David Grusch last year - conducted the new interview with Elizondo, which airs in full on Friday

'You take a nuclear carrier strike group, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, you have a nuclear powered submarine and other nuclear equities in the area, and you put it on the water,' he told DailyMail.com.

The idea was to gather warships in the ocean, focusing their radar, sonar, and cameras where they believed the UFOs would appear.

'There was an official plan that had support. It got briefed all the way to the Joint Staff,' Elizondo said. 'We had a lot of interest from the intelligence community. A lot of agencies were part of this. They were ready to put their effort and assets into it. And at the last minute it got denied.'

'That, for me, was one of the last straws,' he told DailyMail.com this past Saturday.

NewsNation's 'Confessions of a UFO Hunter' TV special airs this Friday at 9pm Eastern / 8pm Central.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-08-2024 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

“Our species, Homo sapiens, has been successful at adapting to ecological conditions — from tropical forests to arctic tundra — that require different kinds of problems to be solved,” said associate professor Charles Perreault, an anthropologist from Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change. and a research scientist with the Institute of Human Origins.“Cumulative culture is key because it allows human populations to build on and recombine the solutions of prior generations and to develop new complex solutions to problems very quickly.”

Toolmaking Suddenly Underwent a Rapid Advance in Technology

In their published study, “3.3 million years of stone tool complexity suggests that cumulative culture began during the Middle Pleistocene,” which appeared in the journal PNAS, Perreault and fellow author Jonathan Paige, a University of Missouri anthropologist, explain how their analysis of stone tools dating back to 3.3 million years ago revealed this sudden and unexpected technological leap.

The researchers analyzed tools collected from 57 separate ancient hominin sites. The oldest tool, dating back over 3 million years, came from an African site. However, the researchers also studied ancient stone tools discovered at ancient hominin sites in Eurasia, Greenland, Sahul, Oceania, and the Americas.

Next, the team ranked the tools’ complexity. This meant analyzing how many steps would need to be taken to create the tool in question. The researchers characterized and ranked 62 distinct tool-making sequences.

Above: Tools that become increasingly more complex over the course of 3 million years. Left: First time period studied — Oldowan core, Koobi Fora, Kenya; Center: Second time period studied — Acheulean cleaver, Algeria; Right: Characteristic of 600,000 years ago technology — Levallois core, late Pleistocene Algeria (Image credits: (left) Curry, Michael. 2020. Oldowan Core, Koobi Fora. Museum of Stone Tools LINK; (middle) Curry, Michael. 2020. Acheulean Cleaver, Morocco, Koobi Fora. Museum of Stone Tools. LINK; (right) Watt, Emma. 2020. Levallois Core, Algeria. Museum of Stone Tools. LINK).

After charting the tools’ complexity, the team saw some unexpected patterns. Tools made between 3.3 million years ago and 1.8 million years ago required somewhere between two and four procedural units to manufacture. The complexity of stone tools steadily increased over the next 1.2 million years, with the top samples requiring an impressive seven steps. While significantly more complex than tools made over a million years earlier, the researchers say this is still within the range of complexity for a single craftsman. This means knowledge from previous generations of toolmakers had most likely not been passed down over that span.

However, the researchers discovered that when they looked at tools made around 600,000 years ago, in the Middle Pleistocene, they began to see a sudden and unexpected increase in complexity. Tools from this time period were not only more complex, but more complex manufacturing processes were required to make these tools.

“We analyzed the stone tools made during the last 3.3 million years,” the researchers explain. “We found that these stone tools remained simple until about 600,000 B.P. After that point, stone tools rapidly increased in complexity.”

Where previous tools had required only a handful of procedural steps to manufacture, tools from this time often required as much as 18 steps. According to Paige and Perreault, this is way too many steps for a single generation of craftsmen to achieve without the knowledge passed down from previous generations.

This evidence, the researchers write, is consistent with findings from other research teams, suggesting that such a rapid transition “signals the development of cumulative culture in the human lineage.”

“By 600,000 years ago or so, hominin populations started relying on unusually complex technologies, and we only see rapid increases in complexity after that time as well,” said Paige. “Both of those findings match what we expect to see among hominins who rely on cumulative culture.”

Dawn of Cumulative Culture and the Evolution of Modern Humans

Although the evolution of stone toolmaking provides evidence for the dawn of cumulative culture, the researchers behind the findings say such a leap likely affected all aspects of early humans. This likely included changes in human culture, biology, and even the ability to adapt to a range of environments and habitats found across the globe.

Such changes can increase in complexity as genetic and cultural evolution happen concurrently. According to the researchers, this “gene-culture coevolution process” may explain increases in relative brain size, a prolonged life history, “and other keystone traits underlying human uniqueness.”

Notably, the researchers point out that the Middle Pleistocene shows many other examples of evolving technology. For example, studies of this era reveal consistent evidence of the controlled use of fire, hearths and other domestic spaces. This era also features the evolution of wooden structures constructed with logs hewn using hafted tools, which, the researchers explain, “are stone blades affixed to wooden or bone handles.”

In their conclusion, Paige and Perreault note that toolmaking is just one measure of cumulative culture, and further study could spot other increases in this behaviour that may have occurred in the past but are not immediately evident in the archaeological record. “It is possible that early hominins relied on cumulative culture to develop complex social, foraging, and technological behaviours that are archaeologically invisible,” they write.

Ultimately, the research team believes that their findings show how knowledge can be passed down through the generations without each successive generation having to rediscover the knowledge of the past. When enough knowledge makes it through, like what appears to have happened 600,000 years ago, this process can result in an ever-increasing and adaptive knowledge pool that allows for a consistent upward progression in cultural and technological evolution.

“Generations of improvements, modifications, and lucky errors can generate technologies and know-how well beyond what a single naive individual could invent independently within their lifetime,” the researchers conclude. “When a child inherits her parent’s generation’s culture, she inherits the outcome of thousands of years of lucky errors and experiments.”

“The result is, our cultures — from technological problems and solutions to how we organize our institutions — are too complex for individuals to invent on their own,” Perreault adds.

• Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

23-08-2024 om 21:38 geschreven door peter  

Lockheed Martin artist concept of Mk21A

(Credit: Lockheed Martin).

The unarmed reentry vehicle was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, aboard a Minotaur I rocket at 11:01 p.m. Pacific Time.

In a press release, the American aerospace company said the test allowed engineering teams to evaluate several of the Mk21A’s technological capabilities and primary design components. The development of the Mk21A is part of a broader initiative that forms a critical component of the U.S. Air Force’s strategy to modernize its ICBM weapon systems.

“Test launches like these are crucial for protecting our nation’s defense,” said Col. Mark Shoemaker, Commander of Space Launch Delta 30, in a statement following Monday’s launch.

Presently, the Mk21A reentry vehicle represents the cutting-edge ICBM weapon technologies of the future, providing the basis for technologies that are already becoming integral to the U.S.’s deterrent posture.

Jay Watson, vice president of Strategic Reentry at Lockheed Martin, said his company’s more than six decades of involvement in the development of aerospace systems has “demonstrated exceptional performance in reentry technologies and a pioneering digital engineering approach on this program from its beginning.”

“We remain focused on delivering this capability for the warfighter as a trusted partner to the U.S. Air Force for ICBM reentry systems and modernization of the deterrent triad,” Watson said.

Monday’s test was part of an Engineering and Manufacturing Development contract the aerospace company presently has with the Air Force Nuclear Systems Center, based at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico.

The company says that the data it collected during the test flight will provide potentially crucial information that it will use in the ongoing development and future testing of the Mk21A.

Presently, the reentry vehicle’s development remains on schedule, with assistance from modelling and simulation and the implementation of advanced digital engineering capabilities that have helped Lockheed Martin maintain an economical approach to the system’s development.

The Mk21A’s unique design includes the arming and fuzing subsystem and support elements, which contribute to ensuring the vehicle’s operational performance and overall effectiveness.

“As global threats evolve, it’s essential to support these launches and maintain access to space to safeguard our nation,” Col. Shoemaker said following Monday’s launch.

• Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/defense/ }

23-08-2024 om 21:18 geschreven door peter  

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

23-08-2024 om 21:06 geschreven door peter