Their study, published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, examines the big five personality traits: extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, along with schizotypy traits (behaviors that resemble schizophrenia), to help determine if UAP experiencers could be distinguished from those who had not reported seeing a UAP.

The Big Five Personality Traits: What Are They? 

In the 1970s, two research teams—one led by Paul Costa and Robert R. McCrae of the National Institutes of Health and the other by Warren Norman and Lewis Goldberg of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of Oregon—found that most human character traits can be explained by five dimensions. Surveys of thousands of individuals uncovered these mostly distinct traits:

• Neuroticism: Emotional stability; individuals with high scores are characterized by anxiety, inhibition, moodiness, and lower self-assurance.
• Extroversion: Encompasses cheerfulness, initiative, and communicativeness.
• Openness: Fond of innovation and displays of creativity. 
• Agreeableness: Dictates how they interact with others. Other traits include being friendly, empathetic, and warm.
• Conscientiousness: Gauges a person’s level of organization. Individuals with high scores are motivated, disciplined, and trustworthy.

The Findings

Dr. Stubbings’ experiment involved 206 participants, including 103 who said they had witnessed or self-reported seeing a UAP. The team analyzed personality traits to see how participants naturally grouped together.

The study consisted of three groups. Group one had average traits, whereas the second group, designated the Neurotic/Schizotypy group, was high on neuroticism and schizotypy traits. The last controlled group, labelled O-ACE, was found to have high openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion but low neuroticism and schizotypy traits. 

“These were the groups that ‘emerged’ out of the data analysis,” Dr. Stubbings told The Debrief. “The latent profile analysis demonstrated these three patterns of personality profiles. Prior research looked at correlation and regression (predictive patterns) but not a latent (underlying) profile.”

“This was a new finding,” Stubbings told The Debrief.

The study concluded that the third group, O-ACE, was more likely to see UAPs. Over the years, stigma and stereotypes have helped create narratives that people who see UAPs are more than likely emotionally reactive; in other words, they may display neurotic behavior and are prone to perceptual and cognitive abnormalities.

However, the recent data does not appear to support this narrative. Instead, Dr. Stubbings and his coauthors state in their paper that the “descriptive UAP accounts by the general public were similar to the descriptions provided by military witnesses.” 

Stubbings, when asked why people with high conscientiousness see UFOs, said it is difficult to answer such a question based on the current data in-hand.

“Our data indicates that there is a small statistical relationship, but further research should explore why that relationship exists,” Stubings told The Debrief. “But my guess is that people who are high in conscientiousness might be more willing to admit to themselves that they have seen something and believe it is the right thing to do to admit it.” 

However, Stubbings notes that conscientiousness alone is probably not everything in this equation, but instead, combinations of other variables—specifically low scores in Neuroticism and higher scores in Openness, also contribute.

“We need further research to explore the nuances of these personality factors in the emergence of both belief and experience.”

Dr. Stubbings also noted that “only 28 percent of participants reported their sightings anywhere, and 14 percent used a UFO reporting organization, which suggests that events are vastly underreported.” His paper also suggested that stigma and a lack of proper reporting avenues were the main obstacles impacting their willingness to report their sightings.

Dr. Stubbings initiated his research by referencing an older academic paper on UAPs published in the Applied Cognitive Psychology Journal in 2011, which found that certain personality factors were predictors of an individual’s belief in UFOs. 

“This is relevant to the UFO topic more broadly because what people perceive and recall tends to be in line with their beliefs,” Stubbings told The Debrief. “If beliefs can be predicted by personality factors, then it supports the notion that it is a particular kind of person who is more prone to belief in UAPs, and in turn, they end up seeing and recalling what they believe to be true.” 

“In other words, people see UAP not because they are there but because of the conviction of their beliefs, which are influenced by their personality dispositions. 

“So the idea was born to change the dependent variable of ‘belief’ to ‘have you had a sighting.’ Those who believe in UFOs/UAP might not have the same characteristics [as] those that report to have seen what they believe to be a UAP.”

Fundamentally, Stubbings says that in addition to understanding the kinds of personality traits and psychological drivers that may contribute to a person’s likelihood of observing and reporting UAP, scientists need to be engaging in dialogue about the assessment, diagnosis, formulation, and treatment of mental health distress in individuals who claim to have observed UAP or even had direct contact with purported NHI. 

“This topic is one of the most fascinating areas,” Stubbings told The Debrief, “and I believe other scientists from around the world need to help address this mystery.”

Stubbings and his colleagues Sophie Ali and Alexander Wong’s new paper, “Who Sees UFOs? The Relationship Between Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Sightings And Personality Factors,” appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

• Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and founder of VOCAB Communications. She hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on The Debrief’s YouTube Channel. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton and at chrissynewton.com.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/uap/ }

01-09-2024 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

The Standard Model describes how the Universe has evolved at large scale. There are six numbers that define the model and a team of researchers have used them to build simulations of the Universe. The results of these simulations were then fed to a machine learning algorithm to train it before it was set the task of estimating five of the cosmological constants, a task which it completed with incredible precision. 

The Standard Model incorporates a number of elements; the Big Bang, dark energy, cold dark matter, ordinary matter and the cosmic background radiation. It works well to describe the large scale structure of the Universe but there are gaps in our understanding. Quantum physics can describe the small scale of the Universe but struggles with gravity and there are questions around dark matter and dark energy too. Understanding these can help in our understanding of the evolution and structure of the Universe. 

A team of researchers from the Flatiron Institute have managed to extract some hidden information in the distribution of galaxies to estimate the values of five of the parameters. The accuracy was a great improvement on values that were attained during previous attempts. Using AI technology the team’s results had less than half the uncertainty for the element that describes the clumpiness of the Universe than in the previous attempt. Their results also revealed estimates of other parameters that closely resembled observation. The paper was published in Nature Astronomy on 21 August. 

The team generated 2,000 simulated universes after carefully specifying their cosmological parameters. These included expansion rate, the distribution and clumpiness of ordinary matter, dark matter and dark energy and using these the team ran the simulations. The output was then compressed into manageable data sets and this was used to compare against over one hundred thousand real galaxies data. From this, it was possible for the researchers to estimate the parameters for the real Universe. 

The parameters the team managed to fine tune are those that describe how the Universe operates at the largest scale. These are essentially, the settings for the Universe and include the amount of ordinary matter, dark matter, dark energy, the conditions following the Big Bang and just how clumpy the matter is. Previously these settings were calculated using observations from the structure of galaxy clusters. To arrive at a more accurate group of settings observations needed to go down to smaller scale but this has not been possible. 

Instead of using observations, the team used their AI approach to extract the small scale information that was hidden in the existing observational data. At the heart of the approach was the AI system that learned how to correlate the parameters with the observed structure of the Universe – but at small scale. 

In the future the team hope to be able to use their new approach to solve other problems. The uncertainty about the Hubble Constant is an example where the team hope AI can help to fine tune its value. Over the next few years though, and as observational data becomes more detailed both Hubble’s Constant and the Settings of the Universe will become far better understood along with our understanding of the Universe. 

Source : 

• Astrophysicists Use AI to Precisely Calculate Universe’s ‘Settings’

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 22:28 geschreven door peter  

The solar chromosphere is the second layer of the Sun’s atmosphere residing above the Sun’s surface, known as the photosphere (4,130 to 6,330 °C), and below the corona (just under 1,000,000 °C). The chromosphere is known for its red color that is observed hydrogen-alpha electromagnetic emissions and extends between 3,000 to 5,000 kilometers (1,900 to 3,100 miles) in height, which is approximately one percent of the Sun’s radius, while exhibiting temperatures ranging between 3,500 to 35,000 °C. It is the solar chromosphere that is responsible for producing coronal loops, which are arch-like structures produced by the Sun’s magnetic field activity, typically occurring from sunspots. In addition to the incredible image, McCarthy also posted an equally incredible 14-second video of these incredible features in action.

McCarthy tells Universe Today, “These are an example of the magnetic loops captured authentically by isolating the plasma caught in them. This produces coronal rain, plasma raining back onto the photosphere.”

Our Sun is essentially a giant ball of plasma that is undergoing constant change, both within its interior and on its surface, including radio waves, solar wind, and magnetic field. Studying the magnetic field teaches scientists about 22-year cycles where the poles of the magnetic field flip and then return to their initial position, resulting in increased solar activity occurring over 11-year cycles during each transition. This increased magnetic field activity results in increased solar wind emanating from the Sun, leading to solar storms that can strike Earth, causing auroras near our planet’s poles while also harming satellites in orbit and electronic ground stations. One of the most revered incidents of solar storms on Earth was the Carrington Event, which occurred between September 1-2, 1859, resulting in worldwide auroras and telegraph station fires across the globe, as well.

Scientists who study the Sun and its various features are known as solar physicists who use a combination of ground- and space-based telescopes to obtain data regarding the Sun’s activity on a 24/7 basis. Arguably one of the most successful missions to study the Sun is NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which was launched on August 12, 2018, and has traveled closer to the Sun than any human-made spacecraft in history, coming within 7.26 million kilometers (4.51 million miles) from the Sun’s surface in September 2023 and again in March 2024. During its mission, the Parker Solar Probe encountered magnetic field switchbacks, which is when the magnetic field reverses its direction, resulting in heating the solar corona.

Examples of ground-based telescopes that study the Sun include the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory, which like McCarthy, uses specialized equipment to safely study the Sun and its various features, providing data and images that can be used for research and public outreach. Therefore, how can McCarthy’s work be used for scientific research, and has his past work been used for scientific research purposes?

“This image is in no way intended for scientific research, but rather a product of scientific research,” McCarthy tells Universe Today. “That said, hydrogen alpha images of the sun offer real insight into the behavior of the sun’s magnetic field and are used by scientists worldwide. Amateurs capturing the sun in detail can complement the data produced by professional observatories on earth and in space and play a role in public outreach that can sometimes be lacking by professional institutions.”

McCarthy has become well-known for capturing incredible images of the Sun and sharing them with the public, including breathtaking images and videos of tornado-like prominences emanating from the solar chromosphere in March 2023, which also captured images of the solar corona. Along with these images, McCarthy provides detailed descriptions of the events occurring in his work with the goal of exciting the public about the Sun and its many incredible features.

“The Sun is unique in that every time I photograph it, it looks completely different,” McCarthy tells Universe Today. “The features are always changing. For that reason, it’s a target I will keep coming back to. While intended purely as a piece of digital art, my goal with this piece was to inspire people to ponder our fragile existence kept in balance by our host star. Hopefully it inspires more people to study it, as it gives us a better understanding of this universe we live in!”

What new discoveries will we make about our Sun in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

• As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Links:

• Andrew McCarthy: X (Twitter) & Website

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 22:17 geschreven door peter  

The Steve Kilburn Alien Abduction

• (As heard in the Weird Darkness episode, “Unveiled Under Hypnosis: The Alien Secrets of Steve Kilburn” from July 30, 2024.)

It was only by a strange sense of foreboding that would grip Steve Kilburn whenever he passed or even just thought about one particular stretch of Maryland road that memories of his alien abduction began to surface. This alien emotion eventually led him to speak with UFO researcher Budd Hopkins. When Kilburn underwent hypnotic regression in an attempt to get further clarification on where this shadow of dread was coming from, it revealed that something utterly bizarre had happened there years back.

Steven not only saw a weird object that night during the early ’70s while driving back home, but he was also visited by strange beings who eventually got him on board. Even worse, he would be subjected to medical procedures for the better part of a year. The specifics that would later come to light through regressive hypnosis wouldn’t just offer insight into an encounter Stephen Kilburn experienced—a number of these precise details are present in universal human stories about alien abduction, adding credibility to his account.

This is yet another case from the files of Budd Hopkins, described in great detail by authors with a contemporary perspective who run through details not included elsewhere. It can be read about at length in *Missing Time: A Documented Study Of UFO Abductions*. This, as we will see, is one of the most complex and nuanced cases in history.

When Steven Kilburn first mentioned to Budd Hopkins this peculiar sensation troubling him, they were no strangers. Through his friendship with Bloecher, another Fortean Society member, Kilburn attended more than one meeting of UFO buffs at Hopkins’ New York studio apartment — gatherings arranged and hosted by the two researchers.

In *Missing Time*, Hopkins said that after a meeting, where everybody was getting their things together and preparing to leave, Kilburn went up and said, “Something might have happened to me in college.” He countered with, “there was probably nothing to it,” but mentioned one particular stretch of road he had to drive on whenever he visited his girlfriend.

Hopkins asked if Kilburn could remember any UFO sighting connected with the road in question, to which Kilburn replied that he didn’t recall “anything particular.” However, he always had a sense that “something happened to me one time when I was driving home.” That was when Kilburn mentioned that he would be interested in trying hypnotic regression to see if there was something more to discover.

The two let the matter lie for a while, but one day Hopkins called Bloecher and told him about his chat with Kilburn, confiding that he suspected there was more to those foreboding premonitions. They eventually talked with psychologist Dr. Girard Franklin, who agreed to do the session. What they discovered would be astonishing for all involved.

The session took place in May 1978 at Dr. Franklin’s office in downtown Manhattan, several weeks after Kilburn revealed his doubts to Hopkins about the strange events that occurred that night in 1973.

Steven explained that when he lived in Baltimore before moving to New York, his girlfriend lived six miles away in Frederick. He remembered making the drive to see her, occasionally driving west along Route 40. “Ten or fifteen miles of that road is completely empty,” he said. He added that he often left his girlfriend’s house very late, and this part of the road was dark and seemingly endless.

One night, about a year into doing this drive, he was driving from Frederick to Maryland. Somewhere between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., “I couldn’t remember if I had actually seen something [high up], but I felt it the first time.” He added that all of a sudden, he felt weird and didn’t know why, noting: “That feeling someone is watching you when you wake from sleep.” Ultimately, he said that for some reason, the experience seemed too weird to him or even weirder “going to be happening.”

After that, every time Steven drove down that road, he felt the same way. As years passed, Steven tried hard to forget the event. But every once in a while, he would wonder if the impossible had actually happened that night between Frederick and Baltimore.

Dr. Franklin posed more questions about the night in question, attempting to access any memories Steven could recall and what those recollections did for him before hypnotizing him. These memories were often nebulous at best. He remembered, for instance, staring at the dashboard during that particular drive but had no idea why. Then more memories were shared.

He remembered walking in front of his car after it had been pulled over on the side of the road. He saw light emanating, which he figured was from his car but couldn’t be sure. He said he could not remember how he got outside the car but distinctly felt like he was out of the car while it was stopped behind him.

When Dr. Franklin asked what he was thinking when this occurred, Steven replied that he remembered feeling scared, so much so that he felt shivers down his spine. He added that he felt “trapped” in his car and unable to go faster.

As he continued to talk, flashing memories seemed to take over his thoughts. He remembered glancing at the rearview mirror as if searching for someone—or something—tracking him. Even more troubling was the sensation that someone or something else had power over him.

At this point, Dr. Franklin called for Steven to be hypnotized, and the true revelations began.

Dr. Franklin regressed Steven to that evening when these strange feelings had crept in. He remembered that it was getting dark, which added to his sense of sleepiness. He opened the window to bring fresh air into the cabin as he tried, unsuccessfully, to regain his alertness. Suddenly, the car stopped as he leaned in to examine what was on the dashboard. He was completely lost and did not know what to do.

He then exited the car and glanced at a metal fence some yards away. He stopped there, continued silence as he was on the couch in his office. To all who were watching, he looked scared to death. He screamed, “On my shoulder … a clamp…pain and I cannot move!”

The whole event veered into the surreal during that session. Dr. Franklin tried to hush Steven as a recorded incoming message clicked on his answering machine. The click prompted Steven to “literally almost jump off the couch.” It was obvious that he had plunged into a massive state of fear and panic.

At last, Dr. Franklin was able to calm him down enough for Bloecher to start asking Steven questions.

Bloecher then asked him what was on his shoulder. Steven said it looked like a “big wrench” and seemed to be coming from behind him, although he wasn’t sure of that. He went on to say that this wrench-like item lifted him and landed about a foot on either side of his chest and back.

Then, he remembered seeing a light. Bloecher asked if that light was from his car, and Steven immediately said, “No, there’s something else you’re not seeing behind the fence.” He then mumbled: “…dressed in black…can’t see their faces…more than two…three or more…”

He asked if the figures he saw were behind the fence. Steven replied affirmatively, saying that they were. He began to panic again, saying over and over, “I don’t know what’s going to happen!” He paused and then said, “There’s someone coming towards me.”

While this was going on, Steven said he heard some type of noise. He had no idea whether it was the sound of them inhaling or some kind of sliding noise. Bloecher requested that he focus on the sound more, but instead of focusing, Steven began talking about what was occurring. He insisted that his sides and back were hurting, and it felt as though something had been twisting him towards the road.

It was then that Steven’s memories started to blend together. He remembered being maybe six feet away from the car, and now it was light out. Bloecher could hardly tell if it was day or not due to all the bright lights. Steven exclaimed in confusion: “Day… but now it’s night!”

Steven then described when one of the two figures that came out from behind or over the fence was now on his right. When ordered to describe the figure, Steven managed to say it was “very white” and later told investigators he did not want to look. Bloecher asked Steven whether the figure was as big as he was, and his answer was it’s ‘almost our size,’ only a little smaller. He added that its “neck and face were very white” with no hair above the neck.

Steven said the figure kept flickering in and out of sight, then declared, “He ain’t one of us,” adding, “Every time I see him, it gives me a fright!” This was followed by an account of something he said or did next. He put it this way: “…They want something from me. I don’t know what they want…”

At this stage, it was agreed to conclude the session and bring Steven out of the hypnotic state. He was shaken by the revelations, but it seemed Steven had finally found some peace knowing they were starting to uncover the layers from years earlier. A few months later, he’d repeat the process for another session that showed more results than anyone would have expected.

Seven months after the first session, Steven was willing to undergo a second hypnosis session in 1978. This time, the session was conducted by Dr. Aphrodite Clamar, who had worked with Hopkins before on an alien abduction case.

Once more, Dr. Clamar brought Steven back to that trip in 1973. He remembered that he was driving and feeling tired and sleepy. He said it was late, but when Dr. Clamar asked him to look at the time on the dashboard, he told her it wasn’t working. He said he briefly turned on the light in his car to check his watch, then looked back at the road and suddenly woke up. He remarked he had momentarily driven onto the shoulder, which woke him up.

He was now driving down a hill and began to accelerate. At that point, he leaned forward toward the dashboard, maybe to adjust his seat. As he did so, a luminous light shined from somewhere. He wondered why there were no other cars around.

The car then abruptly “turned violently” and snapped to the right. “Like a giant magnet just pulled it right to the right!” Steven said.

The next thing he knew, the car came to a halt, and out of nowhere, he felt an intense sensation that someone was watching him from behind. He looked in the mirror, but there was no reflection. The car stopped, and Steven was asking himself why he had even pulled over in the first place. The situation, which he found beyond confusing, opened up before him.

As he started to scan the area, his eyes landed on a big tree and a fence not too far away. He was “out of the car” and staring at the fence.

Surprised, he wondered whether or not another vehicle was driving by on the road surrounding him. It was only then, when he looked down, that he noticed that though his car had pulled off the road, it still was on “something solid,” as if it was the future location of a new street.

He heard an alien noise by the fence or just something wind-borne. He sat in front of the car and looked into the fence. All at once, the feeling hit him that he was not supposed to look that way toward the fence. Only then did his memory of what had brought him there come rushing back.

He said when he was going downhill, he saw “two lights in the sky” and leaned forward to get a better look at them. He first thought it could just be a reflection in the car window, so he turned on the light inside to check if they were gone — but they weren’t. He then deactivated the interior lights and still stared at the lights. He said, “Look at it go right there; it’s going way off to the right, up in the lights, over the highway and up with those trees.”

At this point, he was completely befuddled as to what the object could be, saying it looked like “two light beams, kind of worked diagonally,” one off to his right and another in the lower left. He said there were “lights and a shadow of something” behind the lights, indicating they may have been some sort of opaque object.

The lights kept moving and flew toward the vegetation on his right. He went back the way he came down the road, and as soon as he got to where it looked like the object had landed, his car started turning right. We can suspect that something else was pulling him. He said, “I wasn’t really that interested in going over there,” but the car made a right turn as if it had been yanked by some malevolent force.

He remembered looking at the fence from outside of the car. He watched the fence a few more seconds and then just found himself back in his car, driving home. He said that when he thought of this, “…I just don’t want to remember. I shouldn’t remember!”

Dr. Clamar asked him what he meant by this. His reply: “I know I’m not! It’s really serious! I might die. I mean, I know I won’t, if I remember, but I feel really, really afraid to see…”

Finally, Dr. Clamar brought him back to the point where he was outside his car staring at the chain-link fence and feeling nauseous all over again. He said he felt the “sense of things standing around him” and that something was going on near the fence. He remembered seeing a light on the regular that lit up his surroundings.

Then suddenly, he was faced with three grotesque figures before him. He could not say what made him so sure of it, but he knew one among them was overseeing the others. He said one of them was doing something behind him, and he believed they were “suspicious” about him. At that moment, he remembered the sight and sound of leather. Now, he could see that beyond their clothing—or whatever they were wearing—had a texture reminiscent of leather. And the material covered their arms and hands.

Looking back toward the figures, he continued. He said: “…I can see the faces, and they are white… chalky … like they are made out of rubber, or,… not rubber…. something…. only really a dull finish…”

One of them reached out and touched him. What struck him was that the moment one of those figures touched him, he felt pain. In addition to the hurt, he felt a sense of puzzlement from them. He said the figure in front of him was “motioning to the others” with his arm. He believed it had some sort of suit. Is it part of him or is it a suit? It does not appear to be skin.

He also described the figure’s rubbery fingers as “white plastic tubes” which seemed shiny.

He added that one of the figures appeared to be digging behind him while the one in front (the leader) was encouraging it to speed up. Although he couldn’t make out the figure behind him very well, it appeared more like it was poking around in the dirt than actually digging. He felt that this figure was not particularly strong.

Steven realized there were a few other figures he had not seen previously, digging near the first one. They were identical to the others and also watched as the figure behind Steven continued to fill in the “grayish” soil.

As Steven recounted the events, he seemed to lose any sense of fear: at one point, “the troubled tone [vanished] entirely,” and his speech was even “punctuated by small, ironic chuckles.” Hopkins realized he was “in some manner artificially calmed,” apparently by the figure on his left. We remember that Steven felt a bump in his hand as soon as he noticed it. What kind of narcotic was the figure injecting into him—one to turn the hysterical Steven calm, even serene?

Due to this newfound calmness, Steven let more information about his surreal environment emerge. He remembered, for instance, when his fear of the fast-moving vehicle just stopped, and he looked around to see if any more cars were coming from a distance (none).

He then turned his gaze towards the figures in front of him—a figure he called “the boss”—and, more specifically, at the eyes. They were “really shiny,” he remembered, quite large and devoid of pupils. He said the figure’s head was not roundish but more like “an upside-down teardrop” and had what looked like a “big, huge rounded bar across it.”

He followed this up by stating, “He looked like he wasn’t alive,” and that “he was very wooden and awkward to be there.” Steven said that while no communication from the figure had been made, it was “clear” to him that it hoped simply to leave. Steven remembered getting the sense the figure “wants me to say something or help him out or whatever”—but he did not understand what.

He later said he felt compelled by the figures, that they “could make me do whatever” they wanted to control him. He explained that he saw them kind of “communicate with each other, but they are not talking,” or at least nothing audible. Dr. Clamar replied, “Do you think they were speaking in their minds?” to which Steven responded that it appeared so because there was no doubt about what they were talking about.

He further said that there was a common thread among them as they engaged in some kind of argument or dispute, saying the leader wanted something while another didn’t. Steven got the impression they were arguing over where to dig, but he wasn’t sure.

• https://youtu.be/mJyPWX0En0o

Steven refocused his view toward the light penetrating the walls from behind, revealing silhouettes with a strong tang of musty, fiery old smell, finally putting a face to everything he saw. He looked back down at the eyes and said they were ‘so black’ and bottomless, like a liquid but fitting perfectly.

Not content with being perceived as uncomfortable, the figure shifted slightly, allowing Steven to realize it moved like “my knees hurt really bad,” hobbling clearly in discomfort. The figure dragged its feet a little. Steven described the boots, but there was no mention of feet.

He further detailed that the feet were shaped like cat’s eyes—had no toes, and pointed frontwards or backwards. He observed that the figure’s ankles, legs, and arms were very long and slender. He stared into the mouthless face and realized for the first time there were no ears, only a slit where a mouth would be. He pointed out that the figure never expressed any emotion.

The figure’s eyes trailed behind Steven, where the blinding light originated. Steven heard what sounded like something coming down, causing shadows to shift.

At this time, unable to guide his attention away from the falling object, Steven again saw what had seemed like “digging” behind, experiencing something like two forms of attack: one in front and another from behind. Hopkins described it as “so obvious that Steven was holding back from getting further into his story,” the kind of reflex we all possess. This might suggest something had been implanted in his mind to keep him from continuing even under hypnosis.

It would take almost two years before Steven agreed to be hypnotized once more. By then, he remembered that some physical examination had been made after an object came out of the sky. Due to the nature of what this involved, he resisted more regression sessions. Nonetheless, when the session resumed in February 1979 and drew a blank, another session two years later, presided over by Dr. Clamar, would reveal much more about this bizarre encounter with apparent alien entities.

Steven was directed in the sessions by Dr. Clamar to walk back to his BMW, where the figure (the leader) was waiting outside. He remembered what happened after the object fell from above behind him. He said, “This long clamp kind of thing,” seemingly from nowhere, grabbed him around the shoulder.” He described: “…it has a joint in the center like an elbow, one almost shaped like part of an arm around my shoulder. And I catch it standing behind me, to my right side. It is related to it…I have no clue what this can be…it seems like a frisbee!”

He went on to say that this particular saucer was “whitish” and looked like it was standing upright from some sort of platform. He felt the vice around his lower back. The figure then started waving its arms, and the clamp moved him in a direction that turned his back to them. He wasn’t quite sure what he saw, but it was completely dark.

Next, he saw a ramp, and it was clear the figure was trying to lure him inside.

He then said he could hear a weird noise that sounded like it was coming from the object, “it sounds like vibrating,” but stationary in one place. It then clamped down on his shoulder and shoved him toward the object.

The next thing he knew, he was moving along a tunnel-like walkway and realized he was actually walking. The clamp had vanished, and the figure was walking next to him. Moving into the familiar ‘Mass Abduction’ sequence, he found himself being guided through a door into another white room, well illuminated with the same almost “all-white” light. Despite the light, it didn’t seem to come from any real source of illumination—it was as if the very walls were themselves luminescent.

He remembered something going into his back and then suddenly being on the table in the middle of the room. At this moment, he saw that the walls were curved with no straight lines. He could make out more of the peculiar figures in the room; two were near him, and several others were against one wall.

While looking around and wondering how everything “had this metallic glow to it,” including himself, he noticed he was no longer wearing his clothes but some sort of crisscross type adult diaper. A gadget he described as “like a fancy ray gun,” with a needle attachment, descended from overhead. It started to spin on its own—it appeared that no one was controlling it. It stopped when its needle was right on top of him. He could not see it any longer, but he immediately felt something touch his back and imagined the needle had stuck him.

At the same time, Steven noticed that the person who showed him in was standing in a corner of the room, watching everything unfold.

During the exam, he was instructed to lay on his back, each side, and then his front. By the time he had done so, they had likely run a “full body sweep” with various devices placed on or around him. Despite the surreal circumstances, he managed to stay calm, almost as if a sedative was already in his bloodstream. There was something about the feeling of being unable to move yet at peace that made him fall asleep.

At this juncture, the regression session ended, and Steven emerged from hypnosis.

In the days that followed, Steven remembered additional minor details that were common in other alleged alien abduction scenarios. He recalled how the table didn’t just sit in the middle of the room but seemed to “grow” out of the floor with no seams or bolts visible, as if carved from the same material.

Many of the other devices used during these procedures were no different—they either emerged from the floor or hung down from the ceiling and even sidewalls as integral parts rather than separate apparatus.

There were probably more memories still buried deep in Steven’s unconscious, but he had found the key to the mystery that had cornered him for so long. Something very strange and unusual had happened.

According to Hopkins, certain elements of Steven’s story could only be validated by other documented cases of alien abduction. Such specifics as the texture of their skin (weird, like warm putty) and the description from Travis Walton of his purported captors, which took place a little over two years after Steven’s experience.

Walton not only said the creatures were about Steven’s size (5′ tall), but also described their “marshmallow-white flesh” with no fingernails on their fingers and “spotless” hands with “bare, smooth” non-wrinkled fingers. Steven described the hands similarly, saying, “And all those fingers were full-on beautiful.”

Among other incidents, Hopkins mentioned several others dating back to 1957 where marshmallow-like skin (or color and consistency) was noted, and strange hands were described.

The detail about substances apparently administered to pacify Steven also recurs in many alien abduction encounters, as does Steven’s strong feeling that he shouldn’t remember and that his memory was deliberately abolished. The abductors in numerous other alien abduction cases seem to have made a point of mental programming to ensure the victims forget the incident and resist any attempts, like hypnotic regression, to recall it.

Hopkins added that under hypnotic regression, Steven had no memory of his original sighting until the UFO re-contact session. Counterintuitive as it may seem, this is true in many other instances—an indication of intentional efforts to ensure witnesses remember nothing about their experiences.

The Steven Kilburn abduction seems to have been one of the most complicated cases (in terms of time spent pulling it out) and also one that appeared realistic. After the third and final hypnotic session with Steven, Hopkins called neurosurgeon Dr. Paul Cooper. Steven had detailed an elaborate neurological examination administered by his alien abductors, so he asked Dr. Cooper to evaluate whether the responses mimicked what would be expected during a real exam. The findings were interesting.

Ten days after Dr. Cooper met with Steven for the final time, he spent an afternoon with him and then called Hopkins, describing it as the “spookiest two-and-a-half hours” of his life. He stated that no matter which process Steven described, his answers about what would happen to his body and where exactly it would be felt were accurate. To sum it up: short of having advanced medical knowledge, Steven described a verifiable event.

In his medical opinion, Cooper concluded that they only wanted to examine Steven: “They just wanted to see how he works.” This conclusion is one that many alien abduction researchers and investigators have reached.

• (Source: Marcus Lowth, UFOInsight.com)

The short video below looks at some of the most intriguing alien abduction cases on record.

{ https://weirddarkness.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 21:58 geschreven door peter  

FOIA Documents Reveal AARO’s Authorized and Repeated Attempts to Engage with David Grusch

By John Greenewald

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), tasked to investigate Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), made numerous attempts to interview UFO whistleblower David Grusch regarding his claims of U.S. Government engagement with extraterrestrial materials and technologies. These new documents were just released to The Black Vault in FOIA case 24-F-0266, which was filed on November 2, 2023, and they outline not only the timeline of events to contact Grusch, but numerous text messages and emails.

The following is an overview and brief timeline, as explained in a January 8, 2024, Memorandum for Record, which was one of the documents released in the case.

Timeline of AARO’s Attempts to Engage David Grusch:

• June 8-13, 2023: Initial contact was made with known associates of Grusch, urging them to have him speak with AARO. These efforts were clarified during dialogues between AARO’s Director and individuals close to Grusch.
• June 26, 2023: AARO staff reached out directly for Grusch’s contact details and extended an interview invitation, which Grusch declined.
• June 28, 2023: After Grusch’s congressional testimony, AARO sought any verifiable information he might have shared with Congress.
• July 27, 2023: Further attempts to arrange an interview through another associate of Grusch, who was meeting him the following day.
• October 6, 2023: A secure call was made to encourage Grusch to participate in a formal interview.
• November 10, 2023: Grusch agreed to be interviewed on November 14, after Congressional staff urged his cooperation.
• November 14, 2023: Grusch failed to appear at the scheduled interview, expressing doubts about AARO’s authorization to handle classified information.
• November 19, 2023: AARO contacted Grusch again, reiterating their authorization and inviting him to discuss his claims, which he declined.
• January 8, 2024: AARO provided additional documentation to address Grusch’s concerns about confidentiality and classification handling, maintaining a standing invitation for an interview.

As noted in the above email also released in the records, there was a scheduled meeting with Grusch after he finally agreed to meet. However, he never showed, and seemingly even left them waiting in the lobby at the agreed meeting time and location.

Grusch later apologized in an email, but alluded to his no-show being tied to what he felt were unanswered questions that he wanted addressed prior to the meeting.

After the timeline was outlined, the memorandum ended with, “During interactions between AARO and Mr. Grusch from November 2023 to January 2024, it became evident that Mr. Grusch had no intention of providing AARO with information regarding his claims.”

But the memorandum outlining the timeline of contact attempts was not the full extent of the release. Numerous emails and text message exchanges were provided to support the above timeline.

One example of the latter were text message exchanges between Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the Director of AARO at the time they were written, on the encrypted text messaging system known as Signal.  These messages reveal Mellon attempting to mediate between Grusch and AARO to clarify misunderstandings about AARO’s legal capacities.

Note: Mellon’s texts are in the grey/white and Kirkpatrick is in blue/white.

Through Mellon, Grusch was asking why AARO just did not get their information from the Inspector General’s office, as Kirkpatrick then explained due to the “criminal investigation” aspect of the material, they would not have access to it until the IG decided to release it. However, Kirkpatrick explained that Grusch still was able to give his testimony and evidence to AARO directly, outside of the criminal investigation.

Kirkpatrick labels Grusch’s assertions and Mellon’s response to him as “absurd and false” during the exchange.

Another exchange showed how Kirkpatrick told Mellon he was “… defending and adjudicating, and [Mellon was] undermining the very organization [he]purported to help establish for this purpose.” Mellon’s response was that he never claimed Grusch’s claims were “accurate” but he felt Grusch was “sincere and credible.” His full response is above. (Note: The message appears to have been cut off. An appeal has been filed for the rest of it under the “Read More” link, as shown in the screen shot).

The exchanges released began on June 11, 2023, and lasted until June 13, 2023. Another exchange was at an unknown date relaying AARO’s position that, “By law, AARO may receive all UAP-related information, including any classified national security information involving military, intelligence, and intelligence-related activities, at all levels of classification regardless of any restrictive access controls, special access programs, or compartmented access programs.”

Mellon agreed to pass that on to Grusch’s attorney, then he stated he would, “… seek to avoid further communication unless it is something that seems extraordinary or if [likely Kirkpatrick]initiate.” No further communication between Mellon and Kirkpatrick was released.

Another document in the FOIA release is the memorandum confirming AARO’s authority to receive and handle all UAP-related information, regardless of its classification. This memorandum, signed by Major General David Abba, Director, DoD Special Access Program Central Office (DoD SAPCO), explicitly states that AARO representatives are authorized to engage with individuals who possess sensitive U.S. Government information about UAPs, even if bound by nondisclosure agreements. This document is crucial because it directly counters Grusch’s claims of legal and security risks in cooperating with AARO, providing a clear legal basis for AARO’s ability to hear details about his story.

It should also be noted, that on April 17, 2024, Abba took part with the now acting Director of AARO Tim Phillips, in a classified briefing for some members of Congress. Details of that briefing, as of the writing of this article, are scant.

The detailed FOIA documents, including the timeline of engagements and the text messages with Christopher Mellon, demonstrate AARO’s persistent and legally supported efforts to involve David Grusch in their investigation. Despite these efforts, Grusch’s refusal to cooperate, based on disputed claims about AARO’s authority, raises more questions about the discrepancies between his public statements and his actions. The memorandum affirming AARO’s authorization to receive classified information is a critical piece of evidence supporting the office’s capacity to conduct its mandated tasks, reinforcing AARO’s role in the ongoing UAP investigations.

Numerous attempts by The Black Vault in the past to contact David Grusch about his claims have never been returned. No attempt was made to contact him for this specific article as all methods to contact him have been exhausted. The results of the appeal on the above case will be posted, when available.

Document Archive

• Release Package for FOIA Case 24-F-0266 [28 Pages, 4MB]

{ https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/ }

01-09-2024 om 21:28 geschreven door peter  

{ https://unsolvedcanadianmysteries.ca/ }

01-09-2024 om 20:59 geschreven door peter  

David Michael Jacobs was an Associate Professor of History at Temple University for nearly four decades before his retirement a few years back. Tenured in 1981, he taught a variety of classes with a focus on 20th-Century American history, including one that's made him infamous: Unidentified Flying Objects in American Society. The three-credit course was perpetually popular. Students were invited to learn about "American society's reaction to the UFO phenomenon". Jacobs analyzed "UFOs and the controversy that has surrounded them by studying the attitudes of various groups toward the phenomenon". At the culmination of the course, Jacobs shared his own personal research, comprised of thousands of hypnosis-based interviews with 150 people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. He also told students his personal beliefs: that aliens are here, they are abducting humans, and may be intent upon planetary domination.

A few more of his conclusions, not necessarily shared with students, but openly available on his personal website: Humans are being impregnated and forced to have hybrid babies. These hybrids are now walking amongst us. At least two percent of Americans have been abducted. Aliens use a "mindscan" procedure to effectively entrance humans.

If not for his ivory tower position, Jacobs could easily be dismissed as a crank. His genial, humble demeanor also cloaks his pseudoscientific stance.

"I have tried to be as objective and as 'agenda free' as possible," he says. "I have no New Age, spiritual, religious, transformational, or transcendent program to promote. I try to stay as close to the evidence as I can. However, there is no possibility that I have avoided error. The majority of evidence for the alien abduction phenomenon is from human memory derived from hypnosis administered by amateurs. It is difficult to imagine a weaker form of evidence. But it is evidence and we have a great deal of it. Still, readers must be skeptical of what I say and of what all others say in this tangled arena of alien abductions, hypnosis, popular culture, and memory."

Jacobs' self-deprecation doesn't shield him from being wrong, however. His evidence – interviews with alleged abductees using amateur hypnosis – is not really evidence at all. Rather than the stories being real, it's far more likely that Jacobs is accidentally prompting his subjects to unwittingly fabricate them. Alternatively, in subjects' relaxed state, they may just be regurgitating information that was widely available. Or they may be misinterpreting nightmares or sleep paralysis as alien visitation. Jacobs admits that alleged abductees have a key commonality: either their mother, father or both were abductees as well. This suggests a compromised mental state may factor in to their frightening tales.

Jacobs' claims also have no convincing physical evidence, which he persistently attempts to explain away.

If you argue that there's no actual evidence of abductions, no smartphone movies, for example, he says the aliens are invisible.

"They take people through walls, windows, and ceilings. During this part of the abduction scenario, the UFOs, the aliens, and the abductees have been rendered 'unseeable.' This is advanced technology at work."

If you contend that there's no way intelligent aliens could reach Earth due to the vastness of space and the inconceivability of traveling faster than light, he counters that aliens have technology that we can't fathom.

"At this point we cannot know the levels of science and technology that ultimately led to the development of a method of transportation to Earth that surmounted what we presently see as insuperable difficulties."

If you ask why scientists haven't noticed any human-alien hybrids by now, Jacobs simply says you can't tell them apart from real humans.

Ultimately, Jacobs' grandiose claim of widespread alien abductions echoes the case of Carl Sagan's invisible dragon, a skeptical thought experiment he shared in his essential book The Demon-Haunted World.

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage," Sagan claims...

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage.

You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon. "Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon." 

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless." 

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." 

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

"Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?" Sagan asks, before explaining. "Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder."

Just like Jacobs' human-abducting, malevolent aliens...

{ https://www.realclearscience.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 20:44 geschreven door peter  

Fly Over The 'Grand Canyon' Of Mars In High-Resolution Orbiter Imagery

{ https://www.space.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 20:30 geschreven door peter  

Lily Nova, 29, took up astrophotography in 2020 to cure her lockdown boredom (

Image: Caters News Agency)

Lily Nova, 29, from St Louis, Missouri, US, says she had her first encounter with aliens in November 2020 after taking up astrophotography to cure her lockdown boredom

By Beth Kilgallon - Ryan Fahey /News Reporter

A woman who claims to have spotted a UFO during lockdown says she's been visited by aliens ever since.

Lily Nova, 29, from St Louis, Missouri, US, says she had her first encounter at the end of 2020 after taking up astrophotography to cure lockdown boredom.

But the encounters did not stop there, with Lily now claiming the extraterrestrial beings visit her on a daily basis.

They've approached her in all manner of spacecraft, including metallic ships, black triangles and orbs that move in an "unearthly" way, she claims.

She also says she knows what some of the beings look like.

She first started getting into astrophotography in the summer of 2020 during the lockdown which eventually led to her first encounter with aliens just a few months later, in November.

She said: "My first encounter with aliens and UFOs was very intense.

"I went outside for some fresh air one night and I immediately locked eyes with bright light hovering over the neighbourhood.

"I started investigating and realised it was a UFO. Seconds later I looked away briefly and when I looked back there was a second craft that was much closer.

"I could actually see the triangular shape of the craft.

"The UFOs did some impressive manoeuvres to show me that it wasn't a regular aircraft before they disappeared above me.

"It really spooked me because aliens and UFOs aren't something I have thought about much before. It was a total reality shifting experience.

Astrophotography is a hobby where people take pictures of the deep sky - celestial objects in our solar system 

( Image: Caters News Agency)

She says they've chosen to visit her because she is "open minded" and "welcoming" towards them 

( Image: Caters News Agency)

"A couple of months later I had my second encounter. After that, it kept happening more frequently and now I am having experiences daily.

"During my encounters I have also been able to see what the beings look like.

"One of the first beings I saw was a girl with light blue skin. She had no hair, but she was very beautiful. She was wearing a skin tight grey suit and I saw her ship mates standing behind her in the same uniform.

"I have also seen another group of beings with light blonde hair, fair and glowing skin and bright blue eyes.

"I believe they send images of themselves to me through telepathy. I think they are easing me into an introduction as it would be such a shocking experience for any human to have an alien walk up to you."

Lily believes that the aliens were testing the waters with her after her first shocking encounter as she says they were motioning towards her and knew she was recording.

She thinks that they then gave her some space to process the experience before appearing to her again.

Lily added: "My encounters have been very close from the start. I could not believe what I was seeing, it was groundbreaking and it piqued my interest in astrophotography even more.

"I needed to find out as much as possible.

"I abandoned my career as a nutritionist because it was overtaken by my passion for finding out more about UFOs and aliens.

"It's not something I ever expected to happen.

"The shock of my encounters with the UFOs eventually turned to comfort as I had more and more experiences.
"It felt like I was developing a relationship with them.

"These experiences have changed everything for me. It has totally changed my view of the world and I have learnt so much about the cosmos and other beings.

"I have been focusing on spreading awareness of what I have found."

Lily now believes that she can invite these experiences with aliens and UFOs when is she is in a relaxed, open and blissful state of mind.

She says that she has even developed a sixth sense and intuitive gut feeling for when they are going to appear to her.

Lily added: "Whenever I am out doing my creative passion, astrophotography, this is when I believe I can make contact and invite these encounters.

"During my first initiated contact, where I have invited them instead of them just showing up, I even received a vision of being on the space ship and of the ships crew members.

"I have been out with a friend who is experienced in meditation, and we set our intention for them to appear to us, and within five minutes of getting out the car, a bright golden orb appears and was moving around to our questions

{ https://www.mirror.co.uk/ }

01-09-2024 om 20:12 geschreven door peter  

Woman Claims She Has Daily Encounters With UFOs And Aliens Who Use Telepathy

A woman from St. Louis, Missouri named Lily Nova claims to have daily encounters with aliens and even gave up her career to pursue more knowledge about them.

Nova claims that her first alien encounter occurred during the pandemic after she took up astrophotography to combat her boredom.

“My first encounter with aliens and UFOs was very intense,” the Mirror reports she claimed. “I went outside for some fresh air one night and I immediately locked eyes with bright light hovering over the neighborhood. I started investigating and realized it was a UFO.

“Seconds later I looked away briefly and when I looked back there was a second craft that was much closer. I could actually see the triangular shape of the craft. The UFOs did some impressive maneuvers to show me that it wasn’t a regular aircraft before they disappeared above me.”

Lily Nova claims that she has seen numerous aliens over the span of her many encounters with UFOs.

She says she once saw an alien girl with light blue skin with no hair who “was very beautiful” and “wearing a skin-tight grey suit.”

“I have also seen another group of beings with light blonde hair, fair and glowing skin and bright blue eyes,” Nova added. “I believe they send images of themselves to me through telepathy. I think they are easing me into an introduction as it would be such a shocking experience for any human to have an alien walk up to you.”

Nova says that after her alien encounters she gave up her career as a nutritionist “because it was overtaken by my passion for finding out more about UFOs and aliens.”

She also claims that she has developed a sort of sixth sense when it comes to knowing when the encounters will occur.

“Whenever I am out doing my creative passion, astrophotography, this is when I believe I can make contact and invite these encounters,” she said. “I have been out with a friend who is experienced in meditation, and we set our intention for them to appear to us, and within five minutes of getting out the car, a bright golden orb appears and was moving around to our questions.”

Lily Nova and Demi Lovato should get together sometime and exchange notes.

{ https://brobible.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 17:42 geschreven door peter  

Waarnemingen van gigantische hagedissen in Florida komen steeds vaker voor: wat zijn het en waarom zijn ze daar?

door Janine

Antony Stanley/Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 2.0

Als we het hebben over invasieve uitheemse soorten, bedoelen we dieren die zijn geïntroduceerd in een ecosysteem waar ze geen deel van uitmaken, maar die daardoor een bedreiging vormen voor de lokale biodiversiteit. Er zijn veel voorbeelden, zoals de blauwe krab en de Louisiana rivierkreeft, of zoogdieren die door kolonisten naar verschillende delen van de wereld zijn gebracht. Heel anders is het geval van de gigantische hagedissen die onlangs in Florida zijn gespot, reptielen die vreemd zijn aan het lokale ecosysteem maar een potentieel gevaar vormen voor dieren en mensen. Laten we eens kijken wat het zijn en waarom ze in Florida voorkomen.

Gigantische hagedissen in Florida: een steeds vaker voorkomende waarneming

Over waarnemingen van reuzenhagedissen in Florida wordt met min of meer regelmatige tussenpozen gesproken, maar de laatste jaren steeds vaker. Een van de meest recente incidenten werd gedocumenteerd door een vrouw genaamd Renee Aland, die video's en foto's deelde van een waarneming op een paar meter afstand.

Op de beelden is een groot reptiel van bijna twee meter lang te zien dat bekend lijkt te zijn met de verharde wegen van Florida. Renee vertelt hoe het in een kanaal dook en kort daarna weer boven water kwam, zonder acht te slaan op de vrouw die filmde met haar mobiele telefoon en ondertussen haar dochter aanspoorde om niet uit de auto te stappen. Nadat ze de video en de beelden had gedeeld op sociale media, stuurde de vrouw de documentatie ook naar de Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, die de waarneming zal afhandelen en het dier mogelijk zal vangen. Maar wat was het precies?

Wat zijn de gigantische hagedissen die in Florida werden gespot?

Volgens functionarissen van het FFWCC, en afgaande op Renee's beelden, zijn de reuzenhagedissen die in Florida zijn gezien Aziatische watervaranen, wetenschappelijke naam Varanus salvator. Het gaat om een reuzenhagedis die zelfs langer kan worden dan twee meter en iets kleiner is dan de Komodovaraan, een van zijn naaste verwanten. Aziatische watervaranen worden dan ook vaak verward met Komodovaranen, waar ze fysiek op lijken.

Net als Komodovaranen kunnen watervaranen zich voeden met grotere prooien en bezitten ze gifklieren in hun onderkaak. In de praktijk bijten ze hun prooi en kunnen hem dan zelfs uren of dagen volgen, wachtend tot het gif effect heeft. Deze reuzenhagedissen komen oorspronkelijk uit Zuidoost-Azië, maar waarom bevinden ze zich dan in Florida?

Waarom zijn er varanen in Florida?

Dat er Komodovaranen of watervaranen in Florida zijn is niet verrassend, omdat ze misschien te gast zijn in een dierentuin en dus geen invasieve uitheemse soorten zijn. Het probleem is een ander: watervaranen worden vaak geïntroduceerd als exotische huisdieren, en slagen er misschien in om uit gevangenschap te ontsnappen of worden vrijgelaten door hun eigenaars. Daardoor worden het uitheemse en invasieve dieren die de biodiversiteit van het gebied in gevaar kunnen brengen.

Dit is een wijdverspreid maar weinig besproken probleem, dat mogelijk een probleem vormt voor inheemse soorten en hun evenwicht. Aan de andere kant zijn Aziatische watervaranen echte reuzenhagedissen: ze vormen misschien geen echt gevaar, maar ze moeten zeker niet onderschat worden.

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

01-09-2024 om 17:28 geschreven door peter  

About 66 million years ago, a cataclysmic event marked the end of the dinosaur era. This episode is linked to the impact of a giant asteroid in the Chicxulub region of Mexico. Until now, the exact nature and origin of this celestial body remained subject to debate.

A new study published in Science sheds light on these mysteries by revealing that this asteroid originated from the outer Solar System, beyond Jupiter, and not from a comet as some had supposed.

Illustration image Pixabay

Researchers employed an innovative method to analyze samples of ancient sediments. These contain ruthenium, a chemical element absent from terrestrial rocks. By comparing the isotopes of ruthenium in the samples with those from different classes of meteorites, they determined that the asteroid that struck Earth was a carbonaceous type (type C). This indicates it formed beyond Jupiter's orbit, in a region where asteroids contain more carbon and volatile elements.

This discovery challenges the hypothesis put forward in 2021 by two Harvard researchers, who proposed that the Chicxulub impactor was a long-period comet. According to their theory, the comet was fragmented by the Sun's gravitational influence before a fragment collided with Earth. However, the new data confirm that the celestial object was indeed a carbonaceous asteroid, thus refuting the comet idea.

Ruthenium played a key role in this identification. In fact, the isotopes of this element allow for distinguishing type C asteroids, formed in the outer Solar System, from type S asteroids, which are more common and originate from the inner Solar System. The fact that the Chicxulub asteroid is type C is particularly significant, as most meteorites found on Earth are type S, formed in regions closer to the Sun.

The implications of this discovery extend beyond dinosaur history. According to Mario Fischer-Gödde, a geochemist at the University of Cologne and lead author of the study, better understanding the nature of asteroids that have impacted Earth over time could provide clues about the origin of water on our planet. He also suggests that if other mass extinctions were caused by type C asteroids, it would be essential to closely monitor this type of celestial object in the future, as they could pose a significant threat to life on Earth.

Ismar de Souza Carvalho / Southern Methodist UniversityL.(L)

A footprint left by a Theropod dinosaur discovered in the Borborema region in northeastern Brazil in South America. (R) Theropod tracks located in the Cameroon's Koum Basin from when South America and Africa were connected under the super continent of Gondwana. Brazil's and Cameroon's Koum Basin 

{ https://www.techno-science.net/en/ }

01-09-2024 om 17:16 geschreven door peter  

© The Island – Sri Lanka/Facebook

For decades, a massive anomaly sprawling across 1.2 million square miles on the Indian Ocean floor has baffled scientists. This phenomenon, known as the “gravity hole,” has sparked endless debate and curiosity. Read on as we uncover this mystery, officially named the Indian Ocean Geoid Low.

© Shiv Kar/Facebook

The Indian Ocean’s Gravity Anomaly
So, what’s the deal with this vast region of the Indian Ocean that sits up to 106 meters below the global average sea level? It turns out there’s a significant dip in Earth’s gravity here. This gravitational anomaly has puzzled scientists for years, but recent studies are shedding light on its origins and linking it to deep geological processes.

© Paul Wilson Images/Facebook

Understanding the Geoid Low
Geologists have a term for this “hole”—a geoid low, where Earth’s gravity is weaker than average. It might sound alarming, but it’s just a natural part of our planet’s gravitational landscape. Recent research suggests that molten rock plumes rising from deep beneath Africa are responsible for this phenomenon; these plumes are at the edge of an ancient sea bed.

© International Centre for Global Earth Models (ICGEM)/Facebook

Earth’s Shape and Gravitational Variation
Ideally, Earth would have uniform gravity, but it’s not a perfect sphere. It’s flatter at the poles and bulges at the equator, causing variations in gravity. Different regions exert varying gravitational pulls based on the crust, mantle, and core mass distribution. Such complexity contributes to gravitational anomalies like the low geoid of the Indian Ocean.

© Space Live/Facebook

The Potsdam Gravity Potato
To visualize these gravitational tugs, scientists use gravity measurements from sensors and satellites to create models like the “Potsdam gravity potato.” The model highlights Earth’s gravitational highs and lows, helping scientists understand the mass distribution beneath the surface. It’s like taking off each layer of an onion, discovering more with every peel.

© Woodwalker/Wikipedia

Discovery and Confirmation of the IOGL
The Indian Ocean Geoid Low (IOGL) was discovered by Dutch geophysicist Felix Andries Vening Meinesz in 1948 during a ship-based gravity survey. Since then, subsequent shipboard expeditions and satellite measurements have confirmed its presence. This IOGL is the planet’s most prominent gravitational anomaly, covering over three million square kilometers.

© Will Walker/Facebook

Investigating the Origins
Researchers Attreyee Ghosh and Debanjan Pal compared various computer models of the region’s formation over the past 140 million years. Each model used different variables for the convection of molten material within the mantle. Their goal? To pinpoint the cause of the IOGL. Their findings point to a distinctive mantle structure influenced by ancient geological events.

© The Role of the Mantle and the African Blob

The Role of the Mantle and the African Blob
The study suggests that the IOGL is due to a unique mantle structure combined with an adjacent disturbance under Africa known as the “African blob.” This large low-shear velocity province (LLSVP) consists of hot, low-density material, thought to be remnants from ancient seafloor slabs, which influence the region’s gravitational characteristics.

© Encyclopedia of Science/Wikipedia

Connection to the Tethys Ocean
Geologists believe Tethyan slabs, remnants of an ancient seafloor from the Tethys Ocean, form the African blob. Over 200 million years ago, the Tethys Ocean existed between the supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana. As India moved northward, it created the Indian Ocean and left behind these geological traces.

© NASA Earth/Facebook

Evolution and Persistence of the IOGL
Around 20 million years ago, the geoid low probably formed its current shape as plumes began spreading through the upper mantle. The mantle material flow from the African blob sustains this anomaly. As long as these flows continue, the geoid low will persist.

© Paddy Dolan/Facebook

Future Implications
The IOGL will eventually dissipate when temperature anomalies cause it to move, which could take many millions of years. Studying this geoid low provides valuable insights into Earth’s internal processes and the dynamic nature of its mantle.

• The post Unraveling the Indian Ocean’s Mysterious Gravity Hole appeared first on Housely.

 { https://www.msn.com/en-us/channel/topic/Science/tp-Y_ }

01-09-2024 om 16:53 geschreven door peter  

5.5 million years ago the Mediterranean dried out, with sobering lessons for humanity today – new research

What would happen if humans dried out the Mediterranean sea, turning it into a giant salt lake? Would its wildlife survive, and if so, how long would it take to recover?

These may seem like wildly theoretical questions, but not for Herman Sörgel, a Bavarian architect who dedicated much of his life to this exact project: building a giant dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, letting the Mediterranean dry up, and colonising the land reclaimed from the sea.

Sörgel organised lectures and documentaries and raised funds until the 1950s for a project which, he believed, would promote cooperation between Africa and Europe, and power both continents through gigantic hydroelectric megaprojects.

What he did not know was that his dream had already come true at the end of the Miocene era, 5.5 million years ago, as a simple result of natural forces.

When the Mediterranean disappeared

Since the 1970s, several generations of marine geologists and geophysicists have confirmed the existence of a one to three kilometre thick layer of salt buried throughout most of the deeper parts of the Mediterranean Sea.

This is almost a million cubic kilometres of salt that testify to a brief period when the Mediterranean was isolated from the rest of the world’s oceans – brief in the geological sense, as the episode lasted about 190,000 years

https://youtu.be/y6GV_tnFta0

The culprit was not, of course, an eccentric German architect, but plate tectonics. The Mediterranean basin, trapped between two continents that today continue to move closer by up to two centimetres every year, was cut off from the Atlantic. Its waters quickly evaporated due to the region’s arid climate, leaving behind vast amounts of salt.

This episode, known as the Messinian salinity crisis (the Messinian being the last period of the Miocene), is the biggest extinction event suffered by the Earth since the meteorite that wiped out the flightless dinosaurs and ended the Mesozoic era 65 million years ago.

As a result, no geoengineering experiments are needed to answer our initial question: how resilient is marine life in the face of an environmental crisis of this magnitude?

The answer has just been published in the journal Science, in a study led by Konstantina Agiadi of the University of Vienna in collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council and 28 other scientists from 25 European institutes.

After gathering all Mediterranean fossil data from between 12 and 3.6 million years ago, the results suggest that native marine life was virtually extinct when the Mediterranean was cut off, and that subsequent recolonisation by Atlantic species gave rise to a Mediterranean fauna more similar to the one we find there today.

Native, extinct and migrant species

By statistically analysing information from more than 750 scientific papers, we were able to document 22,932 presences of a total of 4,897 marine species living in the Mediterranean. Before the crisis, 779 species could be considered endemic species (i.e. documented only in the Mediterranean). Of those, only 86 were still present after the salinity crisis. All the tropical corals that were abundant in the Mediterranean before this cataclysmic environmental change disappeared.

However, some apparently endemic sardine species managed to survive. The sirenian, a sea mammal related to today’s manatees and dugongs (also known as sea cows) also survived.

Because fossil records are limited and fragmented we cannot be certain that these species were all endemic, or that they would not have survived outside the Mediterranean, hence the value of basing our study on statistics from a large number of species. But for those that were endemic, where did they manage to survive, and what refuges did they find to avoid the radical increase in salt levels and temperature?

These questions remain unanswered, but we have been able to establish that changes in populations are the result of replacement by Atlantic species after the Mediterranean’s re-flooding, rather than rapid adaptation to the new hypersaline environment. In other words, life did not have enough time to adapt, and the extinct species were replaced by Atlantic species that migrated into the Mediterranean.

Several iconic species, such as the great white shark and the dolphin, only appeared in the Mediterranean after the crisis. Even more interestingly, the current richness of fauna in the western Mediterranean only came after the re-flooding – previously, the eastern Mediterranean (Ionian and Levantine Seas) had possessed a higher number of different species.

Lessons on mass extinction

The impact of the Mediterranean’s isolation on its fauna and flora was catastrophic, destroying most of its ecosystems. Another significant finding from our research is that it took more than 1.7 million years for species numbers to recover. This slow recovery of the richness of Mediterranean ecosystems provides the first detailed quantification of how wildlife responds to an extinction event of this magnitude.

The Mediterranean’s biodiversity today is very high thanks to the presence of numerous endemic species. Our results suggest that this was also the case six million years ago, but that the vast majority of these endemic species disappeared when it was cut off from the Atlantic.

Perhaps another lesson learned from this study is that, however tempting it may be to believe that geoengineering projects can allow us to maintain our current rate of emissions and ecosystem destruction, the Earth’s geological past will reveal more than any experiment.

When the Mediterranean was reconnected to the Atlantic, it was repopulated by the huge reserve of species in the world’s oceans, yet it still took millions of years for the Mediterranean’s ecosystems to recover in terms of richness. No one knows yet how long it will take for marine life to recover from the kind of global-scale change that is currently underway.

{ https://theconversation.com/europe }

01-09-2024 om 01:22 geschreven door peter  

Being Stranded In Space Could Upend Starliner Astronauts’ Perception of Time

Waiting slows our perception of time.

by Ruth Ogden, Daniel Eduardo Vigo and The Conversation

 

NASA

They arrived in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft — the first test of the spaceship with astronauts. Wilmore and Williams were supposed to stay on the ISS for around eight days and return on the same spacecraft. But there is now debate about the safety of Starliner after it experienced helium leaks and thruster problems on its way to the ISS.

In the coming days, NASA and Boeing may decide to clear Starliner to carry the astronauts back to Earth. This means their stay might not last too much longer. But if officials decide against Starliner, the astronauts face waiting an additional six months in orbit before returning. So how do astronauts cope with a potential six-month wait for a lift home?

Waiting for things is difficult at the best of times. Under normal circumstances, it is frustrating, stressful and anxiety-provoking. But in extreme situations, with high stakes, waiting can be purgatory.

Part of the reason that waiting is difficult is that it distorts our sense of time. Think of the last time you were waiting for a delayed train, test results or a text from a potential new partner. Did it fly by or drag? For most people, time spent waiting crawls at a glacial pace. As a result, delays and periods of anticipation often feel much longer than they actually are.

Waiting slows our perception of time because it changes the amount of time that we spend thinking about time. During normal daily life, we often ignore time, and our brains have a limited capacity. If time isn’t important, we simply don’t think about it, and this helps it to pass quickly.

When we are waiting, our desire to know when the wait is over increases how much we think about time. This “clock watching” can make the minutes and hours feel like they are passing at a snail’s pace. Stress, discomfort and pain exacerbate this effect, meaning that waiting in difficult situations can seem even longer.

Waiting also slows our perception of time because it is what we do and how we feel. Normal life is busy and full of ever-changing activities and interactions. The sudden need to wait halts the flow of life, often leaving us with nothing else to do, thus increasing levels of boredom and frustration.

In general, time filled with activity passes more quickly. We all got a taste of this during COVID lockdowns. When we were stuck inside, unable to see friends and engage in normal daily activities, the loss of routine and distractions caused time to drag for many.

For the astronauts stuck on the ISS, anxiety about when they will return, limited opportunities for activities and fewer opportunities to contact friends and families combine to make their wait to return home feel significantly longer than six months — if it should come to that.

However, as academics who research the effects of time on human psychology and biology, our ongoing work with crew members at research stations in Antarctica aims to shed light on whether waiting in extreme environments is different to waiting during normal daily life.

A year in Antarctica

While being stuck for six months on the ISS may sound like many people’s worst nightmare, it is not uncommon for scientists to spend long periods isolated and confined in extreme environments. Every year, organizations such as the Instituto Antártico Argentino (which uses the Belgrano II Antarctic station), the French Polar Institute and the Italian Antarctic Programme, in cooperation with the European Space Agency (which all use Antarctica’s Concordia station), send crews of people for up to 16 months to conduct research on the frozen continent.

During the March to October polar winter, teams spend six months in near darkness – and from May to August, in complete darkness – facing outside temperatures of up to -60C, wind speeds of 160 km/h (100 mph) and storms which prevent almost all outdoor activity. Limited internet coverage can also prevent constant communication with the outside world.

For the last year, we have researched how life in Antarctica influences people’s experience of time. Each month, we asked crew members how time felt like it was passing in comparison to before their mission. Trapped on base, with limited contact with the outside world, you might expect time to drag. However, our results suggest the opposite may be true.

Analysis of crew members’ experiences indicated that being constantly busy with complex tasks such as scientific research helped the time to pass swiftly, according to 80% of crew responses. Only 3% of responses indicated that time actually dragged, and these reports occurred when nights were long, and there was little to do.

These experiences may provide hope for those stuck on the ISS. Like life in an Antarctic station, these NASA astronauts have busy and mentally demanding lives. These factors may help time to pass quickly.

However, a key factor of their wait may be their ability to tolerate the uncertainty of when they will return. Wilmore and Williams will spend their time in a space equivalent to the inside of a Boeing 747 plane. However, better information about “when” things will happen and “why” delays are being incurred can help people tolerate waiting and reduce its impact on their wellbeing.

• This article was originally published on The Conversation by Ruth Ogden at the Liverpool John Moores University and Daniel Eduardo Vigo at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Argentina. Read the original article here.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 01:00 geschreven door peter  

The Webb Telescope Just Identified 6 Giant Gaseous Planets That Are More Massive Than Jupiter

And these strange worlds may be a lot more common than we thought.

by Kiona Smith

 

STSCI

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) peered into a nearby star cluster and found a handful of rogue gas giants — including one with its own disk of dust swirling around it. The results suggests that rogue planets may not only be worlds that got kicked out of their star systems, but worlds that coalesce out of clouds of interstellar gas in the same way stars do — just smaller.

Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Adam Langeveld and his colleagues published their work in The Astronomical Journal.

Lonely Planets Club

Langeveld and his colleagues surveyed a cluster of stars called NGC 1333, which exists 1,000 light years away in the constellation Perseus, with JWST’s Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument. They found six gas giants — each between five and 10 times more massive than Jupiter — drifting through space on their own, not orbiting a star. One of these lonely worlds even had a disk of dust orbiting it, as if in the process of forming its own little family of planets (or moons). And based on their observations, Langeveld and his colleagues say rogue planets, once thought to be rare flukes of nature, might make up about 10 percent of the objects in the cluster.

We know that stars form when dense clumps of gas and dust in clouds called nebulae collapse under their own gravity, creating enough heat and pressure at their centers to kickstart nuclear fusion. And we know that sometimes, a clump of material can form an object that’s just on the threshold of being able to start burning as a star, but doesn’t have quite enough mass to get there: a brown dwarf. But astronomers weren’t sure whether even smaller objects, like giant gas planets, could form the same way.

The team of astrophysicists used JWST “to search for the faintest members of a young star cluster, seeking to address a fundamental question in astronomy: how light an object can form like a star?” says Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Ray Jayawardhana, the senior author of the recent paper, in a recent statement. “It turns out the smallest free-floating objects that form like stars overlap in mass with giant exoplanets circling nearby stars.”

The smallest rogue planet Langeveld and his colleagues spotted, a gas giant about 5 times the mass of Jupiter (or 1,600 times the mass of Earth, if you prefer), is an important clue. It sits at the heart of a swirling disk of gas and dust, which looks exactly like the disks that form around newborn stars, where material eventually coalesces into planets. That suggests that the planet probably formed like a star, just from a smaller cloud of gas and dust. And it may be forming its own miniature system, like Jupiter or Saturn with their swarms of moons.

In other words, rogue planets may not always be planets that formed in orbit around a star like our Sun, only to get kicked out of the star system by a close encounter with a sibling planet or a passing star (which may have happened at least once in our own Solar System’s history). Instead, they can apparently spawn all alone, from much smaller clouds of gas than the ones that form stars.

“This is important context for understanding both star and planet formation,” says Langeveld in a recent statement.

What’s Next?

Langeveld and his colleagues hope to learn more about these lonely planets’ atmospheres in their next round of observations with JWST. Once they have that information, they’ll compare the rogue gas giants’ atmospheres to brown dwarfs and to “normal” gas giants that orbit stars. That could offer clues about whether gas giants that coalesce alone in the middle of space contain a different mix of elements than those that form in the disks around newborn stars.

The astronomers also hope to find more objects like the small rogue planet with its own little protoplanetary disk. That could shed light on whether, or how, rogue planets might form their own systems of planets (or moons). Picture all the diverse worlds that orbit the gas giants in our Solar System — Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and volcanic hellworld Io, or Saturn’s Titan with its methane seas — orbiting a version of Jupiter all alone in deep space, unlit by any star, heated only by the tidal pull of their planet.

“The diversity of systems that nature has produced is remarkable and pushes us to refine our models of star and planet formation,” says Jayawardhana.

{https://www.inverse.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

Microplastics Can Cross the Blood-Brain Barrier, A New Study Suggests — Here’s Why That Matters

Plastic levels in the brain were much higher than in organs surveyed.

by Elana Spivack

 

Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

A preprint study — which is a scientific study that has not yet been reviewed by other scientists for publication in a journal — was posted online in May by the National Institutes of Health looking at the amount of microplastics in human brain samples from autopsies. The study found that brains had higher concentrations of microplastics than other organs, and that these autopsy samples also had higher concentrations of microplastics than autopsy samples from a 2016 study. Though this paper is still under review to ensure the methods and findings are trustworthy, the key results of the study exemplify yet another vital organ affected by microplastics.

For the study, the authors examined livers, kidneys, and brains from autopsied cadavers. They found that concentrations of microplastics in the brain samples they examined “ranged from 7 to 30 times the concentrations seen in livers or kidneys.” They also found that brain samples collected and analyzed in 2024 contained significantly higher concentrations of microplastic, with over 3,000 micrograms per gram of human tissue in 2016 and over 4,800 micrograms per gram in 2024. Some samples ranged as high as more than 8,800 micrograms of plastic per gram of brain tissue.

We don’t know yet what effects, if any, microplastics could have on the brain, but this study does confirm that these bits of plastic can cross the blood-brain barrier, which is the protective membrane that helps regulate what molecules enter the brain from circulating blood.

“Based on our observations, we think the brain is pulling in the very smallest nanostructures, like 100 to 200 nanometers in length, whereas some of the larger particles that are a micrometer to five micrometers go into the liver and kidneys,” lead author of the study Matthew Campen, a toxicologist and professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, told CNN.

While it seems like microplastics are omnipresent in today’s society, figuring out how to affect our health is key.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 00:32 geschreven door peter  

The Event Horizon Telescope Just Made A Major Breakthrough — Black Holes Can Now Be Seen in ‘Color Vision’

The team that delivered the first-ever image of a black hole is getting more ambitious.

by Doris Elín Urrutia

 

EHT, D. Pesce, A. Chael

“This new ‘color vision’ allows us to tease apart the effects of Einstein’s gravity from the hot gas and magnetic fields that feed the black holes and launch powerful jets that stream over galactic distances,” Sheperd “Shep” Doeleman, astrophysicist and Founding Director of the EHT, said in an announcement published Tuesday.

Two is better than one

Doeleman tells Inverse that supermassive black holes are busy places. Seeing two frequencies would reveal more of its organized chaos. The team has published simulation images to depict how the new frequency changes the view.

“When you have two separate frequencies, you’re able to tease apart different effects around the black hole,” Doeleman says.

Albert Einstein predicted that gravity bends all light, across all wavelengths, in the same way. Right around the black hole’s shadow, where gravity is so strong that not even light can reflect back out, data across both frequencies may look the same.

But farther away from the event horizon, other phenomena like the black hole’s jets of superheated plasma will look differently from one frequency to the next.

Seeing in color

Having two sets of information allows for color. The data from the telescopes is radio, a wavelength of light invisible to human eyes. The single color of existing EHT images are packed with information at 230 GHz. But now that EHT can take observations at 345 GHz, imagery specialists can add a new color to the golden ring. This will be exciting to view not only as a still image, but eventually, as a motion picture.

This composite simulated image from the Event Horizon Telescope shows how the supermassive black hole M87* might look at different radio frequencies of 86 GHz (red), 230 GHz (green), and 345 GHz (blue).

EHT, D. Pesce, A. Chael

Doeleman and other researchers hope the telescopes in the EHT network will be able to take not just two radio wavelengths at the same time, but eventually three.

“The EHT's successful observation at 345 GHz is a major scientific milestone,” Lisa Kewley, Director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, said in the announcement. “By pushing the limits of resolution, we’re achieving the unprecedented clarity in the imaging of black holes we promised early on, and setting new and higher standards for the capability of ground-based astrophysical research.”

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

The discovery is in a new article in Nature titled “Earth’s ambipolar electrostatic field and its role in ion escape to space.” The lead author is Glyn Collinson from the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Space Age gained momentum back in the 1960s as the USA and USSR launched more and more satellites. When spacecraft passed over the Earth’s poles, they detected an outflow of particles from Earth’s atmosphere into space. Scientists named this the polar wind, but for decades, it was mysterious.

Scientists expect some particles from Earth to “leak” into space. Sunlight can cause this. But if that’s the case, the particles should be heated. The wind is mysterious because many particles in it are cold despite moving at supersonic speeds.

“Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere,” said lead author Collinson.

Collinson is also the Principal Investigator for NASA’s “Endurance” Sounding Rocket Mission. “The purpose of the Endurance mission was to make the first measurement of the magnitude and structure of the electric field generated by Earth’s ionosphere,” NASA writes in their mission description. Endurance launched on May 22nd, 2022, from Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago.

“Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,” said Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester, UK, and co-author of the paper.

Svalbard is key because there are open magnetic field lines above Earth’s polar caps. These field lines provide a pathway for ions to outflow to the magnetosphere.

After it was launched, Collinson said, “We got fabulous data all through the flight, though it will be a while before we can really dig into it to see if we achieved our science objective or not.”

Now, the data is in, and the results show that Earth has a global electric field.

Prior to its discovery, scientists hypothesized that the field was weak and that its effects could only be felt over hundreds of kilometres. Even though it was first proposed 60 years ago, scientists had to wait for technology to advance before they could measure it. In 2016, Collinson and his colleagues began inventing a new instrument that could measure the elusive field.

At about 250 km (150 mi) above the Earth’s surface, atoms break apart into negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions. Electrons are far lighter than ions, and the tiniest energetic jolt can send them into space. Ions are more than 1800 times heavier, and gravity draws them back to the surface.

If gravity were the only force at work, the two populations would separate over time and simply drift apart. But that’s not what happens.

Electrons and ions have opposite electrical charges. They’re attracted to one another and an electric field forms that keeps them together. This counteracts some of gravity’s power.

The field is called ambipolar because it’s bidirectional. That means it works in both directions. As ions sink down due to gravity, the electrical charges mean that the ions drag some of the electrons down with them. However, at the same time, electrons lift ions high into the atmosphere with them as they attempt to leave the atmosphere and escape into space.

via GIPHY

The result of all this is that the ambipolar field extends the atmosphere’s height, meaning some of the ions escape with the polar wind.

After decades of hypothesizing and theorizing, the Endurance rocket measured a change in electric potential of only 0.55 volts. That’s extremely weak but enough to be measurable.

“A half a volt is almost nothing — it’s only about as strong as a watch battery,” Collinson said. “But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”

Hydrogen ions are the most plentiful particles in the polar wind. Endurance’s results show that these ions experience an outward force from the magnetic field that’s 10.6 times more powerful than gravity. “That’s more than enough to counter gravity — in fact, it’s enough to launch them upwards into space at supersonic speeds,” said Alex Glocer, Endurance project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-author of the paper.

Hydrogen ions are light, but even the heavier particles in the polar wind are lifted. Oxygen ions in the weak electrical field effectively weigh half as much, yet they’re boosted to greater heights, too. Overall, the ambipolar field makes the ionosphere denser at higher altitudes than it would be without the field’s lofting effect. “It’s like this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere up into space,” Collinson added.

“The measurements support the hypothesis that the ambipolar electric field is the primary driver of ionospheric H+ outflow and of the supersonic polar wind of light ions escaping from the polar caps,” the authors explain in their paper.

“We infer that this increases the supply of cold O+ ions to the magnetosphere by more than 3,800%,” the authors write. At that point, other mechanisms come into play. Wave-particle interactions can heat the ions, accelerating them to escape velocity.

These results raise other questions. How does this field affect Earth? Has the field affected the planet’s habitability? Do other planets have these fields?

Back in 2016, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission detected a 10-volt electric potential surrounding the planet. This means that positively charged particles would be pulled away from the planet’s surface. This could draw away oxygen.

Scientists think that Venus may have once had plentiful water. However, since sunlight splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, the electric field could’ve siphoned the oxygen away, eliminating the planet’s water. This is theoretical, but it begs the question of why the same thing hasn’t happened on Earth.

The ambipolar field is fundamental to Earth. Its role in the evolution of the planet’s atmosphere and biosphere is yet to be understood, but it must play a role.

“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,” Collinson said. “Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.”

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

31-08-2024 om 23:23 geschreven door peter  

Story by mmcfalljohnsen@businessinsider.com (Morgan McFall-Johnsen)

 

A giant hole in the earth is breaking open the land in Siberia, and photos from space show it's growing rapidly.

It resembles a stingray, a horseshoe crab, or a giant tadpole. It started as a sliver, barely visible in declassified satellite imagery from the 1960s.

Now it's a chasm with steep cliffs, clearly visible from space.

The hole tripled in size between 1991 and 2018, according to the US Geological Survey.

Satellite images from 1999 and 2017 show how much the Batagay megaslump has grown (and how much satellite imaging has improved). NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen/Landsat data from the US Geological Survey

© NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen/Landsat data from the US Geological Survey

The Batagay crater, sometimes referred to as Batagaika or the "gateway to hell," represents a much larger, often invisible problem that affects the entire planet.

What is this hole in Siberia?

The Arctic is heating up faster than the rest of Earth, and that's quickly thawing the permafrost, which is a thick layer of soil that's permanently frozen — at least, it used to be.

The Batagay crater isn't actually a crater at all. It's the world's largest "retrogressive thaw slump," a pit that forms when permafrost thaw causes the ground to cave in, creating a landslide as the earth at its edges slumps into the pit.

There are thousands of thaw slumps across the Arctic. But the size of the Batagay "crater" has earned it the title of megaslump. It's named for the nearby town of Batagay.

"Permafrost is not the most, let's say, photogenic of subjects," Roger Michaelides, a geophysicist at Washington University in St. Louis, told Business Insider. "You're talking mostly about frozen dirt underground, which by definition you often can't see unless it's been exposed somehow, like in this megaslump."

That makes the Batagay pit a bit of a permafrost celebrity and an omen of what lies ahead.

The Batagay megaslump could help decode our planet's future

The Batagay crater in 2020, imaged in near-infrared. contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA© contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA

As permafrost thaws, all the dead plants and animals that have been frozen inside it for centuries start to decompose, belching carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

Those are powerful heat-trapping gases, which cause global temperatures to rise even more, triggering even faster permafrost thaw.

This vicious cycle could have dire effects. Permafrost covers 15% of the land in the Northern Hemisphere and contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere.

One study estimated that permafrost thaw could emit as much planet-warming gases as a large industrial nation by 2100 if industries and countries don't aggressively rein in their own emissions today.

"There's a lot we don't know about this feedback loop and how it will play out necessarily, but the potential is there for very large changes to the climate system occurring over very, very fast geologic timescales," Michaelides said.

In short, permafrost thaw could quickly make the climate crisis much worse. But it's still a mysterious process. Studying extreme sites like the Batagay megaslump can help scientists understand permafrost thaw and see into the future.

In a study published in the journal Geomorphology in June, researchers used satellite and drone data to construct 3D models of the megaslump and calculate its expansion over time.

They found that about 14 Pyramids of Giza's worth of ice and permafrost had thawed at Batagay. The crater's volume increases by about 1 million cubic meters every year.

"These values are truly impressive," Alexander Kizyakov, the study's lead author and a scientist at Lomonosov Moscow State University, told BI in an email.

"Our results demonstrate how quickly permafrost degradation occurs," he added.

The researchers also calculated that the megaslump releases about 4,000 to 5,000 tons of carbon each year. That's about as much as the annual emissions from 1,700 to 2,100 US homes' energy use.

Michaelides said those numbers didn't surprise him, but they can help inform models of future permafrost thaw and emissions.

"I think there is a lot we can learn from Batagaika, not only in terms of understanding how Batagaika will evolve with time, but also how similar features might develop and evolve over the Arctic," Michaelides said. "Even if they're a tenth or a hundredth the size of Batagaika, the physics is fundamentally the same."

• If you enjoyed this story, be sure to follow Business Insider on Microsoft Start.

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/ }

31-08-2024 om 23:00 geschreven door peter