Wil je een videoclip bekijken en stoort het X-files-deuntje jou daarbij. Schakel het deuntje gewoon uit door in deze kolon, helemaal beneden op de 2 witte balkjes in het blauwe cirkeltje te klikken, tot een pijltje verschijnt. Veel kijk- en luisterplezier en bedankt voor jouw bezoek.
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.
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!!!
UFO'S - MET HET LAATSTE NIEUWS OVER UFO'S BOVEN BELGIË EN IN ANDERE LANDEN...
UFO's in België en de rest van de wereld In België heb je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE ww.ufo.be.
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 maandeliiks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal. Since 02/01/2013 is Pieter not only president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
21-10-2018
How Close Are We to Kubrick's AI-Controlled Vision of the Future?
How Close Are We to Kubrick's AI-Controlled Vision of the Future?
By Mindy Weisberger, Live Science Senior Writer
A murderous computer named HAL in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968).
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Movie audiences first heard these calmly intoned and ominous words in 1968, spoken by a spaceship's intelligent computer in the science-fiction masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey." With that one phrase, the computer named HAL 9000 confirmed that it could think for itself, and that it was prepared to terminate the astronauts who were planning to deactivate it.
We might be a lot closer than we think, with machines as smart — and as potentially threatening — as HAL lurking "in plain sight on Earth," according to an essay published yesterday (Oct. 17) in the journal Science Robotics.
Essay author Robin Murphy, a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University, knows artificial intelligence well; she was a pioneering leader in the development of disaster-response robots, and she serves as director of Texas A&M's Humanitarian Robotics and AI Laboratory, according to a faculty biography.
Kubrick's portrait of HAL represented a rare glimpse of what were then very young fields: AI and robotics, showcasing three disciplines that were critical for developing artificial intelligence: "natural language understanding, computer vision and reasoning," Murphy wrote in the essay.
HAL learned from observing its environment, watching and analyzing the words, facial expressions and movements of the human astronauts on the spaceship. It was responsible for performing rote functions such as maintaining the spaceship, but as a "thinking" computer, HAL also was capable of responding conversationally to the astronauts, Murphy explained.
However, when the mission goes awry and the astronauts decide to shut HAL down, the AI discovers their plot by lip-reading. HAL arrives at a new conclusion that wasn't part of its original programming, deciding to save itself by systematically killing off the people onboard.
The prospect of AI doing more harm than good may not be that farfetched. Experts suggest that weaponized AI could play a big part in future global conflicts, and the late physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that humanity might soon find AI to be the biggest threat to our survival.
"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," Hawking told the BBC in 2014.
During a pivotal scene in "2001," HAL strands astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) outside the spaceship, cutting off his demands for re-entry with an emotionless, "This conversation can serve no purpose anymore." But the conversation about AI today is far from over; humanity's growing dependence on computers for a range of everyday uses demonstrates that AI has already established a firm foothold in our homes and in our lives.
What that could mean for humanity over the next 50 years, however, remains to be seen.
Why Haven't We Found Aliens? Because We're Just Not Looking Hard Enough.
Why Haven't We Found Aliens? Because We're Just Not Looking Hard Enough.
By Adam Mann, Live Science Contributor
The Very Large Array in New Mexico is searching for out-of-this-world signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. But it still only covers a vanishingly tiny slice of the search space where alien signals could hide.
Credit: Shutterstock
Editor's Note: This story was corrected at 5:20 p.m. E.D.T.
Where are all the aliens? For decades, humans have searched for artificial signals, yet the skies above remain silent. But new research suggests that researchers' investigations have so far not been particularly exhaustive; if the total possible search space were equivalent to the all the water in Earth's oceans, we have examined only a hot tub's worth of volume.
"It is often said that we have been looking for 40 years or so, but we still haven't found any signs of extraterrestrial civilization," said Shubham Kanodia, an astronomy graduate student at Penn State University and co-author of the new paper in the preprint journal arXiv, which has been submitted to The Astronomical Journal. "We wanted to see how much have we looked and how much more do we need to look."
Researchers see radio telescopes as an obvious instrument to use for such investigations, because radio waves travel easily through interstellar dust and, in certain parts of the radio spectrum, background interference is minimized. "It is the 'cosmic quiet zone' where we can best listen for a faint whisper across the interstellar expanse," as an article on the SETI Institute's website puts it.
But how much of the skies have researchers scoured for such radio signals? Along with his colleagues, Kanodia created a rigorous mathematical framework to analyze past SETI searches. The researchers looked at eight separate parameters, including the amount of sky a telescope searched, the sensitivity of the searching observatory and the power of a potential signal. They concluded that, of the total possible search space in which a signal could have hid, previous SETI searches have examined roughly 5.8 times 10 raised to the minus 18, or about a quintillionth, of the available space, which is itself merely a miniscule part of the huge range of potential bandwidths that scientists could search through.
The findings support those who argue that "the Great Silence" is merely an artifact of our limited investigations. "Bright and obvious radio beacons might be quite common in the sky, but we would not know it yet, because our search completeness to date is so low," the authors wrote in the paper.
There is much more room to expand these examinations, said Kanodia, as SETI searches now go beyond radio wavelengths. Newer studies target signals in the optical bands as well, because intelligent aliens might flash powerful optical laser pulses into the universe, either as signals or as a method to drive interstellar spaceships powered by solar sails, Kanodia said. He and his colleagues hope to also eventually quantify the amount of optical SETI that has been done to date, he said.
However, even if we searched both optical and radio wavelengths thoroughly, that would likely represent only a small sliver of the potential search space. In the course of their history, extraterrestrials might have come across many phenomena that humans have not, some of which might be useful for generating signals, Kanodia said. "In all probability, there is still a lot of physics that we have not yet deciphered or understood," he said. "If you were trying to communicate with a caveman with a walkie-talkie, you would not receive any reply."
The results are heartening, said Jill Tarter, an astronomer and former director of the Center for SETI Research, who has done similar calculations in the past. Her results suggested that total SETI searches were akin to looking at a drinking glass's worth of seawater and concluding that there were no fish in the ocean. "I was glad to see that I was in the right ballpark," she said. "It's a very big ocean, and so far, we haven't been able to investigate very much of it."
Editor's Note: This story was updated to note that the study looked at eight parameters, including how much of the sky a telescope searched, not the number of star systems searched.
Illustration of CI Tau, which is surrounded by a planetary disc and has four gas giants orbiting around it.
Credit: University of Cambridge.
Astronomers have discovered a peculiar solar system some 500 light-years away from Earth that may force them to rethink how planets form. The star in question is only two million years old — a mere ‘toddler’ by astronomical standards — but despite its very young age, it’s orbited by four Jupiter and Saturn-sized planets.
A crowded baby star
Since the first confirmation of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star in 1995, and with only a few narrow slices of our Milky Way galaxy surveyed so far, astronomers have confirmed 2,327 exoplanets, with a further 2,244 awaiting confirmation.
A recent statistical estimate places, on average, at least one planet around every star in the galaxy. However, only 1% of the stars astronomers have surveyed so far host a hot Jupiter — a class of gas giant exoplanets that are inferred to be physically similar to Jupiter but that have a very short orbital period.
Most of the hot Jupiters currently identified orbit stars that are at least hundreds of millions of years old. This is why CI Tau, the young star recently studied by researchers at the University of Cambridge, is so interesting. What’s more, it has not one but four gas giants orbiting it.
The astronomers used Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to identify the exoplanets. CI Tau is surrounded by a huge disc of dust and ice, known as a protoplanetary disc, which will seed planets, moons, asteroids, and other objects in its system. ALMA’s instruments were able to find distinct gaps in the disc which theoretical modeling showed would correspond to gas giant planets orbiting the star.
According to the new study published theAstrophysical Journal Letters, the four planets differ greatly in their orbit. The closest planet to CI Tau, a juvenile hot Jupiter, is within the equivalent orbit of Mercury.
The farthest orbits are at a distance three times greater than that of Neptune from the Sun. The two outer planets are about the mass of Saturn, while the two inner planets are around one and 10 times the mass of Jupiter respectively. Given that the outermost planet is more than a thousand times further from the star than the innermost one, the system has also set a new record for the most extreme range of orbits observed so far.
Scientists are not sure what to make of this anomalous system. Hot Jupiters have always puzzled astronomers because they are often thought to orbit too close to their parent stars to have formed in situ — instead, they might be captured rogue planets. But considering the age of CI Tau, the findings suggest that hot Jupiters could form within close proximity of a star.
“It is currently impossible to say whether the extreme planetary architecture seen in CI Tau is common in hot Jupiter systems because the way that these sibling planets were detected—through their effect on the protoplanetary disc – would not work in older systems which no longer have a protoplanetary disc,” said Professor Cathie Clarke from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, the study’s first author.
In the future, the team of researchers plans on studying CI Tau at multiple wavelengths to learn more about the disc and its planets. For instance, they would like to see whether the outer planets played a role in driving their innermost sibling into such an ultra-close orbit. How the two outer planets formed in the first place is also a mystery.
“Planet formation models tend to focus on being able to make the types of planets that have been observed already, so new discoveries don’t necessarily fit the models,” said Clarke. “Saturn mass planets are supposed to form by first accumulating a solid core and then pulling in a layer of gas on top, but these processes are supposed to be very slow at large distances from the star. Most models will struggle to make planets of this mass at this distance.”
NASA wants to send humans to Venus – here’s why that’s a brilliant idea
There are plans to cause HAVOC on Venus.
NASA wants to send humans to Venus – here’s why that’s a brilliant idea
Popular science fiction of the early 20th century depicted Venus as some kind of wonderland of pleasantly warm temperatures, forests, swamps and even dinosaurs. In 1950, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Natural History Museum were soliciting reservations for the first space tourism mission, well before the modern era of Blue Origins, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. All you had to do was supply your address and tick the box for your preferred destination, which included Venus.
Today, Venus is unlikely to be a dream destination for aspiring space tourists. As revealed by numerous missions in the last few decades, rather than being a paradise, the planet is a hellish world of infernal temperatures, a corrosive toxic atmosphere and crushing pressures at the surface. Despite this, NASA is currently working on a conceptual manned mission to Venus, named the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept – (HAVOC).
But how is such a mission even possible? Temperatures on the planet’s surface (about 460°C) are in fact hotter than Mercury, even though Venus is roughly double the distance from the sun. This is higher than the melting point of many metals including bismuth and lead, which may even fall as “snow” onto the higher mountain peaks. The surface is a barren rocky landscape consisting of vast plains of basaltic rock dotted with volcanic features, and several continent-scale mountainous regions.
Venus was once an Earth twin.NASA / JPL
It is also geologically young, having undergone catastrophic resurfacing events. Such extreme events are caused by the build up of heat below the surface, eventually causing it to melt, release heat and re-solidify. Certainly a scary prospect for any visitors.
Hovering in the atmosphere
Luckily, the idea behind NASA’s new mission is not to land people on the inhospitable surface, but to use the dense atmosphere as a base for exploration. No actual date for a HAVOC type mission has been publicly announced yet. This mission is a long term plan and will rely on small test missions to be successful first. Such a mission is actually possible, right now, with current technology. The plan is to use airships which can stay aloft in the upper atmosphere for extended periods of time.
As surprising as it may seem, the upper atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like location in the solar system. Between altitudes of 50km and 60km, the pressure and temperature can be compared to regions of the Earth’s lower atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure in the Venusian atmosphere at 55km is about half that of the pressure at sea level on Earth. In fact you would be fine without a pressure suit, as this is roughly equivalent to the air pressure you would encounter at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Nor would you need to insulate yourself as the temperature here ranges between 20°C and 30°C.
The atmosphere above this altitude is also dense enough to protect astronauts from ionising radiation from space. The closer proximity of the sun provides an even greater abundance of available solar radiation than on Earth, which can be used to generate power (approximately 1.4 times greater).
The conceptual airship would float around the planet, being blown by the wind. It could, usefully, be filled with a breathable gas mixture such as oxygen and nitrogen, providing buoyancy. This is possible because breathable air is less dense than the Venusian atmosphere and, as result, would be a lifting gas.
The Venusian atmosphere is comprised of 97% carbon dioxide, about 3% nitrogen and trace amounts of other gases. It famously contains a sprinkling of sulphuric acid which forms dense clouds and is a major contributor to its visible brightness when viewed from Earth. In fact the planet reflects some 75% of the light that falls onto it from the sun. This highly reflective cloud layer exists between 45km and 65km, with a haze of sulphuric acid droplets underneath down to about 30km. As such, an airship design would need to be resistant to the corrosive effect of this acid.
Luckily we already have the technology required to overcome the problem of acidity. Several commercially available materials, including teflon and a number of plastics, have a high acidic resistance and could be used for the outer envelope of the airship. Considering all these factors, conceivably you could go for a walk on a platform outside the airship, carrying only your air supply and wearing a chemical hazard suit.
Life on Venus?
The surface of Venus has been mapped from orbit by radar on the US Magellan mission. However, only a few locations on the surface have ever been visited, by the series of Venera missions of Soviet probes in the late 1970s. These probes returned the first – and so far only – images of the Venusian surface. Certainly surface conditions seem utterly inhospitable to any kind of life.
Venus as seen by Magellan.NASA
The upper atmosphere is a different story however. Certain kinds of extremophile organisms already exist on Earth which could withstand the conditions in the atmosphere at the altitude at which HAVOC would fly. Species such as Acidianus infernus can be found in highly acidic volcanic lakes in Iceland and Italy. Airborne microbes have also been found to exist in Earth’s clouds. None of this proves that life exists in the Venusian atmosphere, but it is a possibility that could be investigated by a mission like HAVOC.
The current climatic conditions and composition of the atmosphere are the result of a runaway greenhouse effect (an extreme greenhouse effectthat cannot be reversed), which transformed the planet from a hospitable Earth-like “twin” world in its early history. While we do not currently expect Earth to undergo a similarly extreme scenario, it does demonstrate that dramatic changes to a planetary climate can happen when certain physical conditions arise.
By testing our current climate models using the extremes seen on Venus we can more accurately determine how various climate forcing effects can lead to dramatic changes. Venus therefore provides us with a means to test the extremes of our current climate modelling, with all the inherent implications for the ecological health of our own planet.
We still know relatively little about Venus, despite it being our nearest planetary neighbour. Ultimately, learning how two very similar planets can have such different pasts will help us understand the evolution of the solar system and perhaps even that of other star systems.
Mysterious Signals at the Center of Our Galaxy May Be an Optical Illusion
Mysterious Signals at the Center of Our Galaxy May Be an Optical Illusion
By Yasemin Saplakoglu, Staff Writer
Credit: Shutterstock
The universe might be tricking us with its optical illusions.
Last spring, researchers discovered high abundances of three elements in a group of red giants (dying stars in the last stage of their evolution) less than 3 light-years away from the black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The high levels of these elements — scandium, vanadium and yttrium — puzzled astronomers, who tried to explain the phenomenon with various theories. One theory suggested that the abnormally high levels of the elements resulted from the descent of old stars into the black hole, while another posited that the elements were debris from the collision of neutron stars, according to a statement.
The latest of such explanations was recently proposed by an international group of astronomers and atomic physicists. They argue that those elements didn't actually exist at the high concentrations observed. Rather, the elements were probably an illusion all along, the researchers reported in a new study published yesterday (Oct. 10) in the Astrophysical Journal.
Scientists originally detected these elements by recording "spectral lines" with a spectrometer. With this method, scientists look at the amount of light an object absorbs or emits. Because different elements will emit or absorb light in a slightly different way (called their spectral lines), scientists can use the information to figure out what an object is made of. Scandium will interact with light differently than, say, vanadium would, for example. [Our Milky Way Galaxy: A Traveler's Guide (Infographic)]
The scientists who conducted the new research found similar lines of scandium in red giants in our own solar neighborhood. However, the authors found that if the red giant were below a certain temperature, those spectral lines increased in strength. But this didn't mean that there was more scandium, vanadium or yttrium in the star, they said.
As for why temperature would affect the measurements, the researchers suggested that electrons that make up the atoms of these elements behave differently at lower temperatures than at higher ones, according to the statement. So, the lower temperatures of red giants — which are much, much lower than that of our sun — could have given off this illusion of spectral lines, according to the statement.
The researchers suggest that the high abundance of these elements is not a unique phenomenon in these red giant stars near the black hole, but that it's an illusion in the measurements. The formation of these strong lines currently "escapes accurate theoretical modeling," they wrote in the study.
They concluded that those spectral lines shouldn't be used as a measurement of these elements, "until we better understand how these lines are formed," they wrote in the study. The researchers are doing just that, continuing to measure spectral lines from various stars in the Milky Way to better understand what they're made of.
'Roswell, New Mexico' Series Has a Fresh Take on Themes in the Original Alien Drama
'Roswell, New Mexico' Series Has a Fresh Take on Themes in the Original Alien Drama
By Doris Elin Salazar, Space.com Contributor
NEW YORK — A "Roswell" series reboot will crash-land on The CW in 2019, and its creators attended last weekend's New York Comic Con to describe the modern themes that can be gleaned from this new interpretation.
"Roswell, New Mexico" doesn't air on The CW network until next year, but fans of the original WB show "Roswell" got an exclusive look at the reboot's first episode on Oct. 6.
The premiere episode is full of desert scenery, anecdotes about the famous Roswell Crash and a new interpretation of an iconic scene from the pilot of the original series. But there's also something deeper to the storyline this time around that makes it more relevant and compelling than before. [The CW Aims to Refresh 'Roswell' Teen Alien Drama]
By discussing aliens, "we're talking about people who feel othered," writer and show developer Carina Adly MacKenzie said during the Saturday morning panel that followed the premiere.
"I wanted to make sure there was a reason to reboot it," MacKenzie said. "The original show is available on Hulu, and it's really great, and there wasn't a reason to sort of update it unless we made it really current," she said. "One of the important things I wanted to do was return Liz Parker back to Liz Ortecho," the character's name from the source-material books.
The "Roswell High" books by Melinda Metz inspired the original television adaptation, which first aired in 1999. The story centers on three extraterrestrials and their human friends, who are uncovering their pasts and avoiding detection from the government agencies who seek to detain them. The lead character is a young human woman by the name of Liz, and, as the creators discussed during the reboot's panel, her last name was changed back to the way it was in the book series for an important reason.
In the books, Liz is of Mexican descent, but the original television series removed that aspect of the character. With this new incarnation and return to the initial source material, MacKenzie wanted to "talk about what it really feels like for actual human beings to exist in a small town in a border state in 2018."
Liz Ortecho and her family are human, and so the plot delivers an extra dimension of complexity by casting the aliens — Max Evans, Isabel Evans and Michael Guerin — as white.
And as for the inspiration behind all this lore: The conspiracy theory about the little green men crashing into the New Mexico desert began over 70 years ago, in 1947. Roswell is the place where Sheriff George Wilcox received items, including strips of rubber and fabric, from W.W. "Mac" Brazel, a rancher who gathered the strange material he found across the desert. What Brazel actually found were pieces of a highly classified, high-altitude balloon that the U.S. government launched into the ionosphere as part of Project Mogul.
"Roswell, New Mexico" explores how potential extraterrestrials onboard the mythical flying object would face real-world fears as young adults, and bond with humans who also face the sharp end of xenophobia.
Exposing the Secret History of Giants and the Underground Hyperborean Gallery in Romania
Exposing the Secret History of Giants and the Underground Hyperborean Gallery in Romania
With Rosia Montana being a mining area, a number of interesting discoveries have been unearthed there over the years – one of the most interesting being a skeleton of a 10 meter (32.8 feet) tall giant which was found in 1976.
About 5,500 years ago, an underground gallery was constructed in the region by the Agathyrsi. In February 2012, a group of geologists followed the gold vein in the same place. They kept digging until they ended up at the base of the gallery. To their utter surprise, they found a gravestone which was definitely not made of common rock. The geologists took a sample, and the laboratory results revealed that the components of the tombstone included 55% 50 karat gold dust, 15% granite dust and 30% wolfram. Also, the analysis revealed that the composite rock had been made using a type of technology unknown today.
The Hyperborean Gallery
Known by the name of “The Hyperborean Gallery” or “Gallery 13”, the place of this amazing discovery is located beneath Cornea village. A number of other discoveries were made at the site in 1976. However, in the name of “security” the anthropological and archaeological discoveries were deemed too unusual and shocking for the time, so the gallery was permanently sealed.
The gravestone was not the only unusual item found inside the gallery. On it, archaeologists found a 10 meter (32.8 ft.) tall skeleton of a giant. Apparently, the giant had been buried there after his death, with his legs gathered on one side. Lacking the proper equipment necessary to analyze such a find, the skeleton was sent to Moscow. Unfortunately, nothing has been reported about the giant ever since.
The discovery of a skeleton that measures 10 meters or 32.8 Feet.
As for the tombstone, a new series of research was planned to analyze it in 2012. The relic was dug up once again and measurements showed that it was six meters (19.7 feet) wide, twelve meters (39.4 feet) long and three meters (9.8 feet) tall. It weighed almost 1700 tons and contained somewhere around 900 tons of solid gold. To make a comparison, such a quantity of gold would have required over twenty years of mining work to gather. The last thing known about the gravestone is that it had been cut up into 80 smaller pieces in order to make its transportation possible. As for its destination, it is not known where it lies today.
One of the archaeologists working in Gallery 13 took a set of photos with the gravestone and sent them to a paleolinguist. The latter noticed emerald green bas-relief writing covering the entire surface of the artifact. The text had been written in three parallel rows which started in the upper left. From there, the writing descended diagonally, similar to a serpent, and formed a spiral around a wolf head. Finally, the script ended in the lower right corner. The paleolinguist speculated that the unknown writing could be Pelasgian and that the discovery with its markings and writing clearly possessed great cultural and historical value. Nevertheless, the gravestone was cut and melted. The state obtained a share of 19 pieces, 31%, as stipulated in the local gold exploitation contract.
During the excavation, the lifting of the gravestone also revealed the entrance to a pit. The four meter (13.1 feet) diameter pit had a descending spiral stairway and a milky violet light radiated from the inside. A closer inspection of the stairs made it clear that they looked as if cut into the walls of the pit by a laser and, as for the violet light, nobody could determine its source.
Curious to find the source of the light and to see what was inside, the paleolinguist descended into the pit, but nobody else proved brave enough to join him. The night passed and the man never returned from the pit.
Ultimately, the army sealed the entry to the pit, as well as the entire Gallery 13, with cement. Those present never talked about the discoveries again - as they had been made to sign confidentiality agreements, therefore what lies beyond the staircase of the pit remains a mystery.
Romanian Giant Legends
Depending on the region of Romania where the legends come from, there are different names for giants. In the Boziorul area, giants are known as “tartars” (“tartari”), for example. A number of unusually tall skeletons have been uncovered at Scaieni, in Buzaului Mountains. For instance, when locals tried to plant apple trees on a hill, they accidentally discovered humanoid skeletons of over 2.4 meters (8.2 feet) tall along with pottery fragments.
Knowing the local legends, people from the area immediately thought about the tartars. One of these legends even claims that the mountain formation known as the “Pillars of Tainita” (“Stalpii Tainitei”) had actually been built by these giants of old. In the past, the giants were also credited for building two large underground halls somewhere beneath the mountain.
The strange formation which can be seen up on Tainita Mountain resembles a set of stone chairs. As they are found at high altitude and in a highly inaccessible area, locals claim that tartars built the chairs to sit on when they wanted to gather for council.
Another legend from Hateg Country (“Tara Hategului”), tells the tale of two giantesses who built two cities: one in Deva and the other on the peak of the Severed Mountain (“Muntele Retezat”) respectively. Upon the end of the construction, when the giantess from Deva beheld her rival’s city and saw it had turned out more beautiful, she became envious. In a moment of rage, she threw a plough towards the mountain citadel - destroying it and severing the top of the mountain at the same time. In this way, the mountain earned its name, being known ever since as the Severed Mountain.
The Retezat Mountains seen from atop one of them (Vârfu Mare, "The Big Peak").
In regions such as Teleorman, Giurgiu, and southern Muntenia, giants are known as “jidovs” (“jidovi”). A local legend speaks about a hero going by the name of Novac who fought a jidov. Once the giant was defeated, he ran away to save his life, but in his flight he left a mark on the ground. The area has been called “Brazda lui Novac” ever since. In the region there are also other formations called “maguri” by locals who believe that these have been built by giants.
A number of archaeological discoveries have been made in Giurgiu. For example, it was found that in Argedava, King Burebista had his first city (before he unified the Dacian tribes of the area). Yet, an even more interesting discovery was made between the years 1940 and 1950. In this period, archaeologists unearthed 80 humanoid skeletons which appeared to be giants. The huge skeletons measured about four to five meters (13-16 feet) in height.
Giant skeletons have been unearthed in other parts of the country as well. As one example, in October 1989, 20 giant skeletons were found in Pantelimon – Lebada.
A sculpture of a giant’s leg in Corbii din Piatra, Romania.
Other such discoveries have been unearthed at Polovragi, at Cetateni, beneath Negru Voda Monastery, and in the Bucegi Mountains - where the existence of a network of underground tunnels surprised workers.
Thus, skeletons of giants have been discovered in many places around Romania. To get straight to the point, giants have been discovered in: Scaieni in Buzau County, Mariuta in Calarasi County, Persani Mountains, Polovragi, Piatra Craiului, Tara Hategului, Cetateni beneath Negru Voda Monastery, and in many other places.
In Maramures, the Fortress of Oncesti (“Cetatea de la Oncesti”) was believed to be the home of the giants. At Argedava, giants with a height of over five meters (16 feet) have been discovered in 80 graves. Although most are suddenly “lost” after being discovered, the secret Romanian giants continue to be unearthed.
A new study has sent ripples throughout the seismological world — a team of researchers from the Australian National University have found a new way to confirm that the Earth’s core is solid.
A simplified schematic of the Earth’s structure.
If you think about it, the very fact that we know so much about the Earth’s interior is stunning. The deepest hole we’ve dug is “only” around 12 km deep, whereas the radius of our planet is 6378 km — so how could we know so much about the Earth’s structure?
Seismic waves
Scientists use many bits and pieces of information to study this structure, but the most important clues come from seismic waves. Whenever an earthquake takes place, it sends out pressure waves in all directions — much like the acoustic waves we use to speak and hear sounds. These waves propagate through the subsurface, reflecting and refracting as they move from one environment to the other. Eventually, they reach the surface, where they are picked up by seismographs — devices that measure the movement of the earth.
Using seismographs, researchers can infer a surprisingly large amount of information. For instance, by measuring the arrival time of seismic waves at different seismograph stations, the position of the earthquakes’ epicentres can be triangulated — this is how we know where earthquakes happen.
But that’s just the start of it.
A typical seismogram.
More than just data about the earthquake itself, we can derive data about the rocks through which the seismic wave has traveled. For instance, generally speaking, there are three types of seismic waves:
P or Primary waves, which are longitudinal waves (these are the fastest and the first to arrive);
S or Secondary waves, which are shear waves; and
Surface waves, which are slower than both P and S waves, but have larger amplitude and more complex movements.
A simple simulation of an S wave structure.
P waves travel through any type of medium, whereas S waves only move through solid environments — not liquid. This was a huge indication that the Earth’s outer core is a liquid, as S waves don’t appear to pass through it. It’s not a liquid in a conventional sense (think of it more like viscous, molten lava, or thick honey), but it’s definitely not a solid.
A depiction of different seismic waves propagating through the Earth.
This also revealed that the inner core is solid, as S waves appear to be able to pass through it. However, the small size of the inner core makes detecting shear waves very difficult, and this theory could still use additional verification. This is where the new study comes in.
A J wave is nothing more than an S wave that passes through the inner core — seismologists love giving different names to waves depending on where they pass through, but don’t let it confuse you, it’s still a shear, S wave.
J waves are rather elusive because they have small amplitudes, and the Earth’s inner core has a relatively small volume, which means that many seismic waves simply go around it. The small, feeble amplitude is so problematic that detecting J-waves has sometimes been referred to as the “Holy Grail” of global seismology.
However, Associate Professor Hrvoje Tkalčić and PhD Scholar Than-Son Phạm believe they’ve found a new way to identify J waves. What they did is pretty creative: instead of looking directly at the wave as it comes, they simply ignore it for the most part and look at the wave signal hours after the largest rumbles have passed. By studying the similarities between these signals at two receivers after a major earthquake, they’re able to observe a correlation of patterns, and this correlation is the key to the J-wave identification. A similar approach was used by other scientists to study the thickness of Antarctic ice.
“Using a global network of stations, we take every single receiver pair and every single large earthquake – that’s many combinations – and we measure the similarity between the seismograms,” lead author Hrvoje Tkalčić explained.
“That’s called cross correlation, or the measure of similarity. From those similarities we construct a global correlogram – a sort of fingerprint of the Earth.”
“We’re throwing away the first three hours of the seismogram and what we’re looking at is between three and 10 hours after a large earthquake happens. We want to get rid of the big signals,” Dr. Tkalčic added.
Using this approach, they confirmed that the inner core seems indeed solid, though it seems to exhibit some differences from current models. In fact, it’s a bit like two very familiar materials: gold and platinum.
“We found the inner core is indeed solid, but we also found that it’s softer than previously thought,” Associate Professor Tkalčić said.
“It turns out – if our results are correct – the inner core shares some similar elastic properties with gold and platinum. The inner core is like a time capsule, if we understand it we’ll understand how the planet was formed, and how it evolves.”
We should still wait for additional observations to confirm this study but, for now, it seems like the information about the nature of the inner core is becoming more and more solid.
In 2020, China plans to send an artificial moon into space to replace street lighting. It is an earth satellite that will reflect sunlight and be about nine times brighter than the moon.
As the authors of the project, including the Institute of Space Microelectronics, claim, it will be possible to regulate the illumination zone on the Earth's surface - the light field will vary between 10 and 80 kilometers.
In 1993, the Russian 65-foot-diameter satellite, called Znamya, briefly lit the Earth like a giant orbiting night light.
According to experts, neither humans nor animals perceive artificial moonlight as a disturbance because it will be similar to dusk.
The main challenges in creating an artificial moon are the cost of the project and the technical problems of launching mirrors into orbit and assembling them in the midst of space debris.
NASA is again being encouraged to expand its search for alien life – not just intelligent life – all forms of life, including microbes.
Astrobiology is the scientific study of study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. A new report from the National Academies recommends strategies to help NASA expand its search for life elsewhere.
Image via NASA.
Late last month, I reported on how the U.S. Congress wants NASA to focus more on searching for alien technosignatures in space. In other words, Congress is encouraging NASA to look for signals from advanced civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy. On October 10, 2018, another congressionally mandated report – this time from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in Washington, D.C. – urged a related search. The report asked NASA to ramp up its research on alien biosignatures, which are signatures of life in all its various forms, including microbes. It urged NASA to incorporate the science of astrobiology – the study of life in the universe – more fully into all stages of future exploratory missions to the planets of our solar system.
Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. It is an inherently interdisciplinary field that encompasses astronomy, biology, geology, heliophysics, and planetary science, including complementary laboratory activities and field studies conducted in a wide range of terrestrial environments. Combining inherent scientific interest and public appeal, the search for life in the solar system and beyond provides a scientific rationale for many current and future activities carried out by the National Aeronautics and Science Administration (NASA) and other national and international agencies and organizations.
Requested by NASA, this study offers a science strategy for astrobiology that outlines key scientific questions, identifies the most promising research in the field, and indicates the extent to which the mission priorities in existing decadal surveys address the search for life’s origin, evolution, distribution, and future in the universe. This report makes recommendations for advancing the research, obtaining the measurements, and realizing NASA’s goal to search for signs of life in the universe.
Could this be a subsurface, liquid-water lake on Mars? The bright horizontal feature in this radar image represents Mars’ icy surface. The south polar layered deposits – layers of ice and dust – are seen to a depth of about a mile (1.5 km). Below is a base layer that in some areas is even brighter than the surface reflections, highlighted in blue. Analysis of the reflected signals suggests liquid water. Subsurface regions like this should be a high priority in the search for life, according to the new report.
The National Academies will appoint an ad hoc committee to initiate a study of the state of astrobiology as it relates to the search for life in the solar system and exoplanetary systems. The primary objectives of the study will:
– Outline key scientific questions and technology challenges in astrobiology, particularly as they pertain to the search for life in the solar system and extrasolar planetary systems;
– Identify the most promising key research goals in the field of the search for signs of life in which progress is likely in the next 20 years;
– Discuss which of the key goals could be addressed by U.S. and international space missions and ground telescopes in operation or in development;
– Discuss how to expand partnerships (interagency, international and public/private) in furthering the study of life’s origin, evolution, distribution, and future in the universe;
– Make recommendations for advancing the research, obtaining the measurements, and realizing NASA’s goal to search for signs of life in the universe.
So what exactly is this report recommending? The National Academies said it wants NASA to expand on how it searches for evidence of life on other planets and moons. Future searches would include both past and present life, by using a more sophisticated catalog and framework to enhance NASA’s ability to detect – and this is significant – both life that might be similar to terrestrial life, and life that may be quite different from life as we know it on Earth.
Until now, NASA has focused on looking for evidence of life that is similar to earthly life, primarily microorganisms that use carbon, nitrogen and water. This led to the follow the water mantra that NASA has used, in particular for its exploration of Mars.
That approach makes sense to some degree, since on Earth, all life we know of requires water.
The new report from the National Academies recommends looking for alien life in two ways – both as we know it (on Earth) and as we don’t.
Image via Chart: S. Seager & W. Bains Sci. Adv. 1, e1500047 (2015)/Cone: Ref. 5.
More recently, however, scientists have been considering the possibilities of more exotic forms of life, such as organisms based on methane instead of water. In this view, places like Saturn’s moon Titan – with its liquid methane/ethane lakes and seas – might be more habitable than previously supposed. The report recommends that NASA search for so-called agnostic biosignatures – in other words, for signs of life that aren’t tied to a particular metabolism or molecular blueprint, or other characteristics of life as we currently know it.
The report also recommends a comprehensive framework be established to aid in distinguishing between biosignatures and abiotic (non-living) phenomena, and also to improve understanding of the potential for biosignatures to be preserved (or not) over long planetary time-scales. It suggests the need for in-situ detection of energy-starved or otherwise sparsely distributed life such as chemolithotrophic or rock-eating life. This includes looking for evidence of life below the surface of a planet or moon; the subsurface is now thought to be the best place to look for such evidence on Mars, for example, especially after the discovery of a subsurface lake below the south pole.
This same strategy could, of course, also be applied to moons such as Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which have subsurface oceans.
The recommendations also extend beyond our own solar system, saying that NASA should also use technologies in near-term direct imaging missions that can suppress the light from stars in order to image exoplanets. For more about this, read my earlier article here at EarthSky: Report calls for direct images of Earth-like exoplanets. These suggestions form a part of the National Academies’ Exoplanet Science Strategy.
Saturn’s moon Titan is another intriguing place to search for “life as we don’t know it.” Could organisms of some kind exist in its subsurface ocean or in the liquid methane/ethane lakes and seas on its surface?
The report also highlights the need for specialized measurements, equipment and analysis required to take full advantage of space missions, including some that exist outside of traditional space science fields, as well as the need for interdisciplinary, non-traditional cooperation and collaboration with organizations outside of NASA.
As also noted, NASA missions have so far mostly been based on geological interests rather than astrobiological. This again has been particularly true with Mars – the Viking missions in the late 1970s to early 1980s were the last ones to focus specifically on looking for evidence of life – the results of which are still hotly debated to this day. Since then, the priority has been to search for evidence of past habitability. Not even past life, rather just the conditions that might have made life possible millions or billions of years ago.
The report stresses that an interdisciplinary approach to astrobiology is necessary toproduce a more complete picture of life on Earth as well as other planets. That approach should integrate the physical, chemical, biological, geologic, planetary and astrophysical sciences into the study of astrobiology to show how the relationship between life and its environment changes – producing a new, more dynamic view of habitability overall. NASA should continue to actively seek new mechanisms to reduce the barriers to these potential collaborations, the report says.
The last time that NASA looked directly for life on Mars, or any other planet or moon, was with the Viking mission in the late 1970s to early 1980s.
Image via NASA/JPL.
An online event called An Astrobiology Science Strategy for the Search for Life in the Universe was livestreamed on October 10, 2018, but you can still watch it again here. A prepublication version of the written report is also available here.
Bottom line: NASA needs to expand its search for signs of extraterrestrial life, according to a new congressionally-mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Previous search strategies have mostly been narrowly focused, usually not looking for evidence of life at all. Hopefully these recommendations will bring us closer to discovering the first evidence of alien biology elsewhere in the solar system or beyond.
X-37B Military Space Plane Wings Past 400 Days on Latest Mystery Mission
X-37B Military Space Plane Wings Past 400 Days on Latest Mystery Mission
By Leonard David, Space.com's Space Insider Columnist
Artist's illustration of the U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane carrying out its mysterious duties in Earth orbit.
Credit: Boeing
The latest mystery mission of the U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space planehas now passed the 400-day mark .
This mission — known as Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-5) — was rocketed into Earth orbit on Sept. 7, 2017, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Each X-37B/OTV mission has set a new flight-duration record for the program:
OTV-1 began April 22, 2010, and concluded on Dec. 3, 2010, after 224 days in orbit.
OTV-2 began March 5, 2011, and concluded on June 16, 2012, after 468 days on orbit.
OTV-3 chalked up nearly 675 days in orbit before finally coming down on Oct. 17, 2014.
OTV-4 conducted on-orbit experiments for 718 days during its mission, extending the total number of days spent in space for the OTV program at that point to 2,085 days.
What's up?
Most X-37B payloads and activities are classified. The only OTV-5 payload revealed to date by Air Force officials is the Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader, or ASETS-II.
Developed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), this cargo is testing experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipes for long-duration stints in the space environment. According to AFRL, the three primary science objectives are to measure the initial on-orbit thermal performance, to gauge long-duration thermal performance and to assess any lifetime degradation.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane on Sept. 7, 2017.
Credit: SpaceX
Landing site
When the space plane will land is unknown. The last X-37B mission, OTV-4, touched down at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 7, 2017 — a first for the program. All prior missions had ended with a tarmac touchdown at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The next X-37B mission,B OTV-6, may lift off in 2019 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas-V (501) rocket. Launch would be from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex-41.
Reusable vehicles
The Air Force's X-37B "fleet" consists of two known reusable vehicles, both of which were built by Boeing at several locations in Southern California, including Huntington Beach, Seal Beach and El Segundo.
The program transitioned to the U.S. Air Force in 2004 after earlier funded research efforts by Boeing, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Looking like a miniature version of NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiter, the military space plane is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.6 feet (2.9 m) tall, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.6 m). The X-37B space plane has a payload bay measuring 7 feet by 4 feet (2.1 by 1.2 m), which can be outfitted with a robotic arm. The X-37B has a launch weight of 11,000 lbs. (4,990 kilograms) and is powered on orbit by gallium-arsenide solar cells with lithium-ion batteries.
On-orbit duties
The missions of the X-37B space planes are carried out under the auspices of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, and mission control for OTV flights is handled by the 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado. This squadron oversees operations of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.
This Schriever Air Force Base unit is billed as the Air Force Space Command's premier organization for space-based demonstrations, pathfinders and experiment testing. It gathers information on objects high above Earth and carries out other intelligence-gathering duties.
And that may be a signal as to what the robotic craft is doing — both looking down at Earth and upward.
Repeating ground tracks
Ted Molczan, a Toronto-based satellite analyst, told Inside Outer Space that OTV-5's orbit at the start of August was about 197 miles (317 kilometers) high, inclined 54.5 degrees to the equator. Its ground track repeated nearly every five days, after 78 revolutions.
"Maneuvers on August 18 and 21 raised its orbit by 45 miles (74 kilometers) which caused its ground track to exactly repeat every three days, after 46 revolutions. It was still in that orbit when last observed, on September 8, by Alberto Rango, from Rome, Italy," Molczan said.
"Repeating ground tracks are very common," he added, "especially for spacecraft that observe the Earth. I do not know why OTV has repeating ground tracks."
Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars."
A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+.
Evidence of a big, unseen world in the extreme outer solar system continues to mount. Take the recent discovery of the distant dwarf planet 2015 TG387, known as "The Goblin." This world's highly elliptical orbit appears to have been sculpted by the gravity of a sizable planet way out there in the dark depths — as have the orbits of more than a dozen other faraway objects, researchers say.
"Planet Nine really remains the only viable explanation for all of the stuff that we observe," said Konstantin Batygin, a theoretical astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. [The Evidence for 'Planet Nine' in Our Solar System (Gallery)]
Starting the hunt
Batygin is a major player in the hunt for Planet Nine, which really kicked off in 2014.
That year, astronomers Chad Trujillo and Scott Sheppard proposed the existence of a large "perturber" far beyond Neptune. Such a planet, the scientists said, couldo explain weird features in the orbits of the dwarf planets Sedna and 2012 VP113, as well as a few other distant objects.
In January of 2016, Batygin and fellow Caltech researcher Mike Brown marshalled more evidence for this hypothetical world, which the duo dubbed "Planet Nine." Batygin and Brown also took a stab at characterizing the planet, estimating that it's perhaps 10 times more massive than Earth and orbits about 600 astronomical units (AU) from the sun on average. (One AU is the Earth-sun distance, about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
Further detections of distant objects with oddball orbits followed. Astronomers have now spotted 14 bodies that bear the imprint of a perturber's tug, Batygin said.
That imprint is primarily a pronounced clustering. Basically, the elongated portions of the objects' highly elliptical orbits point in the same direction, in a way predicted by the Planet Nine models.
The chances of such a configuration developing by chance alone are less than 0.1 percent, Batygin said. And other possible explanations fall short, he added.
For example, some researchers have proposed that the clustering resulted from the combined tugs of many small objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit. But a "self-modulating" Kuiper Belt would look very different from the actual belt that we see, Batygin said. And, he added, a recent study suggests that the entire Kuiper Belt (sans Planet Nine) harbors no more than 2 percent of the mass of Earth — not nearly enough to shape the bodies' orbits in the observed manner.
He pegged the probability of the world's existence at "over 90 percent." Sheppard, who's based at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., is similarly bullish.
"We think it's more likely than not," Sheppard told Space.com. "For me, personally, it's probably at the 80 [percent] to 90 percent level."
Where is Planet Nine hiding?
Batygin and Brown have systematically searched for Planet Nine over the past few years, as have Trujillo and Sheppard (who refer to the hypothetical world as "Planet X"). Both teams have been using Japan's 26-foot (8 meters) Subaru Telescope, which sits atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Other research groups around the world have joined the hunt as well. Still, it's not all that surprising that the putative planet remains undiscovered, Sheppard said.
"Where we think the planet is — hundreds of AU away, if not 1,000 AU — something even as big as Neptune would be fainter than most telescopes could see," Sheppard said.
"And most of our surveys to date do not go that faint, do not go that deep. We've covered very little of the sky to the depth that's needed to be covered to find something this faint," he added. "You can hide a very big thing in the outer solar system very easily."
Indeed, the search has so far covered just 20 percent to 25 percent of "premium sky," the regions where Planet Nine is most likely to be, both Sheppard and Batygin said.
It's tough to make predictions about when Planet Nine will finally be spotted, because astronomers don't know the object's mass, brightness or precise orbit — or even that it exists at all. But Batygin said he suspects that Subaru is capable of seeing the planet. (Subaru combines good resolution with a wide field of view. That latter quality is key. Some instruments, such as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, are probably sharp-eyed enough to spot Planet Nine but have such narrow fields of view that employing them in the hunt would be impractical.)
If Planet Nine is too faint for Subaru, then Batygin, Sheppard and other hunters likely won't despair. Help will soon yarrive in the form of powerful new instruments, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which is scheduled to come online in the Chilean Andes in the early 2020s.
"If we don't find it in the next five or so years," Batygin said, LSST "is definitely going to deliver the final word on Planet Nine."
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There," will be published on Nov. 13 by Grand Central Publishing. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.
That, of course, is the opening line from the first “Star Trek” series. No one (outside of China, as we will soon see) would watch if the line was, “Space, the next street light.” Yet that’s exactly what the Chinese space program is saying. In 2020, it plans to launch a satellite with a reflective coating that it claims will be capable of beaming sunlight at night on a 50 square mile area that apparently hasn’t yet heard of street lights. Or Las Vegas. Or what animals and humans do when they can’t sleep. What could possibly go wrong?
“The satellite light will be like a twilight glow.”
Kang Weimin – the director of the Institute of Optics at the Harbin Institute of Technology’s School of Aerospace – gave that very non-technical description after the announcement by Wu Chunfeng — chairman of Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co. – that Chengdu, a city 0f 14 million residents in southwestern China, will soon get a second moon “eight times brighter than the Moon” (please update your definition of “twilight” to ‘reflect’ this). At a technology conference in Chengdu, he told the audience that the beam from this satellite will be bright enough to entirely replace street lights.” (Better update “twilight” again.) Why? Chengdu Business Daily gives one answer:
“According to reports, in the civilian sector, the project can replace night street lighting, saving a lot of infrastructure electricity consumption. In view of the 50 square kilometers of Chengdu, providing radiation, for example, can save electricity costs of about 1.2 billion yuan ($173 million USD) per year.”
People’s Daily reports that Chengdu officials also expressed that the artificial moon would increase tourism (see Las Vegas and New York City) while Asia Times points out that the light can be directed to specific locations such as construction sites or disaster areas.
What could possibly go wrong? Ask the people who live in far northern or southern areas with summers filled with midnight suns. Or ask their psychologists who say perpetual sunlight affects internal clocks, creates a feeling of perpetual jet lag and contributes to insomnia and all of its associated serious problems (see Insomnia). The artificial moon will certainly upset astronomers who will be able to see it as its light blocks their view, and it will affect businesses that depend on night darkness. (Note to self: sell stock in nightlight company.)
Then there’s the animals. Kang Weimin says the all-night “twilight” won’t affect them, but that’s not the case in midnight sun areas, which report the animals are out hunting longer, birds are chirping and crowing at all hours, bears are cranky from not hibernating and those all-important nighttime insect-eating bats are eating less often. And those are just the obvious signs.
What could possibly go wrong? Plenty. Enough to offset the profits of a billionaire space entrepreneur, his rich business friends and money-hungry government officials? What do you think?
After the recent passing of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, there was much coverage of the billionaire’s many notable accomplishments and activities – inventor, investor, philanthropist, private rocket builder, shipwreck hunter, brain researcher and owner of sports teams, yachts and an island. However, one major achievement that didn’t get much press was his early and substantial financial contributions to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). That’s right – the other half of the IBM side of the personal computer revolution was also a key member of the SETI revolution … and the evidence starts with the Allen Telescope Array, located in the Cascade Mountains in California.
“The chance that we are going to pick up the phone and an alien is going to be on the other end is small, but it is certainly worth—on a modest scale, for me—seeing if we can enable some of that research.”
Paul Allen
In a 2007 interview with Discover magazine, Paul Allen describes how his interest in space and extraterrestrials began with the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, a little thing called software got in the way of that interest and Allen didn’t give it much thought until he had had made some of his billions and one day received a call from a fellow computer industry pioneer. According to Motherboard, Allen, along with Hewlett-Packard founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard and Intel founder Gordon Moore, received a call from Hewlett Packard laboratories founder Barney Oliver asking each to invest $5 million in Project Phoenix, which scanned for signals from 800 stars within 200-light years of Earth.
Allen Telescope Array
When Project Phoenix ended, astronomers interested in SETI designed a large array of radio telescopes and convinced Allen to contribute the $25 million (he later invested $5 million more) needed to build what became the Allen Telescope Array – the first array in the U.S. built specifically for SETI. While it has received 200 million signals from thousands of stars and recently scanned the Oumuamua intergalactic space rock, a definitive ET message hasn’t been identified yet. Despite that, Allen never lost his excitement for the search.
“That would be such a life-changing thing, for us all to know that there are other beings out there who we could potentially communicate with, or maybe we are listening to a signal that they transmitted hundreds of millennia ago.”
While Paul Allen had many other successes, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence wasn’t one of them. However, his quest lives on in the Allen Telescope Array. While we wait for a message, perhaps Allen has finally received it.
A couple of common aspects in discussions about a Planet X or Planet Nine or Nibiru are that it’s a danger to Earth and it’s coming back. A new study suggests that while a giant ninth planet may have once existed in the solar system, it’s not coming back and it may actually have been good to Earth. Why? Because it saved our planet from Jupiter’s gravitational power by making that giant planet use it instead to fling this Planet X out of the solar system and turn it into a rogue wandering the galaxy aimlessly. Is it true? Should we feel guilty?
“We shouldn’t fall into the trap of looking at the outer solar system and thinking it was always like that.”
In Dynamical Evolution of the Early Solar System, a study published in the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysicsand reviewed recently by Knowable Magazine, David Nesvorný of the Department of Space Studies at Southwest Research Institute in Colorado describes how computer simulations of how the solar system was formed seem to always end up with Uranus or Neptune getting flung out of the array by Jupiter’s massive gravitational force. There’s a pretty big hole – two of them, actually – in those simulations. Some astronomers added a planet that disappeared 4 billion years ago to the simulations – a change that led them to create our current solar system but pointed to no evidence left behind of the one-time existence of such a planet.
Except for the orbit of Jupiter. The simulations indicate that at one time Jupiter was farther away from the sun and closer to Saturn. The combined gravitational pulls of the two ice giants could have been a threat to the inner planets, including Earth. However, during a million-year dynamical instability in the early life of the solar system, something happened to move Jupiter away from Saturn, reducing the danger to the inner planets … something that looked like it was caused by the blowback from Jupiter flinging a huge planet out of the system. That fixes the simulations, except for the fact that an exiting giant would have had some visible effect on the Kuiper belt of space rocks outside of Neptune.
Kuiper belt in relation to the ice giants
Nesvorný thinks he found the hole in the Kuiper belt. The belt is generally in sync with Neptune’s orbit … except for an area called the ‘kernel’ which has a different orbit and may even have a different composition of space rocks. The simulations show that as Neptune moved into its final orbit, it suffered a bump that could have created a gravitational push that created the kernel. And – you guessed it – that bump could have been caused by the force of the gravitational effort needed by Jupiter to knock out Planet X.
“You end up with something like the kernel. It’s circumstantial evidence … but it’s not conclusive.”
Nesvorný admits that while this addition of an exiting Planet X makes the simulations work, he needs more proof. One piece of evidence he proposes is the fact that astronomers are constantly finding Jupiter-sized rogue planets floating between the stars and most were likely deported by similar cataclysmic events in their own solar systems. And it’s not just a few … some estimates put the number in the billions. That means that while we may never again see the Planet X that saved us from Jupiter, there’s a good chance we’ll be visited by a different rogue. Nesvorný has this warning that it may only be a matter of time:
“I bet there will be many. It’s surprising how organized the solar system has remained.”
Which planet will save Earth and the inner planets the next time … or is it our turn?
Popular science fiction of the early 20th century depicted Venus as some kind of wonderland of pleasantly warm temperatures, forests, swamps and even dinosaurs. In 1950, the Hayden Planetarium at the American Natural History Museum were soliciting reservations for the first space tourism mission, well before the modern era of Blue Origins, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. All you had to do was supply your address and tick the box for your preferred destination, which included Venus.
Today, Venus is unlikely to be a dream destination for aspiring space tourists. As revealed by numerous missions in the last few decades, rather than being a paradise, the planet is a hellish world of infernal temperatures, a corrosive toxic atmosphere and crushing pressures at the surface. Despite this, NASA is currently working on a conceptual manned mission to Venus, named the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept – (HAVOC).
But how is such a mission even possible? Temperatures on the planet's surface (about 460°C) are in fact hotter than Mercury, even though Venus is roughly double the distance from the sun. This is higher than the melting point of many metals including bismuth and lead, which may even fall as "snow" onto the higher mountain peaks. The surface is a barren rocky landscape consisting of vast plains of basaltic rock dotted with volcanic features, and several continent-scale mountainous regions.
It is also geologically young, having undergone catastrophic resurfacing events. Such extreme events are caused by the build up of heat below the surface, eventually causing it to melt, release heat and re-solidify. Certainly a scary prospect for any visitors.
Hovering in the atmosphere
Luckily, the idea behind NASA's new mission is not to land people on the inhospitable surface, but to use the dense atmosphere as a base for exploration. No actual date for a HAVOC type mission has been publicly announced yet. This mission is a long term plan and will rely on small test missions to be successful first. Such a mission is actually possible, right now, with current technology. The plan is to use airships which can stay aloft in the upper atmosphere for extended periods of time.
Venus was once an Earth twin.
Credit: NASA / JPL
As surprising as it may seem, the upper atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like location in the solar system. Between altitudes of 50km and 60km, the pressure and temperature can be compared to regions of the Earth's lower atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure in the Venusian atmosphere at 55km is about half that of the pressure at sea level on Earth. In fact you would be fine without a pressure suit, as this is roughly equivalent to the air pressure you would encounter at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Nor would you need to insulate yourself as the temperature here ranges between 20°C and 30°C.
The atmosphere above this altitude is also dense enough to protect astronauts from ionising radiation from space. The closer proximity of the sun provides an even greater abundance of available solar radiation than on Earth, which can be used to generate power (approximately 1.4 times greater).
The conceptual airship would float around the planet, being blown by the wind. It could, usefully, be filled with a breathable gas mixture such as oxygen and nitrogen, providing buoyancy. This is possible because breathable air is less dense than the Venusian atmosphere and, as result, would be a lifting gas.
The Venusian atmosphere is comprised of 97% carbon dioxide, about 3% nitrogen and trace amounts of other gases. It famously contains a sprinkling of sulphuric acid which forms dense clouds and is a major contributor to its visible brightness when viewed from Earth. In fact the planet reflects some 75% of the light that falls onto it from the sun. This highly reflective cloud layer exists between 45km and 65km, with a haze of sulphuric acid droplets underneath down to about 30km. As such, an airship design would need to be resistant to the corrosive effect of this acid.
Luckily we already have the technology required to overcome the problem of acidity. Several commercially available materials, including teflon and a number of plastics, have a high acidic resistance and could be used for the outer envelope of the airship. Considering all these factors, conceivably you could go for a walk on a platform outside the airship, carrying only your air supply and wearing a chemical hazard suit.
Venus as seen by Magellan. Credit: NASA
Life on Venus?
The surface of Venus has been mapped from orbit by radar on the US Magellan mission. However, only a few locations on the surface have ever been visited, by the series of Venera missions of Soviet probes in the late 1970s. These probes returned the first – and so far only – images of the Venusian surface. Certainly surface conditions seem utterly inhospitable to any kind of life.
The upper atmosphere is a different story however. Certain kinds of extremophile organisms already exist on Earth which could withstand the conditions in the atmosphere at the altitude at which HAVOC would fly. Species such as Acidianus infernus can be found in highly acidic volcanic lakes in Iceland and Italy. Airborne microbes have also been found to exist in Earth's clouds. None of this proves that life exists in the Venusian atmosphere, but it is a possibility that could be investigated by a mission like HAVOC.
The current climatic conditions and composition of the atmosphere are the result of a runaway greenhouse effect (an extreme greenhouse effect that cannot be reversed), which transformed the planet from a hospitable Earth-like "twin" world in its early history. While we do not currently expect Earth to undergo a similarly extreme scenario, it does demonstrate that dramatic changes to a planetary climate can happen when certain physical conditions arise.
By testing our current climate models using the extremes seen on Venus we can more accurately determine how various climate forcing effects can lead to dramatic changes. Venus therefore provides us with a means to test the extremes of our current climate modelling, with all the inherent implications for the ecological health of our own planet.
We still know relatively little about Venus, despite it being our nearest planetary neighbour. Ultimately, learning how two very similar planets can have such different pasts will help us understand the evolution of the solar system and perhaps even that of other star systems.
And, more to the point, are any asteroids that might be hidden in the Taurid meteor stream potentially hazardous to Earth?
A Taurid fireball – or exceptionally bright meteor – caught during the unusually strong 2015 shower by Bill Allen.
It’s the time of year for the long-lasting Taurid meteor shower. If you glimpse any, think about this. Last year, a team of researchers from the Czech Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic found evidence to suggest Earth is at greater risk than we thought of being hit by an asteroid associated with these meteors. They identified a new swarm of meteoroids – icy debris in space, left behind by a comet – related to the Taurid meteor stream. More importantly, they said, this new meteoroid stream might also contain still-undiscovered asteroids, some good-sized, say, a few tens of meters (yards) or even larger.
Their study was published in 2017 in the peer-reviewed journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Let’s be clear. We are no more in danger of being hit by a space rock from the newly discovered stream of Taurids than we were before scientists discovered it. So there is no imminent danger here. It simply means that scientists will be searching the newly identified streams of meteoroids, with the goal of detecting any medium-sized or even moderately large asteroids with orbits that might bring them near Earth.
What are meteoroids? They’re typically bits of debris in space, often left behind by comets as they orbit the sun. The Taurid meteor shower, for example, is produced by debris of Comet 2P/Encke. When debris from a comet enters our atmosphere, meteoroids vaporize due to friction with the air, leaving streaks of light in our night sky that we call meteors. Sometimes, a random meteor (usually not associated with one of the annual meteor showers) hits the ground, and then its name changes again to meteorite.
There are many comets orbiting the sun, leaving debris behind. As Earth orbits the sun, as our planet encounters these small particles left by comets, we see meteor showers. Some meteoroid streams produce only a few visible meteors, but sometimes Earth passes by a denser swarm of particles, thus causing a more impressive or active meteor shower.
These particles are usually very small, maybe as tiny as sand, or grains of rice, although the sizes do vary. New research suggests some recent Taurid fireballs – or exceptionally bright meteors – were produced by much-larger particles. At least one meteor observed in 2015 had an estimated size of about a meter (3.28 feet). Another very bright meteor – observed in 2015 and recently studied – might have been caused by a space rock 10 times more massive.
The 2015 Taurid shower produced many fireballs, or exceptionally bright meteors. Here’s another one, captured in 2015 by Jeff Dai in Tibet.
The Taurid meteor shower occurs every year, beginning in late October and extending through November. It usually offers only a few bright meteors. However, 2015 was an exceptional year for the Taurids. In November 2015, a network of meteor cameras located in Europe detected about 200 fireballs. Of those, 24 were very bright, and 10 were as bright or even brighter than the full moon.
Since then, astronomers have made an extensive analysis of some of the incoming 2015 Taurids and found that most of the meteors showed a trajectory or orbit that points to the same new branch of meteoroid material. And hence a new meteoroid stream has been found.
Then something else got astronomers’ attention. They realized that some large space rocks, including asteroids 2015 TX24 and 2005 UR, share the same orbits as the newly found swarm of Taurid meteoroids. These asteroids are now assumed to be members of the newly detected meteoroid stream. Asteroid 2015 TX24 – discovered on October 8, 2015 – was closest to Earth 20 days later, on October 28, a date very close to the Taurid meteor shower’s enhanced activity in 2015.
These asteroids are between 200 and 300 meters (656 and 984 feet) in diameter.
And so it appears likely that the newly discovered meteoroid streams contains other still-undiscovered, but relatively large, space rocks.
Remember, some Taurid meteors encounter Earth’s atmosphere each year. Is it possible that larger objects in the newly found Taurid meteor stream might also encounter Earth? For this reason, astronomers speak of these objects as potentially hazardous. They say the objects would be large enough to cause some regional damage if they were indeed to strike Earth, but – as yet – no asteroid has been identified as threatening or having a collision course with Earth.
Clearly, further research and observations are needed.
Some bright meteors were seen during the enhanced Taurid meteor shower of November 2015, including this impressive meteor seen in Thailand:
Bottom line: A new stream of meteoroidal material has been discovered for the Taurids. Some relatively large asteroids are known to be in this same orbit. Could there be potentially hazardous asteroids in the stream as well?
When the U.S. football field–size, cigar-shaped object ‘Oumuamua entered our solar system last year, it didn’t just give us our first glimpse of an interstellar piece of rock. It also bolstered the plausibility of space rocks spreading life among the stars by ferrying microbes between distant star systems, according to a new study. “Life could potentially be exchanged over thousands of light-years,” says author Idan Ginsburg, a postdoc at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The idea, known as panspermia, has been around for centuries. Some astronomers have even speculated that life on Earth was seeded by microbes that hitched a ride on debris ejected from another life-harboring world in the solar system, perhaps on meteorites from Mars. But it seemed improbable that life could have come from interstellar space.
Take computer simulations in 2003 by planetary scientist H. Jay Melosh, now at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. The analysis revealed that about a third of the meteorites shot off Earth were eventually thrown out of the solar system by Jupiter or Saturn, but that the process took millions or tens of millions of years—a long stretch for even the toughest bugs or spores to be exposed to the vacuum and radiation of space. And vanishingly few rocks would ever be captured by some distant system, Melosh found.
The outlook improves if the receiving system is a binary star, which has a more complex gravitational field than the solar system. Yet any system that’s good at capturing is also good at ejecting, meaning refugees from another system are far more likely to be tossed back out in a game of interstellar hot potato than to settle on a hospitable world.
‘Oumuamua is providing fresh hope for the idea of galactic panspermia. For the telescopic survey that found it, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, to have detected such an object in the region it had scanned, our Galaxy needs to have 1 trillion of them per cubic light-year, according to study published earlier this year. To fill space like this, every star in the Milky Way would have to eject 10 quadrillion such objects, and a few should be passing through our solar system at any given moment.
In the new study, Ginsburg, along with astrophysicists Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, calculated the chances of such objects delivering life to an alien world. A binary star such as Alpha Centauri would ensnare a few thousand rocks of ‘Oumuamua’s size every year, and our solar system might snag one a century, the team estimates in a preprint posted last week on arXiv and in a forthcoming paper in The Astronomical Journal.
The researchers then multiplied this capture rate by the number of stars an interstellar object will encounter before whatever bugs it carries all die. If the objects move, like ‘Oumuamua, at a velocity of 26 kilometers per second through interstellar space, 10 million of them will be captured somewhere in the Milky Way in a million years. “If you look at the galaxy as a whole, you expect this to happen fairly often,” Ginsburg says.
Astronomer Jason Wright of Pennsylvania State University in State College says the analysis has merit: “For reasonable numbers, this suggests that planets and asteroids are commonly exchanged between stars.”
But astronomer Ed Turner of Princeton University says the authors may be reading too much into the single example of ‘Oumuamua. “There’s no rigorous mathematical argument you can write about one event evaluated a posteriori,” he says.
And even if our galaxy is thick with ‘Oumuamuas, they are unlikely vectors of panspermia, Melosh says. ‘Oumuamua is way too big to have been ejected from an inhabited planet, he says.
Still, Loeb says more data could settle where galactic panspermia is plausible. Additional discoveries of interstellar interlopers would clarify their prevalence, and Loeb says the detection of life on other worlds would show whether it tends to cluster, as it would if it arose in one place and spread elsewhere by panspermia. If so, he says, our entire galaxy might be considered biologically interconnected, its vast distances offset by vast spans of time and the vast number of objects that set out to cross the void.
*Correction, 16 October, 10:55 a.m.:This story has been updated to note that the new study will appear in The Astronomical Journal. A link to the study has been added.
Record Breaker: 4 Huge Alien Planets Spotted Around Baby Star
Record Breaker: 4 Huge Alien Planets Spotted Around Baby Star
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer
An artist's illustration of the very young CI Tau system, which appears to harbor four gas-giant planets.
Credit: Amanda Smith, Institute of Astronomy
In an astronomical first, four gigantic planets have been detected around a very young star, a new study reports.
The star in question is CI Tau, which lies about 500 light-years from Earth. CI Tau is just 2 million years old and is still surrounded by a swirling clump of dust and gas known as a protoplanetary disk.
The star was already known to host one planet, a world about 10 times more massive than Jupiter that circles CI Tau once every nine Earth days. This planet, called CI Tau b, was the first "hot Jupiter" ever discovered around such a young star. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]
In the new study, a team of researchers observed CI Tau and its disk with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a network of radio telescopes in the Chilean Andes. ALMA spotted three additional gaps in the disk, at distances of 13, 39 and 100 astronomical units (AU) from the star, the astronomers report. (One AU is the Earth-sun distance — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers).
So it seems that CI Tau b has three siblings. And these newfound worlds are big, too: The team's work suggests the innermost of the three is about as massive as Jupiter, while the outer two have Saturn-esque heft.
Astronomers had never spotted four gas-giant planets around such a young star before, study team members said. And the orbital range — the outermost planet lies about 1,000 times farther from CI Tau than the innermost world does — is extreme as well, the researchers added.
Indeed, it's unclear how the two outermost planets were able to take shape.
"Saturn-mass planets are supposed to form by first accumulating a solid core and then pulling in a layer of gas on top, but these processes are supposed to be very slow at large distances from the star," study lead author Cathie Clarke, of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in England, said in a statement. "Most models will struggle to make planets of this mass at this distance."
It's also unclear what role, if any, the sibling planets played in driving CI Tau b to its super-tight orbit, study team members said. Observing the bizarre system further with other telescopes may help answer these and other questions, study team members said.
Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, appears to have undergone periods of intense geological activity.
Ganymede. Image credits: NASA / JPL.
Among the many things that make the Earth so special, plate tectonics have a special role. We don’t give it much credit, but without it, life on Earth would perhaps not have been able to exist — or at the very least, would have been dramatically different from what we see today.
The Earth’s crust is split into several rigid plates, which move relative to each other at a speed of a few cm/year. It’s not much, but if you multiply that on the scale of millions of years, it becomes quite significant. Plates can move towards each other convergently (as seen in most high mountain ranges such as the Himalayas), away from each other divergently (as seen on rifts, such as the East African Rift), or simply slide by each other in a motion called “strike-slip”. The most famous example of strike-slip movement is the San Andreas fault in California. Now, astronomers have found signs of this type of movement on another celestial body: Ganymede.
“The heavily fractured surface of Ganymede displays many distinctive regions of inferred strike-slip faulting that may be important to the structural development of its surface,” said Marissa E. Cameron, lead author of this study who completed the work as a doctoral candidate in SOEST’s Department of Earth Sciences.
Ganymede is Jupiter’s and the solar system’s largest moon. Like Europa, it is believed to be an ocean world. Although its surface is frozen, researchers believe that beneath its frozen shell there lies an ocean of liquid water heated up by friction stress caused by Jupiter’s tidal forces.
Europa is widely considered the most likely place in the solar system to hold life outside of Earth, but Ganymede is also an interesting candidate. The liquid water would provide the necessary environment for life to develop, while the ice shell would protect the water from radiation.
Several studies have shown that Europa is still tectonically active, whereas Ganymede isn’t — but it used to be. Studying this process along with its causes and effects could teach us a great deal not only about Ganymede’s past and present but also about Europa’s future.
Astronomers were intrigued to see just how much evidence of strike-slip they found.
“The unexpected finding was how commonplace strike-slip faulting was. Indicators of strike-slip were observed at all nine sites, representing various geographic locations on Ganymede,” said Cameron. “Additionally, the similarities between the sites may be indicative of a past, larger scale process. Incorporating our observations with previous studies provides an improved representation of Ganymede’s tectonic history and allows us to learn more about its neighbor, Europa.”
Journal Reference: Marissa E. Cameron, Bridget R. Smith-Konter, Liliane Burkhard, Geoffrey C. Collins, Fiona Seifert, Robert T. Pappalardo. Morphological mapping of Ganymede: Investigating the role of strike-slip tectonics in the evolution of terrain types. Icarus, 2018; 315: 92 DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2018.06.024
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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