Lasers reveal 3,000-year-old secret Mayan city with more than 6,500 structures

• READ MORE:  Ancient Mayan city containing 50-foot pyramids discovered

By Nikki Main Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Scientists have uncovered a secret Mayan city hiding in Mexico, which once featured an urban landscape of more than 6,500 structures.

The team used lidar technology to create three-dimensional models across 50 miles of land in Campeche, allowing them to map areas not visible to the naked eye.

The method revealed a 21-square-mile metropolis with iconic stone pyramids, houses and other infrastructure that have been concealed for more than 3,000 years.

There are hundreds of documented Mayan sites, but the newest find revealed that researchers aren't close to finding all the major Maya cities.

'Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a region that was dense with settlements, but it also revealed a lot of variability,' said the study's co-author, Luke Auld-Thomas, a doctoral student at Tulane University.

'We didn't just find rural areas and smaller settlements. We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the area's only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years,' Auld-Thomas said. 

The city, called Valeriana, included a dam, ballcourt, houses and terraces as well as a curved amphitheater and temple pyramids

There are hundreds of documented Mayan sites , but the newest find revealed that researchers aren't close to finding all the major Maya cities

The team conducted an aerial lidar survey, which uses laser pulses to measure distances and create three-dimensional models of specific areas. 

It has allowed scientists to scan large swaths of land from the comfort of a computer lab, uncovering anomalies in the landscape that often prove to be pyramids, family houses and other examples Maya infrastructure. 

'Because lidar allows us to map large areas very quickly, and at really high precision and levels of detail, that made us react, 'Oh wow, there are so many buildings out there we didn't know about, the population must have been huge,' Auld-Thomas said. 

'The counterargument was that lidar surveys were still too tethered to known, large sites, such as Tikal, and therefore had developed a distorted image of the Maya lowlands. 

'What if the rest of the Maya area was far more rural and what we had mapped so far was the exception instead of the rule?' 

The team uncovered two blocks of the Mayan city, one of which included a distinct pseudo-pyramid that was identical to one found at Rio Bec - a pre-Columbian Mayan archaeological site located near the Guatemala border in the Yucatan Peninsula.

The city, called Valeriana, was adjacent to a freshwater lagoon and encompassed two major areas of architecture that includes a dam, ballcourt, houses and terraces.

Valeriana also contained a curved amphitheater, temple pyramids and a reservoir that 'has all the hallmarks of a classic Maya political capital,' the study said.

The survey was conducted near a highway, revealing the hidden city with over 6,5000 structures

The Mayan city was discovered near Campeche in Mexico and covers about 21 square miles

'The discovery of Valeriana highlights the fact that there are still major gaps in our knowledge of the existence or absence of large sites within as-yet unmapped areas of the Maya Lowlands,' researchers shared.

A third region of the city was identified as a 'sparse and modest settlement, consisting of scattered or loosely clustered residences with no monumental architecture and limited investment in water storage.

Read More

• Lasers reveal 650-square-mile ancient Mayan city hidden beneath Guatemala rainforest 

Tulane professor and co-author Marcello Canuto said: 'Lidar is teaching us that, like many other ancient civilizations, the lowland Maya built a diverse tapestry of towns and communities over their tropical landscape.' 

He continued: 'While some areas are replete with vast agricultural patches and dense populations, others have only small communities. 

'Nonetheless, we can now see how much the ancient Maya changed their environment to support a long-lived complex society.'

Although hundreds of sites have been found, it's impossible to determine exactly how many Mayan cities still have to be studied.

However, lidar technology is helping researchers unearth them much more quickly, particularly in regions of southern Mexico and Guatemala.

'The government never knew about it; the scientific community never knew about it. That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there's a lot more to be discovered,' Auld-Thomas said. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

31-10-2024 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

'They are on the brink of instigating a potential intervention on the part of an extraterrestrial civilisation in order to preserve the life generating capacity of our planet'

He has now returned with another one – when speaking to the Julian Dorey podcast about what aliens might want on Earth.

He said: “They (the aliens) are on the brink of instigating a potential intervention on the part of an extraterrestrial civilisation in order to preserve the life generating capacity of our planet.”

Claiming that world leaders are driving the planet to nuclear war and environmental collapse, he went on: “That's what's panicking them (the aliens). If they intervene in an aggressive enough way to shut off our nuclear weapons capacities in both the East and West then that's going to reveal their presence – we aren't ready for that yet.

“We haven't taken the steps to prepare ourselves for an intervention of an extraterrestrial civilisation like this.”

He also claimed that the aliens don't want to change those in power and the power dynamics of the planet as it could potentially harm them, as they want to “sustain what they have here”. The claims follow an earlier one about two locations where the aliens are living on Earth.

Having previously stated that one bases was under the sea bed off the island of Isla Guadalupe, Danny has stated another base is in a very different “secret” location.

He said, going into great detail about this “secret” location: “There's another base outside of Sedona, Arizona, over by a place called 'secret mount' wilderness – a totally desolate area.

“There's a base there where the craft are, there's a number of them high in the mountains in remote areas of the planet and they're here now and they're extraordinarily distressed about the state of affairs (of humanity).”

He had previously claimed that the aliens were “mantis people”, and when asked if they were aliens who had very advanced weaponry he claimed that it was “conceivable”.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

30-10-2024 om 23:54 geschreven door peter  

'There's a base there where the craft are, there's a number of them high in the mountains in remote areas of the planet and they're here now and they're extraordinarily distressed'

The aliens are in the 'secret' mountains in Arizona 

(Image: Getty Images)

The location of another alien base on Earth has been revealed. Alien-loving lawyer Danny Sheehan has been involved in bringing UFO whistleblowers to the United States Congress in recent years.

He has been helping to provide explosive evidence of alleged government cover-ups regarding real encounters with extraterrestrial beings. Danny's made a series of bombshell claims regarding the potential locations of two bases with hundreds of UFOs seen going “in and out of it”, and that aliens are stealing human eggs and sperm.

He has now returned with another one – when speaking to the Julian Dorey podcast about the location of one of those bases.

Danny Sheehan has made a series of bold alien claims 

(Image: Twitter/X//julianddorey)

Having previously stated that one bases was under the sea bed off the island of Isla Guadalupe, Danny has stated another base is in a very different “secret” location.

He said, going into great detail about this “secret” location: “There's another base outside of Sedona, Arizona, over by a place called 'secret mount' wilderness – a totally desolate area.

“There's a base there where the craft are, there's a number of them high in the mountains in remote areas of the planet and they're here now and they're extraordinarily distressed about the state of affairs (of humanity).”

He had previously claimed that the aliens were “mantis people”, and when asked if they were aliens who had very advanced weaponry he claimed that it was “conceivable”.

Sheehan also claimed that there was “US military” all around the mountain base who “company the comings and goings of these big triangles going in and out of there,” as well as witnesses who stated that they had seen “tall whites or tall greys there, along with the mantis people”.

When asked what the “mantis people” are, he said: “They are huge, seven feet tall, extraordinary skinny, thin, kind of bowed over and remind people of a praying mantis... they are also called 'insectoids'. Whenever they're seen with tall greys, they seem to be in charge... giving telepathic commands.”

He went on to claim that sightings were reported in 2018 by people who were abducted by the aliens.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

30-10-2024 om 23:42 geschreven door peter  

New Research Casts More Light on Mechanisms of End-Triassic Mass Extinction

The end-Triassic extinction along with the end-Permian and end-Cretaceous events are the most severe mass extinctions in the past 270 million years. The exact mechanisms of the end-Triassic extinction have long been debated, but most prominent: carbon dioxide surfaced by volcanic eruptions built up over many millennia, raising temperatures to unsustainable levels for many creatures, and acidifying ocean waters. But a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says the opposite: cold, not warmth was the main culprit.

Outcrop area of CAMP rocks in Pangea showing paleolatitudes at CAMP time (201 million years ago) of key localities with the terrestrial end-Triassic extinction including the Newark Basin (NB) in northeastern North America, the Fundy Basin (FB) of Atlantic Canada, and the Central High Atlas (CHA) Basin of Morocco.

Image credit: Kent et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2415486121.

The end-Triassic mass extinction occurred 201.564 million years ago and resulted in the demise of some 76% of all marine and land species.

This mass extinction coincided with massive volcanic eruptions that split apart the supercontinent Pangea.

Millions of km³ of lava erupted over some 600,000 years, separating what are now the Americas, Europe and North Africa.

The event marked the end of the Triassic period and the beginning of the Jurassic, the period when dinosaurs arose to take the place of Triassic creatures and dominate the planet.

The new study presents evidence that instead of stretching over hundreds of thousands of years, the first pulses of lava that ended the Triassic were stupendous events lasting less than a century each.

In this condensed time frame, sunlight-reflecting sulfate particles were spewed into the atmosphere, cooling the planet and freezing many of its inhabitants.

Gradually rising temperatures in an environment that was hot to begin with — atmospheric carbon dioxide in the Late Triassic was already three times today’s level — may have finished the job later on, but it was volcanic winters that did the most damage.

“Carbon dioxide and sulfates act not just in opposite ways, but opposite time frames,” said Dr. Dennis Kent, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

“It takes a long time for carbon dioxide to build up and heat things, but the effect of sulfates is pretty much instant. It brings us into the realm of what humans can grasp. These events happened in the span of a lifetime.”

The Triassic-Jurassic extinction has long been thought tied to the eruption of the so-called Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP).

In their study, Dr. Kent and colleagues correlated data from CAMP deposits in the mountains of Morocco, along Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy, and New Jersey’s Newark Basin.

Their key evidence: the alignments of magnetic particles in the rocks that recorded the past drifting of Earth’s magnetic pole at the time of the eruptions.

Due to a complex set of processes, this pole is offset from the planet’s unchanging axis of rotation — true north — and to boot, changes position by a few tenths of a degree each year.

Because of this phenomenon, magnetic particles in lavas that were emplaced within a few decades of each other will all point in the same direction, while ones emplaced, say, thousands of years later will point 20 or 30 degrees in a different direction.

What the researchers found was five successive initial CAMP lava pulses spread over about 40,000 years — each with the magnetic particles aligned in a single direction, indicating the lava pulse had emerged in less than 100 years, before drift of the magnetic pole could manifest itself.

These huge eruptions released so many sulfates so quickly that the sun was largely blocked out, causing temperatures to plunge.

Unlike carbon dioxide, which hangs around for centuries, volcanic sulfate aerosols tend to rain out of the atmosphere within years, so resulting cold spells don’t last very long.

But due to the rapidity and size of the eruptions, these volcanic winters were devastating.

The scientists compared the CAMP series to sulfates from the 1783 eruption of Iceland’s Laki volcano, which caused widespread crop failures; just the initial CAMP pulses were hundreds of times greater.

In sediments just below the CAMP layers lie Triassic fossils: large terrestrial and semiaquatic relatives of crocodiles, strange tree lizards, giant, flat-headed amphibians, and many tropical plants. Then they disappear with the CAMP eruptions.

Small feathered dinosaurs had been around for tens of millions of years before this, and survived, eventually to thrive and get much larger, along with turtles, true lizards, and mammals, possibly because they were small and could survive in burrows.

“The magnitude of the environmental effects are related to how concentrated the events are,” said Dr. Paul Olsen, also from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

“Small events spread out over tens of thousands of years produce much less of an effect than the same total volume of volcanism concentrated in less than a century.”

“The overarching implication being that the CAMP lavas represent extraordinarily concentrated events.”

• Dennis V. Kent et al. 2024. Correlation of sub-centennial-scale pulses of initial Central Atlantic Magmatic Province lavas and the end-Triassic extinctions. PNAS 121 (46): e2415486121; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2415486121

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

30-10-2024 om 23:25 geschreven door peter  

De blobvis is de lelijkste vis ter wereld, maar zijn echte aspect in het water is iets anders

door Janine

The Ugly Animal Preservation Society/Facebook

Er bestaat geen twijfel over wat de lelijkste vis ter wereld is: het is de blobvis die al jaren dit vreemde record heeft.

Als we aan “lelijke” dieren denken, denken we meteen aan de blobvis: hoe zouden we anders een zacht uitziende vis met een bijzonder trieste uitdrukking noemen?

De werkelijkheid is echter anders: de blobvis is niet alleen niet de lelijkste vis ter wereld, maar wat we gewend zijn te zien is niet eens zijn echte verschijning in het water.

Hoe is dit mogelijk? Laten we daar samen achter komen!

Is de blobvis echt de lelijkste vis ter wereld?

rfedortsov/X

Als je kijkt naar foto's van de blobvis die we tot onze beschikking hebben, lijkt er geen twijfel mogelijk: het is echt de lelijkste vis ter wereld.

Hij is ongeveer 30 centimeter lang, heeft een trieste uitdrukking, een gelatineachtig uiterlijk en een grote “neus” die zijn gelaatstrekken heel menselijk maken, misschien wel te menselijk.

We moeten namelijk niet vergeten dat wij mensen heel goed zijn in het herkennen van vormen die ons bekend voorkomen, zelfs als ze er niet zijn. En de blobvis, met zijn trieste gezicht, is daar het perfecte voorbeeld van.

Tegelijkertijd zijn de beelden die van de blobvis "de lelijkste vis ter wereld" hebben gemaakt niet echt correct, omdat ze zijn ware verschijning in het water niet weergeven.

De gelatineachtige textuur en droevige uitdrukking die we op de foto's zien, zijn slechts het resultaat van de plotselinge decompressie die de blobvis ondergaat wanneer hij uit de diepten van de oceaan wordt gevist.

Zoals National Geographic aangeeft, leeft de Psychrolutes marcidus op dieptes tussen 600 en 1200 meter tussen Nieuw-Zeeland en Australië en om de enorme druk te weerstaan, heeft hij een lichaam ontwikkeld dat bijna geen spieren heeft.

Dit betekent dat het idee dat we hebben van de Psychrolutes marcidus, blobvis zoals wij hem noemen, niet helemaal juist is.

Hoe ziet de blobvis er onder water uit?

NOAA/MBARI - Public Domain

De blobvis in het water is heel anders dan wij ons voorstellen: hij leeft vredig in de diepten van de oceaan, waar hij moeiteloos drijft.

Op een diepte van 1200 meter heeft deze soort een succesvolle aanpassing gevonden door zijn spieren op te geven en zich mee te laten voeren door de stromingen. Het enige wat hier telt is het weerstaan van de grote druk en alle schaal- en weekdieren eten die voorbij komen.

Bovendien heeft deze soort geen zwemblaas, dus hij kan niet naar ondieper water. Maar dit is geen probleem.

Integendeel, in de diepten van de oceaan brengt de blobvis zijn hele leven door in verschillende stadia. Vrouwtjes kunnen tot tienduizenden eitjes per keer leggen, die vervolgens op de zeebodem worden afgezet.

Eenmaal uitgekomen komen er kleine blobvissen tevoorschijn die qua uiterlijk op volwassen exemplaren lijken: ze hebben een gelatineachtige structuur, weinig spieren en geen zwemblaas.

Onder water zijn deze verschillen echter niet merkbaar, in tegenstelling tot de oppervlakte.

Het behoud van de lelijkste vis ter wereld

clubguffy/Instagram

Hoewel de blobvis een perfect voorbeeld is van aanpassing aan een zeer specifieke ecologische niche, komen de problemen niet van de oceaan. Integendeel, ze komen van de mens.

Trawlvisserij in de diepten tussen Nieuw-Zeeland en Australië dreigt de populatie van deze soort, waarover we nog te weinig weten, te reduceren.

Daarom werd de blobvis in 2013 uitgeroepen tot het lelijkste dier ter wereld, maar het is een record met nobele bedoelingen.

Het was namelijk de Ugly Animal Preservation Society, een organisatie die mensen bewust wil maken van het belang van het beschermen van diersoorten die misschien minder aantrekkelijk zijn, maar net zo belangrijk voor het ecosysteem, waaronder de blobvis, die deze definitie gaf.

Onze lieve blob mag dan wel de lelijkste vis ter wereld zijn, maar wel voor een goed doel

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

30-10-2024 om 23:02 geschreven door peter  

Over the years, numerous mysterious events have been witnessed in the sky, defying explanation. Recently, yet another unusual sky phenomenon was observed over Southern Australia capturing attention and sparking curiosity. 

Video footage reveals what appears to be a dome-shaped structure, with an even stranger detail: lightning seems to bounce off or perhaps even originate from within the dome. 

The mysterious formation has led to numerous theories. Some viewers suggest it could be a unique (red) rainbow or a rare weather event like a haboob (sandstorm). Others speculate it might be the result of weather manipulation or even an energy field projected over the region. 

Opinions also vary on the lightning, some say it’s bouncing off the dome, while others believe it could be emanating from within. Although it may just be an unusual natural phenomenon, the seemly strange interaction with the lightning remains unexplained.

  

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

30-10-2024 om 22:44 geschreven door peter  

By Adry Torres For Dailymail.com

Viewers were left guessing after an apparent UFO was spotted floating over Cuernavaca, a city in the south central Mexican state of Morelos.

In viral video, a flying saucer-style is seen in a fixed position in the sky as bystanders at a gas station trained their cellphone cameras on it.

'This is here on Teopanzolco Avenue, on the corner of Plan of Ayala,' one of the stunned witnesses can be heard saying in the clip 'It's not just me, there are several people who are seeing it. In other words, this is how the object is suspended there.'

Residents in the south central Mexican town of Cuernavaca claimed to have recorded the moment a UFO appeared hovering near a gas station in broad daylight

A resident in Mexico was among many who paused at a gas station to record the alleged sighting of a UFO 

Some social media users questioned the veracity of the siting.

'It's false because it sways as if the wind were moving it,' another social media user commented. 'How long did it last and from there? Where did it go?'

'They saw how unsafe the city was and they decided to go somewhere else,' another joked. 'Aliens, Morelos is not safe!!'

While one person claimed it may have been a drone, another recalled seeing the same footage six years ago while adding that the object's appearance was not never verified.

Social media users appeared to be divided as to whether it was a UFO

The sighting comes just a month after the viral video filmed by Eduardo Chavez showed what appeared to be UFOs hovering near his tire repair business in the western municipality of Guadalajara.

'When I saw it I was impressed but as the minutes went by, I saw it as normal and that's when I made the video,' Chavez told DailyMail.com at the time.

But some TikTokers thought the video was a clever way to promote his small business.

'The people studying Marketing for years and this guy blew them away,' one person quipped.

'Is he aware that if the UFO is real it made a very possibly unbeatable commercial?' another commented.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

30-10-2024 om 00:43 geschreven door peter  

By Francine Wolfisz

Donald Trump has come tantalisingly close to revealing what he was told about UFOs while President, as he divulged fighter jet pilots told him 'they saw things that were very strange'.

Trump, who served as the 45th President of the United States between 2017 to 2021 and is seeking re-election, also refused to rule out there could be life on Mars or other planets 'that we don't know'.

The 78-year-old politician shared his thoughts on extra-terrestrials with podcaster Joe Rogan, in an engaging interview that also covered the unopened JFK and Martin Luther King assassination files, as well as his own recent brush with a would-be killer. 

Speaking about 'the people coming from space', while looking upwards and pointing, Trump said it had not been something of specific interest to him, but he was left intrigued after speaking to pilots claiming to have witnessed UFOs over America.

He said during Friday night's podcast: 'I interviewed a few people, it's never been my thing, I have to be honest. I have never been a believer. 

Donald Trump has come tantalisingly close to revealing what he was told about UFOs while President, as he divulged fighter jet pilots told him 'they saw things that were very strange'

The 78-year-old politician shared his thoughts on extra-terrestrials with podcaster Joe Rogan, in an engaging interview broadcast on Friday night

When Rogan told Trump scientists had as yet not found any evidence of life on Mars or any other planet in the solar system, Trump said he believes there still could be. 'Well maybe its life that we don't know,' he replied

'So I interviewed jet pilots that say they saw something. If you saw them you'd love to have them [on your show]...that were solid people, perfect, great pilots, everything. 

'And they said, 'we saw things sir that were very strange, like a round ball that wasn't a comet or meteor, it was something and it was going four times faster than an F22, which is a very fast plane. 

Read More

• Trump reveals to Joe Rogan the 'one big mistake' he made in his presidency as he opens up about UFOs, murder plots and the state of the 2024 election in wild three-hour podcast 

'And it was round, which in theory is a great shape [for flying].'

Rogan, 57, then asked Trump if he spoke to the pilots because he felt 'compelled' to do so because of a 'personal interest' in the issue.

Trump admitted: 'A little bit, its not a great interest for me, but its still an interest.'

He then added that the question he is asked 'as much as almost any question' is whether there are aliens visiting the earth. 

'What do you think?' pressed Rogan.

'There's reason not to think Mars and all these planets [don't] have life,' he replied.

When Rogan said scientists had as yet not found any evidence of life on Mars or any other planet in the solar system, Trump revealed that he believes there still could be.  

'Well maybe its life that we don't know,' he replied.

Trump added that while the sighted UFOs 'could be' drones or Chinese spy balloons, he remained swayed by the eyewitness accounts of the fighter pilots he spoke to. 

He added: [They are] solid, beautiful people. [They said] this is something sir, this is something. They're not conspiracy guys.'

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

The pair went on to discuss an infamous 2004 UFO incident in which top Navy pilots spotted 'Tic-Tacs' flying at incredible speed off the California coast, which were also picked up on sonar moving swiftly underwater.

On November 14 2004, Top Gun fighter pilot David Fravor was flying a training exercise close to San Diego when he was re-routed to investigate a strange object spotted on radar by warships protecting his aircraft carrier the USS Nimitz.

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

Commander Fravor told Congress in 2023 that as he circled the object, it turned to mirror his movements, then shot off past him at thousands of miles per hour, somehow stopping a second later at a secret pre-designated rendezvous point 60 miles away that only he and a handful of Navy staff on his ship were given ahead of their training exercise.

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

Kevin Day, who was Senior Chief Operations Specialist aboard the USS Princeton at the time in charge of monitoring the skies with radar to protect the Nimitz, said that in the 10 days prior to the incident he saw similar objects on his radar behaving inexplicably.

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

Kevin Day, who was Senior Chief Operations Specialist aboard the USS Princeton at the time, says his witnessed the 2004 Tic-Tac UFO incident 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sean Cahill, who was a Chief Master-At-Arms on the Princeton, said he saw lights in the sky matching the movements of the objects Day saw on his radar.

Rogan said that he invited Fravor onto his show to speak about his experience, mentioning that he had described seeing 'this thing go from below sea level to 50,000ft in a second'.

'That's stuff to beat,' smiled Trump.

Rogan continued: 'They don't know what it is, they saw something making a disturbance in the water, they got video evidence of this thing, two different fighter jets with pilots saw it, there's visual evidence, photographic evidence, video, radar. 

'Whatever the hell it is would turn a human being into jello if you were inside of it.'

Trump nodded as Rogan spoke, but did not elaborate further on the episode.

Speaking about US fighter jet capabilities he said: 'When you fly in these jets, the pilots have to be in great shape.

'When you fly in some of these things its amazing, you've got to be special [to be a pilot].'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

30-10-2024 om 00:34 geschreven door peter  

Alien-loving lawyer Danny Sheehan has made a claim on the Julian Dorey podcast about how many different species of aliens are in our galaxy . . . that we know of

And now he has made another claim about how many different species of aliens are in our galaxy...that we know of.

Speaking to the Julian Dorey podcast, he said: “The kind of evidence and information we had indicated that there was, in fact, two to six other highly intelligent, highly technologically developed but non-human species in our galaxy – an extraordinarily conservative reading, I might add.

“But very amazing because it was the Congressional report that concluded that this was the likelihood . . . but they were really unable to determine whether any of those civilisations had developed the kind of technology that would have been able to go faster than the speed of light.”

He didn't go into further details about what those other species could be, despite claiming on the same podcast that “mantis people” were on Earth and were leading “the greys” – another form of alien.

Claiming that world leaders are driving the planet to nuclear war and environmental collapse, he went on: “That's what's panicking them (the aliens). If they intervene in an aggressive enough way to shut off our nuclear weapons capacities in both the East and West then that's going to reveal their presence – we aren't ready for that yet.

“We haven't taken the steps to prepare ourselves for an intervention of an extraterrestrial civilisation like this.”

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

30-10-2024 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Lasers reveal 3,000-year-old secret Mayan city with more than 6,500 structures

• READ MORE:  Ancient Mayan city containing 50-foot pyramids discovered

By Nikki Main Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Scientists have uncovered a secret Mayan city hiding in Mexico, which once featured an urban landscape of more than 6,500 structures.

The team used lidar technology to create three-dimensional models across 50 miles of land in Campeche, allowing them to map areas not visible to the naked eye.

The method revealed a 21-square-mile metropolis with iconic stone pyramids, houses and other infrastructure that have been concealed for more than 3,000 years.

There are hundreds of documented Mayan sites, but the newest find revealed that researchers aren't close to finding all the major Maya cities.

'Our analysis not only revealed a picture of a region that was dense with settlements, but it also revealed a lot of variability,' said the study's co-author, Luke Auld-Thomas, a doctoral student at Tulane University.

'We didn't just find rural areas and smaller settlements. We also found a large city with pyramids right next to the area's only highway, near a town where people have been actively farming among the ruins for years,' Auld-Thomas said. 

The city, called Valeriana, included a dam, ballcourt, houses and terraces as well as a curved amphitheater and temple pyramids

There are hundreds of documented Mayan sites , but the newest find revealed that researchers aren't close to finding all the major Maya cities

The team conducted an aerial lidar survey, which uses laser pulses to measure distances and create three-dimensional models of specific areas. 

It has allowed scientists to scan large swaths of land from the comfort of a computer lab, uncovering anomalies in the landscape that often prove to be pyramids, family houses and other examples Maya infrastructure. 

'Because lidar allows us to map large areas very quickly, and at really high precision and levels of detail, that made us react, 'Oh wow, there are so many buildings out there we didn't know about, the population must have been huge,' Auld-Thomas said. 

'The counterargument was that lidar surveys were still too tethered to known, large sites, such as Tikal, and therefore had developed a distorted image of the Maya lowlands. 

'What if the rest of the Maya area was far more rural and what we had mapped so far was the exception instead of the rule?' 

The team uncovered two blocks of the Mayan city, one of which included a distinct pseudo-pyramid that was identical to one found at Rio Bec - a pre-Columbian Mayan archaeological site located near the Guatemala border in the Yucatan Peninsula.

The city, called Valeriana, was adjacent to a freshwater lagoon and encompassed two major areas of architecture that includes a dam, ballcourt, houses and terraces.

Valeriana also contained a curved amphitheater, temple pyramids and a reservoir that 'has all the hallmarks of a classic Maya political capital,' the study said.

The survey was conducted near a highway, revealing the hidden city with over 6,5000 structures

The Mayan city was discovered near Campeche in Mexico and covers about 21 square miles

'The discovery of Valeriana highlights the fact that there are still major gaps in our knowledge of the existence or absence of large sites within as-yet unmapped areas of the Maya Lowlands,' researchers shared.

A third region of the city was identified as a 'sparse and modest settlement, consisting of scattered or loosely clustered residences with no monumental architecture and limited investment in water storage.

Tulane professor and co-author Marcello Canuto said: 'Lidar is teaching us that, like many other ancient civilizations, the lowland Maya built a diverse tapestry of towns and communities over their tropical landscape.' 

He continued: 'While some areas are replete with vast agricultural patches and dense populations, others have only small communities. 

'Nonetheless, we can now see how much the ancient Maya changed their environment to support a long-lived complex society.'

Although hundreds of sites have been found, it's impossible to determine exactly how many Mayan cities still have to be studied.

However, lidar technology is helping researchers unearth them much more quickly, particularly in regions of southern Mexico and Guatemala.

'The government never knew about it; the scientific community never knew about it. That really puts an exclamation point behind the statement that, no, we have not found everything, and yes, there's a lot more to be discovered,' Auld-Thomas said.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

29-10-2024 om 23:55 geschreven door peter  

By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com

NASA has captured the moment the 'Great Halloween Comet' was swallowed by the sun.

The agency's probe witnessed the comet soar directly into the sun's fiery orbit and disintegrated without a trace Monday.

Astronomers discovered C/2024 S1 ATLAS in September, giving it the nickname due to it making a close approach days before Halloween.

Models predicted that the comet would glow brighter than Venus by the holiday, but on October 24, ATLAS flew past Earth and swung around the sun. 

NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) was the last to see the comet as it soared within 750,000 miles of the sun and disappeared.

Karl Battams, lead for NASA’s Sungrazer Project, said: 'This comet was likely already a rubble pile by the time it entered SOHO’s field of view.

'Unlike comet C/2023 A3, which never passed closer than about a third of Earth’s distance to the sun, C/2024 S1 is a true sungrazer: It passed within 1one percent of Earth’s distance to the sun, and has been completely vaporized as a result.'

Both comments are known as 'sungrazers' due to traveling close to our planet's star, where they light up brightly and often break into smaller pieces.

NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) witnessed the final moments of the 'Great Halloween Comet' as it soared closer to the sun

The Halloween Comet had shown signs of instability when telescopes in Hawaii identified it on September 27, including a sudden release of dust and cause.

While not unusual behavior for a comet, it was a sign of nucleus fragmentation that means the ball of ice is starting to break apart.

And the farther out in space an objects forms, the faster it is likely to happen. 

Astronomer Heinrich Kreutz was the first to name the comets in the late 1880s, studying as they grazed close to the sun.

And many even followed the same orbit. 

'That is, they were all fragments of a single comet which had broken up,' the European Space Agency, which partners with NASA to operate SOHO, said.

It is probable that the original comet, and its fragments, had broken up repeatedly as they orbited the Sun with a period of about 800 years. 

'In honor of his work, this group of comets was named the Kreutz sungrazers.'

Sungrazing comets have been observed possibly as far back as the year 371 BC. 

A comet seen by Aristotle and Ephorus may have been a Kreutz sungrazer. 

C/2023 A3 - also known as Tsuchinshan-Atlas - also made a close pass at Earth this month.

The comet, known as a sungrazer, took a straight path Earth's star and vaporized in the fiery orbit

Astronomers suggested the comet orbits the sun once every 80,000 years, making its current trip through our solar system the first since humans began to move out of Africa.

A3 was discovered by researchers last year and first observed at China's Purple Mountain Observatory and an Atlas (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) telescope in South Africa. 

It is named after both observatories.

It is thought to have originated from the Oort cloud, a giant spherical icy shell that surrounds our solar system and dates back some 4.5 billion years and may measure as much as 25 miles across.

Dr Gregory Brown, senior public astronomy officer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: 'The comet itself comes from an extremely distant part of our solar system, a place called the Oort cloud.

'It contains lots of bits left over from the formation of the solar system. Every so often, one of those bits will be nudged inwards in towards the solar system, where it could end up in a very, very long orbit.

'Those orbits can take extraordinarily long periods of time - thousands of years. The estimate on this particular comet is that if it is in a stable orbit, its last path to the inner solar system was about 80,000 years ago.'

While comets often appear as a flaming fireball in the sky, Dr Brown said they are sometimes referred to as 'dirty snowballs', as they contain a considerable amount of ice.

As they fall in towards the sun they thaw out, and the gas and dust trapped within their ice is released, forming a misty cloud around them and the illusion of a 'tail'.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

29-10-2024 om 23:44 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE - Exactly how NASA could evacuate ISS amid fears about leaks and cracks on the space station

• READ MORE:  ISS astronauts brace for evacuation as NASA monitors leaks 

By Ellyn Lapointe For Dailymail.Com

A growing leak on the International Space Station has sparked fears that astronauts on board may need to evacuate, including the two stranded by Boeing's Starliner. 

All seven astronauts have been forced into the US side of the orbiting laboratory due to 50 'areas of concern' and four cracks in a Russian-made module.

If the leaks become severe, the space station could rapidly lose oxygen and pressure. 

The moment Houston sounds the alarm of a threat, astronauts would have to race to shut the hatch of the leaking section and head to 'lifeboats' docked on the ship. 

A spaceflight expert told DailyMail.com that if evacuation became necessary, each crew would escape in their assigned NASA spacecraft, including the SpaceX Dragon capsule and the Russian Soyuz.

NASA's Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich said that in the event of an emergency, SpaceX's Dragon could be powered up within minutes. 

The capsules have been stocked with emergency suits, allowing the crew to quickly put on the proper gear as they flee the orbiting laboratory, saving more valuable time. 

However, the US space agency has admitted that it is not prepared for capsule failures due to the lack of ready-to-launch vehicles, which could leave the crew stranded without a way home.

NASA has committed to fully use and safely operate the space station through 2030, with plans to retire the ISS sometime after.

NASA has a plan in place for an emergency evacuation of the ISS and it could be used amid cracks and leaks on the ship. All seven astronauts are staying on the US side due to a leak in the Russian module

Independent spaceflight safety expert Laura Forczyk told DailyMail.com: 'If the leaks on the ISS worsen significantly to the point where NASA and Russia conclude the situation is unsafe, it may mean decommissioning the ISS sooner than expected.'

The main leak was identified in a service module transfer tunnel in Russia's Zvezda module that provides station living quarters, life support systems, electrical power distribution and data processing, flight control and propulsion systems.

American astronauts who came to the ISS on SpaceX's capsule are prepared to escape on their spacecraft if necessary.

But the evacuation plan for Don Pettit, a NASA astronaut who flew to the ISS aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft with two Russian astronauts in September, is a bit more complicated.

In the event of an emergency, he would not return to Earth on Soyuz. Instead, he would have to cram inside the SpaceX capsule, which was recently equipped with an extra seat just in case Pettit needs it, NASA spokesperson Jimi Russell told DailyMail.com.

It is unclear why Pettit would not return in the Russian craft, but some have suggested the swap would be due to the growing tensions between Russia and the US. 

NASA does not currently have an official evacuation plan for American astronauts assigned to Russian spacecraft. But the agency has awarded a $266,000 contract order for SpaceX to build one out. 

In the event that the leaks, cracks and other issues render the entire ISS uninhabitable, the astronaut crews would follow protocol to shelter in their respective spacecraft.  

This is not the first time the ISS has sprung a leak. In 2018 astronauts rushed to fix a hole (pictured) which had appeared in the outer wall of the Soyuz capsule on the orbiting laboratory.

ESA astronaut Tim Peake took this photo from inside Cupola in 2016, showing a 7 mm-diameter circular chip gouged out by the impact from a tiny piece of space debris

Each crew's capsule has an assigned shelter-in-vehicle plan that will protect astronauts from threats aboard the ISS, and allow them to flee the space station if necessary, according to a September report from NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG). 

'It was designed with these kinds of contingencies in mind,' Stich said previously. 

They also contain astronaut suits so that crews can quickly and conveniently suit-up in an emergency situation.

It can take up to 30 minutes to get inside a spacesuit, according to NASA.

Streamlining this process as much as possible would be critical in an emergency situation. 

These vehicles would be the astronauts' only hope of escape. If something happened to them, it would be a different story.

'Due to the high costs and a limited budget, the lack of ready-to-launch vehicles prevent the Agency from having an immediate response capability if crew vehicles encounter significant damage and are no longer safe for crew evacuation,' the report states. 

Russia's Zvezda module launched in 2000 and 'served as the early cornerstone for the first human habitation of the station,' NASA has said. But like the rest of the ISS, this module is aging and requires maintenance to keep working. 

The leak has been ongoing since 2019 when air began escaping from the module's transfer tunnel, a vestibule that separates the Russian docking port from the rest of the rest of the module.

There was no immediate danger, but it was eventually located and has been patched multiple times over the last five years. 

The Zvezda module is used to access a Russian cargo dock. Due to the escalating leak, the Russian space agency has agreed to keep the module sealed except when needed

A new leak was identified in 2021, also in the Russian Zvezda module, which was deemed a 'fairly serious issue.' 

If the leak grew severe, NASA and Roscosmos may be forced to permanently close the hatch to the affected tunnel.

And if the leaks worsened to a point where the habitability of the entire space station was affected, astronauts would be forced to sequester inside their spacecraft and potentially return to Earth. 

Former NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd, who served as the first commander on the ISS from October 2000 to March 2001, told a House of Representatives committee at the time that NASA and Russian engineers 'don't exactly understand why the cracks are appearing now.' 

Shepherd reiterated claims by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, that it was 'becoming a serious issue.'

Despite the fact that NASA has patched the main leak repeatedly, the amount of air escaping the station has only increased over the last five years.

NASA is now tracking 50 'areas of concern' related to a leak in the Russian Zvezda Service Module Transfer Tunnel (labelled)  which sprung a leak in 2019

The Canadarm2 robot arm was struck by space debris in May 2021, creating a hole that fortunately didn't impact the functionality of the robotic arm

It was the focus of the September report from the OIG, which found that the leak then hit record rates in April - losing 3.7 pounds of air every day.

The OIG has escalated the threat rating to five out of five in NASA's internal risk assessments. 

But this leak is just the tip of the iceberg. NASA officials told the Washington Post they are tracking four other cracks and 50 'areas of concern' on the ISS.

Speaking to the Washington Post, NASA associate administrator Jim Free said: 'We have conveyed the seriousness of the leaks multiple times, including when I was in Russia earlier this year.'

The cracks have 'all been covered with a combination of sealant and patches,' by Roscosmos, and further repairs are ongoing. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

29-10-2024 om 23:34 geschreven door peter  

The Solar Maximum is all based on the Sun’s magnetic fields. These fields are measured in Gauss units, which describe magnetic flux density. The Sun’s poles measure about 1 to 2 gauss, but sunspots are much higher at about 3,000 gauss. (Earth is only 0.25 to 0.65 gauss at its surface.) Since the magnetic field is so much stronger where sunspots appear, they inhibit convective heating from deeper inside the Sun. As a result, sunspots appear as dark patches.

Sunspots are visual indicators of the Sun’s 11-year cycle. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and an international group called the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel watch sunspots to understand where the Sun is at in its cycle.

“During solar maximum, the number of sunspots, and therefore, the amount of solar activity, increases,” said Jamie Favors, director of the Space Weather Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This increase in activity provides an exciting opportunity to learn about our closest star — but also causes real effects at Earth and throughout our solar system.”

The effects came into focus for many of us recently. In May 2024, the Sun launched multiple CMEs. As the magnetic fields and charged particles reached Earth, they triggered the strongest geomagnetic storm in 200 decades. These created colourful aurorae that were visible much further from the poles than usual. NASA says that these aurorae were likely among the strongest displays in the last 500 years.

Scientists know the Sun is at its solar maximum. But it lasts for an entire year. They won’t know when its activity peaks until after they’ve watched it for months and its activity has declined.

“This announcement doesn’t mean that this is the peak of solar activity we’ll see this solar cycle,” said Elsayed Talaat, director of space weather operations at NOAA. “While the Sun has reached the solar maximum period, the month that solar activity peaks on the Sun will not be identified for months or years.”

Each cycle is different, making it difficult to label peak solar activity. Different peaks have different durations and have higher or lower peaks than others.

Understanding the Sun’s cycle is important because it creates space weather. During solar maximum, the increased sunspots and flares also mean more coronal mass ejections (CMEs.) CMEs can strike Earth, and when they do, they can trigger aurorae and cause geomagnetic storms. CMEs, which are blobs of hot plasma, can also affect satellites, communications, and even electrical grids.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured these images of solar flares below, as seen in the bright flashes in the left image (May 8, 2024 flare) and the right image (May 7, 2024 flare). The image shows 131 angstrom light, a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colourized in orange.

via GIPHY

During the solar maximum, the Sun produces an average of three CMEs every day, while it drops to one CME every five days during the solar minimum. The CMEs’ effect on satellites causes the most concern. In 2003, satellites experienced 70 different types of failures. The failures ranged from erroneous signals in a satellite’s electronics to the destruction of electrical components. The solar storm that occurred in 2003 was deemed responsible for 46 of those 70 failures.

CMEs are also a hazard for astronauts orbiting Earth. The increased radiation poses a health risk, and during storms, astronauts seek safety in the most shielded part of the ISS, Russia’s Zvezda Service Module.

Galileo and other astronomers noticed sunspots hundreds of years ago but didn’t know exactly what they were. In a 1612 pamphlet titled “Letters on Sunspots,” Galileo wrote ‘The sun, turning on its axis, carries them around without necessarily showing us the same spots, or in the same order, or having the same shape.’ This contrasted with others’ views on the spots, some of which suggested they were natural satellites of the Sun.

We’ve known about the Sun’s magnetic fields for 200 hundred years, though at first, scientists didn’t know the magnetism was coming from the Sun. In 1724, an English geophysicist noticed that his compass was behaving strangely and was deflected from magnetic north throughout the day. In 1882, other scientists correlated these magnetic effects with increased sunspots.

In recent decades, we’ve learned much more about our stellar companion thanks to spacecraft dedicated to studying it. NASA and the ESA launched the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) in 1995, and NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in 2010. In 2011, we got our first 360-degree view of the Sun thanks to NASA’s two Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. In 2019, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe, which also happens to be humanity’s fastest spacecraft.

Our understanding of the Sun and its cycles is far more complete now. The current cycle, Cycle 25, is the 25th one since 1755.

“Solar Cycle 25 sunspot activity has slightly exceeded expectations,” said Lisa Upton, co-chair of the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel and lead scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “However, despite seeing a few large storms, they aren’t larger than what we might expect during the maximum phase of the cycle.”

The most powerful flare so far in Cycle 25 was on October 3rd, when the Sun emitted an X9 class flare. But scientists anticipate more flares and activity to come. There can be significantly powerful storms even in the cycle’s declining phase, though they’re not as common.

The Sun’s 11-year cycle is just one of its cycles, nested in larger cycles. The Gleissberg cycle lasts between 80 to 90 years and modulates the 11-year cycle. The de Vries cycle or Suess cycle lasts between 200 and 210 years, and the Hallstatt cycle lasts about 2,300 years. Both of these cycles contribute to long-term solar variation.

However, even with all we know about the Sun, there are big gaps in our knowledge. The Sun’s magnetic poles switch during the 11-year cycle, and scientists aren’t sure why.

There’s a lot more to learn about the Sun, but we won’t run out of time to study it any time soon. It’s in the middle of its 10-billion-year lifetime and will be a main-sequence star for another five billion years.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

29-10-2024 om 22:09 geschreven door peter  

Ken Chaffin included the following message with the solution he and his daughter submitted:

“My decoded message is a simple image with 5 amino acids displayed in a universal (hopefully) organic molecular diagram notation and a few single pixel points that appear between the clusters and molecular diagrams. I used a Margolus reversible 2×2 block cellular automata (BCA) with the simplest reversible rule, which is called ‘single point (CCW) rotation,’ acting only on 2×2 cells that contain only a single point or pixel per the header instructions, conserving pixel or point count, 625 pixels in and 625 out. The starmap image appears to have the molecular forms encoded in a 3D local degree of freedom set of basis vectors (also shown in the header).

“The CA effectively transforms and projects this 3D info onto a 2D plane. I can run my Unity game engine based simulator forwards (CCW rotation) and backwards (CW rotation) in time and transform the starmap representation to the amino acid diagrams in 6625 generations and reverse the rotation process to transform the amino acid diagrams back to the starmap image in 6625 generations. I say starmap but I really read from the binary message file each run. The decoded image is only visible for 1 frame lasting about 1/10th of a second, but I can pause and manually step as well as reverse my CA engine…Here is a screen capture of my decoded image [see below].

“The ‘blocks’ have 1, 6, 7, or 8 ‘pixels’ representing the atomic number of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Single and double bonds are designated as single and double lines. C-H bond angle is indicated with a caret ^ sign. These signs were produced by the CA. I have not edited the image in any way. It’s absolutely obvious to me what this is, as well as to my chemist friend I ran this by. It is amazing to watch all of the CA gliders or spaceships carry the binary bits of the message all over the ‘galaxy’ and then suddenly come together in coherence and meaning…”

Now that the tasks of extracting and decoding the message are complete, Daniela and her colleagues are taking a step back to observe how citizen scientists are shaping the challenge. The next step is to interpret the message and determine what it was meant to convey, a task that currently remains open. According to the project team, there are several ways for the public to engage, which include using the description and solution provided by the Chaffins to conduct independent analysis and post the results on the project’s Discord channel.

Participants must include a description of the method they used so that their approach can be replicated and verified. The possibilities are endless, ranging from an attempt at communication, cultural exchange, or a threat of invasion. Ultimately, this exercise aims to determine whether or not humanity is ready to make first contact with an alien civilization.

Further Reading: 

• ESA

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

29-10-2024 om 21:56 geschreven door peter  

Approaching An Artificial Sky

Streaks and trails due to the increasing number of Starlinks in orbit have also become a standard feature in modern deep sky images. While techniques to remove these have been pioneered by astrophotographers, these will continue to impact deep sky astronomy. This impact extends to sky surveys soon set to come online such as the Vera Rubin Observatory, set to see first light early next year in 2025.

SpaceX has implemented mitigation plans in response, including use of sun visors on first generation satellites, diffuse ‘dielectric mirror’ material on newer Version 2 (V2) platforms, and angling solar arrays. These have seen some success. Certainly, spotters have noted that the new Version 2’s have a bluer tint, and seem to shine at magnitude +7 once they’re boosted into their respective orbital slots. This is near the +7 magnitude threshold called for by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Radio noise from these new communications satellite constellations is also an issue that astronomers now have to contend with. LOFAR (The Netherlands Institute for Astronomy’s Low Frequency Array) notes that “new observations with the LOFAR radio telescope…have shown that the second generation ‘V2-mini’ Starlink satellites emit up to 32 brighter unintended radio waves than satellites from the previous generation.”

Enter China’s ‘Thousand Sails’ Initiative

China also recently joined the competition in LEO, with the launch of a Long March-6 rocket from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center with 18 satellites for Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST). This is part of the company’s ‘Thousand Sails’ initiative.

Dubbed China’s answer to Starlink, This will see an initial 1,296 satellites for the constellation placed in orbit by 2027. The company also has plans to expand the network to 12,000 satellites into the 2030s. This first batch went into a polar (sun-synchronous) orbit, and the resulting satellite train was spotted in orbit shortly after launch.

And there’s more in store. China also launched a Long March 6 rocket on September 5^th, with 10 new satellites for Geely Group Automotive. These are part of the company’s effort to build a communication network for autonomous vehicles.

As a follow-on this month, China also launched a Long March-6 rocket on October 15^th with another batch of 18 satellites headed into a polar orbit. This group is also part of the Thousand Sails constellation. Satellite spotters have already tracked these in orbit, with an estimated brightness of up the +4th magnitude when near the zenith on a visible pass. Keep in mind, China isn’t beholden to any obligations to mitigate the impact that satellite constellations might have on the night sky…nor do any formal international standards exist.

More Mega Satellite Constellations to Come

Not to be outdone, SpaceX is putting up more than just Starlink. Last month, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket on September 12^th, with the first five Bluebird satellites. These are ASTMobile’s follow-on to the BlueWalker-3 test satellite, still in orbit. With a phased-array antenna 10-meters across when deployed, BlueWalker-3 reaches magnitude 0. The company plans to put 110 of these potentially brilliant Bluebirds in orbit over the next few years.

OneWeb is also still putting satellites in orbit. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine War has forced the company to forego Soyuz launches. Instead, OneWeb now relies on competitor SpaceX to get into orbit.

The OneWeb satellite constellation currently hosts 660 satellites in orbit, right around the initial target number set by the company Eutelsat-OneWeb for nominal operation. The company began offering services through residential providers last year, including Hughesnet, Viasat and ironically, Starlink.

Starlink’s current status is 7,125 satellites in orbit, with 23 more planned tonight with the launch of Starlink Group 6-61 from the Cape. 12,000 satellites in orbit are planned for in the coming years, and the constellation could extend to a total of 34,400 satellites in future years.

Not to be outdone, the Unites States’ Department of Defense is putting its own dedicated satellite constellation in space. Dubbed Starshield, the network already has 73 satellites in orbit, and a total of more than a 100 are planned. As expected, the DoD is already shaping up to be Starlink’s (and SpaceX’s) biggest customer.

Hunting Satellite Trains

Other bright reflectors are making themselves seen in the night sky as well. ACS-3 (the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System) was launched this past April on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket. The mission successfully unfurled this summer on August 29^th. ACS-3 is the latest in a batch of satellites to attempt to test solar sail technologies in orbit. Mission planners could use this tech on future missions for maneuvering, propulsion or reentry disposal. Previous missions, including NanoSail-D2 and Planetary Society’s Light Sail have struggled with this tech, demonstrating just how difficult it’s turning out to be.

ACS-3 is definitely tumbling: we’ve seen it flare up to 0 magnitude (as bright as Vega) on a good pass. This seems to be very angle dependent.

You can track these missions and more on Heavens-Above. The leaders for the first two batches of respective Thousand Sail groups are 2024-140A and 2024-145A. Plus, Heavens-Above tracks Starlink batches (which are once again going up at a furious rate) on a dedicated page. We saw the most recently launched Starlink Group Batch 8-19 this past weekend… and that was from under the bright lights of downtown Bristol, Tennessee.

The Promise and Peril of Mega-Sat Constellations

To be sure, we’re a huge consumer of roaming WiFi. If we can continue our career and online exploits from a remote basecamp, then that’s a good thing… but there also needs to be oversight when it comes to what we’re collectively doing to our night sky as a resource.

Are we headed towards a future where artificial stars in the night sky outnumber real ones? Perhaps, the best thing that amateur satellite trackers can do now, is to chronicle what’s happening, as the Anthropocene era leaves its mark on a brave new night sky.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

29-10-2024 om 21:53 geschreven door peter  

To try to understand how Earth’s water fits into the history of the planet and the Solar System, researchers examine the isotope ratio on Earth and in meteorites. The isotopic composition of Earth’s water is most similar to primitive meteorites. On the other hand, it’s different from that of comets and nebular gas.

This implies that Earth’s water came from the same cosmochemical reservoir that is also the source of primitive meteorites.

It’s a complicated issue. Maybe Earth’s water has multiple sources. Maybe some of it was created in space long after Earth and the rest of the Solar System formed, and then delivered to Earth.

New research in The Astrophysical Journal explores how water can be created by the solar wind as it strikes surfaces holding oxygen-containing minerals. It’s titled “Stellar Wind Contribution to the Origin of Water on the Surface of Oxygen-containing Minerals.” The lead author is Svatolpuk Civiš from the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague.

The solar wind is a steady stream of charged particles—mostly protons and electrons—that come from the Sun. H+ ions, which are simply protons, are the most abundant particles in the solar wind. They make a big contribution to the solar wind’s properties. Could the wind trigger the creation of water molecules?

The researchers performed laboratory experiments to find out. They tested 14 oxygen-containing minerals. “To investigate the process of water formation on the surface of oxidic materials and water abundances, we used the technique of surface bombardment with hydrogen or deuterium atoms and ions,” the authors write in their paper.

The experiments had two phases: the first tested whether the minerals would produce water when exposed to the solar wind, and the second tested their adsorption capacity. Separate from absorption, adsorption is the adhesion of a sample to a surface.

The team produced water and then measured it using two methods: a microwave (MW) discharge experiment and sputter gun irradiation. They tested the results with a type of spectrometry analysis called Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) and temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) analysis.

“Both these experiments include a mineral sample bombarded by hydrogen/deuterium ions, which, among other possibilities, react with surface oxygens in the mineral lattice and form water molecules,” the authors write.

The oxide material samples were not only exposed to the strong current of H, H+ and molecular hydrogen that mimic the solar wind. They were also exposed to intense visible and UV radiation generated in the hydrogen discharge.

“The stellar wind irradiation of rocky oxygen-containing minerals results in a reaction between H+ ions and silicate minerals to produce water and OH, which could explain the presence of water in the regoliths of airless worlds such as the Moon, as well as the water abundances in asteroids,” the authors write.

Previous research has established that a chemical reaction occurs between hydrogen ions and silicate minerals when rocky materials are exposed to solar wind irradiation. Some researchers have observed the formation of OH (hydroxide) and water, while others have only found OH. This research goes deeper by testing the rocky materials for water adsorption.

The researchers tested the samples’ water adsorption capacity. Then, they calculated how much material would need to reach Earth to account for the amount of water on contemporary Earth.

“Besides material acquired by the Earth during accretion, the solar wind origin of water and its delivery to Earth could have gone on even during post-accretional bombardment,” the authors write. Here, they’re referring to the hypothetical Late Heavy Bombardment.

Previous research shows that ” asteroid and comet impacts during the classical Late Heavy Bombardment would bring in about ?10²⁰ kg of material,” the authors write. “If that material’s surface was fully saturated with adsorbed water as composed of one of our minerals, our calculations suggest that at least one ocean equivalent of water could have been brought in.”

There’s not much doubt about the results of these tests and the ability of the solar wind to create water.

“The results of the experiments summarized in this work, focused on surface bombardment with hydrogen atoms, clearly confirm the theory of the interaction of excited hydrogen or deuterium Rydberg atoms and ions with the surface oxygens of oxide minerals,” the authors explain. “Our experiments attempt to explain the origin of water in the areas of oxygen-containing solid material (e.g., dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets) exposed to a stream of charged particles close to a parent star.”

Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere shield it from the solar wind, so there’s no way the wind could’ve created water right on Earth’s surface. However, as the study shows, the wind can create water on the surface of other bodies like asteroids, and the water can be adsorbed and held firm, then delivered to Earth via impacts.

“This scenario is also applicable to the origin of water on Earth,” the authors write. “Due to this effect, a water molecule can be adsorbed on the surface of oxygen-containing particles and then transported over long distances and times,” the researchers write.

This study won’t be the end of the ongoing effort to account for Earth’s water. In a fascinating roundabout way, this research brings us back to asteroids and meteorites delivering Earth’s water. If it can happen here, it can happen on exoplanets elsewhere in the galaxy.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

29-10-2024 om 21:40 geschreven door peter  

This dwarfs the eight days that the Apollo 11 astronauts spent in space. These long trips will tax astronauts’ health and NASA is working to understand what role nutrition can play in helping astronauts stay healthy and manage the risks.

Their current work on astronaut nutrition is a freely available PDF book titled “Human Adaptation to Spaceflight: The Role of Food and Nutrition—2nd Edition.” Its four authors are all researchers working in nutrition, biochemistry, biomedical research, space food systems, and preventative health.

“The importance of nutrition in exploration has been documented repeatedly throughout history, on voyages across oceans, on expeditions across polar ice, and on treks across unexplored continents,” the authors write.

Scientists have learned a lot about nutrition since the age of sailing and exploration, but the authors write that “a key difference between past journeys and space exploration is that astronauts are not likely to find food along the way.” This means that understanding astronaut nutritional requirements and food system requirements on long journeys is “as critical to crew safety and mission success as any of the mechanical systems of the spacecraft itself.”

The book examines the unique challenges astronauts face and presents data from multiple studies that are analogous to those challenges. For example, nutrition research from Antarctica duplicates the isolation and lack of sunlight astronauts can face on long missions, and head-down tilt-bed rest duplicates the musculoskeletal disuse they must endure.

Astronauts face a long list of health risks on long-duration spaceflights. Radiation exposure and its cancer risk and microgravity and its effect on muscle and bone are the most well-known risks. But there are other lesser-known risks, too.

Astronauts can suffer from neuro-ocular syndrome, their immune systems can be weakened, and their gut biota can change. All of these conditions are linked with nutrition. While scientists don’t have a complete understanding of how everything works, it’s clear that nutrition plays a role. The book outlines the types of research being done and what the current understanding is. But the authors are clear about one thing: the system of providing astronauts with proper nutrition needs work.

ISS astronauts, except for Russians, get part of their food in Crew Specific Menu (CSM) containers that each astronaut orders. They provide between 10% and 20% of their food. They also receive a small supply of fresh foods and limited shelf-life foods on each re-supply mission. This has increased the variety of foods for astronauts and helped with nutrition, but astronauts still say they’d like more CSM and fresh foods.

Here in the developed world on Earth, it’s fairly straightforward to meet nutritional needs. Most of us have access to supermarkets and/or farmer’s markets where we can buy fresh produce and other healthy foods. That same variety simply isn’t available in space. ISS astronauts have done some experimental “farming” and have successfully grown a few food plants like lettuce, kale, and cabbage. However, that’s a long way away from growing enough food to help with nutrition, especially on a Mars mission, where presumable space and payload will be at a premium.

One obvious question about astronaut nutrition is whether supplements can replace nutritious food. The authors present evidence that discredits that idea. “Many previous studies have shown that the complex synergistic benefits provided by whole foods cannot be replicated by supplements,” they write. In fact, in some instances, supplements can be dangerous. “Recent studies have also found that supplementation with certain antioxidants such as vitamin E and vitamin A can increase risks of cancer and all-cause mortality,” the authors explain.

The need for a space food system goes beyond nutrition. There are social and well-being benefits, too. Knowing that you have access to a variety of healthy foods keeps morale up. The ability to share or trade high-value food items with your fellow astronauts can create goodwill and a desire to cooperate. Think of sharing a meal with friends or family and all the social connection it provides.

According to the authors, there’s currently no solution to the nutrition roadblock for Mars missions. In fact, there’s currently no system designed to supply astronauts with the needed nutrition for any long-duration spaceflight. “Currently, no food system exists to meet the nutrition, acceptability, safety, and resource challenges of extended exploration missions, such as a mission to Mars,” the authors write.

However, the researchers say it’s critical that we develop one. Without it, long-duration missions and the astronauts who crew them will suffer and possibly face catastrophic failure.

“A space food system, developed and provisioned to deliver all the defined nutritional requirements, should be available on every human mission as an essential countermeasure to health and performance decrements,” the authors write.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

29-10-2024 om 21:28 geschreven door peter  

PREMIUM

“Een kosmische structuur zo groot als 140 Melkwegen, dat is onvoorstelbaar”: nooit eerder spuwde superzwaar zwart gat zo'n gigantische stralen uit

Diep in de kosmos hebben astronomen de grootste straalstromen ooit waargenomen, afkomstig uit een ‘superzwaar zwart gat’. Ze zijn liefst 140 keer groter dan onze Melkweg en dat slaat wetenschappers met verstomming, want ze dachten dat zoiets fysisch onmogelijk was? Tot nu, dus. Wat hebben ze precies ontdekt? Hoe hebben ze dat gedaan? En wat maakt dit zo uitzonderlijk? HLN-wetenschapsexpert Martijn Peters geeft de antwoorden.

Wat hebben de wetenschappers precies ontdekt?

“Een internationaal team astronomen heeft het grootste paar straalstromen ooit ontdekt , bij een superzwaar zwart gat. Dat maakten ze deze week bekend in een nieuwe wetenschappelijke publicatie in het toonaangevende tijdschrift Nature”, vertelt Peters.

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“Die zogenaamde ‘jumbojets’ zitten elk aan weerszijden van een zwart gat. Samen zijn ze maar liefst 140 keer groter dan onze Melkweg, zo’n 23 miljoen lichtjaar in afstand (onze Melkweg heeft slechts een diameter van ‘amper’ 200,000 lichtjaar). Daarmee is dit de grootste kosmische structuur ooit ontdekt. De wetenschappers hebben het daarom naar ‘Porphyrion’ vernoemd, de koning van de reuzen uit de Griekse mythologie.”

Hoe is deze ‘grootste structuur in onze kosmos ooit’ ontstaan?

“Vandaag is het universum 13,8 miljard jaar oud, maar de gigantische straalstromen zijn ontstaan toen het heelal nog maar 6,3 miljard jaar oud was. Een superzwaar gat in het centrum van een sterrenstelsel heeft ze toen als het ware uitgespuwd”, legt onze wetenschapsexpert uit. “Zo’n zwart gat verslindt aan de lopende band sterren, gas en stof. Maar een klein deel van al dat materiaal ontsnapt aan de vraatzucht van het zwarte gat en wordt langs twee kanten uitgespuwd in de vorm van straalstromen.”

Het is vooral de grootte van deze straalstro­men die wetenschap­pers met verstom­ming heeft geslagen

“Het is niet de eerste keer dat deze groep astronomen zo’n ontdekking doet. In 2022 vonden ze al Alcyoneus, toen met een grootte van 100 Melkwegen de grootste structuur ooit. De nieuwe kosmische megastructuur Porphyrion is niet alleen veel groter dan vorige recordhouder Alcyoneus, maar ligt ook verder weg van ons”, aldus Peters.

Wat maakt deze ontdekking zo uitzonderlijk?

“Het is vooral de grootte van deze straalstromen die wetenschappers met verstomming heeft geslagen. Volgens theoretische berekeningen was deze ontdekking namelijk onmogelijk. Een superzwaar zwart gat dat zulke gigantische straalstromen de kosmos in heeft gezwierd kon volgens de fysica niet bestaan. Maar dat blijkt nu wel zo te zijn.”

“Waar Porphyrion zijn recordgrootte aan te danken heeft, blijft vooralsnog een mysterie. Ook de onderzoekers kunnen moeilijk verklaren waarom deze jumbojets zo groot zijn. Straalstromen van deze grootte verliezen normaal gezien snel hun stabiliteit. Ze vermoeden dat het zwarte gat miljarden jaren lang ongehinderd materiaal heeft kunnen verslinden en uitspuwen. Voor een ongewoon lange periode dus.”

Hoe zijn ze hierin geslaagd?

“De onderzoekers deden hun ontdekking met behulp van het LOFAR-telescoopnetwerk. Dat is een telescoop die uit duizenden radioantennes bestaat. Ze hebben de radiobeelden met het oog, met behulp van machine learning en burgerwetenschappers bestudeerd. Om Porphyrions sterrenstelsel te bepalen hebben ze nog extra onderzoek verricht met de Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India en met de Keck I-telescoop op Mauna Kea in Hawaï.”

De volgende stap voor de wetenschap is om uit te zoeken hoe zo’n megastruc­tu­ren alles rondom hen beïnvloe­den

“Ze hebben trouwens niet enkel deze megastructuur ontdekt, maar ook nog 8.000 andere exemplaren. Weliswaar niet zo groot als Porphyrion. De onderzoekers vermoeden echter dat dit nog maar het topje van de ijsberg is. De LOFAR-beelden die nu bestudeerd zijn, besloegen slechts 15 procent van de hemel. Daarnaast zijn zulke grote en verre jets moeilijk waar te nemen. Hoe beter onze instrumenten worden, hoe groter de kans dat we nog van deze structuren zullen zien. Wie weet wat we nog zullen ontdekken in de komende jaren”, mijmert onze wetenschapsexpert.

Wat zijn nu de volgende stappen voor de wetenschap?

“Door zijn recordgrootte heeft Porphyrion waarschijnlijk veel invloed uitgeoefend op zijn omgeving. Vooral ook omdat het heelal toen kleiner was en alles veel dichter bij elkaar lag. De volgende stap voor de wetenschap is om uit te zoeken hoe zo’n megastructuren alles rondom hen beïnvloeden. De straalstromen verspreiden allerlei zaken zoals magnetische velden, zware atomen, hitte en kosmische straling. Wat is de impact daarvan? Dat zal de wetenschap moeten uitzoeken. Daarnaast is het nog steeds onduidelijk hoe deze megastructuren precies tot stand komen.”

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• IN BEELD. Wereld genoot van “superoogstmaan” afgelopen nacht

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

29-10-2024 om 20:58 geschreven door peter  

Story by Holly Bishop

 

Pentagon officials have been left perplexed by a swarm of mystery drones that flew over Langley Air Force base for 17 consecutive nights.

The flock of drones flew in a specific pattern over the base in east Virginia, with one or two-fixed wing drones flying over 100ft in the air, as smaller quadcopters flew below them.

General Mark Kelly, a commander at the airbase, said the drones were almost impossible to catch.

Despite flying across large areas around the base for more than a fortnight in December 2023, the Air Force could not shoot them down due to strict federal laws that stop the military from shooting them down unless they pose a threat.

Some suspect the drones may have originated from Russia or China in an attempt to test American responses.

In a statement, the US Air Force confirmed the breaches but played down the potential threat.

“The number of UASs [uncrewed aerial systems] fluctuated and they ranged in size/configuration," the US Air Force said.

“None of the incursions appeared to exhibit hostile intent but anything flying in our restricted airspace can pose a threat to flight safety. The FAA was made aware of the UAS incursions.”

Analysts noted that the quadcopters did not utilise frequencies typically associated with commercial drones, suggesting they were not operated by hobbyists.

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Due to the sensitive military location, as well as the prolonged nature of the incursions, analysts contacted the White House to help formulate an effective response.

Officials grappled with various options to combat the potential surveillance threat, although all choices have so far been rejected.

One suggestion involved using electronic signals to disrupt the drones' navigation systems, but this was dismissed due to the risk of interfering with Wi-Fi networks and emergency response systems.

Another proposal considered the use of directed energy weapons, an emerging military technology, to shoot down the drones.

However, the Federal Aviation Authority raised concerns about the potential danger to commercial aircraft during the holiday season.

A third option explored was the deployment of nets by the US Coast Guard to capture the drones.

This idea was also rejected due to questions over legal authority and the practical challenges of tracking the swift-moving aircraft.

While the investigation into the Langley incident continues, a potential lead emerged in January when a Chinese student was arrested for unlawfully photographing naval installations.

Fengyun Shi, who was studying at the University of Minnesota, was apprehended whilst attempting to fly back to China.

Shi was caught flying a drone near a shipyard operated by HII, a company responsible for constructing nuclear submarines and the latest Ford Class aircraft carriers.

The student's drone, which had crashed into a tree, contained photos of Navy vessels in dry dock taken around midnight.

During a federal court appearance, Shi's attorney stated: "If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known."

However, the connection between this incident and the Langley drone sightings remains unclear.

The Langley incident is not isolated, as drones have been spotted at other sensitive US military sites.

Just two months prior, the Energy Department's Nevada Nuclear Security Site outside Las Vegas detected five drones over three days.

This location is used for testing nuclear weapons, underscoring the potential security risks posed by such incursions.

These events follow the high-profile Chinese spy balloon incident over Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana, where nuclear assets are stored.

On February 4 last year, the US Air Force responded by dispatching an F-22 fighter jet armed with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile to take down the balloon over water.

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/ }

29-10-2024 om 00:46 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious US spaceship executing unprecedented maneuvers above Earth: ‘National security missions in space’

A secretive US spaceship is about to attempt unprecedented flight maneuvers above Earth.

The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-7) is an experimental space plane operated by the United States Space Force (USSF).

Although little has been revealed about the purpose of the vehicle, an official painting of the X-37B unveiled last year depicted the futuristic vehicle intercepting an adversary satellite positioning to disable a friendly satellite.

The US Space Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle at Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 12, 2022.

U.S Space Force/Boeing / SWNS

USSF have now announced the X-37B will begin executing a series of “novel maneuvers” called aerobraking.

This sees a number of passes using the drag of Earth’s atmosphere to change its orbit around Earth while expending minimal fuel.

If successful, it will allow the X-37B to safely dispose of its service module components in accordance with recognized standards for space debris mitigation.

A rendering showing the spacecraft intercepting an adversary satellite. 

John Ayre/Space Force / SWNS

The X-37B seen at Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 27, 2019. U.S Space Force/Boeing / SWNS

Since December 2023, USSF, supported by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, has conducted radiation effect experiments and has been testing Space Domain Awareness technologies in a “Highly Elliptical Orbit.”

Once the aerobrake maneuver is complete, USSF say the X-37B will “resume its test and experimentation objectives until they are accomplished,” at which time the vehicle will de-orbit and execute a safe return as it has during its six previous missions.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman praised the team for its efforts. “This first of a kind maneuver from the X-37B is an incredibly important milestone for the United States Space Force as we seek to expand our aptitude and ability to perform in this challenging domain. The success is a testament to the dedication and perseverance of the team.”

29-10-2024 om 00:28 geschreven door peter