Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
11-09-2024
Het universum bestond al vóór de oerknal, zo beweert een onderzoek
Het universum bestond al vóór de oerknal, zo beweert een onderzoek
Niet iedereen gelooft dat het universum met de oerknal is ontstaan. Voor sommigen waren er zelfs twee oerknallen, terwijl voor anderen het universum heen en weer beweegt tussen fases van uitdijing en inkrimping zonder te worden gereduceerd tot singulariteiten. Dit is ongetwijfeld een fascinerend perspectief, hoewel moeilijk te bewijzen, dat een ander beeld oplevert vergeleken met de meest wijdverspreide theorie van vandaag. Toch hebben sommige onderzoekers recentelijk bewijs gevonden van geheim leven in het universum vóór de oerknal, dat verband houdt met zwarte gaten en donkere materie. Laten we eens kijken waar het over gaat.
Zijn zwarte gaten en donkere materie hetzelfde?
Donkere materie is lange tijd het onderwerp geweest van diepgaande studies: we weten dat het bestaat, maar we kunnen het op geen enkele manier “zien”, behalve via enkele van de effecten ervan op de omringende materie. In feite zendt, absorbeert of reflecteert donkere materie geen elektromagnetische straling, maar heeft toch wel effecten op de zwaartekracht en de rotatiesnelheid van sterrenstelsels. Het is daarom een soort materie die we alleen kunnen bestuderen via de effecten ervan, op een manier die sterk lijkt op wat er gebeurt met zwarte gaten.
En juist deze principiële overeenkomst is niet onopgemerkt gebleven: een recente studie gepubliceerd in de Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics heeft de hypothese naar voren gebracht dat donkere materie zou kunnen worden gevormd door primordiale zwarte gaten. Maar wanneer zouden deze zwarte gaten zich hebben gevormd? Voor onderzoekers bestaat er geen twijfel: vóór de oerknal.
Van de Big Bounce tot (primordiale) zwarte gaten
EHT Collaboration/Wikimedia Commons - CC BY 4.0
Vanaf hier keren we terug naar de kosmologische theorie die we in de inleiding noemden, omdat de associatie tussen oorspronkelijke zwarte gaten en donkere materie het bewijs zou kunnen vormen van de Big Bounce. Volgens deze theorie was het ontstaan van het heelal daarom niet een singulariteit gevolgd door een fase van snelle uitdijing, in een proces dat we kennen als de oerknal, maar een oscillerend patroon van uitdijingen en inkrimpingen.
Volgens onderzoekers kromp het heelal ruim 13 miljard jaar geleden tot een oneindig kleine omvang voordat het weer uitdijde, wat leidde tot een toename van de dichtheid van de materie, wat op zijn beurt bijdroeg aan de vorming van oorspronkelijke zwarte gaten. We hebben het over hemellichamen die de massa van een asteroïde hebben en een oneindig kleine diameter, maar toch groot genoeg zodat Hawkingstraling ze niet volledig wegvaagt. Zeker niet in 13 miljard jaar. Maar wat betekent dit allemaal voor het universum, voor de natuurkunde en voor donkere materie?
Aan de oorsprong van het universum?
Het aantonen dat donkere materie uit vele kleine oorspronkelijke zwarte gaten bestaat, zou een impuls kunnen geven aan de studie van dit overheersende component van het universum. Aan de andere kant zouden we kunnen stoppen met het zoeken naar deeltjes die alleen via de zwaartekracht met materie interactie hebben, en op zoek kunnen gaan naar kleine zwarte gaten verspreid over het universum: sommige doen al iets soortgelijks. En dit is niet het enige gevolg: volgens de onderzoekers komen de eigenschappen van een oscillerend universum zoals geschetst overeen met de kromming van de ruimte en de kosmische achtergrondstraling in zijn vroege stadia. Maar zo eenvoudig is het niet.
Om hun theorie te testen zal het internationale team dat aan het onderzoek heeft gewerkt zwaartekrachtgolven moeten detecteren die zijn gevormd in de vorige fase van samentrekking van het universum. Tot op heden is het onmogelijk om dit te doen, tenminste met de instrumenten die momenteel beschikbaar zijn, maar wie weet in de toekomst. Misschien kunnen de Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, of LISA, en de Einstein Telescope ons al een antwoord op deze vraag geven. En een revolutie teweegbrengen in alles wat we wisten over de oorsprong van het universum.
Alien Abduction or Truth? The Charles Hickson Case That Passed the Polygraph Test
Alien Abduction or Truth? The Charles Hickson Case That Passed the Polygraph Test
One of the most compelling stories of alien abduction took place on the night of October 11, 1973, in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Two men, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, experienced a bizarre and traumatic event that would go on to become one of the most famous UFO cases in American history. What sets this case apart from other similar reports is that both men passed polygraph tests, providing a degree of credibility to their account. The Pascagoula incident remains one of the most intriguing alien abduction stories to date.
The Incident: A Night of Fishing Gone Wrong
On that fateful evening, Hickson, a 42-year-old Korean War veteran and shipyard foreman, and his friend Calvin Parker, a 19-year-old welder, were fishing along the Pascagoula River. As they enjoyed the quiet night, they were suddenly startled by a strange zipping sound and two flashing blue lights. Turning around, they saw an oval-shaped, hovering object, approximately 30-40 feet across and 8-10 feet high, descend towards them. The craft appeared to defy the laws of gravity, hovering just above the ground.
Before the two men could react, three strange creatures emerged from the craft. The beings were described as having no necks, coarse, wrinkled skin, and standing around five feet tall. Their movements were mechanical, and they glided toward Hickson and Parker. The men later reported being paralyzed, unable to move but fully conscious, as they were floated aboard the hovering craft.
Inside the spacecraft, both men claimed to have undergone a terrifying examination. Hickson described an “electronic eye” that scanned his body, while Parker recalled being laid on a table, subjected to a thorough physical examination by a more human-like, feminine creature. Both men said they were given telepathic reassurances not to be afraid, but the experience left them traumatized.
The Aftermath: Reporting the Incident
After being released from the spacecraft, Hickson and Parker were left standing at the river’s edge, completely shaken. Still in shock, the men initially hesitated to report the incident, but eventually decided to contact local authorities. They first called Keesler Air Force Base, only to be told that UFO encounters were no longer within their jurisdiction. With nowhere else to turn, they went to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
Skeptical at first, the sheriff’s deputies interviewed the men separately and even placed them in a room wired for sound, hoping to catch them in a lie. However, their conversation, recorded when they thought they were alone, only reinforced the deputies’ belief that the men were genuinely terrified by something unexplainable.
The story quickly gained national attention. News outlets across the country reported on the Pascagoula abduction, and Hickson, in particular, became a media sensation. Despite the attention, both men maintained the truth of their account, never deviating from their original story.
Passing the Polygraph Test: The Truth or Belief?
A key moment in the investigation was the administration of polygraph tests, which both men passed. Charles Hickson’s polygraph test was conducted by a New Orleans firm on October 30, 1973, just weeks after the incident. The examiner stated that Hickson was truthful in his belief that he had been abducted by extraterrestrial beings.
Skeptics have pointed out that passing a polygraph test does not definitively prove the truth of an event. Instead, it shows that the person being tested believes they are telling the truth. However, the fact that both Hickson and Parker passed their polygraph tests adds a layer of complexity to the case, as they demonstrated strong conviction in the accuracy of their bizarre experience.
The Public Reaction and Ongoing Interest
Hickson, more open to sharing his story, appeared on popular talk shows like The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and To Tell the Truth. Despite the public interest, Parker shied away from the limelight, choosing a quieter life, though he never contradicted his earlier statements.
In the years that followed, other witnesses came forward to support the men’s claims. For example, Mike Cataldo, a retired Navy officer, later reported seeing a strange, hovering object in the sky the same night near the Pascagoula River. Cataldo’s account described an object with flashing lights, spinning in the sky, and disappearing after hovering for about 30 seconds.
Despite the corroborative testimonies, skeptics, including renowned UFO debunkers like Philip Klass, challenged Hickson and Parker’s story. Klass pointed to inconsistencies in Hickson’s descriptions of the creatures, noting that his accounts changed over time. Others suggested that the men had entered a state of sleep paralysis and hallucinated the entire experience.
Theories and Skepticism: Was It Real?
Skeptics have tried to explain the incident in various ways. Joe Nickell, a prominent paranormal investigator, suggested that Hickson and Parker might have entered a hypnagogic state, a condition where a person experiences sleep paralysis and vivid hallucinations. This could explain the sensations of paralysis and the strange visual and auditory experiences the men reported.
Additionally, some investigators raised concerns about the polygraph tests. They noted that the polygraph examiner was relatively inexperienced, and Hickson had refused to take another test conducted by a more seasoned expert. These factors have led some to question the legitimacy of the tests and the overall story.
VIDEO:
The Most Convincing Alien Abduction Victim (He Passed The Polygraph Test)
The Pascagoula alien abduction case remains one of the most perplexing UFO encounters in American history. With both men passing polygraph tests, numerous eyewitnesses coming forward, and their consistent storytelling over the years, the incident continues to baffle investigators. Charles Hickson passed away in 2011, and Calvin Parker in 2023, yet their experience still ignites debate among believers and skeptics alike.
Was it a genuine alien abduction, a shared hallucination, or something else entirely? The Pascagoula incident leaves us with more questions than answers, but it stands as one of the most convincing cases in the annals of UFO lore, made even more compelling by the fact that its key witnesses passed a polygraph test, indicating that—at least in their minds—their terrifying experience was very real.
Travis Walton Tells His Story of Alien Abduction
Secret recording of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker after the Pascagoula alien abduction incident
IN CONTACT ~ rare documentary with Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson on the Pascagoula UFO incident
An unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) was filmed from the USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in July 2019. CREDIT: Jeremy Corbell/WeaponizedPodcast
UFOs that have shown the ability to seamlessly transition from air to sea without a splash or crash debris are an "urgent" national security concern with "world-changing" scientific ramifications, an ex-Navy officer said.
In July 2019, the USS Omaha recorded a UFO – or UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) – that buzzed a Navy fleet off San Diego and disappeared into the ocean without a trace.
The video, first released by Jeremy Corbell and verified by the Pentagon, displays capability that "jeopardizes U.S. maritime security, which is already weakened by our relative ignorance about the global ocean," oceanographer and retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet said.
"The fact that unidentified objects with unexplainable characteristics are entering US water space and the DOD is not raising a giant red flag is a sign that the government is not sharing all it knows about all-domain anomalous phenomena," Gallaudet wrote in his March 2024 report.
A recording of a UFO flying by the USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in July 2019 and then vanishing into the ocean without a splash or crash debris.
(Jeremy Corbell/Weaponized Podcast)
Gallaudet sent the strong warning message in a 29-page report for the Sol Foundation, a think tank focused on researching UAPs and their implications, that was published last month.
He told Fox News Digital that it's "scientifically valid" to explore these unexplained transmedium (between the atmosphere and the ocean) events involving objects displaying abilities that have never been seen before.
"Pilots, credible observers and calibrated military instrumentation have recorded objects accelerating at rates and crossing the air–sea interface in ways not possible for anything made by humans," Gallaudet wrote in his report.
A Fox News Digital-created UFO hotspot map based off information by the Department of Defense.
(Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital based on AARO's Data)
They defy physics while being far superior in terms of engineering and materials needed to create this type of craft that could revolutionize virtually every aspect of human life from air and maritime transportation to energy generation to agriculture, he argues.
"To meet the security and scientific challenges, transmedium UAP and USOs should be elevated to national ocean research priorities," Gallaudet argues.
WATCH JEREMY CORBELL'S VIDEO OF UFO GOING FROM AIR TO SEA
Newly leaked video shows a UFO disappear into the water
The Department of Defense or NASA still haven't been able to explain the UFO seen in the 2019 video that Corbell, an investigative journalist and leading civilian voice about UFOs, released in 2021.
How the object was able to move that fast and seemingly vanish remains a mystery.
Former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, ex-Navy commander David Fravor and former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch testify before the House of Representatives subcommittee focused on UFOs.
(House subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs)
The DoD created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) tasked with getting answers, but the AARO's reports have concluded there's no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Experts have criticized the reports as "underwhelming" and directly conflict with former intelligence officer David Grusch's testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee national subcommittee hearing in July 2023.
READ TIM GALLAUDET'S FULL REPORT
Grusch testified that he had knowledge of secret government-run crashed-UFO-retrieval program to reverse-engineer the technology.
He also said the government "absolutely" has UFO tech and "biologics" of "non-human origins" since the 1930s and knows the exact locations where they're being held.
"The underwhelming document, which lacked any NASA data, appeared to be a perfunctory appeasement of congressional concerns regarding UAP," Gallaudet wrote, referring to AARO's most recent report.
Going back to focusing on underwater UFOs, Gallaudet said there's been legislative acknowledgment of their potential existence but "the literature on this subject is sparse and unsystematic."
WATCH HIGHLIGHTS OF DAVID GRUSCH'S CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY
David Grusch Highlights From Congressional UAP UFO Hearing 7.26.23
Tim Gallaudet, CEO, Ocean STL Consulting, LLC / Explorer's Cub Fellow / Former Deputy / Acting NOAA Administrator (2017-2021) Former Oceanographer of the Navy (2014-2017). (Tim Gallaudet/X)
"There are only a handful of books and scattered accounts by largely nonprofessional researchers, in contrast with the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books published about UAP sightings in the sky," Gallaudet wrote.
He lists a handful of sources that describe "luminous orbs, silver and gray discs, and triangular and cigar-shaped objects with various lighting configuration …. (and) their movement seems to defy known physical laws."
Gallaudet called on the U.S. government, academics, philanthropies and the private sector to invest in in-depth research about undersea UAPs.
"Sometime in the future, the government may start openly researching UAP to a greater degree than the perfunctory categorization effort underway at AARO," he wrote. "When that occurs, subsequent exploration for UAP on and under the sea will have the benefit of making new ocean science discoveries as well.
"Any hunt for USOs or supporting undersea infrastructure will almost certainly identify new marine species, geologic features, and oceanic processes."
Europese ruimtesonde "ontdekt" dat er leven mogelijk is op aarde
Europese ruimtesonde "ontdekt" dat er leven mogelijk is op aarde
Europese ruimtesonde "ontdekt" dat er leven mogelijk is op aarde
Geruststellend nieuws: de aarde is bewoonbaar. Dat heeft de Europese ruimtesonde Juice bevestigd toen hij op 20 augustus langs de planeet scheerde op weg naar Jupiter, zo deelde de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA dinsdag mee.
Instrumenten van de ruimtesonde gingen tijdens de vlucht langs de aarde na of de noodzakelijke voorwaarden voor leven aanwezig zijn. Ze vonden niet alleen water, maar ook koolstof, waterstof, stikstof, zuurstof, fosfor en zwavel, de meest voorkomende elementen in levende organismes.
Belangrijker dan de "ontdekking" op zich, is de bevestiging dat de instrumenten van Juice werken. "We zijn uiteraard niet verrast door de resultaten, het zou heel zorgwekkend zijn geweest indien we hadden ontdekt dat er geen leven mogelijk is op aarde", zegt projectwetenschapper Olivier Witasse. "Maar de resultaten bewijzen dat de instrumenten goed zullen werken bij Jupiter, waar ze zullen onderzoeken of er op de ijsmanen leven mogelijk is of is geweest."
Europese ruimtesonde "ontdekt" dat er leven mogelijk is op aarde
Juice (kort voor Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) werd in april 2023 gelanceerd. De aankomst bij Jupiter is in 2031 gepland. Daar zal de sonde drie van de zowat honderd manen van de planeet - Ganymedes, Callisto en Europa - bestuderen, omdat zij onder hun ijskorst mogelijk oceanen met vloeibaar water bevatten.
De flyby langs de aarde en de maan in augustus diende om met behulp van de zwaartekracht de snelheid en richting van het ruimteschip aan te passen. In 2026 en 2029 zal de sonde normaal opnieuw langs de aarde komen.
The capsule landed in the New Mexico desert after spending just over three months in space. But thanks to technical issues worrying NASA officials, it left behind the agency's two stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, bookending a disastrous first crewed flight attempt.
The pair will have to wait for their ride back, on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, until February.
Signals on the capsule's return were mixed. On the one hand, according to NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich, it pulled off a "bullseye landing." On the other, the agency admitted that a new thruster had failed during its descent. The capsule also experienced a temporary blackout of Starliner's guidance system during reentry.
It's an awkward situation for the space agency: would Starliner have been able to ferry NASA's missing crew members in the end?
"I think we made the right decision not to have Butch and Suni on board," Stich told reporters on Saturday. "All of us feel happy about the successful landing. But then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it."
Double Down
While approaching the International Space Station in early June, five of Starliner's 28 control thrusters gave up, forcing Wilmore and Williams to take over manual control.
Related video: Starliner capsule set to return to earth without crew (FOX 10 Phoenix)
Several helium leaks added to Boeing's growing headache at the time, worrying NASA officials.
The capsule didn't fare much better following undocking procedures on Friday. One of its 12 control jets on the crew module — a different set unrelated to the other malfunctioning service module thrusters — failed to ignite. And a glitch caused the spacecraft's navigation system to go down briefly during reentry as well.
It's still unclear whether Boeing will try to launch its plagued Starliner again. Analysts suggest the aerospace giant may dump the entire project, which has already lost the company well over a billion dollars, instead.
"It’s unclear if or when the company will have another opportunity to bring astronauts to space," Bank of America aerospace and defense analyst Ron Epstein told the New York Times. "We would not be surprised if Boeing were to divest the manned spaceflight business."
So, Would Starliner Have Safely Brought Its Astronauts Home?
So, Would Starliner Have Safely Brought Its Astronauts Home?
Story by Doris Elín Urrutia
NASA/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Starliner is finally home. But its crew — astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — are not. Could Starliner have safely carried them?
The Boeing spacecraft’s initial 8-day flight ballooned into a months-long saga shortly after launch. The aerospace company and NASA, who are collaborating for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program to bring low-cost astronaut rides to and from space, had tense discussions. Boeing argued their spacecraft was sound enough to return the crew. NASA was uncomfortable signing off. Starliner therefore landed shortly past midnight Eastern time early Saturday without Wilmore and Williams.
But in hindsight, would it have been fine?
Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, doesn’t beat about the bush on this point: “It would have been a safe successful landing with the crew onboard, had we have had Butch and Suni onboard.”
These comments came during a media conference NASA held after landing — noticeably without Boeing officials, who did not participate in the event. Stich explained that “if there was a crew onboard, it would have flown the same back-away sequence, and the same orbit return, and executed the same entry.”
This of course was not a given since not long after Starliner entered orbit around Earth on June 5, it leaked helium and five thrusters malfunctioned. Out of an abundance of caution — or according to many even a modicum of it — NASA did not want to send the astronauts home once they looked over the data with Boeing. It was not an easy decision and as Stich noted in an earlier meeting that “the teams were very split.” Boeing thought it would be fine — NASA “saw limitations” in the data.
So, Would Starliner Have Safely Brought Its Astronauts Home?
Moving forward, this uneventful landing doesn’t mean Starliner is now certified to get back in the game. Starliner’s launch in June was its critical Crew Flight Test, which would have certified Starliner as an astronaut ferry provider for NASA — had nothing gone awry. Of course, plenty went wrong and it was a huge hitch for Wilmore and Williams who will now return to Earth in February 2025 at the earliest, onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule set to launch to the International Space Station later this month.
Related video:
NASA Says Something Weird Is Happening With Boeing's Starliner, Stay in Space Forever!
“I’d say it’s probably too early to think about what the next flight looks like. We want to look at the data,” Stich said.
Amidst Boeing’s absence at the conference, Stich said the company is still a major partner. The major goal of the Commercial Crew Program is to get Starliner to the point where it’s greenlit for crew rotation. But the next steps aren’t yet clear.
“We will review the data and determine the next steps for the program,” Mark Nappi, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement Boeing published after Starliner landed.
“It will take time to determine the path forward,” Stich said. “Today we saw the vehicle perform well.”
Mysterious objects spotted in the outer solar system beyond Pluto
Mysterious objects spotted in the outer solar system beyond Pluto
Story by Eric Ralls
Mysterious objects spotted in the outer solar system beyond Pluto
Recent observations using the ultra-widefield prime focus camera of the Subaru Telescope have shown that there may be a population of small astronomical objects further out in the Kuiper Belt still waiting to be discovered.
According to the experts, the findings are essential for a better understanding of the formation of the solar system.
The research was made possible through an international collaboration between the Subaru Telescope and the New Horizons spacecraft traveling through the outer solar system.
New Horizons flew through the Kuiper Belt
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was launched in 2006 in order to observe the surfaces of outer solar system bodies up close for the first time in our history. The spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of the Pluto system (2015), and later on (2019) it made a flyby of one of the Kuiper Belt objects, (486958) Arrokoth.
Although there were four other spacecraft which have flown to the outer solar system, New Horizons is the only one that has flown through the Kuiper Belt.
Viewing objects in the Kuiper Belt
When examining Kuiper Belt objects from the ground, we can only observe them at small solar phase angles (the angle between the sun, the object, and the observer).
However, when looking at an object in the outer solar system from a spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt, these objects can be observed at different phase angles and their reflection characteristics can be utilized to estimate their surface properties.
Related video:
One of NASA’s Furthest Probes Just Gave Us a Look at Just How Dark the Universe is Beyond Our Solar System
Yet, the camera on the New Horizon spacecraft has a narrow field-of-view and cannot find Kuiper Belt objects on its own.
Fortunately, the Subaru Telescope can use its wide-field camera to discover a variety of Kuiper Belt objects and then narrow down the collection of objects which the spacecraft can fly by and examine.
New Horizons and the Subaru telescope
The collaboration between the New Horizons spacecraft and the Subaru Telescope was initiated in 2004.
During the 2004–2005 observations with the Subaru Telescope's prime focus camera (Suprime-Cam), the orbital alignment between Pluto and the spacecraft caused a portion of the Milky Way's center to appear in the background of the search area for Kuiper Belt objects.
While it was highly difficult to search for solar system objects with multiple background stars, the scientists were able to localize 24 Kuiper Belt objects.
Unfortunately, the Kuiper belt objects discovered until now require too much fuel for New Horizons to flyby, but new ones at greater distances might fall within the available fuel reach of the spacecraft.
In 2020, deeper observations with the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) on the Subaru Telescope began, and, by 2023, 239 Kuiper Belt objects were discovered.
A large number of objects discovered with HSC are located at distances ranging from 30 to 55 astronomical units (au) from the Sun (with one au corresponding to the distance between the Sun and Earth) and are thought to belong to the known Kuiper Belt.
However, the experts were not expecting to discover what looks to be a cluster of objects in the 70–90 au region and a valley between 55 and 70 au, where only a small number of objects are distributed.
Is there a new population of Kuiper Belt objects located at 70–90 au? "If this is confirmed, it would be a major discovery. The primordial solar nebula was much larger than previously thought, and this may have implications for studying the planet formation process in our solar system," Yoshida explained.
"This is a groundbreaking discovery revealing something unexpected, new, and exciting in the distant reaches of the solar system; this discovery probably would not have been possible without the world-class capabilities of the Subaru observatory," added New Horizons mission principal investigator Alan Stern.
Understanding solar system formation
In order to determine the precise orbits of these objects, the scientists are continuing observations with HSC.
"I think the discovery of distant objects and the determination of their orbital distribution are important as a stepping stone to understanding the formation history of the solar system, comparing it with exoplanetary systems, and understanding universal planet formation," Yoshida said.
New Horizons is currently traveling further out, at approximately 60 au from the Sun, hoping to discover many more distant objects.
The findings will be published in two articles in the Planetary Science Journal and are currently available on the arXiv preprint server.
Check us out on EarthSnap, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.
VIDEOS
Incredible Discoveries Of The James Webb Telescope | Universe Explorers | BBC Earth Science
The Year of Pluto - New Horizons Documentary Brings Humanity Closer to the Edge of the Solar System
Mysteries of the Universe. A Journey to Amazing Objects
The Bermuda Triangle is one of urban legend’s favourite locations.
For decades, the section of the north Atlantic oceanhas sparked fear and fascination as the alleged site, and source, of dozens of mysterious disappearances.
Top 10 Creepiest Unsolved Bermuda Triangle Mysteries
More than 50 ships and 20 airplanes are said to have vanished in the region, which stretches roughly from the Florida coast to Bermuda to the Greater Antilles islands.
This amounts to an average of four planes and 20 boats disappearing without a trace in the zone every year, the Week notes.
Naturally, conspiracy theories have abounded as to the causes of these tragic and unexplained instances, with aliens and even Atlantis blamed for the phenomena.
However, experts have offered more credible hypotheses and, in 2017, Australian scientist Karl Kruszelnicki claimed to have “solved” the enduring mystery once and for all.
The precise parameters of the Bermuda Triangle are disputed, but it roughly lies between Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico
((iStock))
He dismissed any suggestion that the supernatural was at play here and instead pointed the finger of blame simply at human error, bad weather and high traffic volumes.
“It is close to the equator, near a wealthy part of the world, America, therefore you have a lot of traffic,” he told news.com.au.
Indeed, the Bermuda Triangle (also known as the “Devil’s Triangle”), is one of the most heavily travelled shipping lanes in the world, with vessels passing through to reach ports in the US, Europe and the Caribbean.
And whilst the disappearance of any plane or ship is a tragedy, in fact, “the number of planes that go missing in the Bermuda Triangle is the same as anywhere in the world on a percentage basis,” Dr Kruszelnicki said, quoting insurance company Lloyds of London and the US Coast Guard.
Put simply, travelling through this infamous area is no riskier than going through other busy parts of the world.
And yet, sceptics will continue to cling to more interesting theories, including that rogue waves are behind the disappearances.
Scientists put forward this hypothesis in the Channel 5 documentary ‘The Bermuda Triangle Enigma’, claiming that conditions in the zone are just right for “massive rogue waves”.
“There are storms to the south and north, which come together,” University of Southampton oceanographer Simon Boxall explained. “And if there are additional ones from Florida, it can be a potentially deadly formation of rogue waves.”
Rogue waves of this type could reach around 30 metres (100 feet) tall, which would be on par with the largest wave ever recorded – a 100-foot tsunami triggered by an earthquake and landslide in Alaska’s Lituya Bay in 1958, HuffPost reports.
None of the 14 airmen involved in Flight 19 were ever seen or heard from again
((NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND/NAS Fort Lauderdale Museum))
Reports of unexplained occurrences in the Bermuda Triangle date to the mid-19th century when some ships were discovered completely abandoned for no apparent reason, while others transmitted no distress signals but were never seen or heard from again, , according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Perhaps the most famous incident linked to the area is the disappearance of Flight 19, which occurred in December 1945 and saw five US Navy Avenger torpedo bombers vanish during a training mission.
After setting off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the planes reportedly experienced compass malfunctions and became disoriented, leading to their disappearance.
And yet, Kruszelnicki dismissed suggestions, posited in 1964, that the incident proves that the Bermuda Triangle “is the scene of disappearances that total far beyond the laws of chance.”
He noted that Flight 19 took off in poor weather conditions, with 15-metre (49-foot) waves crashing down below the aircraft.
Kruszelnicki added that the only truly experienced pilot in the flight was its leader, Lieutenant Charles Taylor, and his human error may well have played a part in the tragedy.
“[He] arrived with a hangover, flew off without a watch, and had a history of getting lost and ditching his plane twice before,” the scientist explained.
Furthermore, radio transcripts recorded before the patrol vanished revealed that Lt Taylor had lost his bearings and ordered the patrol to fly east – unwittingly taking them further over the deep waters of the Atlantic.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the experts say. For some people, legends like that of the Bermuda Triangle will always hold appeal.
After all, mystery and intrigue are a lot more enticing than the prosaic truth: that humans make mistakes and you can't trust the weather.
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VIDEOS
Scientist Solves the Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle
What Actually Happens in the Bermuda Triangle - Mystery Revealed
The Mysterious Bermuda Triangle Unveiling Its Secrets. #Bermuda Triangle
Largest Dark Matter Detector is Narrowing Down Dark Matter Candidate
In 2012, two previous dark matter detection experiments—the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) and ZonEd Proportional scintillation in Liquid Noble gases (ZEPLIN)—came together to form the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment. Since it commenced operations, this collaboration has conducted the most sensitive search ever mounted for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles(WIMPs) – one of the leading Dark Matter candidates. This collaboration includes around 250 scientists from 39 institutions in the U.S., U.K., Portugal, Switzerland, South Korea, and Australia.
On Monday, August 26th, the latest results from the LUX-ZEPLIN project were shared at two scientific conferences. These results were celebrated by scientists at the University of Albany‘s Department of Physics, including Associate Professors Cecilia Levy and Matthew Szydagis (two members of the experiment). This latest result is nearly five times more sensitive than the previous result and found no evidence of WIMPs above a mass of 9 GeV/c2. These are the best-ever limits on WIMPS and a crucial step toward finding the mysterious invisible mass that makes up 85% of the Universe.
Led by the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the LZ experiment is located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, about 1,500 meters (nearly a mile) beneath the surface. The experiment relies on an ultra-sensitive detector made of 10 tonnes (11 U.S. tons) of liquid xenon to hunt for the elusive signals caused by WIMP-nucleus interactions. While direct detections are yet to be made, these latest results have helped scientists narrow the search.
“Dark matter interacts very, very rarely with normal matter, but we don’t know exactly how rarely. The way we measure it is through this cross-section or how probable an interaction is within our detector. Depending on the mass of a dark matter particle, which we don’t know yet, an interaction within the detector is more or less probable. What the new LZ results tell us is that dark matter interacts with normal matter even more rarely than we thought, and the only instrument in the world that is sensitive enough to measure that is LZ.”
The existence and nature of Dark Matter are among the greatest mysteries in modern astrophysics. Originally proposed to explain the rotational curves of galaxies, the existence of Dark Matter is vital to the most widely accepted cosmological model – the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model. Unfortunately, according to the prevailing theories, DM only interacts with normal (aka. “luminous”) matter via gravity, the weakest of the four fundamental forces. Detecting these interactions requires incredibly sensitive instruments and an environment free of electromagnetic energy (including heat and light).
While no direct detections have been made, the latest results from LZ have narrowed the range of possibilities for one of the leading DM candidates. As Szydagis said:
“It’s often misunderstood what is meant by the phrase ‘world’s best dark matter experiment’ since no one has made a conclusive, unambiguous discovery yet. However, new, stricter null results like LZ’s are still extremely valuable for science. UAlbany, as one part of the multinational collaboration that is LZ, has been making important contributions ensuring the robustness of LZ’s results, going back to the very beginning of the experiment.”
Although DM remains “invisible” to us, the presence of its gravitational pull is fundamental to our understanding of the Universe. For example, the formation and movement of galaxies are attributed to DM, and its existence is vital for explaining the large-scale structure and evolution of the Universe. If DM does not exist, then our understanding of gravity – as described by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity – is essentially wrong and needs revision. However, General Relativity has been experimentally validated again and again over the past century.
Therefore, narrowing the search for its constituent particle is vital to proving that our foundational theories about the Universe are correct. As Levy noted, UAlbany scientists have been making integral contributions to LZ for over a decade, and their work is far from done! “Working on LZ is always so exciting, even if we still have not made a discovery yet,” she said. “We all know that if it were easy, someone else would have done it already! I think right now what we need to take out of this result is that LZ is a great team of scientists, our detector is working superbly, our analysis is extremely robust, and we are nowhere near done taking data.”
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.
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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.
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"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
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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