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.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
24-01-2022
Catherine Austin Fitts: We're 'Headed for a Digital Concentration Camp'
Catherine Austin Fitts: We're 'Headed for a Digital Concentration Camp'
Catherine Austin Fits: "We have what we have been building for the last 20 or 30 years, and it's getting much more obvious, but it's been covert most of the time. They basically want digital control systems through the financial system, through the health system and government systems to implement control.
It's important to understand what they are trying to do. They are trying to create complete transaction control. If they don't want you going five miles from your home, your electric car will not work more than five miles from your home. . . .
If they don't want you to buy pizza, your credit card will not allow you to buy pizza. They are talking about putting in extraordinary digital control systems and literally turning your car and your home into a digital concentration camp."
Here is something to think about that no-one has ever mentioned. If China (CCP) really did plan the release of Covid-19 on purpose and this was all part of a bigger plan. Then China would have needed the head of the WHO to help them convince the world that it wasn't Chinas fault. So...this is the juicy part...China back in 2017 helped Tedros, a known head of the communist party in Ethiopia to secure his 5 year position in the WHO, on the condition that he helps convince the world to see China in a better light. Unbeknownst to Tedros...China was already planning the covid release back in 2017, but he thought it would be an easy road to travel with good pocket money from China...until covid was released in late 2019. Why else would China need the head of the World Health Organization in Chinas pocket? Also note the photo above...Tedros immediately met with the China Premier after he secured his WHO position.
This is only a theory, not definitive proof, however China has never been forthcoming about covid info from the start...and its up to the public to put the pieces of the puzzle together to find the true answers.
The USGS site returned back online and is no longer giving a 404 error code today. After I published a report about finding a 25km building in one of the photos, the USGS tried to prevent others from doing the same. However I downloaded all the pdf photos of the full mars map and released it to the public yesterday. Clearly they no longer saw a point to being down.
Carl Rogers once said, "the truth will set you free, but first it will hurt like hell." The USGS must be feeling it right now.
A massive icefish breeding colony, covering almost 100 square miles, has been discovered in Antarctica's Weddell Sea, with about 60 million active nests.
It is the world's largest breeding colony of fish, representing a biomass of more than 135 million pounds, and covers an area roughly the size of Birmingham.
Until now it was not known that such a thing existed.
Each of the nests include about 1,700 eggs, with a number of fish carcasses found within, or near the site - as it is thought to be a feeding ground for seals.
Also known as notothenioids, these fish play an important role in the wider food web, say experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany.
The discovery will play an important role in the conservation of Antarctica and surrounding oceans, the researchers claim, adding that they plan to return to the area later this year to survey more of the ocean floor for signs of nests.
A massive icefish breeding colony, covering almost 100 square miles, has been discovered in Antarctica's Weddell Sea, with about 60 million active nests
Each of the nests include about 1,700 eggs, with a number of fish carcasses found within, or near the site - as it is thought to be a feeding ground for seals
WHAT ARE ICEFISH (NOTOTHENIIDAE)?
Nototheniidae, the notothens or cod icefishes, live in the Southern Ocean.
They are a family of ray-finned fish first described in 1861, with the name meaning 'coming from the south'.
They are found around the Antarctic and have elongated bodies.
They typically have two dorsal fins and grow to up to 85 inches.
Researchers from Germany discovered more than 60 million icefish nests in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.
The team used an underwater camera 'sledge' called Ocean Floor Observation and Bathymetry System (OFOBS) in the southern Weddell Sea, Antarctica.
The researchers were surveying the Filchner ice shelf, a vast slab that has floated off the land onto the sea, as well as the surrounding seafloor, which included an upwelling of water that was 3.6 F warmer than the surrounding area.
While they were able to examine the change in water temperature, finding the massive fish colony and breeding ground was 'rather unexpected'.
Their bodily fluids contain antifreeze proteins that enable them to survive the very cold temperatures of the Southern Ocean.
As a result, blood is less thick and sticky - increasing supply of oxygen to organs.
Lead author Dr Autun Purser said data revealed this area is a prime feeding ground for seals, with 'a great many spending their time in close proximity to the nests'.
'We know this from historical tracking data and fresh tracking data from our cruise. The nests are exactly where the warmer water is upwelling.
'These facts may be coincidence, and more work is needed, but the recorded seal data show seals do indeed dive to the depths of the fish nests, so may well be dining on these fish.'
'A few dozen nests ha$
ve been observed elsewhere in the Antarctic - but this find is orders of magnitude larger,' added Dr Purser.
The researchers used an underwater camera 'sledge', OFOBS, which is a large, towed device, weighing one ton and towed behind the icebreaker RV Polarstern.
'We tow this at a height of about 5ft to 8ft above the seafloor, recording videos and acoustic bathymetry data,' explained Dr Purser.
Live images were transmitted from 1,755ft to 1,377ft down to monitors aboard the research ship, and the longer the mission lasted, the more excitement grew.
The discovery will play an important role in the conservation of Antarctica and surrounding oceans, the researchers claim, adding that they plan to return to the area later this year to survey more of the ocean floor for signs of nests
The team used an underwater camera 'sledge' called Ocean Floor Observation and Bathymetry System (OFOBS) in the southern Weddell Sea, Antarctica
'Oasis of life' is discovered beneath Antarctica's Ekström Ice Shelf
Deep beneath the Antarctic ice shelves, the environment is about as harsh as it gets.
Extremely cold, perpetually dark and with food sources almost non-existent, it is not exactly conducive to life, even if Earth is home to some remarkably hardy and resolute creatures that exist in all corners of the world.
But surprisingly scientists have discovered 77 species living there, including evidence that this 'oasis of life' dates back some 6,000 years.
Among them were sabre-shaped moss animals and unusual worms, researchers in Germany found.
Using hot water, the team from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) drilled two holes through nearly 656ft (200 metres) of the Ekström Ice Shelf near Neumayer Station III in the South Eastern Weddell Sea in 2018.
Nest followed nest, the team said. Precise evaluations identified an average one breeding site per 33 square foot - with up to two per 10 square feet.
Mapping suggested it extended across a region roughly equivalent to an island the size of Malta - about 92 square miles.
Dr Purser said: 'The idea such a huge breeding area of icefish in the Weddell Sea was previously undiscovered is totally fascinating.'
The Polarstern icebreaker has been exploring it for four decades. Only individual Neopagetopsis ionah fish or small clusters of nests had ever been detected.
Dr Purser said: 'We did not know to expect any sort of fish nest ecosystem.' That part, he adds, came as a 'total surprise.'
Dr Purser said: 'After the spectacular discovery of the many fish nests, we thought about a strategy on board to find out how large the breeding area was - there was literally no end in sight.
'The nests are three quarters of a metre in diameter - so they are much larger than the structures and creatures, some of which are only centimetres in size, that we normally detect with the OFOBS system.
'So, we were able to increase the height above ground to about three metres and the towing speed to a maximum of three knots, thus multiplying the area investigated.
'We covered an area of [490,000 sq ft] and counted an incredible 16,160 fish nests on the photo and video footage.'
The round fish nests could be clearly identified - about six inches deep and two-and-a-half feet in diameter.
They stood out from the otherwise muddy seabed due to a circular central area of small stones. Several types were distinguished.
Some were 'active' with between 1,500 and 2,500 eggs and guarded in three-quarters of cases by an adult icefish of the species Neopagetopsis ionah.
Others contained only eggs. There were also unused nests, in the vicinity of which either only a fish without eggs could be seen, or a dead fish.
The researchers used OFOBS's longer-range but lower-resolution side scan sonars - which recorded over 100,000 nests - to work out distribution and density.
They were a popular destination for seals in search of food. Transmitters attached to the marine mammals showed 90 per cent of diving activities occurred there.
Nest followed nest, the team said. Precise evaluations identified an average one breeding site per 33 square foot - with up to two per 10 square feet
It's likely to be the most spatially extensive contiguous fish breeding colony discovered worldwide to date.
Bettina Stark-Watzinger, German Federal Research Minister, congratulated the researchers on their discovery, saying it makes an important contribution towards protecting the Antarctic environment.
The researchers have now deployed two camera systems to monitor the icefish nests until a research vessel returns.
The hope is that photographs taken multiple times a day will yield new insights on the workings of this newly discovered ecosystem.
Purser says he has plans to return in April 2022 for surveys of the seafloor in areas of the northeast Weddell Sea.
The findings have been published in the journal Current Biology.
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WEDDELL SEALS
Scientific name: Leptonychotes weddellii
Description: Weddell seals are large animals. Both adult males and females are about 3 metres long and weigh around 400–500kg. The head is small relative to body size and the colour is usually dappled grey and black on the back with a mostly white under-belly.
Distribution and abundance:Weddell seals have a circumpolar distribution and are coastal, staying around the fast ice and venturing only 9-12 miles (15–20km) into the Southern Ocean to feed. Weddell seals haul-out onto the fast-ice to rest and moult, and for females to pup.
Weddell seals are incredibly placid sedentary animals. They can be approached without much apparent stress to the animal. When they haul-out they remain close to their access hole on top of the ice. Underwater they remain relatively close to their breeding colonies, usually within 50–100km though occasional migrations of several hundred kilometres do occur, especially by juveniles.
Weddell seals are the most southerly ranging mammal to permanently inhabit the continent. Sightings of the seals have been made in New Zealand and Australia, though they are very rare here.
Threats: The under-ice environment is relatively safe from air breathing predators such as killer whales and leopard seals.
Special adaptations: Because Weddell seals breath air and live under the fast-ice, they must breath through cracks and holes in the ice cover. There are many cracks in the ice during the warmer summer months.
During winter these openings freeze over and Weddell seals use their canine and incisor teeth to rasp open the new ice and so maintain holes through which to breathe.
Conservation status:least concern
Breeding: Weddell seals haul-out onto the stable fast-ice to rest and moult, and for females to pup, returning to the same area each year. Females of 6 years and over give birth in October to 1 pup per year. Pups weigh 25–30kg at birth and mothers care for them for 6 weeks by which time they have grown to 110–140kg. Pups learn to swim and haul-out of the water from 1 week old.
During the breeding season males defend underwater territories from other males for access to breathing holes and females. Both male and female seals vocalise, males may do so to maintain established territories. The only observation of mating (Cline et al, 1971) reported that it took place under water for 5 minutes or more. The male maintained rhythmic body undulations at a rate of 160 per minute.
Diet and feeding:Weddell seals are carnivores. Their food varies with time and location but mid-water (pelagic) and bottom dwelling (benthic) fish, squid, octopus and prawns are common. One seal was repeatedly observed to capture a fish weighing more than 40kg. Weddell seals are very capable divers, remaining under water for up to 45 minutes and reaching depths as great as 720m in search of prey. Lengthy shallow dives are probably exploration dives for new ice holes and food sources.
SPACEX MARS CITY: LAUNCH SCHEDULE, KEY BUILD DATES, AND HOW TO GET THERE
SPACEX MARS CITY: LAUNCH SCHEDULE, KEY BUILD DATES, AND HOW TO GET THERE
Musk plans to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.
READY TO LIVE on Mars? It could become an option soon, if Elon Musk succeeds in his goals.
The SpaceX CEO has a long-standing vision of establishing a city on the Red Planet. It would be self-sustaining, would be home to 1 million people, and would transform humanity into a multi-planet species. It is perhaps Musk’s most ambitious goal, one that could keep him occupied for the next three decades.
“It's about believing in the future and thinking that the future would be better than the past,” Musk said at the International Astronautical Conference 2017 in Adelaide, Australia. “I can't think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”
Want to find out more about Musk’s plans for a Mars city? Subscribe to MUSK READS+ for exclusive interviews and analysis about spaceflight, electric cars, and more.
Here is what you need to know about Musk’s mission.
WHAT IS THE MARS CITY?
Musk plans to build a full-size city on the surface of Mars. This would be a city open to regular people, not just scientists and researchers.
People interested in moving to Mars could pay for their flight with a loan. Once there, people would be able to pay off the loan by working in anything from iron foundries to pizzerias. Musk declared at a 2016 conference that there would be labor shortages for a long time.
This city would be free to govern itself on its own terms, as indicated by the Starlink internet service terms and conditions released in October 2020. This appears to stand in contradiction to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which states that the launch origin country is responsible for subsequent space activities. David Anderman, who served as SpaceX’s general counsel when the terms were released, suggested to Inversein 2021 that the two documents may be set on a collision course.
Mars: ready for a city?Shutterstock
Musk estimated in 2019 that it would take around one million tons of cargo to build a self-sustaining city on Mars. Assuming it costs $100,000 per ton to send cargo to Mars with the upcoming Starship, that would put a Mars city’s price at around $100 billion. At the high end, Musk estimates it could cost around $10 trillion.
WHY DOES ELON MUSK WANT TO BUILD A CITY ON MARS?
Musk’s stated aim is to transform humanity into a multi-planet species.
Over the years, he has listed reasons as to why humanity would want to expand into the universe. One theme he regularly lists is that a life-ending event on Earth could spell the end of humanity — but humanity could live on if it’s able to set up base on a new planet like Mars.
“Earth is ~4.5B years old, but life is still not multiplanetary and it is extremely uncertain how much time is left to become so,” Musk wrote on Twitter in November 2021. Beyond very worst-case scenario climate change, a surprise meteor strike could also wipe out humanity.
SpaceX concept art of a Starship taking off from Mars.SpaceX
Another reason, as he suggested in September 2018, is because it’s a reason to keep on living:
“There’s so many things that make people sad or depressed about the future, but I think becoming a space-faring civilization is one of those things that makes you excited about the future.”
Musk isn’t the first person to call for humanity to colonize another planet — professor Stephen Hawking said in 2017 that humans would need to expand out within 100 years if they hoped to survive. However, astrophysicist Martin Rees said in response to Hawking and Musk that the idea was a “dangerous delusion [...] dealing with climate change on Earth is a doddle compared to making Mars habitable.”
WHEN DID MUSK FIRST GET THE IDEA FOR A MARS CITY?
It’s hard to say when he first got this idea — Ashlee Vance’s 2015 biography claims that “by the middle of his teenage years” he’d come to see “man’s fate in the universe” as his “personal obligation.” He was inspired by science fiction novels like Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
The book also cites Terency Beney, who went to school with Musk. Beney claims that Musk was already thinking about colonizing other planets in his early years.
In 2001, Musk attended a meeting of the non-profit Mars Society group. During the event, Musk learned about the group’s plans to send mice into space to inspire people. Musk started considering the prospect of sending them to Mars instead, an idea that eventually led to him founding SpaceX.
In 2007, before SpaceX had even launched its first rocket to orbit, Musk told Wired that in 30 years there would be a base on the Moon and Mars.
The idea took on new form in 2016, when he gave a speech at the International Astronautical Congress about his idea to make humanity into a multi-planet species.
HOW WILL ELON MUSK BUILD A CITY ON MARS?
Central to the plan is the Starship. This fully-reusable rocket, currently under development in Texas, will enable SpaceX to send humans and cargo to Mars. The ship will be capable of launching over 100 tons or 100 people into space at a time.
Its use of liquid oxygen and methane as fuel, rather than the rocket propellant used in the Falcon 9, means explorers can fly to Mars, refuel using resources found on the planet, and fly back to Earth. The astronauts could even venture out further into space, building a planet-hopping network of refueling stations along the way.
DOES JEFF BEZOS AGREE WITH ELON MUSK’S MARS CITY IDEA?
Not everybody in the space industry agrees with Musk’s vision. Jeff Bezos, founder of rival firm Blue Origin, prefers to build giant orbiting cities near Earth to expand humanity.
In May 2019, Bezos cited research from physicist Gerard K. O’Neill. He asked a key question: is a planetary surface the best place for humans to expand into the solar system? O’Neill decided the answer was no for three key reasons:
The planetary surfaces aren’t that big. Humans would maybe, at best, double the amount of available land surface.
They’re a long way away. A round trip to Mars would take years — the Earth and Mars align once every 22 months, and the trip itself would take a few months depending on the rocket.
There won’t be any real-time communications with Earth because of the distance. It takes around 20 minutes to send a signal to Mars, much slower than the tens of milliseconds it takes to communicate over the internet.
Instead, Bezos prefers to build O’Neill-style colonies in Earth’s orbit. This, he claims, could support up to one trillion humans.
“Makes no sense. In order to grow the colony, you’d have to transport vast amounts of mass from planets/moons/asteroids. Would be like trying to build the USA in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!”
WHAT IS THE DESIGN FOR THE MARS CITY?
During Musk’s 2017 International Astronautical Congress presentation, he revealed images of how the city may look:
SpaceX's Mars city design.SpaceX
The city would begin initially with a series of bases, gradually expanding out over time.
SpaceX's concept art for how a Mars city with a Starship may look.SpaceX
HOW MUCH WILL IT COST TO TAKE A SPACESHIP TO THE MARS CITY?
Musk claimed in 2019 that a return ticket could cost around $500,000 initially, dropping to $100,000 over time. Musk’s goal in 2016 was to reach a ticket price of around the median price of a house in the United States. That would suggest people could sell their house to move to Mars.
Another option, Musk suggested, would be a personal loan. Visitors would pay off the loan by getting a job to help fill the city’s labor shortages. It’s an idea that arguably bears resemblance to 19th-century American company towns, where employees lived in a city owned by their employer. Especially in the early days, Mars may not have many choices for local employment — and you’ll need to pay off that loan for your flight.
Guenter Lang, an economics professor at Kühne Logistics University in Germany, drew this plan into question in a May 2019 interview with Inverse. After all, if you’re rich enough to go, why would you give up that luxury?
WHEN WILL SPACEX BUILD A CITY ON MARS?
In 2017, Musk outlined an “aspirational” plan to send two cargo ships to Mars as early as 2022. It would then send four ships at the next closest approach — two crewed ships and two cargo ships — in 2024.
Mars and Earth are at their closest around once every 26 months. The distance between the two at this time reduces to around 33.9 million miles.
In March 2019, Musk wrote on Twitter that “it’s possible to make a self-sustaining city on Mars by 2050, if we start in 5 years & take 10 orbital synchronizations.” With 26 months between synchronizations, that would mean it would take around 22 years at a minimum to build the city.
Musk has set himself the deadline of a self-sustaining Mars city with 1 million people by 2050. Musk would turn 79 years old that year.
As SpaceX has yet to even host its first orbital flight with the Starship, it seems unlikely that it will send the first cargo ships this year.
WILL ELON MUSK TERRAFORM MARS?
Probably not in his lifetime, but he does have some ideas.
At SpaceX’s headquarters, next to the lobby, the company has two images that show a before and after of a terraformed Mars:
The current surface temperature on Mars is an average of minus 63 degrees Celsius, or minus 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Musk’s idea is to heat up the planet’s poles to release stores of frozen carbon dioxide. This would use a series of continuous, low fallout nuclear fusion explosions to act as artificial suns.
The idea would be to use the carbon dioxide stores to create a more hospitable atmosphere. Humans could then walk around the planet using just a breathing apparatus.
That’s the theory, at least. In practice, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher S. Edwards published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomyback in 2018 that drew that plan into question. It argued there is “not enough CO2 remaining on Mars to provide significant greenhouse warming were the gas to be emplaced into the atmosphere.”
The paper found that vaporizing Mars’ carbon-rich sedimentary rocks would release enough gas for around 12 millibars of atmospheric pressure. By comparison, Earth’s atmosphere is around 1,000 millibars at sea level.
Jakosky and Edwards publicly discussed with Musk as to whether there was enough carbon dioxide lurking beneath the surface. The three seemed to agree, however, that the technology to terraform Mars is some ways away yet.
Leonardo da Vinci is often considered one of the greatest geniuses in the history of mankind. He was a profound painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His creative genius and his inventive spirit and have left a mark in different fields of study and art.
Da Vinci was a man with extraordinary caliber at everything he tried his hand at, almost defying human limits as we know them, with imagination unprecedented in history. But what made him supernaturally talented? Is there an explanation for the large number of controversies surrounding him? Why were those controversies formed? Was he using some sort of a supernatural source for his intellect and skill? Perhaps Da Vinci was using something natural that is still unknown to us in the 21st century. Perhaps, he was in contact with extraterrestrials?
The Egyptians didn't build The Pyramids & I can prove it!
The Pyramids and Sphinx of the Giza plateau are possibly thousands of years older than mainstream researchers suggest. In fact, these ancient structures could well predate the ancient Egyptian civilization by thousands of years.
Many researchers indicate there is enough evidence to suggest the Giza plateau was heavily flooded in the past. Interestingly, given the evidence found at the Giza plateau, the Pyramids and Sphinx could be some of the megalithic structures that survived the Great Deluge. Researchers suggest that the Sphinx, the Temple of the Sphinx, and the first 20 fields of the Great Pyramid of Giza exhibit erosion due to deep water saturation.
Scenes from History Channel's Ancient Aliens were used under Fair Use for educational purposes
The Terrible Story of Nikola Tesla!
Why one of the greatest inventors of all time died penniless.
THE TRUE PURPOSE BEHIND THE PYRAMIDS: FINALLY DISCOVERED
Mainstream historians will tell you that the Great Pyramid of Giza was a glorified tomb for the Egyptian pharaohs. The only original monument left of the original Seven Wonders of the World, this structure was created with impeccable mathematical precision, and is a unique, mysterious feat of construction and engineering.
There’s only one problem: the Great Pyramid has none of the characteristics of tombs: including extravagant artifacts, ornate wall art, sealed entrances, elaborate coffins, or even mummies themselves. It was, however, built with unique – the same materials that are used for electrical conductivity today. These facts are leading more and more historians to believe the pyramids may have had a far more useful purpose. ..that pyramid of Giza was not at all a tomb, but a power plant: generating and transmitting electricity to the civilization surrounding them. Sound impossible? Join the Universe Inside you for a closer look!
Starlink: The Secret reason Behind Creating a Global Internet Service
The ambitions of the SpaceX satellite internet service extend far beyond Earth.
The Anunnaki: They Created the first Human on Earth
445 000 years ago, “creator gods” – as they call it – came to Earth. They were called the Anunnaki, which means “Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came”. These beings inhabited a distant orbiting planet called Nibiru, which only entered our solar system every 3,600 years. They describe Nibiru as many times the diameter of Earth, and abundant with iron oxide, making its rivers and lakes appear red. A side note about Nibiru: according to the Sumerian tablets, Nibiru’s atmosphere began to deteriorate and became a hostile place for life, and in order to restore it, the Annunaki needed one important element for their atmosphere: gold.
Scenes from the following productions were used under Fair Use for educational purposes:
Everyone knows the story of Atlantis – the advanced civilization that disappeared in the ocean. But not everyone is aware of the similar legends other cultures tell of their own lost_cities – ones that were buried under the desert sand, or overgrown by dense vegetation in the jungle. While many of these stories were considered fiction, an increasing number of archeological discoveries have revealed these legends were more than mere myths- leaving us wondering how many more lost cities might just be awaiting discovery. We may never find the underwater grave of Atlantis, the golden streets of El Dorado, or the peaceful mountains of Shangri-La, but we have found the following 10 lost cities. Starting the countdown with number 10, here are the most spectacular lost cities archaeologists have uncovered.
Neuralink: Merging Humans with AI, Human 2.0!
How Elon Musk's company Neuralink could shape the future of humanity.
Na een jaar vol coronagolven, overstromingen en confronterende klimaatrapporten trakteert Hetty Helsmoortel je op wat luchtiger nieuws. Hier volgt voor elke maand van het jaar een al dan niet wetenschappelijk fait divers!
Januari
In januari lossen Zwitserse en Russische professoren een meer dan zestig jaar oude verdwijningszaak op met dank aan de Disney-film Frozen. Het computeralgoritme dat in de film gebruikt wordt om digitale sneeuw en ijs realistisch te laten overkomen, kan namelijk het ultieme bewijs leveren dat een groep avonturiers in 1959 door een sneeuwramp om het leven kwam. Het maakt meteen een einde aan vele complottheorieën, zoals dat ze ontvoerd zouden zijn door aliens, aangevallen door een yeti, of dat hun verdwijning een experiment was van de Russische overheid. Boodschap aan de samenzweerders: laat het los.
Februari
In februari maakt de nieuwe Mars-rover Perseverance een geslaagde landing. De parachute bestaat uit een chaotische aaneenschakeling van rode en witte vlakken. Maar NASA zou NASA niet zijn als in dat patroon geen code verstopt zit. Na een paar uur rekenen vinden puzzelaars het antwoord: ‘Dare mighty things’: durf machtige dingen doen.
Maart
In maart vindt een Amerikaanse podcaster een nieuwe pastavorm uit. Alle bestaande pastasoorten voldeden volgens hem nooit aan drie belangrijke criteria tegelijk: sausbaarheid (of ze precies de juiste hoeveelheid saus kan op- nemen), vorkbaarheid (of je ze makkelijk op je vork kunt prikken) en tandzinkbaarheid (of ze voldoening geeft om er je tanden in te laten zinken). Zijn gloednieuwe Cascatelli – Italiaans voor waterval – voldoen aan alle criteria. De eerste zevenhonderd dozen zijn binnen de twee uur uitverkocht. Zijn ‘mission impastable’ is geslaagd.
Bron: Wikipedia Commons
April
In april krijgt een Poolse dierenhulporganisatie een oproep binnen over een vreemd beest dat in een boom op de loer zou liggen. ‘Mensen openen hun ramen niet meer, omdat ze bang zijn dat het hun huis zal binnensluipen’, klinkt het. Nog maar een voorbeeld van diersoorten die oprukken naar het noorden op zoek naar een koelere habitat? Nee hoor, het blijkt uiteindelijk om een croissant te gaan.
Mei
In mei komt een onderzoeksbureau met het nieuws dat gummibeertjes en muntjes de grootste economische slachtoffers van de coronapandemie zouden zijn. De beertjes omdat mensen amper impulsaankopen doen bij online shoppen, de muntjes omdat mensen bij minder contact met vreemde ook minder nood hebben aan een frisse adem.
Jebulon op Wikipedia Commons.
Juni
In juni stellen Britse en Nieuw-Zeelandse onderzoekers een naar eigen zeggen revolutionair apparaat voor gewichtsverlies voor. Met de DentalSlim worden de boven- en ondertanden met magneten aan elkaar vastgemaakt, zodat patiënten hun mond niet verder dan 2 millimeter kunnen opendoen.
Juli
In juli, bij de start van de Olympische Spelen, leer ik dat al het metaal voor de bijna vijfduizend gouden, zilveren en bronzen medailles uit afgedankte elektronische apparaten gehaald werd, die in heel Japan werden ingezameld.
Turnster Nina Derwael won dit jaar een gouden turnmedaille op de brug met ongelijke leggers.
Augustus
Voor augustus vond ik – net als vorig jaar – niets. Het was dan ook alweer komkommertijd. De langste komkommer ter wereld dateert trouwens nog steeds van 2011 en is 107 centimeter lang.
September
Over komkommers gesproken: in september horen we dat het Gentse Universiteitsmuseum GUM een nieuwe expo voorbereidt over de fallus. Klein probleem wel: alle e-mails van medewerkers blijven vastzitten in de firewall. Aan de ICT-collega’s moet worden gevraagd of de spamfilter van de universiteit voor een paar maanden wél alle piemels kon doorlaten.
Oktober
In oktober lees ik dat twee Franse monniken twee 5G-masten in brand staken (zie ook ‘Monniken met illusies’, Eos nr. 11, 2021). Ze wilden naar eigen zeggen aandacht vragen voor gezondheidsrisico’s van 5G. Voor alle duidelijkheid: wetenschappelijk bewijs is daar niet voor. De kloosterorde staat achter de overtuiging van de monniken en ziet de brandstichting als ‘een losstaande actie en een fout van de jeugd’. De monniken zijn 39 en 40 jaar oud.
November
In november gaat mijn wetenschappelijk jaaroverzicht Missie 2021in première, waarin ik terugkijk op de verhalen die mij als wetenschapper én als mens het afgelopen jaar het meest geraakt hebben.
December
En vorige week werd de James Webb Space Telescope gelanceerd. De opvolger van de Hubbletelescoop zal ons de komende jaren moeten verbluffen met nieuwe beelden én kennis van ons machtige universum.
China Big Panic: Russia just gave its Navy hypersonic nuclear strike weapons and the target is not the US, it’s China
China Big Panic: Russia just gave its Navy hypersonic nuclear strike weapons and the target is not the US, it’s China
Russia has made a massive defence manoeuvre. The Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that the Russian Navy will be armed with hypersonic nuclear strike weapons and underwater nuclear drones. Putin has often spoken of Russia’s next-gen hypersonic missile weapons, which he has called “unequalled”.
These hypersonic missiles can hit any part of the world according to the Russian President. The Russian Navy plans to become a supreme naval power with these new generation arms and while it has generated a lot of fears in the United States due to anachronistic formulations of the Cold War-era, Moscow seems to be preparing itself against a more realistic threat posed by an expansionist China right in its backyard. From the Arctic to the South China Sea, Russia has a lot of interests to protect from China. Putin is thinking about how geopolitical equations will change in the medium-term and the long-term, while it will continue to share an “axis of convenience” with the Chinese Communist Party. In the medium-term, Russia is getting pulled into the Indo-Pacific by an increasingly assertive India, an old friend of Russia.
Russian policymakers continue to dismiss the Indo-Pacific as divisive and anti-China. At an official level, Russia claims to have nothing to do with the Indo-Pacific. But this official Russian stand is a mere eyewash at the best to keep China at bay. Russia has a lot to do with the Indo-Pacific as it shares a 4,500 kilometres-long Pacific coastline in the Russian Far East. Communist China has traditionally laid its eyes on the resource-rich Russian Far East.
In fact, recently Chinese wolf-warriors staked claim on the Russian Far East city- Vladivostok. India hasn’t let the opportunity go. New Delhi has been pushing a Chennai-Vladivostok sea route that passes through the South China Sea, which too China claims as its own. In this backdrop, the Indian envoy to Russia, D. B. Venkatesh Varma recently said that India wants Russia to be more involved in the Indo-Pacific to protect its own interests, amid the rising threat posed by China.
Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1930s–1980s). Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
Many artists throughout history have claimed some sort of otherworldly inspiration (the muses, for instance). But the visionary American artist Paulina Peavy (1901–1999) may be one of the only to attribute her talents to communications with a U.F.O.—specifically one named Lacamo.
During Peavy’s lifetime, she enjoyed many early successes, including showing with Los Angeles’s Stendahl Gallery, studying with Hans Hofmann, and exhibiting work at the opening of the San Francisco Museum of Art—all before falling into art world obscurity.
The new exhibition “Paulina Peavy: An Etherian Channeler,” on view at the Beyond Baroque art center in Venice Beach, is hoping to reintroduce Peavy as a powerful and one-of-a-kind creative force in the nascent southern California art scene of a century ago.
Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1930s–1980s).
Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
The fascinating show, curated by Laura Whitcomb, marks the first exhibition of Peavy’s work in California in 75 years, and traces her myriad creations —paintings, films, drawings, intricate masks—from the 1930s into the 1980s. Various ephemera related to theosophy and astroculture are also on view in a series of vitrines, along with some of Peavy’s own writings, which detail the elaborate occultist belief systems that informed her work.
Even before UFOs got involved (and we’ll get to that later), Peavy’s story was one against the odds. She was born in Colorado to a miner father and a Swedish immigrant mother. In 1906, the family moved to Portland following the Oregon Trail. Peavy’s mother would die tragically a few years later. In spite of the gender conventions of the time and her own humble origins, Peavy would attend Oregon State College (now Oregon State University), studying art with Farley Doty McLouth and Marjorie Baltzell. While a student there, she received recognition in a national competition hosted by the Art Students League in New York. After moving to Southern California, she received a scholarship to attend the Chouinard Art Institute, where she would later study with Hans Hofmann.
Paulina Peavy holding masks. Photo by Sam Vandivert.
Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery.
In the 1920s, Peavy began to play a pivotal role in the emerging West Coast art scene. She established the Paulina Peavy Gallery, which also functioned as a salon and school, hosting classes for the Los Angeles Art Students League. Like many other artists of the age, Peavy had interests in the supernatural and was loosely affiliated with the occult-inclined art group the Group of Eight, as well as the Synchromists and a group of West Coast surrealists led by artist Lorser Feitelson.
But her true moment of breakthrough came in 1932, when Peavy, by now the mother of two and in the midst of a divorce, attended a seance at the Santa Ana home of Ida L. Ewing, a pastor of the National Federation of Spiritual Science. During a séance there, Peavy claimed to have encountered a discarnate entity she called Lacamo, which she later described as a “wondrous ovoid-shaped UFO.” It was an event that would have a profound impact on Peavy and her work for the rest of her life—because Lacamo, she said, revealed great universal truths which she attempted to convey through her art. (She sometimes co-signed her works with Lacamo.)
Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1980).
Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
At the core of these revelations was a complex cosmology consisting of 12,000-year cycles with 3,000-year seasons. The summer of these seasons harkened a kind of utopia in which human beings transcended the limits of their earthly bodies to become spirits, freed from their sexes and entering “one-gender perfection,” as well as a singular cosmic race.
She also looked to other artists for inspiration. Peavy was fascinated by the Mexican muralists, particularly José Clemente Orozco who also shared a deep interest in hermetic and indigenous traditions, particularly philosopher José Vasconcelos’s belief that a great cosmic race would be born out of the Americas (Peavy exhibited 30 of her paintings at the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40, where Diego Rivera exhibited mural work. She also painted a 14-foot mural titled The Eternal Supper, depicting a “Last Supper” filled with androgynous, racially ambiguous figures which had its debut at the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery (now San Diego Museum of Art) in 1941.)
In drawings and films on view in the exhibition, one sees Peavy alluding to pyramidal shapes and the icon of the Pharaoh, an image that would remain central to her visual lexicon. Within her complex cosmology, the Egyptian era stood as paramount, but one can also see these forms as drawings from the Maya and Aztec lineages heralded by the muralists.
Paulina Peavy, Untitled (circa 1930s–1980s).
Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery and the Paulina Peavy Estate.
Undoubtedly, the most striking part of the exhibition are Peavy’s paintings, in which androgynous faces appear against darkened foregrounds, veils and wisps of colors hauntingly hovering above. For Peavy, who didn’t title or date her works, these paintings were ongoing revelations, and many are the result of 50 years of experimentation. Starting in the 1930s, Peavy employed a signature technique of layering translucent colors, then later, in the 1970s and ‘80s, she often returned to these paintings adding abstract crystal shapes that she believed would make viewers’ more receptive to transcendence and Lacamo’s unearthly wisdom.
“She was instructed [by Lacamo] that her painting could change viewers’ neural pathways so that the viewer could become, over time, a receiver. In other words, the paintings were meant to increase neuroplasticity that would make viewers more psychic and more receptive as channelers themselves,” said curator Laura Whitcomb.
Paulina Peavy, Ghazi Khan (circa 1950s).
Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery and the Paulina Peavy estate.
Another fascinating portion of the exhibition includes a collection of intricately adorned masks that offer a window into Peavy’s practice as a channeler. As art objects, these many-layered masks, which she would wear while communicating with Lacamo, straddle both Surrealist objects and indigenous traditions. As with many women artists before her, Peavy also worked in costume design. In college, she had drawn Surrealist costumes for a campus magazine. Later, in New York, she helped support herself by making costume designs for a fashion house.
Still, everything Peavy created was primarily intended to celebrate her belief system. “Paulina considered herself a philosopher and wrote a number of manuscripts, but most poignantly made films which could elucidate her cosmology,” said Whitcomb. Yet, in her time, these beliefs cast Peavy out of the mainstream art world.
“She has this incredible pedigree where she showed with Delphic Studios—Alma Reed’s gallery—and at the same New York gallery where Agnes Pelton showed abstract works. Peavy was articulate, intelligent, very well educated in the arts, but when she identified her discarnate entity Lacamo, in the aftermath of the war, when there was this fear and anxiety over the UFO phenomenon and the Roswell incident, everyone dropped her and thought she was absolutely crazy,” explained Whitcomb. “These were dangerous ideas to be affiliated with and could get you in a lot of trouble, even on an FBI list.”
Peavy at work in her studio.
Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery.
Peavy made her way henceforth by selling her work, not through galleries but through Albert Bender’s Space Review, one of the most important periodicals of UFO culture of the era, and showing work in astroculture conventions. “She became something of an astroculture celebrity,” said Whitcomb. “She realized the art world was very fearful.”
Now, times have changed and spiritualist women artists such as Hilma af Klint, Georgiana Houghton, and Agnes Pelton are widely celebrated. “In the lead up to the Second World War, many artists were experimenting with the occult—Artaud was casting spells against Hitler. And the past years have been very scary,” said Whitcomb. “I feel like recent interest in the occult had to do with creating a cosmic balance and then we’re reminded of artists’ roles as shamans.”
Ons leefgebied is in verval, de genetische variatie is klein, en de vruchtbaarheid taant: de val van Homo sapiens lijkt onvermijdelijk.
Mag ik u even meenemen terug in de tijd? Meer bepaald naar 1965, toen Tom Lehrer zijn livealbum That Was the Year That Was opnam. Lehrer leidde het nummer ‘So Long Mom (A Song for World War III)’ als volgt in: ‘Als er liedjes uit Wereldoorlog III moeten komen, dan beginnen we ze maar beter nu te schrijven.’ Het schrikbeeld van de nucleaire apocalyps beheerste de jaren 1960. Maar ook overbevolking baarde zorgen. Toen in 1968 de bestseller The Population Bomb van bioloog Paul Ehrlich verscheen, maakte de wereldbevolking een ongezien snelle groei door van meer dan 2 procent.
Een halve eeuw later is de dreiging van de allesvernietigende atoombom zo goed als verdwenen. En de bevolkingsbom? Er wonen vandaag meer dan dubbel zoveel mensen op aarde, en we leiden (in grote trekken) een comfortabeler, rijker leven dan iemand ook maar had kunnen vermoeden. De bevolking groeit nog steeds aan, maar het gaat maar met half zoveel vaart als in 1968.
De huidige voorspellingen lopen uiteen, maar de consensus is dat er, na een bevolkingspiek ergens halfweg deze eeuw, een scherpe daling wordt ingezet. Tegen 2100 zouden we wereldwijd al met minder kunnen zijn dan vandaag. In de meeste landen - ook in armere landen - ligt het geboortecijfer tegenwoordig ver onder het sterftecijfer. In sommige landen zal het huidige bevolkingscijfer in geen tijd gehalveerd zijn. Mensen beginnen zich stilaan zorgen te maken over onderbevolking.
"Als er liedjes over het uitsterven van de mensheid moeten komen, dan beginnen we ze maar beter nu te schrijven"
Als paleontoloog bekijk ik de dingen op de lange termijn. Zoogdiersoorten komen en gaan behoorlijk snel. Ze verschijnen op het toneel, vieren hoogtij, en gaan in rook op in pakweg een miljoen jaar tijd. Uit fossiele vondsten blijkt dat Homo sapiens al zo’n 315.000 jaar op aarde rondloopt, maar het gros van die tijd waren we een zeldzame soort. Zo zeldzaam zelfs dat de mens op de rand van uitsterven heeft gestaan - misschien zelfs meermaals. Daar ligt de kiem van de ondergang des mensen: de huidige populatie is in een verschroeiend tempo toegenomen. Daardoor is H. sapiens als soort uitzonderlijk monotoon. Er zit meer genetische variatie in een paar troepen wilde chimpansees dan in de voltallige mensenbevolking. Een gebrek aan genetische variatie is nooit goed voor de overlevingskansen van een soort.
Bovendien is het de afgelopen decennia sterk bergaf gegaan met de kwaliteit van het menselijke sperma. Dat zou de dalende geboortecijfers kunnen verklaren, en niemand weet goed hoe het komt. Vervuiling - een bijproduct van de door de mens veroorzaakte teloorgang van het leefmilieu - speelt mogelijk een rol. Ook stress is een mogelijke factor. Dat mensen zo lang zo dicht opeengepakt leven is daar volgens mij niet vreemd aan. Door zijn evolutie heen bewoog de mens zich met lichte tred over het land, en leefde hij verspreid in groepen. Het leven in steden, praktisch bovenop elkaar (en in appartementen zelfs letterlijk) is nog maar een erg recente gewoonte.
De afname van de bevolkingsgroei heeft ook economische oorzaken. Politici streven gestage economische groei na, maar dat valt niet vol te houden in een wereld met eindige hulpbronnen. H. sapiens legt nu al beslag op 25 tot 40 procent van de netto primaire productie, de biomassa die planten maken uit lucht, water en zonneschijn. Dat is niet alleen slecht nieuws voor de miljoenen andere soorten op onze planeet die daarvan leven; het zou ook funest kunnen zijn voor de economische vooruitzichten van de mens. De huidige generaties moeten harder en langer werken om de levensstandaard aan te houden die hun ouders hadden, als die standaard überhaupt haalbaar is. Steeds meer onderzoek wijst trouwens uit dat de economische productiviteit wereldwijd is stilgevallen de afgelopen 20 jaar, of zelfs is afgenomen. Dat zou mensen kunnen ontmoedigen om aan kinderen te beginnen, of dat ze het zo lang uitstellen dat hun eigen vruchtbaarheid begint af te nemen.
Een bijkomende factor in de krimpende bevolkingsgroei is iets wat we alleen maar kunnen toejuichen: de economische, reproductieve en politieke emancipatie van vrouwen. Die begon nauwelijks meer dan een eeuw geleden, maar heeft nu al de beroepsbevolking verdubbeld en het opleidingsniveau, de levensverwachting en de economische mogelijkheden van de mens in het algemeen omhoog gestuwd. Dankzij betere voorbehoedsmiddelen en gezondheidszorg hoeven vrouwen niet zoveel kinderen meer te dragen om te verzekeren dat ten minste enkele de gevaarlijke eerste levensmaanden overleven. Maar als we minder kinderen krijgen, en dat op latere leeftijd doen, dan valt te verwachten dat de bevolking zal krimpen.
De meest verraderlijke bedreiging voor de mens is iets wat we ‘extinctieschuld’ noemen. Op een zeker moment wordt uitsterven onontkoombaar, voor elke soort, hoezeer het ze ook voor de wind gaat, en wat die ook doet om het af te wenden. De oorzaak is doorgaans een vertraagde reactie op het verlies van habitat. Het risico is het grootst voor soorten die een specifieke biotoop domineren ten koste van andere soorten, die daardoor wegtrekken en dus meer verspreid leven. De mens bezet min of meer de hele planeet, en met ons onevenredig grote verbruik van wat die wereldwijde biotoop produceert, zijn wij de dominante soort. Het doodvonnis van H. sapiens is dus misschien al getekend.
De tekenen aan de wand zijn er voor zij die ze willen zien. Wanneer de habitat zozeer in verval raakt dat er minder hulpbronnen zijn voor iedereen; wanneer de vruchtbaarheid afneemt; wanneer het geboortecijfer onder het sterftecijfer zakt; en wanneer de genetische hulpbronnen beperkt zijn - dan is het eind in zicht. De enige vraag is hoe snel het zal komen.
Ik vrees dat de menselijke wereldbevolking niet louter een krimp te wachten staat, maar een complete instorting - en gauw. Om het vrij naar Lehrer te zeggen: als er liedjes over het uitsterven van de mensheid moeten komen, dan beginnen we ze maar beter nu te schrijven.
GERELATEERDE VIDEO'S, uitgekozen en gepost door peter2011
Weird alien-like fish spotted in the ocean’s twilight zone off the coast of California
Weird alien-like fish spotted in the ocean’s twilight zone off the coast of California
Ispy with my barreleye, a new Fresh from the Deep! During a dive with our education and outreach partner, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the team came across a rare treat: a barreleye fish (Macropinna microstoma).
MBARI’s remotely operated vehicles Ventana and Doc Ricketts have logged more than 5,600 successful dives and recorded more than 27,600 hours of video—yet we’ve only encountered this fish nine times!
The barreleye lives in the ocean’s twilight zone, at depths of 600 to 800 meters (2,000 to 2,600 feet). Its eyes look upwards to spot its favorite prey—usually small crustaceans trapped in the tentacles of siphonophores—from the shadows they cast in the faint shimmer of sunlight from above.
But how does this fish eat when its eyes point upward and its mouth points forward?
MBARI researchers learned the barreleye can rotate its glowing green eyes beneath that dome (head) of transparent tissue.
Aquarist Tommy Knowles and his team were aboard MBARI’s R/V Rachel Carson with our ROV Ventana to collect jellies and comb jellies for the Aquarium’s upcoming Into the Deep exhibition when they spotted this fascinating fish. The team stopped to marvel at Macropinna before it swam away.
The skyline-changing MSG Sphere entertainment venue in Las Vegas will be the largest such structure in the world.
The $1.8 billion orb will feature 17,500 seats surrounded by a super high-resolution LED screen that projects at an amazing 19,000 x 13,500 pixels, a world record.
The set up will create a revolutionary fully immersive, multi-sensory platform for audiences, and artists.
Just gotta beat that Covid thing and we’re off. Have a look.
Mother whose son, 14 months, has rare uncombable hair syndrome that makes his blonde mop stand on end reveals his water-resistant locks are EASY to take care off and only need washing once a week
Mother whose son, 14 months, has rare uncombable hair syndrome that makes his blonde mop stand on end reveals his water-resistant locks are EASY to take care off and only need washing once a week
Locklan, 14-months old, from Atlanta, Georgia has uncombable hair syndrome
His mother, Katelyn Samples, 33, says it brings her joy, but hasn't been easy
The condition is extremely rare with just 100 cases worldwide
Katelyn wants him to be proud but says strangers can make cruel comments
A mother has revealed how her baby is one of around just 100 people in the world diagnosed with the ultra 'rare uncombable hair syndrome' - but she is teaching him how to be proud of his unruly locks.
Katelyn Samples, 33, from Atlanta, Georgia is mother to Shepard, two, and 14-month-old Locklan.
When Locklan was around five months old and his hair started to grow, Katelyn and husband Caleb, 33, noticed it was quite fuzzy and thought it was going to be curly.
'It was coming in straight up and so soft and fuzzy,' Katelyn recalled.
Scroll down for video
Locklan's fuzzy hair that his parents thought would eventually lead to curly locks, but instead they found out he has ‘uncombable hair syndrome’
The genetic condition is a very rare one with only just 100 people in the world diagnosed
'As it continued to grow it never laid down... a lot of people who see him call him a baby chick.'
Then during the summer, a stranger messaged Katelyn to ask if he had something called uncombable hair syndrome.
Katelyn had never heard of the rare condition, which causes a rare structural anomaly of the hair meaning it can't be brushed or flattened down, no matter how hard you try.
The condition is extremely rare with around just 100 cases worldwide, and some believe Albert Einstein's famous 'mad scientist' look was because he had UHS.
The Samples family: Locklan, centre bottom with his older brother, Shepard behind him, with their parents
Katelyn said: 'Because UHS is so rare our paediatrician referred us to a pediatric dermatologist/specialist at Emory in Atlanta, Georgia.
'They took samples of his hair and called us a few weeks later and confirmed it was in fact, Uncombable Hair Syndrome!
Uncombable Hair Syndrome: The condition that was made famous by Albert Einstein
Uncombable hair syndrome is a rare inherited disorder that causes locks to stand up from the roots and not be flattened.
Such hair is usually silvery-blond or straw colored.
The hair usually appears between three and 12 months of age.
In rare cases, the syndrome has occurred alongside bone and eye abnormalities.
The syndrome usually resolves or improves at the onset of puberty.
It may be more manageable through applying conditioners and using soft brushes.
Source: Genetic and rare diseases information center
'His doctor had only seen one other case in the past 19 years. We have zero clue why he has it.'
Although UHS usually only affects the hair, Katelyn was still concerned about the diagnosis.
She said: 'Hearing your son has a genetic condition isn't easy, especially because it's so rare there isn't a lot of information on it. But as I learned as much as I could and connected with other parents around the world (in a UHS FB group), I became less scared and more appreciative of how unique Locklan is.
'Other than wild and crazy cool hair, he is perfectly healthy and very happy He does have severe eczema, which may be linked to UHS.'
At the minute, because Locklan is still young and his hair is short, his hair routine is pretty simple, and his parents have found that the unique texture actually means it's easier to keep it clean.
Katelyn said: 'His hair doesn't need to be washed much... maybe once a week.
'It's water-resistant so it takes a minute to saturate with water and gentle shampoo.'
His distinctive mane does attract attention when they are out and about - but usually, he doesn't mind.
Katelyn said: 'Lock is already a little celebrity. People come up to us everywhere we go.
'They ask about his hair, and sometimes even ask to touch it! At a fall festival in a local town people even asked to take pictures with him. He enjoys the attention.
'We really can't go anywhere without at least one person making a comment on his hair. It is almost always from a good place!
'However the mean/rude/sarcastic comments happen too and it breaks my heart.'
His mother has revealed that the 14-month-old's hair has been getting a lot of attention, from kind comments in real life to mean ones online. She's heard people say his hair looks like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket
Strangers have compared Locklan's locks to of a cat when it's scared, but his mother insists that it's nobody's business because they're not the ones dealing with it
His parents are adamant that they want their son to grow up celebrating his unique locks rather than shying away from it
Some of the comments Katelyn says they've heard include people calling it 'crazy' or saying he 'looks like he stuck his finger in a socket'.
Other people say things like "Wow his hair makes me happy", "He looks like my cat when its scared", and "That baby wakes up every day with a bad hair day".'
Katelyn added: 'For now myself and my husband are the only ones to have to deal with it but as Lock gets older he will too.
'Lock's hair is truly a source of joy and we celebrate it. I want him to grow up to be proud of his differences and what makes him unique.. everyone should!'
After getting his diagnosis, Katelyn and Caleb started his Instagram account @uncombable_locks in October to share pictures of their son and raise awareness.
The baby boy with the cool hair: Locklan's parents didn't know what to expect when their son's hair was growing
The silvery-blond or straw colored hair usually appears between three and 12 months of age
Locklan's parents want to use the Instagram account they started for their son to raise awareness for the rare genetic disease and also spark some happiness across the internet
Katelyn said: 'We set up his IG account because people truly are so intrigued by his hair and love it so much we wanted to raise awareness of such a rare genetic disease.
'My husband is very creative and came up with his IG name and set up the account!'
'Between his hair and his smile we wanted to spark some joy on the internet.'
Today we will be talking about China, the most populous country in the world. While we all have seen ‘made in china’ almost everywhere, there are a few lesser-known facts that will surprise you.
Do you think you know China? well i guess you need to think again because China is a homeland to some extremely weird and mysterious creatures that I bet you have never heard of. From the creepiest fish to actual dragons, there is much more in China to stun you than you can imagine. Today we will show you the 10 most peculiar and mysterious creatures found only in china.
In 1963 an, Italian sci-fi comedy called “Omnicron” hit the silver screen to a collective yawn. The plot revolved around the dead body of a blue collar worker, who was resurrected by an alien creature known as an Omicron. In essence, the corpse became possessed by a demon and was walking the earth as the living dead…a zombie. When the hybrid creature decides to return to the former job of the deceased laborer, he is able to function at a much higher level given his superior intellect. After getting involved in a labor disruption and a romantic relationship, the alient leaves the corpse and returns to Venus, the Morning Star, planet of The Light Bearer.
The newly-discovered octopus species inhabits the shallow waters off southwest Australia and belongs to the Octopus vulgaris group, according to a new paper published in the journal Zootaxa.
The star octopus (Octopus djinda).
Image credit: Mark Norman / Amor & Hart, doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.5061.1.7.
“Benthic shallow-water species are among the most studied and best understood octopods, and are, therefore, of high interest to researchers and fishers,” said Dr. Michael Amor from the Western Australian Museum and Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and Dr. Anthony Hart from the Western Australian Fisheries and Marine Research Laboratory.
“This attention can lead to an improved understanding of species boundaries and distributions, including the potential identification of cryptic taxa.”
“Cryptic speciation is common among octopods and examples are prevalent throughout the order Octopoda.”
“Octopuses have few hard body parts or diagnostic taxonomic traits. Further, morphological plasticity that is linked to local environmental conditions and the limited utility of traditional molecular markers have compounded our likely underestimation of species richness among octopods.”
“Within Octopoda, perhaps the most iconic example of this phenomenon is observed among members of the Octopus vulgaris group,” they added.
“This species-group represents one of the greatest octopus fisheries targets, and are of broad scientific interest (e.g., cell biology, environmental science, fisheries research, neuroscience, physiology, robotics).”
The newly-discovered species is conspecific with another member of the Octopus vulgaris group — the common Sydney octopus (Octopus tetricus) from Australia’s east coast and New Zealand — but is morphologically and genetically distinct.
Named the star octopus (Octopus djinda), the marine creature is distributed along the southwest coast of Australia, from Shark Bay to Cape Le Grand.
“This distribution closely reflects the territory of the traditional custodians of this land, the Nyoongar people (‘a person of the southwest of Western Australia’),” the researchers said.
“To recognize their connection to this land, a Nyoongar translation of ‘star’ (djinda) was selected as a species name. This use of ‘star’ (luminous) reflects the shared recent ancestry with, and now-understood distinction from, Octopus tetricus.”
The new species is a medium to large octopus, with a mantle length of 10.9-17.7 cm (4.3-7 inches).
“Octopus djinda supports a highly productive fishery and is currently one of two octopod fisheries worldwide to have received sustainable certification from the Marine Stewardship Council,” the scientists said.
“Its taxonomic description provides formal recognition of the taxonomic status of southwest Australia’s common octopus, Octopus djinda, and facilitates appropriate fisheries catch reporting and management.”
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Michael D. Amor & Anthony M. Hart. 2021. Octopus djinda (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae): a new member of the Octopus vulgaris group from southwest Australia. Zootaxa 5061 (1): 145-156; doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.5061.1.7
An emerging industry of nuclear-fusion firms promises to have commercial reactors ready in the next decade.
By Philip Ball
The ancient village of Culham, nestled in a bend of the River Thames west of London, seems an unlikely launching pad for the future. But next year, construction will start here on a gleaming building of glass and steel that could house what many people consider to be an essential technology to meet demand for clean energy in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Long derided as a prospect that is forever 30 years away, nuclear fusion seems finally to be approaching commercial viability. There are now more than 30 private fusion firms globally, according to an October survey by the Fusion Industry Association (FIA) in Washington DC, which represents companies in the sector; the 18 firms that have declared their funding say they have attracted more than US$2.4 billion in total, almost entirely from private investments (see ‘Fusion funding’). Key to these efforts are advances in materials research and computing that are enabling technologies other than the standard designs that national and international agencies have pursued for so long.
FUSION FUNDING
Private fusion firms have disclosed more than $2.4 billion in funding.
TAE Technologies 880 US$ million
Helion Energy 578
Commonwealth Fusion Systems 250
General Fusion 200
Tokamak Energy 200
Other (12 firms) 302
The latest venture at Culham — the hub of UK fusion research for decades — is a demonstration plant for General Fusion (GF), a company based in Burnaby, Canada. It is scheduled to start operating in 2025, and the company aims to have reactors for sale in the early 2030s. It “will be the first power-plant-relevant large-scale demonstration”, says GF’s chief executive Chris Mowry — unless, that is, its competitors deliver sooner.
Designed by British architect Amanda Levete, GF’s prototype plant illustrates the way fusion research has shifted from gargantuan state- or internationally funded enterprises to sleek, image-conscious affairs driven by private companies, often with state support. (GF will receive some UK government funding; it has not disclosed how much.)
Artist’s impression of General Fusion’s planned plant at Culham, UK. Credit: AL_A for General Fusion. Lead image: The world's strongest high-temperature superconducting magnet will be used in a 2025 fusion reactor in Massachusetts.
Credit: Gretchen Ertl, CFS/MIT-PSFC, 2021
In this respect, advocates of fusion technology say it has many parallels with the space industry. That, too, was once confined to government agencies but is now benefiting from the drive and imagination of nimble (albeit often state-assisted) private enterprise. This is “the SpaceX moment for fusion”, says Mowry, referring to Elon Musk’s space-flight company in Hawthorne, California.
“The mood has changed,” says Thomas Klinger, a fusion specialist at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany. “We can smell that we’re getting close.” Investors sense the real prospect of returns on their money: Google and the New York City-based investment bank Goldman Sachs, for instance, are among those funding the fusion company TAE Technologies, based in Foothill Ranch, California, which has raised around $880 million so far. “Companies are starting to build things at the level of what governments can build,” says Bob Mumgaard, chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
And just as private space travel is now materializing, many industry observers are forecasting that the same business model will give rise to commercial fusion — desperately needed to decarbonize the energy economy — within a decade. “There’s a very good shot to get there within less than ten years,” says Michl Binderbauer, chief executive of TAE Technologies. In the FIA report, a majority of respondents thought that fusion would power an electrical grid somewhere in the world in the 2030s.
Several fusion researchers who don’t work for private firms told Nature that, although prospects are undeniably exciting, commercial fusion in a decade is overly optimistic. “Private companies say they’ll have it working in ten years, but that’s just to attract funders,” says Tony Donné, programme manager of the Eurofusion consortium which conducts experiments at the state-run Joint European Torus, established at Culham in the late 1970s. “They all have stated constantly to be about ten years away from a working fusion reactor, and they still do.”
Timelines that companies project should be regarded not so much as promises but as motivational aspirations, says Melanie Windridge, a plasma physicist who is the FIA’s UK director of communications, and a communications consultant for the fusion firm Tokamak Energy, in Culham. “I think bold targets are necessary,” she says. State support is also likely to be needed to build a fusion power plant that actually feeds electricity into the grid, adds Ian Chapman, chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA).
But whether it comes from small-scale private enterprise, huge national or international fusion projects, or a bit of both, practical nuclear fusion finally seems to be on the horizon. “I’m convinced that it’s going to happen”, says Chapman. Chris Kelsall, chief executive of Tokamak Energy, agrees. “Sooner or later this will be cracked,” he says. “And it will be transformative.”
Seventy-year dream
Nuclear fusion, says Klinger, is “the only primary energy source left in the Universe” that we have yet to exploit. Ever since the process that powers the stars was harnessed in the 1950s for hydrogen bombs, technologists have dreamt of unlocking it in a more controlled manner for energy generation.
Existing nuclear power plants use fission: the release of energy when heavy atoms such as uranium decay. Fusion, by contrast, produces energy by merging very light nuclei, typically hydrogen, which can happen only at very high temperatures and pressures. Most efforts to harness it in reactors involve heating the hydrogen isotopes deuterium (D) and tritium (T) until they form a plasma — a fluid state of matter containing ionized atoms and other charged particles — and then fuse (see ‘Fuel mix’). For these isotopes, fusion starts at lower temperatures and densities than for normal hydrogen.
D–T fusion generates some radiation in the form of short-lived neutrons, but no long-lived radioactive waste, unlike fission. It is also safer than fission because it can be switched off easily: if the plasma is brought below critical thresholds of temperature or density, the nuclear reactions stop.
FUEL MIX
Many reactors fuse deuterium (D) with tritium (T) to release energy. This mix ignites, or creates a self-sustaining fusion reaction,at around 100 million kelvin. It produces neutrons, which can make the chamber radioactive.
Deuterium + Tritium Helium 4 + neutron
Other reactions, such as fusing protons (p) with boron-11 (11B), don’t produce neutrons, but ignition requires higher temperatures.
p Boron-11 3a
What makes it so difficult to conduct in a controlled manner, however, is the challenge of containing electrically charged plasma that is undergoing fusion at temperatures of around 100 million kelvin — much hotter than the centre of the Sun. Generally, researchers use magnetic fields to confine and levitate the plasma inside the reactor. But instabilities in this infernal fluid make containment very difficult, and have so far prevented fusion from being sustained for long enough to extract more energy than is put in to trigger it.
This is necessarily big science, and until this century, only state-run projects could muster the resources. The scale of the enterprise is reflected today in the world’s biggest fusion effort: ITER, a fusion reactor being constructed in southern France and supported by 35 nations, including China, European Union member states, the United States, Russia, South Korea and Japan, with a price tag of at least $22 billion.
Although the first test runs are scheduled for 2025, full D–T fusion is not scheduled until 2035, ultimately with the goal of continuously extracting 500 MW of power — comparable to the output of a modest coal-fired power plant — while putting 50 MW into the reactor. (These numbers refer only to the energy put directly into and drawn out of the plasma; they don’t factor in other processes such as maintenance needs or the inefficiencies of converting the fusion heat output into electricity.)
A further series of big reactors might follow ITER: China, which has three fusion reactors feeding results into ITER, plans a China Fusion Engineering Testing Reactor (CFETR) in the 2030s, and both South Korea and the EU propose to build demonstration power plants that would follow on from ITER.
The big national and international efforts won’t succeed soon enough to enable the decarbonization needed to address climate change, although fusion is expected to become a key part of the energy economy in the second half of the century. But private companies hope to have working and affordable devices sooner (see ‘Fusion rush’).
As with space exploration, one of the benefits of a private fusion sector is greater diversity of approaches than monolithic state enterprises can muster. ITER is using the most common approach to confining plasma, in a device called a tokamak, which uses powerful superconducting magnets to hold the plasma in a ring-shaped (toroidal) vessel. The flow of the electrically charged plasma particles themselves also generates a magnetic field that helps to confine the plasma.
But a tokamak isn’t the only option. In the early days of fusion, in the 1950s, US astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer showed that magnetic fields could be configured in a twisted loop, rather like a figure of eight, to make a ‘magnetic bottle’ that could be filled with plasma. This design was known as a stellarator. But solving the equations describing the plasma for this complex geometry was too computationally intensive, so the concept was mostly abandoned once tokamaks had been shown to work.
As supercomputers became available in the late 1980s, however, researchers revisited the idea. This led to a stellarator project at the IPP called the Wendelstein 7-X reactor. Costing more than €1 billion (US$1.15 billion) to build, staff and operate up to its first plasma testing in 2015, with construction costs of €370 million largely borne by the German government, Wendelstein 7-X will be completed by the end of this year. Then comes a long process of working out how to operate it routinely as a demonstration project.
Stellarators have the advantage that their plasma is more easily confined, with no need (as in tokamaks) to drive strong electric currents through it to keep a lid on instabilities, says fusion physicist Josefine Proll at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. But it’s not clear whether it will be possible to implement stellarator technology in a reactor in 20–30 years. “It seems not all that likely at this moment,” she says. “We have a lot of basic questions still to answer,” says Klinger. “This is a first-of-a-kind machine, so one must be patient and go step by step.” Private companies set shorter-term goals because they have to satisfy their stakeholders, he says — but that doesn’t mean they can deliver.
Alternative designs
Some private fusion companies are sticking with the tokamak design, but scaled down. At Tokamak Energy, a team of around 165 employees is working on a spherical tokamak, shaped like an apple with its core removed. At 3.5 metres across, it will be many times smaller than the ITER tokamak, which, with surrounding cooling equipment, will be almost 30 metres wide and tall. Some state-funded schemes are considering the compact spherical design, too: the UKAEA, for example, has launched a project called STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) that aims to create such a device in a prototype plant that would deliver at least 100 MW to the national grid by 2040. The UKAEA has shortlisted five sites to host the plant, and expects the final choice to be made next year.
Hydrogen plasma in Tokamak Energy’s ST40 spherical tokamak. This video has no sound.
Credit: Tokamak Energy Ltd
Key to these designs are new kinds of magnets made from ribbons of high-temperature superconducting materials, which should produce much stronger fields than the conventional superconducting magnets used by ITER. They are “a potential game-changer”, says Klinger — not just because of their higher fields, but also because conventional superconductors need liquid-helium cooling. That is an engineering nightmare: liquid helium’s viscosity is almost zero, allowing it to leak through any tiny cracks. High-temperature superconductors, by contrast, can be cooled with liquid nitrogen, which is abundant, cheap and easy to store.
Both Tokamak Energy (in collaboration with CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland) and CFS are banking on these new magnets. In August, CFS announced that it had made them in the form needed for its tokamaks — “on schedule and on budget”, Mumgaard says proudly.
In 2018, CFS was spun off from the Plasma Science and Fusion Center of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, and Klinger considers the firm “the most promising, most valuable and most thought-through private fusion initiative”. MIT and CFS together are preparing to build what Mumgaard calls “the first fusion machine that makes net energy” — producing more energy than goes into it. Named SPARC, it is being constructed in Devens, Massachusetts. Mumgaard says it will be running by the end of 2025, and will be “commercially relevant” because it will generate around 100 MW of power.
First Light Fusion, a company spun off from the University of Oxford, UK, in 2011, is pursuing a different strategy, called inertial confinement. Here, the fusion plasma isn’t held by magnetic fields: rather, a shock wave compresses it to the immense densities needed for fusion, and the plasma retains its shape just for a split second by inertia alone, before spreading out and dissipating its energy. The idea has been around since the 1950s, and is also being studied at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where pea-sized plastic capsules of D–T fuel are imploded by nanosecond pulses of laser light to ignite fusion. In August, NIF reported a laser shot that produced a fleeting energy output 8 times higher than it had ever before achieved — and amounted to 70% of the energy that had gone into the reaction. That has raised hopes of net gain from inertial-confinement laser fusion, although such an energy-intensive process might be more useful for fundamental research than for large-scale power generation.
At First Light, the compression shock wave is created not by energy-hungry lasers, but by using an electromagnetic projectile gun to fire a small piece of material into a target containing the hydrogen isotopes. The company is keeping details of the process secret, but has said that to achieve fusion, it will need to fire the material at 50 kilometres per second — twice as fast as is typically achieved in current shock-wave experiments.
GF is taking yet another approach, called magnetized target fusion. It involves the plasma being compressed more slowly — for instance, using pistons — but with the aid of magnetic confinement that prevents heat from dissipating as the plasma is squeezed. This idea, suggested in the early 1970s by researchers at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, seeks an optimal compromise between the energy-intensive high magnetic fields needed to confine a tokamak plasma, and the energy-intensive shock waves, lasers or other methods used to rapidly compress plasma in inertial-confinement designs.
GF’s design for its Culham reactor uses a centrifuge to spin a chamber filled with molten lead and lithium. That motion opens a cavity in the liquid metal, where the plasma sits. A piston system pumps more liquid metal into the chamber, compressing the plasma over a few tens of milliseconds. Fusion begins; then the pressure is released and the process repeated in pulses, about once a second.
One especially neat aspect of this reactor is how it generates tritium fuel — a hugely expensive resource that can be made only in nuclear reactions, and decays rapidly. In ITER and other designs, tritium will be produced when neutrons escaping the reactor hit a lithium blanket lining the tokamak. In GF’s design, tritium is made when neutrons hit lithium within the liquid-metal compression system itself.
GF has cracked key challenges only in the past few years — making a plasma target that lasts for long enough to be compressed, and smoothly and rapidly collapsing the liquid- metal cavity. The firm says, however, that after it has its UK demonstration plant operating in 2025, it will “power homes, businesses and industry with clean, reliable and affordable fusion energy by the early 2030s”.
TAE Technologies has, in some ways, an even more audacious concept. It plans to abandon D–T fuel altogether, instead fusing boron-11 atoms with hydrogen-1 nuclei (protons). This idea, championed by TAE’s co-founder, the Canadian plasma physicist Norman Rostoker, and dubbed p–11B fusion, requires temperatures ten times greater than for D–T fusion: about one billion kelvin. The advantage is that this reaction uses only abundantly available fuel, and generates no neutrons that could contaminate the reactor. Binderbauer says that the concept offers lowers maintenance costs and a much more sustainable end goal.
In TAE reactors, the plasma is confined inside a cylindrical magnetic field made by a solenoid — a design that draws on particle-accelerator technologies. The plasma rotates around the axis; that rotation, as in a spinning top, generates inherent stability. Confinement doesn’t require strong external magnetic fields; those are mostly generated by the spinning plasma itself. To keep it rotating, tangential beams of boron inject angular momentum, rather as a top is torqued by a whip.
The company has made prototypes to demonstrate this set-up; since 2017, it has been working with a test system called Norman, and it is now starting work on a device called Copernicus that will run with normal hydrogen (or other non-fusing) plasmas to avoid producing neutrons. Computer simulations will show what energy would be generated if real fusion fuel were used. If TAE achieves the conditions needed for D–T fusion — which it hopes to do by around the middle of this decade — the company plans to license the technology to others who are pursuing those fuels. Binderbauer calls Copernicus a “stepping stone” to the temperatures needed for p–11B fusion. “We’re convinced that we can go to the billion-degree level,” he says — and he hopes to see this towards the end of the decade.
Among the many other private fusion firms, Helion Energy, in Everett, Washington, has attracted the most interest from investors: this month, it announced a $500-million funding round, bringing its total to $578 million. Its aim is to generate electricity directly from fusion, rather than using the process to heat fluids and drive turbines. Helion’s technique involves firing pulses of plasma together inside a linear reactor, then rapidly compressing the merged plasma with magnetic fields. When fusion occurs, the plasma expands and its magnetic field interacts with that surrounding the reactor to induce an electric current. Helion hopes to fuse a mixture of deuterium and helium-3, which would not produce neutrons as a by-product. But helium-3 itself would need to be produced by D–D fusion. The company is building a demonstration reactor called Polaris, which it aims to have in operation by 2024.
How Helion’s technology will generate electricity. This video has no sound.
Credit: Helion Energy
Cheaper reactors?
The reactors built by private companies, being smaller than ITER-scale projects, will be much more affordable. Tokamak Energy’s co-founder, David Kingham, envisages billion-dollar devices, and Binderbauer thinks TAE’s systems could be built for around $250 million.
The aim is to make small fusion reactors that are compatible with existing energy grids. Kelsall says they could also serve industries that are particularly energy-intensive, such as metal smelting — a sector that can’t be supplied by renewables. Mowry adds that shipping could be another important market: devices producing around 100 MW of power are “just the right size for a large container ship”.
Donné remains cautious about the prospects, however, saying that private companies “are working on aggressive time paths compared to publicly funded projects, but also have a much higher risk of potential failure”. All the same, TAE, for one, insists that it is still on the track that it promised in the mid-2010s, of having a fusion device ready for commercialization by around the end of this decade
Despite his scepticism, Donné adds: “I see the booming of private fusion companies as a good sign. There can be mutual benefits in keeping close ties between public and private fusion projects.” That’s certainly happening. Not only is the private fusion industry building on years of state investment in projects such as ITER, but it is benefiting from governments that see value in supporting it — which is why the UK government and the US Department of Energy are also investing in firms such as Tokamak Energy, CFS and GF. Mowry thinks that such public–private partnerships are the way forward — as they were for COVID-19 vaccines. And, as with the vaccines, fusion will be needed everywhere, especially as energy use rises in lower-income countries.
The vaccines showed “what you can do if you have the resources”, says Windridge. “If we had that kind of commitment in energy, I think it would be incredible to see what can be achieved.” As with the vaccines, too, society desperately needs more clean, carbon-free sources of energy. “This is an existential challenge,” says Mowry. “Fusion is the vaccine for climate change.”
Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds
Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds
From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.
An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States.
This image shows the change in leaf area across the globe from 1982-2015. Credits: Boston University/R. Myneni
Green leaves use energy from sunlight through photosynthesis to chemically combine carbon dioxide drawn in from the air with water and nutrients tapped from the ground to produce sugars, which are the main source of food, fiber and fuel for life on Earth. Studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide increase photosynthesis, spurring plant growth.
However, carbon dioxide fertilization isn’t the only cause of increased plant growth—nitrogen, land cover change and climate change by way of global temperature, precipitation and sunlight changes all contribute to the greening effect. To determine the extent of carbon dioxide’s contribution, researchers ran the data for carbon dioxide and each of the other variables in isolation through several computer models that mimic the plant growth observed in the satellite data.
Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect, said co-author Ranga Myneni, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University. “The second most important driver is nitrogen, at 9 percent. So we see what an outsized role CO2 plays in this process.”
About 85 percent of Earth’s ice-free lands is covered by vegetation. The area covered by all the green leaves on Earth is equal to, on average, 32 percent of Earth’s total surface area – oceans, lands and permanent ice sheets combined. The extent of the greening over the past 35 years “has the ability to fundamentally change the cycling of water and carbon in the climate system,” said lead author Zaichun Zhu, a researcher from Peking University, China, who did the first half of this study with Myneni as a visiting scholar at Boston University.
Every year, about half of the 10 billion tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere from human activities remains temporarily stored, in about equal parts, in the oceans and plants. “While our study did not address the connection between greening and carbon storage in plants, other studies have reported an increasing carbon sink on land since the 1980s, which is entirely consistent with the idea of a greening Earth,” said co-author Shilong Piao of the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University.
While rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the air can be beneficial for plants, it is also the chief culprit of climate change. The gas, which traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere, has been increasing since the industrial age due to the burning of oil, gas, coal and wood for energy and is continuing to reach concentrations not seen in at least 500,000 years. The impacts of climate change include global warming, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and sea ice as well as more severe weather events.
The beneficial impacts of carbon dioxide on plants may also be limited, said co-author Dr. Philippe Ciais, associate director of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Gif-suv-Yvette, France. “Studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising carbon dioxide concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time.”
“While the detection of greening is based on data, the attribution to various drivers is based on models,” said co-author Josep Canadell of the Oceans and Atmosphere Division in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Canberra, Australia. Canadell added that while the models represent the best possible simulation of Earth system components, they are continually being improved.
Scientists Sent An Underwater Robot Inside The Fukushima Reactor & Made A Chilling Discovery via Unexplained Mysteries
Scientists Sent An Underwater Robot Inside The Fukushima Reactor & Made A Chilling Discovery via Unexplained Mysteries
Scientists sent an underwater robot inside the Fukushima reactor & made a chilling discovery. Today, we take a look at what scientists found inside the Fukushima Reactor. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear disaster was a devastating event, with 18 non-fatal injuries being directly attributed to the incident, including physical injuries from the hydrogen explosion and radiation burns, and one loss of life with a clear link to the radiation exposure from Fukushima.
This nuclear accident was caused by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, both of which hit the powerplant and saw an additional 18,000 lost their lives. Whilst it was 2011 when disaster struck, the aftermath lingers on even today. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear disaster continues to this day to be the most severe nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986… Thank you for watching! Thank you to CO.AG for the background music!
What do you think? Staying cool this week I hope! Thanks for stopping by. Stay tuned for more BIN news.
12 Unbelievable Things That You Will See For The First Time
12 Unbelievable Things That You Will See For The First Time
We love to discover new things, things that are surprising, strange but also fascinating. Just when you think you have seen it all, there comes a discovery that takes your breath away. We have brought for you some of the rare inventions and happenings around the world that are truly wonderful. Here is the list of cool things, we bet you would have not seen before.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
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