The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
10-09-2024
Using A Space Elevator To Get Resources Off the Queen of the Asteroid Belt
Artistic view of a possible space elevator. Credit: NASA
Using A Space Elevator To Get Resources Off the Queen of the Asteroid Belt
Here at UT, we’ve had several stories that describe the concept of a space elevator. They are designed to make it easier to get objects off Earth and into space. That, so far, has proven technically or economically infeasible, as no material is strong enough to support the structure passively, and it’s too energy-intensive to support it actively. However, it could be more viable on other worlds, such as the Moon. But what about worlds farther afield? A student team from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs looked at the use case of a space elevator on Ceres and found that it could be done with existing technology.
Before we discuss why anyone would want to put a space elevator on Ceres, let’s first examine the technologies that would make it possible. Every space elevator design has three different components: an anchor, a tether, and a counterweight. Each would require its own technologies.
The anchor is simple enough; it’s how the system interfaces with Ceres. The surface of Ceres is primarily made of clay, which is relatively good for anchoring technologies. Luckily, the force the anchor needs to withstand is only around 300N, which is much lower than the force on Earth, given Ceres’ small mass. There have already been asteroid anchoring technologies for other missions that can provide up to 500N of force resistance, so an anchor on Ceres should prove no real challenge.
Fraser describes the general idea of a space elevator.
The tether is where the technology falls short on Earth – no material known to science can withstand the forces exerted on the tether of a passively controlled space elevator when it is tied to Earth. However, the closest we can come, something space elevator enthusiasts mention as almost a holy grail, is carbon nanotubes. In the analysis for the space elevator on Ceres, they once again came out ahead. However, the limitation of actually physically creating a long tether will still plague any space elevator design on Ceres.
The counterweight is much simpler, as it can be just a big, dumb mass. However, its mass is proportional to the necessary length of cable—the heavier the mass, the shorter the cable. So, the tradeoff between having a heavier counterweight and a shorter cable is another design consideration when considering these systems.
Calculations from the team show that, with only a little more technological development, all three main systems could be ready for installation on Ceres itself. But what advantages does it have? It could be helpful as a launching point for accessing other asteroids in the asteroid belt. Ceres also has water relatively near the surface, which is helpful for all kinds of human exploration, either as rocket fuel or biological systems. It’s also well placed to quickly get things back to Earth using Jupiter as a gravity assist.
Isaac Arthur goes into a deeper description of space elevators and their advantages.
But before it can provide any of those advantages, someone is going to have to pay for it. Estimates of the overall cost of the system total about $5.2 billion — not too far out of the range of larger-scale space exploration projects. But more than most countries are likely willing to pony up for a grand infrastructure project that hasn’t yet proven its benefit.
So, for now, any space elevator will remain in the realm of science fiction. But research like this and other ongoing technological improvements is how we will eventually push forward to that future. Whether it’s a space elevator on Ceres, on the Moon, or some other novel launch technology, someday humans will need a better way to get off Earth rather than burning dead living organisms. Hopefully, that day will come sooner rather than later.
Enigmatic depressions on the surface have puzzled scientists since the 1970s
For decades, scientists have been puzzling over strange hollows on Mercury’s surface, thousands of peculiar depressions at a variety of longitudes and latitudes, ranging in size from 60 feet to more than a mile across (18-1,600 meters), and depths of 80 feet or more (24 meters). No one knows how they got there.
And while none are as spooky as the Sleepy Hollow of Washington Irving’s legend, Mercury’s hollows are just as mysterious and, so far, seen nowhere else in the universe.
NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft discovered strange hollows on the surface of Mercury. Images taken from orbit revealed thousands of mysterious depressions, pitted and uneven, in areas all across the planet, up to a mile (1,600 meters) across and 120 feet (37 meters) deep. This mosaic view of the Raditladi impact basin includes individual frames capturing areas about 12 miles (20 km) wide, which merged high-resolution monochrome images from MESSENGER's Narrow Angle Camera with a lower-resolution enhanced-color image from its Wide Angle Camera.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution for Science
“There’s essentially no atmosphere on Mercury,” said planetary geologist David Blewett, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “With no atmosphere, wind doesn’t blow and rain doesn’t fall, so the hollows weren’t carved by wind or water. Other forces must be at work.”
Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system and closest to the Sun, is battered by heat, radiation, and solar wind; its extreme temperatures range from 800°F (430°C) on the sunny side, to as low as -290°F (-180°C) on the night side. It’s slightly larger, and similar to our Moon – airless, rocky, and peppered with impact craters large and small – but Mercury has rarely been visited by spacecraft, and retains many of its secrets.
Scientists got their first tantalizing glimpses of the hollows when the Mariner 10 probe flew past Mercury in the 1970s, and captured low-resolution shots of curious bright areas in some craters.
NASA returned to the small planet with the MESSENGER mission, which first flew past Mercury in 2008, then settled into orbit in 2011.
That spacecraft circled the planet more than 4,000 times in four years, collecting hundreds of thousands of images and other data, and giving researchers new insights into this little-explored world. Mariner had cataloged less than half the planet’s surface during its brief visits 40 years earlier.
“This sinfully scintillant planet...” A view of hollows on Mercury, on the crater named for author Edgar Allan Poe. In this image, Poe's raven-colored rim stands out from the tan volcanic plains that surround it. Tiny hollows speckle the dark rim like blue-white stars in the blackness of night. The image was one of hundreds of high-resolution targeted color observations by MESSENGER’s Wide Angle Camera, using filters of red, green, and blue.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution for Science
“A Little Valley…Among High Hills”
MESSENGER (the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging mission) finally provided a sharper view of the enigmatic tracts. To differentiate them from other surface features, researchers dubbed them “hollows” (akin to Washington Irving’s description of the terrain in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” – “a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills.”)
The probe sent back finely detailed, beautiful images of the hollows, looking in some color-enhanced mosaics like sheets of copper corroded with blue-green patina. In others – such as shots of Sander crater in Mercury’s vast Caloris basin – the strange landforms, etched and ragged, glow bright blue amid the surrounding crater walls and mounds. And yet the images and other data, from MESSENGER’s X-Ray Spectrometer, Laser Altimeter, and other instruments, gave only hints and no definitive answers about the hollows.
This enhanced-color image from the MESSENGER mission shows (from left to right) the craters Munch (38 miles, or 61 km, wide), Sander (32 miles, or 52 km), and Poe (50 miles, 81 km), which lie in the northwest portion of Mercury’s Caloris basin. The hollows are the bright blue areas covering the floor of Sander and dotting the rims of Munch and Poe. The hollows are highly reflective and naturally appear bluish; in images like this, the spacecraft’s Wide Angle Camera used its 11 color filters to exaggerate the color spectrum, to highlight the variation among surface materials.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution for Science
”When we got high-resolution views back of Sander, the floor of the crater just looked amazing,” said Carolyn Ernst of Johns Hopkins APL, a deputy instrument scientist on the MESSENGER mission. “It had all these crazy-shaped, irregular depressions, and it had this bright material outside of it. And to this day, we don’t fully know what causes them.”
Researchers observed that the hollows are among the youngest and brightest features on the planet, especially compared to the impact craters where most reside, which date back as far as 4 billion years. The hollows, on the other hand, are relatively shiny and new – about 100,000 years old, on average – and may still be evolving today.
MESSENGER mission scientists Ralph McNutt and Carolyn M. Ernst, both with Johns Hopkins APL, discuss what they’ve learned about Mercury’s hollows, and how much more needs to be figured out.
Clues and Theories
“We’ve been thinking of Mercury as a relic – a place that’s really not changing much anymore, except by impact cratering,” Blewett said. “But the hollows appear to be younger than the craters in which they are found, and that means Mercury’s surface is still evolving in a surprising way.”
One possible clue to their formation is that many of the hollows are associated with central mounds or mountains inside Mercury’s impact craters. These so-called “peak rings” are thought to be made of material forced up from the depths by an impact that formed the crater. Ernst suggested a large object slamming into the planet, with the meteorite forming a new crater and tossing material from deep underground onto Mercury’s surface.
The newly-excavated material could be unstable, finding itself suddenly exposed at the surface. Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, it’s battered by fierce heat and extreme space weather – factors that might play a role in forming hollows, added Blewett, a member of the science team for MESSENGER.
”Certain minerals, for example those that contain sulfur and other volatiles, would be easily vaporized by the onslaught of heat, solar wind, and micrometeoroids that Mercury experiences on a daily basis,” he said. “Perhaps sulfur is vaporizing, leaving just the other minerals, and therefore weakening the rock and making it spongier. Then the rock would crumble and erode more readily, forming these depressions.”
Looking Ahead
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted similar depressions in the carbon dioxide ice at Mars’ south pole, giving that surface a “swiss cheese” appearance. But on Mercury the depressions are found in rock and often have bright interiors and halos.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like this on a rocky surface,” Blewett said.
Other theories include the idea that darker areas on Mercury’s surface are graphite deposits that, when pummeled and destroyed by solar wind, collapse and leave behind pitted, hollowed areas of only the much brighter, blue-tinged materials.
We’ve never seen anything quite like this on a rocky surface.
David Blewett
MESSENGER mission participating scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
MESSENGER finally ran out of fuel and crashed into Mercury in April 2015, but researchers are still sifting through the data it collected. Scientists are also eagerly anticipating the arrival of BepiColombo to Mercury in 2025 and what secrets the mission will reveal. A joint European-Japanese venture, with two orbiters riding together, the craft made their first flyby of Mercury in October 2021 – only the third mission ever to visit the planet.
In his 1820 novel, Washington Irving wrote of Sleepy Hollow being a place of “strange sights, …haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country.”
Likewise, Mercury has its own “ghosts” – craters in a previous life, later shrouded by lava – and the planet has seen shooting stars and meteors peppering every part of its surface for billions of years.
The craters they leave are named for artists and authors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, whose namesake crater contains hollows. Maybe one day Irving, their mentor and contemporary, will join their company with his own crater. By then the true nature of Mercury’s strange hollows may be unmasked.
Images from the MESSENGER mission are helping tell the story of Mercury's geologic history; in this case, a ghost story. Once there was another crater resembling the one in the upper right of this scene. Then volcanic lava flooded the surface, burying the crater and leaving just a spectral outline of the crater's rim, the "ghost crater" located in the lower left of this image. After extensive flooding in Mercury's north, additional cosmic bodies impacted Mercury's surface, creating the various sized craters seen here, in an image taken Aug. 14, 2011 by MESSENGER’s Wide Angle Camera.
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution for Science
BepiColombo captured this image of Mercury with its Monitoring Camera 3 when it was about 555 km above the surface. It shows the newly-named Stoddart Crater. Image Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft made another flyby of its eventual target, Mercury. This is one of a series of Mercury flybys, as the spacecraft completes a complex set of maneuvers designed to deliver it to the innermost planet’s orbit. Its cameras captured some fantastic images of Mercury.
BepiColombo will eventually enter orbit around Mercury in November 2026. However, Mercury is a challenge to visit because of its proximity to the Sun and the Sun’s overwhelming gravity. To eventually orbit Mercury, the spacecraft is performing six gravity-assist flybys of the Solar System’s innermost planet. This is the 4,100 kg spacecraft’s fourth flyby.
The images are a bonus. The spacecraft’s monitoring cameras captured them, and those cameras are there to keep an eye on the spacecraft itself. But in this situation, they were able to image Mercury and some prominent craters. As BepiColombo approached and passed by Mercury, different monitoring cameras were able to capture images.
All three of BepiColombo’s monitoring cameras captured images of Mercury during the recent flyby. Many of the dual-spacecraft’s scientific instruments were also active, giving the mission personnel a chance to check their function. Image Credit: ESA/Work performed by ATG under contract to ESA/CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The closest approach during the recent flyby was on September 4th. BepiColombo—named after Italian scientist Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo—came within about 165 km of Mercury’s surface. This was the first time that the spacecraft had a view of the planet’s south pole.
This image highlights Mercury’s rugged surface, featureless except for craters. BepiColombo’s MC2 captured this image from about 177 km altitude. The camera was aimed at the horizon, so the actual surface is a slightly greater distance away. North is to the lower left in this image. Image Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Even though Mercury is so close, it’s seldom visited. BepiColombo is only the third spacecraft to visit the small planet after NASA’s Mariner 10 mission in 1974/75 and Messenger mission from 2011 to 2015. Its proximity to the Sun is a complex challenge.
“BepiColombo is only the third space mission to visit Mercury, making it the least-explored planet in the inner Solar System, partly because it is so difficult to get to,” said Jack Wright, ESA Research Fellow, Planetary Scientist, and M-CAM imaging team coordinator.
“It is a world of extremes and contradictions, so I dubbed it the ‘Problem Child of the Solar System’ in the past. The images and science data collected during the flybys offer a tantalizing prelude to BepiColombo’s orbital phase, where it will help to solve Mercury’s outstanding mysteries,” said Wright.
The next flyby is only a few months away, on December 1st, 2024. The final one is on January 8th, 2025.
BepiColombo is actually two orbiters in one. Once it enters Mercury’s orbit, it’ll separate into the ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the JAXA-built Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) or Mio. The Mercury Transfer Module is the spacecraft that delivers the pair of orbiters.
This simple schematic shows the three separate spacecraft that combine to make the BepiColombo mission. Image Credit: ESA
There’s a lot we don’t know about Mercury, where it originated, and how it evolved so close to its star. The spacecraft will study Mercury physically, its form, interior, structure, geology, composition, and abundant craters. It’ll also study the planet’s exosphere.
Instead of an atmosphere, Mercury has an exosphere, a region consisting of atoms blasted off the planet’s surface by the Sun and by impacts. The exosphere is dynamic and changes according to how the solar wind interacts with the surface. Studying it is an opportunity to study planetary evolution and space weather. Understanding the exosphere is also critical to future missions, especially any potential landers, because it can affect spacecraft operations.
This image shows Mercury’s 213 km Vivaldi Crater. The two booms are the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s medium gain antenna (top centre) and magnetometer boom (right). Image Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
BepiColombo will also study Mercury’s magnetosphere and magnetic fields. Mercury’s global magnetic field is extremely weak, only about 1% as strong as Earth’s. This is mysterious since the planet seems to have a large iron core.
Mercury’s magnetosphere is also an object of interest. The powerful solar wind shapes it and prevents it from rising much above the surface. The magnetosphere is also very dynamic and quickly responds to changes in the solar wind, making it a natural laboratory to study the physics of magnetospheres. Its weakness also challenges our understanding of how planetary dynamos function.
BepiColombo was initially scheduled to reach Mercury’s orbit in December 2025. However, a problem firing its thrusters during a maneuver in April 2024 added 11 months to the mission. The revised orbital insertion will be in November 2026.
Once it reaches the rapidly moving Mercury, we’ll start to learn more than ever about this sometimes overlooked planet.
VIDEOS PETER2011
The Hardest to Reach Planet in the Solar System Finally in BepiColombo's Sights
European probe captures stunning up-close views of planet Mercury during brief flyby (video, photos)
Enigmatic depressions on the surface have puzzled scientists since the 1970s
Fossielen worden vaak gevonden als gevolg van opgravingscampagnes die een zorgvuldige planning en langdurig onderzoek vereisen. Maar soms is de ontdekking dichterbij dan het lijkt en is het voldoende om even goed te kijken: fossielen zouden wel eens onder onze voeten kunnen liggen... letterlijk. Dat is wat er gebeurde met James Ryan, een medewerker van de National Trust for Scotland, die een ongelooflijke ontdekking deed in Inverness, in Schotland. Op de stoep ontdekte hij fossielen die veel ouder waren dan dinosaurussen.
Fossielen op de stoep van Inverness: de ontdekking van James Ryan
We zijn in Inverness, een Schotse stad op een steenworp afstand van het beroemde Loch Ness, en James Ryan maakt een wandeling rond het Inverness Town House. Op een gegeven moment stopt de man om de details van het trottoir te observeren: ze hebben een vreemde vorm en lijken in de stenen plaat te zijn ingebed. Zouden het fossielen zijn?
Voor ons lijkt het verband misschien niet zo direct, maar voor James is het overduidelijk. Het is tenslotte zijn taak bij de National Trust for Scotland om bezoekers te vertellen over de ontdekkingen van de Victoriaanse geoloog Hugh Miller, dus hij heeft een getraind oog. Toch is het verbazingwekkend om fossielen te vinden in het gesteente dat het plaveisel van de stad vormt, vooral als je bedenkt hoe oud ze zijn. Volgens vroege reconstructies dateren ze van minstens 385 miljoen jaar geleden, toen er nog geen dinosaurussen op aarde rondliepen.
Fossielen die 385 miljoen jaar oud zijn
The Inverness Courier/Facebook
In feite zijn de platen waaruit de trottoirs van het stadscentrum van Inverness bestaan, erg oud, ongeveer 385 miljoen jaar oud. Het gaat om een steen die is ontstaan uit sedimenten die zijn afgezet op de bodem van een enorm zoetwatermeer. Kortom, de stad staat er vol mee, maar niemand had ooit zulke duidelijk afgebakende fossielen geïdentificeerd. Tenminste voor een deskundig oog als dat van James.
Om precies te zijn behoren de gevonden fossielen tot het Devoon, dat meer dan 100 miljoen jaar voor de komst van de dinosauriërs voorafgaat. Als we naar de straatstenen kijken, zien we dat de donkere vlekken wijzen op schubben van verschillende soorten oude beenvissen. Daarnaast kunnen er ook sporen zijn van andere botfragmenten en een vin: we hebben het hier over zeer oude vissen, maar met een fysionomie die niet onmogelijk te herkennen is.
Een unieke ontdekking?
Volgens Ryan, die de ontdekking aan de Inverness Courier meldde, is de vondst van fossiele vissen op de stoep uniek voor Inverness. Toch is het in het algemeen niet ongewoon in Schotland om sporen van fossielen te vinden op stenen platen die voor antropische doeleinden worden gebruikt. Het hangt allemaal af van het gebruikte gesteente, dat afkomstig is uit steengroeven die rijk zijn aan meer of minder oude fossielen: in Edinburgh bijvoorbeeld begeleidt de universiteit toeristen die ernaar willen zoeken. In een ander, al even buitengewoon geval vond een Britse boswachter tijdens het joggen een voetafdruk van een dinosaurus op een stenen plaat die werd gebruikt voor de bestrating van een pad.
Kortom, in de Schotse stad zijn fossielen te ontdekken en te vinden, misschien door toeval, misschien door geluk. Het verleden is immers dichter bij ons dan we ons kunnen voorstellen: soms vanuit metaforisch oogpunt, soms letterlijk. Het enige wat je hoeft te doen is naar beneden kijken.
NASA is Getting Serious About a Radio Telescope on the Moon
It’s widely known by now that the “dark side” of the moon, made famous by Pink Floyd, isn’t actually dark. It gets as much sunlight as the side that is tidally locked facing Earth. However, it is dark in one very important way – it isn’t affected by radio signals emanating from Earth itself. What’s more, it’s even able to see radio waves that don’t make it down to Earth’s surface, such as those associated with the cosmic “Dark Ages” when the universe was only a few hundred million years old. Those two facts are the main reasons the far side of the moon has continually been touted as a potential location for a very large radio telescope. Now, a project sponsored by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) has received more funding to further explore this intriguing concept.
The project, known as the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), is part of NIAC’s Phase II program, and recently received $500k in additional funding to push the project further towards becoming a fully fledged NASA mission. This isn’t the first time a radio telescope on the moon has been proposed. But the LCRT team, led by Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay at JPL, have suggested two new and interesting features that make their approach much more attractive than previous alternatives.
UT video discussing the usefulness of a radio telescope on the far side of the moon.
The first feature has to do with limiting the sheer amount of material that is needed to construct a radio telescope. LCRT’s proposed instrument would be a one kilometer wide circle in a three kilometer wide crater. Traditional radio telescopes, such as the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) and the recently destroyedArecibo Observatory use hundreds of radio-reflective panels to any signals to an observing platform suspended by cable above the receiving
In order to complete a 1km wide telescope, thousands of reflecting panels would have to be created on Earth, launched into space, and then placed precisely where they need to go. That’s a lot of launches and a lot of weight, and it made the entire concept of a lunar radio telescope untenable.
Artist’s concept of what a completed LCRT would look like. Credit: Vladimir Vustyansky
Dr. Bandyopadhyay’s solution to this problem is to use a wire mesh instead of solid panels to reflect the radio waves to the antenna. This mesh would be much lighter, and less bulky, but will still need to be set precisely in order to work properly. For that, the team turned to their other novel solution – dual robots.
Roboticists at JPL, of which Dr. Bandyopadhyay is one, have been working on a concept called DuAxel. These robots have two separate configurations. In one, they look like a standard four wheeled rover. In the other, the two halves separate. One anchors itself to a specific point while the other uses a tether to ease itself into otherwise unreachable terrain.
Image of the two halves of a DuAxel rover working together. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / J.D. Gammell
Crater walls would likely be such unreachable terrain, so having a robot that is able to access both the bottom of the crater and up above the rim where any landed supplies would be located is invaluable to any such telescope mission. It would also allow the robots to mount the antenna, the critical sensing piece of the telescope, above the crater’s center by applying tension in the mounting wires and lifting it into position.
Some major hurdles still remain, two of which will be the focus of this Phase II NIAC grant. The first is the design of the wire mesh network. It’s physical structure has to be exactly right in order for the telescope to work properly. In addition, it must be able to withstand the extreme temperature differences on the moon, which swing between -173 C and +127 C. If the mesh warps even slightly, the whole project could fail.
DuAxels in an operational test in the Mojave. Credit: JPL YouTube Channel
DuAxels themselves pose another quandary – should they be automated or have some sort of human intervention. Are they the only tools needed for the massive undertaking of constructing the largest ever radio telescope?
While Dr. Bandyopadhyay and his team work out these questions other factors put a time limit on the possibility of constructing a telescope in this most unique of locations. Part of the appeal of the far side of the moon is its lack of interference from artificial radio sources. However, that silence is not guaranteed. Already there is a satellite orbiting there, and other missions could be planned in the near future that would add confounding signals to the data mix.
Presentation by Dr. Banyopadhyay on the LCRT concept for a NIAC meeting. Credit: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay YouTube Channel
That being said, the LCRT is still a long way from reality, and in its press release NASA is quick to point out that it hasn’t been accepted as a full NASA mission. But the intent of the NIAC program is to develop concepts to the point where they could become one. With that in mind, the extra half a million dollars will keep pushing the concept forward and hopefully result in a Phase III grant, which would then transition into a fully fledged NASA program after an additional two years of study. Though it might take awhile, the benefits of having such a massive telescope in one of the most radio quiet place in the solar system cannot be understated.
The Moon race (part deux) is officially in full swing now with Japan, India, China, and even a private corporation making their marks on the surface. The calendar is packed with a whole slew of planned missions in the coming months and years to set the stage for a more sustained presence on the lunar surface. But some astronomers want to use the Moon for something perhaps less expendable than water ice — sorry, fans of For All Mankind — or a cosmic home base: a vantage point to peer into Cosmic Dark Ages.
NASA | New Craters on the Moon
Getting a look at the Cosmic Dark Ages — the period when the early universe was covered in pure darkness — has long been a holy grail for astronomers. It could tell us about the most fundamental aspects of our Universe and potentially help solve mysteries that puzzle us today.
“This is a wonderful place to look for any new physics,” says Jack Burn, a University of Colorado physicist, including understanding “the nature of dark matter, and maybe early dark energy, and really probe and test our fundamental models of cosmology and physics.”
But to see back into the Cosmic Dark Ages you need a very dark place indeed, free from a radiation-blocking ionosphere and away from the constant chatter we create here on Earth. This is why astronomers like Burns and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Joseph Lazio have plans to build radio telescopes on the far side of the Moon.
If engineers and astronomers at private companies, universities, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory have their way, the far side of the moon could soon be the spot from which astronomers stare 13 billion years back in time, to an era before the first stars were born. Teams of scientists worldwide are developing concepts to build huge radio telescopes on the far side of the Moon, and the first prototype could launch as early as 2025, with more rudimentary telescopes set to go even sooner. Here’s a look at the race so far.
“If We Didn’t Have a Moon, We’d Have to Build It”
In the beginning, as hydrogen gas drifted through the darkness of the early Universe, atoms occasionally bumped into each other, releasing energy in the form of radio waves. The radio waves from those dark clouds of gas were 21 centimeters long (that’s just the natural wavelength that hydrogen atoms emit, and they’re very consistent about it). But those radio waves have spent billions of years crossing a rapidly expanding universe, and that journey has stretched them out until they’re several meters long.
Charged particles in an upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere, called the ionosphere, block radio waves longer than about 10 meters, so it’s impossible to study the Cosmic Dark Ages with a telescope here on Earth. And radio telescopes, especially ones meant to map the sources of such long radio waves, have to be much too large to build in space. You need something like a planet, but without an ionosphere – or all the radio noise that surrounds our busy, high-tech world.
Burns has argued for decades that the far side of the Moon is the best of both worlds. There’s solid ground to build on, but there’s no ionosphere to block incoming radiation, and the whole bulk of the Moon (2,000 miles of solid rock) would shield the telescope from Earth’s constant radio noise and – for two weeks out of every month, during the lunar night – the Sun’s radio emissions, too.
“It's the ideal place,” says Burns. “If we didn't have a moon, we'd have to build it.”
This illustration shows what FarView’s zigzagging array of antennas might eventually look like
Ronald Polidan/NASA
Fortunately, we don’t have to build the Moon — just the observatory. Burns is working with Texas-based Lunar Resources, Inc. on a project called the Farview Observatory, which will — if everything goes according to plan — be a 5-square-mile array of radio antennas sprawling across a lunar plain. Picture an antenna something like an old-fashioned television antenna; now picture roughly 100,000 of them, lined up end-to-end in a series of zig-zags. Combined, those antennas will act as one giant radio receiver, listening for faint signals from the Cosmic Dark Ages.
Meanwhile, at JPL, a team led by JPL robotics technologist Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay is working on the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope, which has the same scientific goal as Farview but will look very different. LCRT would be a semicircle of wire mesh about a third of a mile wide, lining the bottom of a 1.9-mile-wide crater on the Moon. The result will be a radio dish similar to Arecibo (the large, now-shuttered observatory in Puerto Rico), but with bare wires instead of the aluminum panels that lined Arecibo’s crater.
This artist’s illustration shows what the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope might eventually look like, with a receiver suspended over a radio dish set in a lunar crater.
Vladimir Vustyansky, JPL
Comparing these two possible Moon telescopes is similar to comparing Earth-based telescopes like the Very Large Array (VLA) and China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). The VLA is an array of dish-shaped radio antennas lined up across a swath of New Mexico desert. It turns out that if you line up several radio receivers (or mirrors, if you’re studying shorter wavelengths like infrared or visible light), and connect them with the right software, those individual antennas can add up one giant telescope. Astronomers call this an interferometer.
FAST and the LCRT, like the now-defunct Arecibo, are something called single-aperture, or filled-aperture, telescopes. FAST is one enormous radio dish, set into a crater that provides structural support for the dish (and the delightful irony of using a crater formed by a meteor impact to study other objects in space).
Each design has its advantages. An interferometer like the VLA or Farview can see the universe in much higher resolution than a filled-aperture telescope like FAST or LCRT, because the interferometer is wider. But the tradeoff is that a filled-aperture telescope like FAST or LCRT can "see" fainter signals than an interferometer, because it's got an entire surface to catch them with. Neither is a “better” option than the other; radio astronomers here on Earth rely on both types of telescope to scan the skies.
A Truly High-Tech Construction Crew
During a field test in the Mojave Desert, the DuAxel robot separates into two single-axled robots, connected by a tether, so that one can rappel down a steep slope.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/J.D. Gammell
There’s one thing both telescope designs require: robotic construction teams. The LCRT team plans to use pairs of rappelling construction robots, developed at JPL, to lay the mesh grid in the base and along the sides of their chosen crater. Each pair of robots — together called a DuAxel — will be linked by a tether. One robot will anchor itself on the rim of the crater, while its partner rappels down the crater’s side to actually lay out the mesh for the telescope.
Farview, meanwhile, has even more ambitious plans for its robotic builders, starting with making the array’s 100,000 antennas from scratch, using aluminum extracted from lunar regolith (the dusty, ground-up rock that covers the lunar surface). The goal, says Burns, is to reduce the amount of material that has to be launched to the Moon from Earth.
And both telescopes will depend on a satellite in lunar orbit to send data home to Earth, since the far side of the Moon is constantly pointed out into the vastness of space, which is the whole point.
At the moment, both are in their second phase of development under a program called NASA Advanced Innovative Concepts, which funds projects that work out the engineering and science details of possible future missions like Farview and LCRT. Farview’s team will spend the next two years devising the best antenna layouts, narrowing down mission requirements, and tackling other engineering issues. They’ll also ask more specific science questions and plan how to use Farview to answer them. At JPL, the LCRT team is busy working on similar problems.
One Small Step For A Lunar Lookout
One or the other of the more ambitious observatory concepts could be ready to launch to the Moon by the late 2030s, but there are no guarantees.
Meanwhile, the first telescope to land on the Moon was a much smaller, much simpler version of a radio telescope: a crossed pair of antennas, spanning about 20 feet, called Radio wave Observation at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES). ROLSES landed near the south pole of the Moon aboard Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus Lander earlier this year. Its goal was to study the background radiation that already exists on the Moon. (Most of that radiation comes from our Sun, but that’s likely to change soon, since nearly everyone with a space program seems to be aiming to set up shop near the lunar south pole.) Its other goal is to simply prove that a radio telescope could work on the Moon
“These are all kinds of multi-billion dollar projects that I think are, in some sense, ahead of their time,” Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist An¸e Slosar tells Inverse. “You're not going to get a $2 billion project unless you can at least prove the principle at some point.”
This illustration shows what LuSEE-Night might look like perched atop its lander.
Firefly Aerospace
Near the end of 2025, a similar telescope called the Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Experiment – Night (LuSEE-Night) is scheduled for launch aboard a Firefly Aerospace rocket. If all goes well, it will touch down on the far side of the Moon in January 2026.
Like ROLSS, LuSEE-Night will be a fairly simple telescope: a pair of 20-foot-wide radio antennae, spring-loaded and mounted on a turntable. But LuSEE-Night will try to last through a two-week-long lunar night. To do that, it will carry a 110-pound battery, heavily insulated against the deep cold of lunar darkness.
“The main role of LuSEE-Night is really to test this theoretical promise – whether the Moon really is such a great place to do observation,” says Slosar. “Maybe the Moon has more ionosphere than we thought; maybe there are plasma tracks; maybe there are micrometeorites; maybe there's something we haven't thought about. Really, there is this kind of notion that the Moon is the best place, but nobody has tested it.”
LUSEE-Night will do some real science, too. It’s too small to capture the long, slow radio waves rippling in from the Cosmic Dark Ages, but it will also be astronomers’ first chance to test their models of what the galaxy should look like at low radio frequencies they can’t see from Earth.
Once we have eyes on the moon, there’s no telling what we’ll be able to see.
Stars, like the Sun, are remarkably constant. They vary in brightness by only 0.1 percent over years and decades, thanks to the fusion of hydrogen into helium that powers them. This process will keep the Sun shining steadily for about 5 billion more years, but when stars exhaust their nuclear fuel, their deaths can lead to pyrotechnics.
Supernovae happen across the Milky Way only a few times a century, and these violent explosions are usually remote enough that people here on Earth don’t notice. For a dying star to have any effect on life on our planet, it would have to go supernova within 100 light years from Earth.
In my writing about cosmic endings, I’ve described the threat posed by stellar cataclysms such as supernovae and related phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts. Most of these cataclysms are remote, but when they occur closer to home, they can pose a threat to life on Earth.
The death of a massive star
An image of Cassiopeia A, the remains of a massive star that exploded roughly three centuries ago.
The dying star emits high energy radiation as gamma rays. Gamma rays are a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths much shorter than light waves, meaning they’re invisible to the human eye. The dying star also releases a torrent of high-energy particles in the form of cosmic rays: subatomic particles moving at close to the speed of light.
Supernovae in the Milky Way are rare, but a few have been close enough to Earth that historical records discuss them. In 185 A.D., a star appeared in a place where no star had previously been seen. It was probably a supernova.
Observers around the world saw a bright star suddenly appear in 1006 A.D. Astronomers later matched it to a supernova 7,200 light years away. Then, in 1054 A.D., Chinese astronomers recorded a star visible in the daytime sky that astronomers subsequently identified as a supernova 6,500 light years away.
At 600 light years away, the red supergiant Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion is the nearest massive star getting close to the end of its life. When it goes supernova, it will shine as bright as the full Moon for those watching from Earth, without causing any damage to life on our planet.
Radiation damage
An image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of a star that exploded roughly 8,000 years ago
NASA
If a star goes supernova close enough to Earth, the gamma-ray radiation could damage some of the planetary protection that allows life to thrive on Earth. There’s a time delay due to the finite speed of light. If a supernova goes off 100 light years away, it takes 100 years for us to see it.
Astronomers have found evidence of a supernova 300 light-years away that exploded 2.5 million years ago. Radioactive atoms trapped in seafloor sediments are the telltale signs of this event. Radiation from gamma rays eroded the ozone layer, which protects life on Earth from the Sun’s harmful radiation. This event would have cooled the climate, leading to the extinction of some ancient species.
Safety from a supernova comes with greater distance. Gamma rays and cosmic rays spread out in all directions once emitted from a supernova, so the fraction that reach the Earth decreases with greater distance. For example, imagine two identical supernovae, with one ten times closer to Earth than the other. Earth would receive radiation that’s about a hundred times stronger from the closer event.
A supernova within 30 light-years would be catastrophic, severely depleting the ozone layer, disrupting the marine food chain, and likely causing mass extinction. Some astronomers guess that nearby supernovae triggered a series of mass extinctions 360 to 375 million years ago. Luckily, these events happen within 30 light years, only every few hundred million years.
Left behind after a supernova explosion, neutron stars are city-size balls of matter with the density of an atomic nucleus, so 300 trillion times denser than the Sun. These collisions created many of the gold and precious metals on Earth. The intense pressure caused by two ultradense objects colliding forces neutrons into atomic nuclei, which creates heavier elements such as gold and platinum.
A neutron star collision generates an intense burst of gamma rays. These gamma rays are concentrated into a narrow jet of radiation that packs a big punch.
If the Earth were in the line of fire of a gamma-ray burst within 10,000 light years, or 10% of the diameter of the galaxy, the burst would severely damage the ozone layer. It would also damage the DNA inside organisms’ cells at a level that would kill many simple life forms like bacteria.
Gamma-ray bursts may not hold an imminent threat to life on Earth, but over very long time scales, bursts will inevitably hit the Earth. The odds of a gamma-ray burst triggering a mass extinction are 50% in the past 500 million years and 90% in the 4 billion years since there has been life on Earth.
The most extreme astrophysical events have a long reach. Astronomers were reminded of this in October 2022 when a pulse of radiation swept through the solar system and overloaded all of the gamma-ray telescopes in space.
It was the brightest gamma-ray burst to occur since human civilization began. The radiation caused a sudden disturbance to the Earth’s ionosphere, even though the source was an explosion nearly 2 billion light years away. Life on Earth was unaffected, but the fact that it altered the ionosphere is sobering – a similar burst in the Milky Way would be a million times brighter.
NASA: First ‘human-made meteor shower’ will light up Earth skies
NASA: First ‘human-made meteor shower’ will light up Earth skies
Story by Eric Ralls
NASA: First ‘human-made meteor shower’ will light up Earth skies
Ever had that moment when you throw a rock into a pond and observe the ripples moving away from the spot? Now, imagine something similar happening, but on a much bigger scale -- in space. That's what happened when NASA's DART spacecraft made history by altering the path of a gigantic space rock hurling through the cosmos.
DART mission makes history
In 2022, DART made more than just ripples, it made waves of debris in space. It strategically collided with the Dimorphos asteroid, causing a ripple effect that shifted its orbit around its larger sibling, the Didymos asteroid.
The interaction didn't just stop there. The impact kicked up an astronomical dust storm, a cloud of debris that may soon become a tad bit personal for us Earthlings and our rusty neighbor, Mars. The most recent models suggest that some of the smaller meteoroids from this debris might make their way to both Earth and Mars.
Not to worry, though. The debris shower won't be disastrous, but rather a sight to behold, quite safely from our terrains.
Planetary defense collaboration
With a diameter of about 160 meters, the small moon Dimorphos orbits the larger body Didymos in what is known as a binary asteroid system.
The DART spacecraft, or the Double Asteroid Redirect Test, made contact with Dimorphos on September 26, 2022.
The outcome? A significant shortening of Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos by half an hour. It was the first act in an international planetary defense collaboration - a literal game-changer.
Related video:
Terrifying NASA Update: Doomsday Asteroid Heading Towards Earth in 2024!
If This Asteroid Hits Earth then we will all Die | NASA Warns About Asteroid coming in 2038
Hera will investigate further
Now, who's going to clean up this mess? Enter ESA's Hera spacecraft. Scheduled for launch this October, Hera will reach Dimorphos for a close-up "crash scene investigation," following the DART mission's impact.
"The DART impact offers a rare opportunity to investigate the delivery of ejecta to other celestial bodies, thanks to the fact that we know the impact location and that this impact was observed by the Italian LICIACube deployed from DART as well as by Earth-based observers," said ESA Hera mission scientist and co-author of this exciting development, Michael Kueppers.
Will DART debris reach Earth?
To understand how the debris from the Dimorphos impact might reach us, it's essential to assess its speed.
"Our results indicate the possibility of ejecta reaching the gravitational field of Mars in 13 years for launch velocities around 450 m/s, while faster ejecta launched at 770 m/s could reach its vicinity in just seven years," explained Eloy Peña-Asensio, lead author of the study.
"Particles moving above 1.5 km/s could reach the Earth-Moon system in a similar timescale."
However, whether the debris would indeed make it to Mars or Earth is subject to several factors. In essence, the location of the debris in the impact plume plays a deciding role.
A human-made meteor shower
"In the coming decades, meteor observation campaigns will be crucial in determining whether fragments of Dimorphos, resulting from the DART impact, will reach our planet. If this happens, we will witness the first human-made meteor shower," noted Peña-Asensio.
As for the consequential meteoroids, the largest ones would likely be about the size of a softball. These larger particles would burn up in Earth's atmosphere. However, they might manage to slip through the thinner Martian atmosphere.
However, it's the smaller particles that move at higher speeds which stand a chance to reach the Earth's atmosphere. But there's no need to panic. We have plenty of time and resources to track the debris and ensure our safety.
Significance of the DART mission
The significance of the DART impact is not solely about potential meteor showers or altered space debris routes. It's also about the human spirit of curiosity, exploration, and conquering new frontiers.
"Our accurate knowledge of the impact site and impactor properties in terms of size, mass, and velocity plus the observations of the ejecta are what allowed us to estimate the long-term fate of the material leaving the Didymos system," said Michael Kueppers.
Hera, named after the Greek goddess of marriage, is expected to begin its investigation of the asteroid pair in late 2026. According to ESA, the spacecraft will perform high-resolution mapping of Dimorphos, providing extremely valuable information for future asteroid deflection missions and science.
DART Impact
The last complete image of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos was taken by the DRACO imager on NASA's DART mission at a distance of about 7 miles (12 kilometers) and 2 seconds before impact.
Scientists make concerning discovery after analyzing bottom of the ocean: 'A stronger impact ... than we are currently taking into account'
Scientists make concerning discovery after analyzing bottom of the ocean: 'A stronger impact ... than we are currently taking into account'
Story by Jeremiah Budin
Scientists make concerning discovery after analyzing bottom of the ocean: 'A stronger impact ... than we are currently taking into account'
We all know that the Earth is getting hotter — but new research indicates that it may be warming even faster than scientists had predicted.
What's happening?
Scientists from NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research analyzed sediment from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean for the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications and reported by SciTechDaily. The researchers used a newly developed method to derive past atmospheric carbon dioxide content and compare CO2 levels in a single location over the past 15 million years.
Their results indicated that doubling atmospheric CO2 levels would increase the planet's average temperature by 13 to 25.2 degrees Fahrenheit.
"The temperature rise we found is much larger than the 2.3 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (4.1 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) that the U.N. climate panel, [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], has been estimating so far," said the study's first author, Caitlyn Witkowski.
Why are CO2 levels so important?
Scientists have already drawn a correlation between the amount of CO2 we release into the atmosphere and the amount of planetary overheating we experience. This new research makes the correlation clearer than ever.
"This research gives us a glimpse of what the future could hold if we take too few measures to reduce CO2 emissions and also implement few technological innovations to offset emissions," said another of the study's authors, Professor Jaap Sinninghe Damsté, a senior scientist at NIOZ and professor of organic geochemistry at Utrecht University.
Related video:
What If the Oceans Lose Oxygen? (See To Believe)
Can the ocean run out of oxygen? - Kate Slabosky
What If Earth’s Oceans Evaporated?
That Time The Ocean Lost (Almost) All Its Oxygen
Report: Oceans' drastic oxygen loss will affect millions of people
"The clear warning from this research is: CO2 concentration is likely to have a stronger impact on temperature than we are currently taking into account," Damsté added.
Global overheating is leading to, among other things, the melting of glaciers, which is causing ocean levels to rise and coastal communities to flood; various changes to the climate that are causing more frequent and intense extreme weather events; the spread of infectious diseases; crops becoming ungrowable in many previously hospitable climates; and heat-related deaths.
What's being done about rising global temperatures?
Several industries are responsible for releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere — chief among them is the dirty energy industry, which releases huge quantities of carbon dioxide whenever its oil and methane gases are burned.
To prevent catastrophic planetary overheating, we must leave these energy sources of the past behind and switch instead to clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
Police chiefs of America's largest cities have published the first guide about UAPs, which details chilling encounters and how officers can report such incidents.
The 11-page document warned that unidentified flying objects 'pose significant safety risks to law enforcement air support units,' urging teams to be vigilant when in helicopters.
The report also highlights stories from officers who claimed to confront UFOs, specifically one in 2023 where a law employee saw a 'triangle craft with green lights gliding through the sky' before a local resident said something 'ran' nearb
The police executives created the reference because 'it's in the interest of law enforcement to be aware of trends and reporting on UAP due to the unknown threat they may pose.'
A Las Vegas police officer appeared to capture a UFO on his bodycam
The organization, called the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), includes nearly 80 executives from major US cities who work together to advance public safety through a range of initiatives, including community outreach, research and policy development and now, UFO investigations.
The guide, released in June, also includes details from America's investigations into UFO encounters, as well as the testimony of 'whistleblowers' such as former United States Air Force officer and intelligence official David Grusch.
One article shared the US Congress UAP hearing held in 2023, which saw Grusch testify about his knowledge about aircraft with 'nonhuman' origins.
The report provided other articles about the US government and its potential link to alien life.
A section includes links to various UAP reporting websites, urging officers to report any bizarre sightings.
More interesting, the pages detail first-person stories from police officers who encountered unknown spacecraft while out in the field.
An officer patrolling Blairsville, Georgia in November 2023 claimed to have witnessed green lights in the sky.
'I am a police officer and deputy sheriff. While on duty after dark, near the top of my windshield (frame of view) I witnessed movement in the sky (southbound direction of view),' the officer's report stated.
'Upon concentrating my focus, viewing through the low light, I was able to make out a triangle craft, with 3 dim green lights per side (just bright enough to assess size, shape, and movement).'
The officer said he lost sight of the craft quickly due to trees, and was unable to hear anything due to being inside his vehicle.
The report described UAPs as a potential danger to police pilots (Major Cities Chiefs Association)
The report cites the testimony of 'whistleblowers' such as former United States Air Force (USAF) officer and intelligence official David Grusch
'I am privy to what helicopters and airplanes look like in the sky, frequently working alongside medical flight crews in the area, and where nearby airports are, making me somewhat familiar with common areas of the sky in which low air travel is common. This was unlike anything I had ever witnessed,' he said.
Within an hour of the sighting, the officer responded to a call from a homeowner in the same direction the object was traveling, reporting 'something running outside of his home… which did not sound like an animal.'
Another encounter happened in Harper Woods, Michigan in 2020, which included two officers who witnessed three mysterious objects in the sky - before they 'blinked out' of existence.
The officer wrote: 'At approximately 6:00am, myself and a fellow officer were standing in a parking lot of a church talking before the end of our shift.
'I was looking towards the southwest at the moon when I glanced towards the southeast. I saw 3 objects in the southeast sky and pointed towards them.
The guide details police encounters with UFOs
'The objects appeared to drift towards the east, maintaining the equal distance. As we watched the objects, they appeared to 'blink out' of our vision.'
Other reports in the guide recount civilian sightings of police helicopters allegedly pursuing UFOs.
In one encounter in Austin, Texas, a civilian wrote: 'When I walked out front door, saw Triangle Craft - with white lights illuminated on each corner - being closely followed by police helicopter - traveling south - near 620 freeway.
'Thought I was seeing things - but checked again - and was not. Hoping that others may corroborate.'
Another incident occurred in Winnipeg, Canada, where a civilian reported seeing a police helicopter being chased by unknown craft.
'While sitting in my hot tub in my back yard, I heard the familiar sound of the police chopper passing over the city. after it passed over our house, it made a few circles to the south of our location and after a few course adjustments, headed north at a higher rate of speed,' reads the statement.
'About 10 seconds later, 2 lights with the same relative brightness of the background stars traveled parallel and at a constant rate of speed.'
Nigel Watson, author of 'Captured by Aliens? A History and Analysis of American Abduction Claims' told DailyMail.com that the guide is 'very handy' for law enforcement officers.
'The short history of the study of UAPs and the links to organizations where sightings can be reported is very helpful,' he said.
'For me the references to the ex-government 'whistleblowers' David Grusch and Luis Elizondo is superfluous as they have only repeated rumors that have circulated for years without any substantial evidence.
'Although it notes numerous official studies, it does not mention the fact that the US Project Bluebook closed due to their finding such research is of no scientific value. Other projects have also found it very difficult to uncover any real evidence of non-terrestrial craft.
'The guide also lacks any references to skeptical websites and blogs that would give a more balanced view of the subject and counteract the wilder stories, like the alleged Roswell crash of 1947.
'Certainly there is now a case to be made that terrestrial UAPs do pose a threat to air safety and national security, but as with this guide, it gets mixed with the science fiction rumors of remarkable non-terrestrial vehicles that have little credibility.'
Minute by minute, what would happen if a world-destroying asteroid was detected coming to Earth - after 'greenish' space fireball crashed into our planet this week
Minute by minute, what would happen if a world-destroying asteroid was detected coming to Earth - after 'greenish' space fireball crashed into our planet this week
NASA's radar gives off a ping, notifying scientists that a world-destroying asteroid has been detected and could hit Earth in 10 years.
World governments are quickly alerted about a potentially catastrophic event, allowing them to formulate a plan to inform the public.
One year before impact, space agencies from every country launch nuclear deflection missiles with hopes of pushing the giant asteroid away from our planet - but the mission fails.
FEMA orders mass evacuations in the impact zone months in advance and the public is told to expect the worst with hours left on the clock.
While NASA has said such a scenario is unlikely to happen in the near future, an asteroid hit Earth this week and was detected only eight hours before impact.
An asteroid hit Earth on Thursday that was detected on eight hours before impact. However, NASA would have about 10 years to save the world from a world-destroying space rock
Most asteroids are not on track to hit Earth - but in the event that one is, here above is the sequence of events that would spring into action after the space rock is spotted
The small space rock that soared over the Philippines on Thursday was only three feet in diameter, which was not large enough to sound any alarms.
A report published by the White House in 2021 recommended that a reconnaissance mission would be necessary if an asteroid measuring at least 165 feet could hit Earth within 50 years is detected.
The document categorized a 3,300-foot-wide asteroid as a 'possible global catastrophe,' a three-mile-wide space rock as 'above the global catastrophe threshold,' and a six-mile-wide object as capable of causing a 'mass extinction.'
However, NASA, FEMA, and the United Nations conducted an exercise in April to assess how prepared Earth would be if a world-destroying asteroid were detected, finding that we would need at least 14 years' notice.
Detecting the world-destroying asteroid - 10 years out
NASA's ground-based telescopes identify the giant asteroid, comparing it with other space rocks in a database to ensure it is newly discovered.
The space agency has several projects that scan the skies, including the Catalina Sky Survey which spotted Thursday's asteroid.
These early-warning systems also include NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), a spacecraft equipped with a wide-field, 20-inch infrared telescope that operates in two wavelength ranges.
Once the object is detected, astronomers look at the data for brightness and movement to double-check that it is not a known one.
Teams then report their findings to the Minor Planet Center (MPC), the single worldwide location for reporting asteroids, minor planets and comets.
The MPC and NASA team up to determine the asteroid's orbit to predict if the path poses a threat to Earth.
The team discovers that the space rock is likely to come within five million miles of our planet and sends alerts to other agencies around the world, according to NASA.
Now that the world is aware of the impending threat, space agencies from every country join forces to deflect the asteroid about two years after detection.
A report published by the White House in 2021 categorized asteroid sizes, deeming one at least 3,300 feet wide could be catastrophic
The scenario begins with NASA detecting a world-destroying asteroid 10 years before it hits Earth. The agency has telescopes around the globe, like Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona that detected Thursday's asteroid that hit our planet
Launching an asteroid deflection - two to five years before impact
NASA tested a strategy in 2022 called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) that plowed into an asteroid at 14,000 miles per hour, leaving a massive plume of dust and rocks, and successfully altering its trajectory.
That asteroid did not threaten our planet, but the space agency could use the strategy to deflect the world-destroying asteroid.
This February, however, NASA's planetary defense chief warned that a DART-like mission would not be able to get off the ground if the impact needed to occur in less than five years.
Leading up to the launch of humanity's Hail Mary, NASA and international partners are studying a range of options, including a spacecraft and nuclear weapons.
The group decides to attack the asteroid with nuclear bombs about five years after detection and begins testing a prototype.
Then, two years before impact, teams send explosives and a detonation device at some short standoff distance from the asteroid.
Kaliat Ramesh, a professor of mechanical engineering and material science at Johns Hopkins University, told VOX: 'We would estimate that it would take energy equivalent to about 200 gigatons of TNT to fully disrupt an asteroid with a 12-mile diameter.'
One gigaton is equal to one billion tons of TNT, which means we would need 10 million Hiroshima-size bombs to destroy the massive asteroid hurtling toward Earth.
The only rockets capable of carrying such massive payloads of nuclear bombs would likely be NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) and Elon Musk's SpaceX Starship, but neither have been proven in this type of mission.
One year before impact, space agencies from every country launch nuclear deflection missiles with hopes of pushing the massive asteroid away from our planet
Billy Bob Thornton as Dan Truman, a a scientist at NASA, in Armageddon. Although a trope of sci-fi films, deflecting asteroids bound for Earth is a real concern
The nuclear option would be faster, a concept familiar to fans of the 1998 film Armageddon, starring Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.
In the movie, NASA sends a group of deep-sea drillers to blow up an Earth-bound asteroid and save humanity with just 18 days of lead time.
Evacuation Plan - months to hours before impact
In the months leading up to impact, global organizations like the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) would create detailed impact scenarios, estimating the destruction radius, atmospheric effects and potential global consequences.
Refined calculations forecasting the exact spot where an asteroid would impact Earth would, however, only become available as the asteroid comes into radar range, a process that new deep-space radar could accelerate.
FEMA would order evacuations around the impact zone to save as many lives as possible
And hours before the asteroid makes impact, the world will be told to shelter-in-place and hope for the best
The information collected by global organizations is sent to FEMA and other emergency groups to alert people in the impact zone, allowing for mass evacuations months before the space rock smashes into Earth.
Teams would also begin formulating rescue plans and assembling relief teams that would be deployed almost immediately after impact to salvage as many lives as possible.
A NASA report published in 2023 estimated that everyone within 300 miles of the impact zone, about 150 million people, 'would need to either evacuate or find an appropriate shelter or build one.'
As the clock ticks down to hours, the public would be ordered to shelter in place while they receiving continuous updates and directions.
After impact
The asteroid impact would cause widespread devastation, triggering tsunamis that devastate coastal regions and massive shockwaves and earthquakes.
Electrical and communication systems around the globe fail almost instantly.
The plan to save Earth would include a deflection strategy, evacuations and shelter-in place
The sun has been blocked by a massive dust plume released from impact, causing a significant drop in temperatures and a 'nuclear winter' that could last for decades.
Earth would be shrouded in darkness as massive fires rage that deplete oxygen levels.
Billions of people are dead, but those who did survive are now suffering from starvation, freezing temperatures and the collapse of civilization’s infrastructure.
VIDEOS PETER2011
What If Asteroid Apophis Hit Earth?
The most devastating asteroid to hit Earth - Sean P. S. Gulick
Boeing's Starliner has returned to Earth empty after leaving two astronauts who rode the spaceship up to the International Space Station stranded until next year.
The space capsule touched down at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexicotoday at approximately 4am GMT, around six hours after departing the ISS on Friday.
It was due to return to earth much earlier, having launched in June for what was meant to be a roughly weeklong test mission with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board.
But unexpected thruster malfunctions and helium leaks on its way up derailed those plans and NASA ultimately decided it was safer to bring the pair back on a spacecraft from rival Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The next scheduled SpaceX flight is not until February next year, meaning Wilmore and Williams will be stranded in space for another six months.
Boeing and NASA teams working around NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test Starliner spacecraft after it landed at White Sands, New Mexico, on Saturday
Boeing's Starliner lands at the landing site at White Sands Space Harbor in White Sands, New Mexico
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were initially planned to depart on the Starliner, but issues with the capsule's thrusters have delayed their return until at least February 2025
Ground teams reported hearing sonic booms as it streaked red hot across the night sky, having endured temperatures of 3,000F (1,650C) during atmospheric reentry.
A smooth, uneventful ride was seen as critical not only for salvaging some pride but also for Boeing's prospects of achieving certification in the future.
The century-old aerospace giant had carried out extensive ground testing aimed at replicating the technical issues the spaceship had experienced on its ascent and devised plans to prevent more problems.
With its reputation already battered by safety concerns affecting its passenger jets, Boeing made assurances in public and in private that it could be trusted to bring the astronauts home - an assessment not shared by NASA.
'Boeing believed in the model that they had created that tried to predict the thruster degradation for the rest of the flight,' Steve Stich, program manager for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, told reporters this week.
But 'the NASA team, due to the uncertainty in the modeling, could not get comfortable with that,' he added, characterizing the mood during meetings as 'tense.'
Starliner capsule fires its thrusters as it pulls away from the International Space Station on Friday, September 6
The gumdrop-shaped capsule touched down softly at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, its descent slowed by parachutes and cushioned by airbags
Shortly after undocking, Starliner executed a powerful 'breakout burn' to swiftly clear it from the station and prevent any risk of collision - a maneuver that would have been unnecessary if crew were aboard to take manual control if needed.
Following that, mission teams conducted thorough checks of its thrusters in preparation for the critical 'deorbit burn,' required to guide the capsule onto its reentry path around 40 minutes before landing.
While expectations were high that Starliner would stick the landing, as it had in two previous uncrewed tests, NASA will now carefully review all aspects of the mission's performance before deciding on the next steps.
NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX multibillion-dollar contracts over a decade ago to develop spacecraft to taxi astronauts to and from the ISS, after the end of the Space Shuttle program left the US space agency reliant on Russian rockets.
Although initially considered the underdog, Elon Musk's SpaceX surged ahead of mighty Boeing, successfully flying dozens of astronauts since 2020.
The Starliner program, meanwhile, has faced numerous setbacks.
The space capsule touched down at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico today at approximately 4am GMT, around six hours after departing the ISS on Friday
Boeing and NASA teams working around NASA's Boeing Crew Flight Test Starliner spacecraft after it landed uncrewed at White Sands, New Mexico
A full timeline of Boeing's Starliner program, from the singing of their massive contact to the incident that left two astronauts stranded aboard the ISS
In 2019, during its first uncrewed test flight, a software glitch prevented the capsule from rendezvousing with the ISS. A second software issue, which could have caused a catastrophic collision between its modules, was caught and fixed just in time.
In 2021, with the rocket poised on the launchpad for another attempt, blocked valves forced yet another postponement.
The capsule finally reached the ISS in May 2022 on a non-crewed flight, but further issues, including weak parachutes and flammable tape in the cabin that needed removal, delayed the crewed test.
For the current mission, astronauts Wilmore and Williams had been strapped into their seats and ready to fly twice before last-minute 'scrubs' due to technical glitches sent them back to their quarters.
A man in small-town Montana has captured footage of an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) and shared the shocking video that made his wife 'cry' on Reddit.
The video was recorded on Friday between 10:10 and 10:15 pm, and showed what appears to be a blinking craft streaking across the clear night sky.
Said to have been spinning and adorned with a series of rotating lights, the apparent object flew over tiny Choteau, home to a population of just over 1,700 people.
The videos, along with the original poster's in-depth account of the sighting, reveals how the man and his wife first mistook the unknown object for a meteor.
It comes after Montana was singled out as a hotspot for UFO sightings, with visitors recording some of the most significant and well-documented footage.
A man in small-town Montana has captured footage of an Unidentified Flying Object. Filmed Friday between 10:10 and 10:15 pm, the video seemingly shows a blinking craft streaking across the sky
Said to have been spinning and adorned with a series of rotating lights, the apparent aircraft flew over tiny Choteau
'On Friday night my wife and I were sitting on the deck out back looking at the stars - we do this every night,' wrote the unnamed poster, who goes by the user name PoneThePoon.
'Just after 10pm my wife said "is that a shooting star??", which I found odd, because if it was I wouldn't have time to look at it.
'The tree near me was blocking the direction she was staring so I got up and looked, and my jaw dropped,' he continued.
'I said 'Holy s**t. Holy s**t!!' and we both jumped off of the deck and got into the yard for a better view.'
Three separate clips show a light in the distance that appeared to be rotating in mid-air and the edge of what appeared to be a craft.
The town is sparsely populated, with a population of just over 1,700, and boasts an exceedingly clear sky
The sight, he said, left his spouse in tears after it lingered for a few minutes before flying away.
'The craft seemed huge, miles away,' he recalled - adding how it had several blinking and spinning lights, and a rotating orange-red light on the bottom.
'You can only see the orange/red light in the video,' he explained, revealing, 'We observed it for 2-3 minutes as it continued flying away, and then it was just gone.
'No noise, it was just gone.'
He also recalled how once the photos and video were secured on his wife's Galaxy Fold 4, he tried to do the same on his Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.
However, he said, the phone 'died right in front of my eyes'.
The man who filmed the clips posted them to Reddit, and was soon met with awe
Rushing to retrieve his charger, he continued to use his wife's phone to take 'tons of various zoomed photos and videos,' he recalled.
'What I have here is the best that came out of all that, this thing was really far away for a night time phone shot, so I'm pleased with what we did get.'
Speaking about the possibility that the craft was an Elon Musk-made satellite, he said: 'I don't believe this was Starlink.'
'I've watched a ton of Starlink videos since observing this, and our lights were rotating/blinking, not a static line of unchanging lights.
'After we got inside to see what we actually captured, my wife was shaking and crying from the experience,' he concluded.
'It was kind of scary, I couldn't fall asleep until 4am and it was my night to do the early feed for our twin boys.'
The Reddit post was soon met with awe by commenters.
Pictured: The Rocky Mountain range just outside of Choteau
'Really cool footage. Good explanation too,' wrote viewer impressed by the post.
'Kudos. Now don't let them disappear into the abyss. Good footage has a way of inexplicably going missing,' the person added.
'Download it, keep copies,' another chimed in, as the post received more than 3,200 upvotes in less than a day.
'This could have been the best UFO video ever if the sky was just a little bit lighter,' added a third top commenter. 'Frustrating, but definitely interesting.'
After asking what others thought of the sighting, most appeared to be at least be open to the idea the craft being something that cannot be explained.
'Awesome!' one such commenter wrote on Monday, as the post was bombarded with a bevy of replies.
As of writing, the origins and nature of the aircraft in the sparsely populated remained unknown. No other reports of the sighting have surfaced
'You should download the app Phenom and post this there!' the person added. 'It cant be taken down by anyone online or banned... This is great footage.'
The origins and nature of the apparent craft remain unknown. No other reports of the sighting have surfaced.
Montana has emerged in recent years as a hotspot for UFO activity, potentially due to the state's sparse population and roaming, vacant plains.
In 1950, two spinning disks seemingly flew over Great Falls and were captured on a hand-held camera - yielding clips that continue to defy conventional explanation to this day
In the '60s, apparent UFOs were seen over the Minuteman missile silos - then home to a vast arsenal of nuclear missiles in the midst of the Great Plains.
In separate incidents that occurred while the alleged UFO hung overhead, a series of armed and ready nuclear missiles were suddenly deactivated - leaving missile launch officers at a loss.
The US Air Force allegedly ordered these men never to tell anyone what happened, books like Joan Bird's Montana UFO's and Extraterrestrials have claimed.
The account examines such events and why they occur in the state, with many reports remaining unexplained in both government and private circles.
The one metre (3ft) wide asteroid was spotted just eight hours before it burned up over the Philippines in a spectacular fireball.
Luckily, the asteroid, named 2024 RW1, was too small to cause any damage.
However, its sudden arrival is a stark reminder of the dangers lurking within our solar system.
From the so-called 'Valentine's Day asteroid' to the deadly space rocks almost a mile wide, experts warn that several asteroids are at risk of smashing into Earth.
From the so-called 'Valentine's Day asteroid' to the deadly space rocks almost a mile wide, experts warn that several asteroids are at risk of smashing into Earth
Scientists around the world were caught off guard on Wednesday as a previously undetected asteroid collided with Earth's atmosphere
The 6 asteroids that could hit Earth
1. Bennu
Diameter: 1,574 ft
Odds of collision: 1/2,700 on September 24, 2182
2. 1950 DA
Diameter: 6,561 ft
Odds of collison: 1/34,500 on March 16, 2880
3. 2023 TL4
Diameter: 1,083 ft
Odds of collision: 1/181,000 on October 10, 2119
4. 2007 FT3
Diameter: 2,165 ft
Odds of collision: 1/11.5 million on October 5, 2024
5. 2023 DW
Diameter: 166 ft
Odds of collision: 1/1,584 on February 14, 2046
6. 1979 XB
Diameter: 2,165 ft
Odds of collision: 1/1.8 million on December 14, 2113
Asteroids colliding with Earth is far from an uncommon event.
In fact, NASA estimates that about 48.5 tonnes of meteoric material falls on Earth each day.
However, the vast majority of these objects simply burn up in the atmosphere to produce the flashing lights we recognise as shooting stars.
Objects large enough to punch through the atmosphere and actually collide with Earth are far rarer and don't often come within Earth's orbit.
Even smaller rocks can have a devastating impact, as shown by the Chelyabinsk meteor, a 59 ft (18m) wide asteroid which exploded over Russia in 2013.
Despite being hundreds of times smaller than the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, the resulting shockwave injured 1,500 and damaged 7,300 buildings.
Due to these risks, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) operate programs aimed at identifying, categorising, and tracking so-called Near Earth Objects (NEOs).
Currently, ESA has 1,634 NEOs on its 'risk list' - meaning that there is a non-zero chance these objects will hit Earth.
However, at present no asteroid is ranked above one on the Torino Scale - a chart which ranges from 0 (won't hit Earth) to 10 (will hit Earth, and will be catastrophic).
The Earth has been hit by devastating asteroids in the past such as the Chicxulub asteroid, which slammed into a shallow sea in what is now the Gulf of Mexico around 66 million years ago, creating an explosion that wiped out the dinosaurs
Experts say that another asteroid impact with Earth is a matter of when, not if (stock image)
If it were to collide with the planet, it would release energy equivalent to 1.4 billion tonnes of TNT.
Professor Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona previously said that an impact with Bennu would release 'three times more energy than all nuclear weapons detonated throughout history'.
While this might not be quite enough to create the type of planet-destroying force which wiped out the dinosaurs it could still lead to millions of deaths.
The asteroid Bennu (pictured) is considered to pose the biggest threat to Earth and could hit our planet within the next 200 years
This revealed that Bennu may contain the building blocks of life - including possible sources of water.
2.2023 DW - The Valentine's Day asteroid
Forgetting the chocolates and flowers on Valentine's Day 2046 might be the least of your worries.
The asteroid 2023 DW is predicted to have a significant chance of colliding with Earth on February 14, 2046 - just in time to ruin your date plans.
At 166ft (50m) across, 2023 DW is about the same size as the asteroid that caused the devastating Chelyabinsk event back in 2013.
The Valentine's Day asteroid, 2023 DW, (pictured) has a slim possibility of hitting Earth on February 14, 2046
Given that the asteroid has been observed moving at 21.78 km/s relative to the sun, it could hit Earth with enough force to level an entire city.
When it was initially discovered, space agencies gave this collision worryingly strong odds of one in 607.
However, with more careful observation that risk has now been considerably lowered.
Last year Richard Moissl, head of the ESA's planetary defence office, further reduced the odds of the asteroid hitting Earth from one in 784 to one in 1,584.
Moissi previously told MailOnline: 'It will go down now with every observation until it reaches zero in a couple of days at the latest. No one needs to be worried about this guy.'
The 165-foot (50 m) space rock was given a one in 560 chance of impact but experts say it is now almost certain to miss the Earth
For NASA to consider something a 'potentially hazardous object', it needs to be 460 feet (140 meters) in size with an orbit that brings it as close as within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometres) of Earth's orbit around the Sun.
At 4,265ft (1.3km) in diameter and weighing 71 million tonnes, asteroid 1950 DA is over 90 times that size.
This makes 1950 DA the biggest asteroid that has a serious chance of colliding with our planet.
If it were to hit, the collision would release energy equivalent to detonating 75 billion tons of TNT - enough to trigger a global catastrophe like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Currently, the asteroid is believed to have a one in 34,500 chance of hitting Earth on March 16, 2880.
In 2032, it will come within 6,959,357 miles (112,000,000 km) of Earth - a relatively close pass allowing for further observations.
Over the eight generations until 1950 DA reached Earth, a small disturbance could easily send it a safe distance from Earth.
A NASA spokesperson previously told MailOnline: 'If it is eventually decided 1950 DA needs to be diverted, the hundreds of years of warning could allow a method as simple as dusting the surface of the asteroid with chalk or charcoal, or perhaps white glass beads, or sending a solar sail spacecraft that ends by collapsing its reflective sail around the asteroid.
'These things would change the asteroid reflectivity and allow sunlight to do the work of pushing the asteroid out of the way.'
The asteroid 1950 DA has the potential to wipe out life on Earth. Based on its predicted orbit (pictured) the asteroid has a 1 in 34,500 chance of hitting Earth on March 16, 2880
Another asteroid which also has humanity-destroying potential is 2023 TL4.
After being spotted last year, scientists immediately recognised this huge asteroid as one of the biggest threats to Earth.
The space rock measures 1,083ft (0.33km) in diameter and is believed to weigh 43 million tonnes - more than 4,500 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower.
On collision, this could create a blast 150 times more powerful than that of the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.
Current estimates suggest that there is a one in 181,000 chance of this asteroid colliding with Earth on October 10, 2119.
Just like 1950 DA, this should give space agencies enough time to push the asteroid off its course, should it appear to be on its way to Earth.
The space rock 2023 TL4 measures 1,083ft (0.33km) in diameter and is believed to weigh 43 million tonnes - more than 4,500 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower. Its orbit (pictured) will bring it dangerously close to Earth in 2119
5. 2007 FT3
While the odds of 2007 FT3 hitting Earth are low, it has the unwelcome distinction of being the asteroid with the chance of hitting Earth soonest.
If we get incredibly unlucky, this 2,165ft (0.34km) asteroid could hit Earth as soon as October 5th this year.
However, current observations of 2007 FT3's path give this only a one in 11.5 million chance of occurring.
The asteroid has slightly better odds of colliding with Earth on March 3, 2030, with a one in 10 million chance.
Although that may seem low, the odds of winning the Lotto jackpot are one in 45 million and many people still buy tickets each week.
Since the odds are higher than zero, the object is still on ESA's risk list and is considered a potentially hazardous object.
The asteroid 2007 FT3 could hit Earth as soon as October this year, however the odds are only one in 11.5 million
The final object with a chance of causing serious damage to Earth is an asteroid called 1979 XB.
At 2,165ft (0.34km) in diameter and weighing 49 million tonnes, should 1979 XB hit Earth, it would easily be capable of destroying an entire city.
First spotted in 1979, scientists believe that this asteroid currently has a one in 1.8 million chance of hitting Earth.
What makes 1979 XB scary is that it has essentially been 'lost' since its discovery.
No one has observed 1979 XB in 40 years and so its orbit is poorly understood.
What predictions we do have are based on the initial observations taken immediately after its discovery.
Given that Earth was just hit by a previously undetected asteroid, this might leave many feeling understandably anxious.
The asteroid 1979 XB is scarier than most since it has been 'lost' for 40 years. The predictions we have of its orbit (pictured) are only based on observations taken shortly after its discovery which makes its true danger a mystery
How much danger are we really in?
Despite how scary these figures may seem, most scientists agree that the Earth is safe for now.
Dr Greg Brown, senior public astronomy officer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, told MailOnline: 'As of today, there are no known asteroids that are both large enough to be of concern and have a sizeable chance to impact the Earth.'
If any asteroids do hit Earth it is likely that they will fall over the ocean or over the remote regions which still make up the majority of the planet's surface.
This renders the risk of any serious devastation from a meteoric impact extremely low.
However, that does not mean that the Earth is completely safe.
While the risk of a collision remains extremely low, scientists warn that some sort of dangerous encounter is inevitable in the very long run. This is why space agencies are investing in planetary defence systems (artist's impression)
While big impacts are very rare, Dr Brown points out that 'asteroid impacts are a case of when, not if.'
That is why space agencies around the world are investing huge funds into planetary defence projects.
These include ESA's DART mission which managed to knock an asteroid off course with kamikaze satellite in 2022.
Dr Brown adds: 'It is important that we continue to improve our ability to track these objects and work on measures to protect ourselves if they occur.'
Boeing’s ruimtefiasco: astronauten achtergelaten in de ruimte door technische problemen
Boeing’s ruimtefiasco: astronauten achtergelaten in de ruimte door technische problemen
Boeing’s ruimtefiasco: astronauten achtergelaten in de ruimte door technische problemen
Key takeaways
De eerste astronautenmissie van Boeing eindigde met twee astronauten die in een baan om de aarde achterbleven.
Een slecht functionerende capsule, Starliner, keerde leeg terug naar de aarde na een tumultueuze reis geplaagd door stuwraketten en heliumlekken.
De astronauten zullen hun verblijf in de ruimte nu meer dan acht maanden moeten verduren door vertragingen bij het boeken van een nieuwe vlucht met SpaceX.
De ambitieuze zoektocht van Boeing om een geloofwaardige speler te worden in de ruimtevaartindustrie kreeg een tegenslag toen de eerste astronautenmissie eindigde met twee achtergebleven astronauten in een baan om de aarde. De slecht functionerende capsule, Starliner, keerde leeg terug naar de aarde na een tumultueuze reis die werd geplaagd door defecte stuwraketten en lekken van het vitale gas helium.
Suni Williams en Butch Wilmore.
Beeld AFP
Technische problemen teisteren de missie
De missie begon veelbelovend, maar ontrafelde al snel onder het gewicht van de technische uitdagingen. Ondanks uitgebreide tests achtte Boeing de capsule veilig voor de terugreis, terwijl NASA een andere mening was toegedaan.
Uiteindelijk koos NASA voor een veiligere optie en boekte een vlucht met SpaceX, die hen pas in februari zal terugbrengen. Deze vertraging betekent dat de astronauten hun verblijf in de ruimte meer dan acht maanden zullen moeten verduren, meer dan twee keer de oorspronkelijke tijdspanne.
De terugreis wordt een beproeving
Het oorspronkelijke plan was dat de astronauten slechts een week na de lancering in de Starliner zouden terugkeren naar de aarde. Hun reis werd echter ontsierd door een cascade van problemen met de stuwraketten en heliumlekken. De ernst van deze problemen zette NASA ertoe aan om de risico’s te heroverwegen die gepaard gingen met het thuisbrengen van de astronauten in de onrustige capsule.
Astronauten gestrand in een baan om de aarde
Door de situatie zijn de twee astronauten gestrand in een baan om de aarde, in afwachting van een lift naar aarde. Hun lot hangt ervan af terwijl ingenieurs blijven worstelen met de mysteries van de slecht functionerende Starliner.
Boeing Starliner: Two astronauts wait to come home amid spacecraft issues
UFO Or Cross-Sign? Mysterious Object Spotted Flying Over California's Skies
UFO Or Cross-Sign? Mysterious Object Spotted Flying Over California's Skies
The footage circulating on social media captures an unidentified object resembling a human figure in the air moving slowly.
Many believe that the object could be a hologram of Jesus.
(Photo Credits: Instagram)
Over the past few months, the USA has witnessed numerous UFO sightings, which has started debates about their origin, whether they’re extra-terrestrial or human-made objects. Recently, another intriguing video was shared online, which was reportedly filmed above Sequoia Park in California. The footage circulating on social media captures an unidentified object resembling a human figure in the air moving slowly and the video has caught attention of viewers worldwide. The person behind the camera speculates that it could be a person, while social media users believe that the object could be a hologram of Jesus, others feel it’s indeed a UFO, while few claim it’s the controversial Project Blue Beam.
For those not aware, Project Blue Beam is a controversial project which is used to manipulate for undisclosed purposes. Meanwhile, the individual recording the video claimed, “It has something on its side, it looks like a person with his arms sticking out. It looks like a person almost. It appears like a person but it’s an anomaly.” Sharing the video on Instagram, the page wrote, “Spotted in the skies over Sequoia Park, California.”
After the user posted the video on Instagram, it quickly went viral and garnered over 50,000 views. Social media users are sharing mixed reactions to the footage. While some made jokes about the mysterious object, others believe it may be part of a secret government project.
Reacting to the clip, a user wrote, “Are they trying to create hologram Jesus for the masses?”
Another shared, “Remember people fake alien invasion is on the list and has been for a long time.”
An individual suggested, “Large satellite balloon. Probably years old that’s all tangled by winds and it’s malfunctioning. That’s all folks.”
“Project blue beam,” a comment read.
Another wrote, “Probably someone’s helium balloon from a bachelorette party.”
One more joked, “It looks like a dancing astronaut.”
Interestingly, a similar video was recorded seven years ago in November 2016 and was posted on YouTube by a channel named Jay C Aerial Anomali. The creator, Jonathan Castro, shared the footage, stating, “I summoned and captured this one in front of my house back in August of this year. Decided to motion track and zoom this a little for a better close-up.” Surprisingly, Castro has shared numerous such videos on his channel and claimed that most of them were visible ‘interdimensional beings’ captured from his house. However, these claims have not yet been verified.
In an unprecedented achievement, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force, has announced that through its “ACE” program the X-62A “VISTA” has become the first autonomous fighter jet in the world to successfully engage in aerial dogfighting maneuvers against a manned F-16.
This historic event marks a significant milestone in applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in combat scenarios, highlighting a radical advancement in military aviation technology.
“The X-62A Team demonstrated that cutting-edge machine learning-based autonomy could be safely used to fly dynamic combat maneuvers,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said in a video released by DARPA marking the achievement. The team accomplished this while complying with American norms for safe and ethical use of autonomous technology.”
The X-62A’s recent accomplishment represents a major breakthrough in DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution, or “ACE” program. The primary goal of ACE is to enhance trust in autonomous combat systems by focusing on the challenge of enabling an AI-controlled aircraft to engage in fast, within-visual-range aerial combat, commonly referred to as “dogfighting.”
Since its inception in 2019, the ACE program has rapidly reached several key milestones, marking a significant departure from the usual lengthy timelines associated with developing advanced aerospace platforms.
In 2020, DARPA’s ACE program hosted the “AlphaDogFight” trials, a three-day virtual competition where AI programs from various industry partners competed in simulated dogfight scenarios. Maryland-based software company Heron Systems emerged as the winner, outperforming seven other AI agents designed to control F-16s. These competing programs included entries from major defense firms such as Lockheed Martin and the Georgia Tech Research Institute.
Heron Systems’ F-16 AI agent would then go on to dominate a series of dogfights against an experienced human Air Force F-16 pilot, “winning 5-0 through aggressive and precise maneuvers the human pilot couldn’t outmatch.” In 2021, Heron Systems was acquired by Shield AI, a San Diego-based technology company that specializes in the development of AI-powered defense systems.
The previously computer simulation-bound AI program was subsequently uploaded into a modified F-16D multirole fighter aircraft, known as the X-62A “Variable Stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft,” or VISTA.
Developed by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in collaboration with Calspan Corporation, the X-62A is a one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft outfitted with software that allows it to mimic the performance characteristics of other aircraft. The VISTA is used as a testbed for new systems, notably contributing to the development of the Direct Voice Input and the “Virtual HUD,” which have been incorporated into the cockpit design of the F-35 Lightning II.
“We conducted multiple sorties [takeoffs and landings] with numerous test points performed on each sortie to test the algorithms under varying starting conditions, against various simulated adversaries, and with simulated weapons capabilities,” DARPA ACE program manager, Air Force Lt. Col. Ryan “Hal” Hefron, explained. “We didn’t run into any major issues but did encounter some differences compared to simulation-based results, which is to be expected when transitioning from virtual to live.”
In 2020, the Air Force tested an AI algorithm named “ARTUµ” to control the sensor and navigation systems of a U-2 “Dragon Lady” spy plane. However, the 2022 tests with the X-62A represented the first time a machine-learning program had ever been used to pilot a tactical fighter aircraft.
Less than a year after these groundbreaking tests, the ACE program has achieved another significant milestone by showcasing the AI-controlled X-62A’s ability to successfully engage in real-world dynamic, offensive, defensive, and high-aspect air combat scenarios against crewed F-16s.
According to DARPA, initial testing of the AI-controlled X-62A against human fighter pilots began in late 2023 and continued into 2024.
“In September 2023 we accomplished another world first where we actually took the x62 and flew it against a live manned F-16,” Lieutenant Colonel Maryann Karlen, Deputy Commandant of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School explained. “We built up in safety using the Maneuvers first defensive, then offensive, and then high aspect nose to nose engagements where we got as close as 2,000 ft at 1200 miles-per-hour.”
The recent announcement showcases the ACE program’s rapid progress from simulations to real-world applications and serves as a testament to machine learning’s potential to revolutionize air combat tactics and strategy.
The image of an autonomous, AI-controlled fighter jet engaging in dogfights with human-piloted aircraft is bound to capture widespread public attention. However, at the core of this breakthrough lies the significant advancement of machine learning technologies and their ability to handle a spectrum of highly complex tasks.
Machine learning stands apart from traditional, rule-based autonomous systems in its ability to learn and adapt from vast streams of data. Unlike pre-programmed systems that operate within strict parameters, AI algorithms like those developed in DARPA’s ACE program autonomously analyze data to make real-time decisions during flight. This capability mirrors how human pilots react instinctively to dynamic combat scenarios, continually learning and adjusting tactics based on experience.
A crucial aspect of integrating AI into practical aviation scenarios is establishing trust. DARPA says the ACE program has made significant strides in this area by ensuring the AI agents controlling the X-62A operate within aviation safety norms. These include aerial and ground collision avoidance protocols, adherence to combat rules, and ensuring the AI’s decision-making process aligns with human safety and ethical standards.
“While the X-62 unique safety features have been instrumental in allowing us to take elevated technical risk,” explained James Valpiani, Commandant of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School Colonel, “with these machine learning agents in this test campaign, there were no violations of the training rules which codify the airmen’s safety and ethical norms, demonstrating the potential that machine learning has for future aerospace applications.”
Given the recent success in testing with the X-62A, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall recently revealed he was planning to personally fly on the autonomous-controlled aircraft at some point this year.
“I’m going to get a ride in an autonomously flown F-16 later this year,” said Kendall at an April senate hearing on the Air Force’s 2025 budget. “There will be a pilot with me who will just be watching, as I will be, as the autonomous technology works. Hopefully, neither he nor I will be needed to fly the airplane.”
As Kendall mentioned, DARPA has highlighted that while the X-62A conducts fully autonomous flights, it still carries two human pilots. These pilots monitor aircraft systems and can switch between AI agents to evaluate performance. They are also prepared to take control of the aircraft at any moment to maintain safety during tests.
Ultimately, the rapid success of DARPA’s ACE program underscores the shift in how future air combat will be conducted. It potentially introduces a new era where AI can be trusted to handle complex decisions in high-stakes environments and reduce human pilots’ risks in combat scenarios.
The implications of this breakthrough in machine learning additionally extend beyond military applications to potential adaptations in other sectors, including civilian aerospace. By demonstrating AI’s capability to handle intricate tasks under extreme conditions, the ACE program could pave the way for future applications where AI can enhance safety, efficiency, and reliability in commercial and military systems.
In DARPA’s announcement, Bill Gray, the Chief Test Pilot at the USAF Test Pilot School, underscored the importance of these recent advances and their potential to herald more robust AI-enhanced systems in scenarios previously considered too hazardous for automation.
“It’s very easy to look at the X-62 Ace Program and see it as under autonomous control [and] it can dogfight. That misses the point,” Gray said. Dogfighting was the problem to solve so we could start testing autonomous artificial intelligent systems in the air. But every lesson we’re learning applies to every task you could give to an autonomous system.”
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter:@LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email:LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com
VIDEOS
The X 62A VISTA: the first fighter jet controlled by AI technology
Artificial Intelligence Successfully Piloted The X-62A VISTA
Lockheed Martin successfully flight tests (VISTA) X-62A by Artificial intelligence for 17hrs
US Air Force. X-62A VISTA, F-22 Raptor and F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters in flight.
The abduction of Betty Andreasson Luca is considered to be one of the most documented cases in the history of Ufology. The woman from Massachusetts experienced multiple abductions, and her case is widely studied by UFO researchers. It became popular after the publication of the best-selling novel “The Andreasson Affair,” which came out in the late 1970s. She attended many radio shows and TV interviews where she discussed her encounter with grey aliens and even drew sketches of the incident.
Betty Andreasson was born on January 7, 1937, to Waino and Eva Aho. She went to school in Westminster and Gardner MA and had a great interest in art since childhood, which later became her passion. Betty married twice and with her first husband, she gave birth to seven children. She met her second husband Bob Luca in 1977.
Betty Andreasson Luca
According to the official reports, on the evening of January 25, 1967, Betty was at home with her seven children and parents. At around 6:30 p.m., she was busy in the kitchen when the lights in the house started blinking strangely. Soon after it, the kitchen’s window was hit by a reddish light beam, and the whole house went out of electricity. The children got terrified with the scene and Betty tried to calm them down. Her father looked out to find the source of the light and saw five strange-looking humanoid creatures walking right towards the house. Before he could understand the situation, the beings walked inside the house through the door which put the whole family in a state of shock.
Betty Andreasson during one of her hypnotic regression sessions
One creature went to Betty’s father while the other four came to her, and one of them started talking with her telepathically. The one who was made telepathic contact with Betty was about 5 feet tall, while others were shorter than him. The description by the witnesses was similar to the modern illustration of grey aliens. They had only slits on their mouth, three fingers in one hand, and wore a blue-colored one-piece suit.
Betty was frightened but at the same time, she felt calm by the friendly nature of the beings. They did not harm any member of the family and even released her daughter from a state of unawareness. Then she was taken outside and boarded on their saucer-shaped craft with a small dome that was standing in the backyard. After that, the ship went up in the air and merged with the mothership where Betty went through medical tests and was under the effects of strange equipment. Later, she was taken to some strange place where she felt much pain which, according to her, was a “spiritual experience.”
UFO sketch by Betty Andreasson
Later that night, Betty returned home at 10:40 p.m. and found her family still in a frozen state, where one of the aliens was watching them in her absence. Then the family was put to bed by the beings and the aliens left. What’s more, she forgot about her abduction until undergoing hypnotherapy in later years.
Betty said in some of her interviews that the creatures were angelic in nature but not biblical. She is a religious person, had only some school education and did not understand much about UFOs. Only after this bizarre experience, she understood that whatever she had experienced that night was much like a UFO abduction
In 1975, Dr. Allen J Hynek posted an ad in the newspaper to learn more about the abduction experiences and asked help from common people. Betty answered his ad by sending a letter, but it was rejected due to its unusual details. It was only in 1977 when her case was deeply investigated by the experts including a solar physicist, an electronics engineer, an aerospace engineer, a telecommunications specialist, and a UFO investigator.
Her case was first investigated by Jules Vaillancourt, a Mutual UFO Network investigator in 1977. He said: “What I found most amazing about Betty was her ability to draw. The detail of the (space) craft and the beings she drew under hypnosis were such that it really made me believe there was something to this.”
He also added that the detective who had given a psychological stress evaluation to Betty and her daughter believed in her story. She even spoke the language of aliens under hypnosis. Her case investigation continued for 12 months where she and her daughter had gone through hypnosis sessions, lie detector tests, and a psychiatric interview. Both mother and daughter passed them with a genuine reaction. Author and UFO researcher Raymond E. Fowler wrote five books on her UFO experiences that include the famous “The Andreasson Affair” series.
During one of her hypnotic regression sessions, she remembered one of the early abductions that occurred to her in childhood. It took place in 1950 when she was taken from her home into a spacecraft as usual. But this time, the craft was flying toward an ocean or sea. She was terrified that the craft would crash into the water. But the ship submerged into the water and entered into a kind of tunnel. Betty could see everything underwater, as the place was filled with light. What she said next under hypnosis is so bizarre that even gave a chill to Fowler.
Betty Andreasson drew what Fowler called Museum of Time
She saw people from all eras, different races, encased in the glass container. Fowler called it “The Museum of Time.” Betty said that people in the container were in old-fashioned clothes, and there were uncountable cubicles with humans inside at that underwater base.
Fowler wrote that when he listened to her one of the regression session recordings, his mind blew up as he found it difficult to believe. “A cold chill coursed through my body when Betty was describing people and animals enclosed in glassy cubicles in an icy cavern.”
Betty Andreasson and her second husband Bob Luca
Betty traveled a lot across the country, attending numerous TV interviews and radio shows and lecturing about her UFO experiences. She and her husband Bob Luca had been unsettled for many years until 1995 when they moved to Virginia. They lived in VA for 5 years and then moved to Florida. Shed died on March 18, 2022.
VIDEOS
Aliens & UFOs: The Betty Andreasson Case, considered one of the best cases of UFO abduction
UFO researcher Raymond E. Fowler talks about the 1967 Betty Andreasson alien abduction case
"The idea that the government is keeping something like this secret is just totally absurd. There's no motivation to do so."
The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array is a radio astronomy observatory located in the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico.
(Image credit: Getty Images/Feifei Cui-Paoluzzo)
If all the reports of mysterious objects buzzing our skies are taken as true encounters, the Earth appears to be under assault.
But spoiler alert: For the chief leader of the SETI Institute, established to search for and understand life beyond Earth, there's a need to step back and cuddle up to a cup of cosmic reality.
"We don't have any evidence of any credible source that would indicate the presence of alien technology in our skies. And we never have," said Bill Diamond, president and chief executive officer of the SETI Institute, headquartered in Mountain View, California. "The idea that the government is keeping something like this secret is just totally absurd. There's no motivation to do so."
UFOs - Truth, Lies & Coverup (Session 3) | The Citizen Hearing on UFO Disclosure
U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule It Out, Either
SETI is a key research contractor to NASA and the National Science Foundation, and collaborates with industry partners throughout Silicon Valley. Space.com caught up with Diamond for a close-encounter with his own thoughts and counterpoints to claims of alien visitation and to ask whether there's any signal in all the UFO noise.
Bill Diamond, president and chief executive officer of the SETI Institute. (Image credit: Bill Diamond)
Thought experiment
Diamond said that, while we should not outright rule out the possibility that we might someday discover evidence of alien technology in our skies, "we should equally not jump to the conclusion that UFOs are alien technology in the absence of any compelling evidence to that effect. And there is no compelling evidence," he contends.
To help visualize why, Diamond urges people to try a thought experiment.
The fastest spacecraft that humans have ever built and continues to head outward from Earth is NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. It was hurled outward back in January 2006, cruising by Pluto and is still adding mileage to its odometer.
"If you sent that spacecraft to our closest neighbor star, Alpha Centauri, it would take 80,000 years to get there," said Diamond. "Any civilization that has mastered the ability to traverse the incomprehensibly vast distances of interstellar space would have technology so far advanced from our own as to be beyond our comprehension."
The closest star system to the Earth is the Alpha Centauri group at a distance of 4.3 light-years. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope snagged this view of Alpha Centauri A (on the left) and Alpha Centauri B (on the right), appearing as cosmic headlamps in the dark. (Image credit: ESA/NASA)
It would be much like a smartphone to a Neanderthal, Diamond suggested.
"If such beings exist, they would likely send hardware here first and not biology, and they certainly wouldn't crash-land in our deserts," he said, like the alleged and highly acclaimed 1947 nose-dive of a UFO and its accident-prone occupants near Roswell, New Mexico.
In short haul language, that's a long way to travel and run out of braking fluid.
Where's the mothership?
"Long before they sent any craft into our sky they would have some understanding of what they were dealing with," Diamond observed, "as they would already know everything about our atmosphere, our airspace, our technology and more."
It just wouldn't happen, Diamond emphasized.
"And if it did they wouldn't leave them behind. And by the way, if you have a small craft zipping around in our airspace, where is the mothership? And if they didn't want to be observed, they wouldn't be!"
For many, the SETI logo signals a universal question of 'are we alone?'.(Image credit: SETI Institute/Trevor Beattie)
Connective tissue
All the same, in the public mind, is there some kind of connective tissue between SETI and UFOs?
"There is definitely connective tissue," Diamond responded. "Why do people have these beliefs? It is because they want to believe. Nobody really wants to think that this Earth is the only place in the vastness of space where life has emerged. Even that idea is also kind of absurd."
For example, Diamond points to the revelations cranked out by the NASA Kepler mission, lofted in March 2009.
That hunter/data-gatherer spacecraft discovered more than 2,700 planets beyond our solar system. Compiling deep space data for nine years, the message from Kepler: there are billions of unseen planets, indeed, more planets than stars.
Statistical probability
"Statistically speaking, every single star in the sky has one or more planets around it," Diamond pointed out. Furthermore, 50 percent or more of these are Earth-like (rocky surface and similar size) and in the habitable zone of their host star, he said.
"That implies the existence of tens of billions of potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy alone," Diamond said. "So indeed, the statistical probability that we are alone in the Universe is zero. Surely there is life beyond Earth!"
But the presence, both in space and time, as well as proximity, of advanced alien civilizations is another matter completely, Diamond continued. "There are innumerable variables, all of which in the sciences of astrobiology, planetary science, astronomy and astrophysics, we are trying to figure out."
Accidental observations
The SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array is the first radio telescope to be designed from the ground up to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. (Image credit: Seth Shostak, SETI Institute)
Diamond questions why any alien civilization would send biology when they could isntead send hardware.
"The farthest things we have sent into space are hardware. And that's logical," said Diamond. "But if you did send beings and the most interesting thing you can do is draw circles in crops … come on!"
One other scoop of skepticism Diamond added is that every single UFO — now tied to the term Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) — are all "accidental observations."
"Therefore, they are highly unreliable. They don't have instrumentation, technology, or methodology to discern what they are looking at," said Diamond.
Lastly, the SETI Institute leader said if the government actually believed in ET buzzing our planet, where's the study money?
"The lack of government funding to study UAP/UFO is evidence of either the government being quite certain that there's nothing to these accidental observations — or — the government preferring that we not use available technology to closely watch our skies because of our own human technologies that are being developed — in secret," said Diamond.
"I think that's the most compelling bit of evidence against the idea that we've got visitors in our skies," Diamond concluded.
For more information on the SETI Institute and its programs, go to https://www.seti.org/
In 1957, the astrophysicist Herman Bondi wrotea paperin which he considered the possible existence ofa negative mass in Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity. A negative mass would repel a positive mass away from it. Given that, a pair of positive and negative masses could accelerate together up to the speed of light. The negative mass would push away the positive mass which in turn would pull the negative mass for the ride. The runaway pair would accelerate indefinitely, without any need for fuel or a propulsion system. Energy conservation would not be violated because the sum of the two masses is zero.
However, in a recent discussion I had with my brilliant collaborator, Mark Hertzberg, we agreed that the existence of a negative mass in nature would allow for a time machine in which one can visit the past. The reason is simple. A positive mass delays the arrival of light that passes near it, as recognized in a seminal paper by my distinguished colleague, Irwin Shapiro.
The “Shapiro time delay” near a positive mass reverses sign and turns into a “Shapiro time advance” near a negative mass. If the sender is moving sufficiently close to the speed of light, the Shapiro time advance would mean that a light signal can be reflected off a mirror and arrive back to the sender when the sender’s clock shows a time earlier than the original transmission time of the same signal.
Effectively, the Shapiro time advance is equivalent to communicating with a faster-than-light particle which violates causality. Within Einstein’s gravity, the technical term for a time machine of this type is a “closed timelike curve.”
Within the standard framework of Einstein’s gravity, a negative mass would allow children to prevent their parents from giving birth to them, a logical inconsistency. Time machines can also be created by traversable wormholes which,as Stephen Hawking recognized in a seminal paper about “chronology protection” from 1992, require negative energy as well.
“It has been suggested that an advanced civilization might have the technology to warp spacetime so that closed timelike curves would appear, allowing travel into the past,” the abstract of Hawking’s paper begins, and thereafter concludes by saying, “These results strongly support the chronology protection conjecture: The laws of physics do not allow the appearance of closed timelike curves.” Hawking’s conclusion was supported ina subsequent paper by Bernard Kay, Marek Radzikowski and Bob Wald, but the final verdict on its validity is awaiting a better understanding of quantum gravity.
If time machines are absent, what are the most extreme distortions of spacetime that our Universe is known to display?
InEinstein’s gravity, the Earth orbits the Sun because the Sun curves space. An analogy is offered by the surface of a trampoline which is curved by a bowling ball,causing a marble with the proper speed to move in a circle around the heavier ball. Removing the bowling ball would release the marble on a straight trajectory on the flat trampoline. Similarly, discarding the Sun would free Earth on a straight path toward interstellar space.
The spacetime curvature created by the Sun at our location is characterized by a length scale that is equal to the inverse of the square root of (GM/r^3c^2), where G is Newton’s constant, M is the mass of the Sun, r is the Earth-Sun separation, and c is the speed of light. Plugging in the relevant numbers yields a curvature length of 10,000 times the Earth-Sun separation. Another way to derive this number is by recognizing that the Earth’s speed around the Sun is 10,000 smaller than the speed of light, c.
Other astrophysical objects display a stronger spacetime curvature overa shorter length scale. The largest distortions of spacetime are expected near a black hole. Limiting our attention to the accessible region outside the event horizon, this curvature length scales in proportion to the black hole mass. The most massive black holes in the Universe have a mass of ten billion solar masses and a curvature scale of 1,000 times the Earth-Sun separation. Thecurvature length shrinksby billions of times for black holes or neutron stars formed from the collapse of massive stars.
What is the largest spacetime curvature that we observed so far in the Universe? It corresponds to a length scale of about 24 kilometers, the size of a large city on Earth, and is realized on the surface of neutron stars which carry about twice the mass of the Sun atnuclear density.
The same spacetime curvature characterizes an atomic nucleus because it has the same matter density as a neutron star. But a curvature length of 24 kilometers is 19 orders of magnitude larger than the size of an atomic nucleus and therefore has no significance when nuclei are smashed into each other in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
In conclusion, based on all we know from observations or theorywithin the standard model of physics, negative masses are forbidden for the same reason that time machines are not allowed. If aliens were able to create negative masses and use them for travel, then they would have also been able to travel back in time.
If time travel had been feasible, then future generations of quantum-gravity physicists could have been able to visit Earth and rewrite our history as they wish. For example, they could have killed Adolf Hitler and allowed six million Jews to thrive in Europe between 1939 and 1945. The fact that this never happened suggests that either time machines will never be constructed in our future or that their creators have no interest in saving human lives.
AviLoebis the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s –Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theoryand Computation at the Harvard-SmithsonianCenter for Astrophysics,andthe former chair of the astronomydepartmentat Harvard University (2011-2020). He is a former memberof thePresident’s CouncilofAdvisorsonScience andTechnologyand a former chair oftheBoard on Physics and Astronomy of the NationalAcademies.He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial:TheFirstSignofIntelligentLifeBeyondEarth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”,was published inAugust 2023.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
