Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
28-06-2024
DISCOVERY IN NASA’S OSIRIS REX MISSION SAMPLES POINT TO ASTEROID BENNU’S SURPRISING ORIGINS
Samples retrieved from an asteroid during NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission have undergone analysis, revealing the presence of components hinting at the origins of life on Earth.
Launched on September 8, 2016, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft traveled to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, where it retrieved a sample of rocks and dust and successfully brought them back to Earth for study.
Scientists were eager to analyze the 4.3-ounce (121.6-gram) sample, and now, less than a year after its arrival on Earth, a new study published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science has revealed the discovery of vital prebiotic compounds and minerals on Bennu’s rocky surface.
Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and a co-author of the new paper, said the OSIRIS-REx mission “gave us exactly what we hoped: a large pristine asteroid sample rich in nitrogen and carbon from a formerly wet world.”
The asteroid’s composition, represented in the samples retrieved by OSIRIS-REx, offers scientists a look into the formation of the solar system and the components that may have played a role in the formation of life on Earth.
The analysis is key to confirming carbon and nitrogen-rich dusts and organic compounds essential for life. However, the sample also revealed a few surprises, including the presence of magnesium-sodium phosphate, which had not been detected in data obtained from the asteroid through remote sensing.
Microscopic view of samples obtained from asteroid Bennu by OSIRIS-REx, revealing a bright vein containing phosphate (Credit: Lauretta & Connolly et al. (2024) Meteoritics & Planetary Science, doi:10.1111/maps.14227.)
This significant finding points to the likelihood that Bennu may have its origins in a small, primitive ocean world since magnesium-sodium phosphate is a water-soluble phosphate that plays a crucial role in Earth’s biochemistry. The detections made in the Bennu samples were also very pure and of a size that set them apart from similar phosphates found in asteroid samples retrieved by JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission.
Although it seems likely, based on the new data, that Bennu has a history involving interactions with water, the asteroid is still relatively chemically primitive, and somewhat paradoxically, researchers compare the elements it possesses to those of the Sun.
Confirming the presence of carbon and nitrogen in the asteroid samples obtained from Bennu’s surface allows researchers to glean new insights into environments where those elements formed, as well as how they became complex molecules over time. These processes would have once occurred early in Earth’s history, also a process that would have been fundamental in the formation of life.
Retrieving the samples directly from the surface of an asteroid also offered NASA scientists access to a veritable “time capsule” where the materials remained preserved for billions of years. Given their low density, such materials are destroyed when asteroids collide with Earth’s atmosphere, burning up during reentry.
Studying the preserved samples retrieved by OSIRIS-REx has already provided new insights toward understanding the intricate processes of solar system formation and prebiotic chemistry, but researchers involved in the ongoing analysis believe there will likely be more surprises in the near future.
“Each week, analysis by the OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team provides new and sometimes surprising findings,” said Harold Connolly, co-lead author of the new study and OSIRIS-REx mission sample scientist at Rowan University.
Connolly said the ongoing discoveries Bennu’s samples are revealing “are helping place important constraints on the origin and evolution of Earth-like planets.”
The new paper by lead-author Dante Lauretta and colleagues, “Asteroid (101955) Bennu in the laboratory: Properties of the sample collected by OSIRIS-REx,” was published on June 26. Additional information about NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission can be found on its official web page.
Trump Claims He Has Access To UFO Files. Here's What Experts Say
Trump Claims He Has Access To UFO Files. Here's What Experts Say
Donald Trump suggested in a recent interview with celebrity influencer Logan Paul that he has access to UFO files after being asked about what information he had about the existence of alien life.
The former president, appearing on Paul's ImPaulsive podcast, was asked what files or documents he was privy to on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP)—the term used by defense officials referring, in part, to sightings of what are colloquially called UFOs.
Trump's conversation comes amid heightened interest in the topic, following thePentagon's release of declassified documents detailing instances reported to it by airmen and other service personnel.
Donald Trump recently claimed he had received briefings about alien life and UFOs while in office. The president was pressed during an interview with celebrity influencer Logan Paul.
REUTERS/GETTY IMAGES
Last summer, 36-year-old Air Force veteran David Grusch caused a media storm after he said that a top-secret U.S. military program had found the wreckage of several fully intact unidentified aerial craft, claiming some of which contained dead nonhuman pilots.
A 2023 report from the Office for the Director of National Intelligence found that there were 510 UAP sightings in 2022, higher than the 366 seen in 2021. Of these, 171 were considered to "appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis."
During the podcast, when asked about aliens, Trump said he had spoken to Air Force personnel who had claimed to see aircraft "round in form, going like four times faster than my super jet fighter plane."
"I have met with people that are serious people that say there are some really strange things they see flying around out there," he added.
Pressed whether he had access to information on alien life and UAPs, Trump replied, "I have access...and I speak to people about it, I've had actually meetings on it, and they will tell you there's something going on.
"When they say things, things are going four times faster than my beautiful top-of-the-line airplane that goes, you know, real fast, Mach 2, right?"
Newsweek has contacted media representatives for Donald Trump via email for comment.
Newsweek has also spoken to experts on what access Trump may have and if that privileges him to any information about UFOs while he is no longer in office.
What can Trump access?
The answer to this has been addressed, in part, through the discussion that followed Trump's handling of confidential documents, claiming that he had the authority as a former president to hold on to papers—a claim that Newsweek has previously explored.
There is no evidence to suggest that information on UAPs was among the documents at Mar-a-Lago or otherwise.
Jason R. Baron, former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and a University of Maryland professor, told Newsweek that at the end of a president's time in office, all official presidential records by law come into legal, physical custody of NARA, with any classified documents stored to protect unauthorized access. A former president may request to access records with additional clearances for classified information.
However, Baron said, "Former presidents do not have the right to request presidential records of the incumbent president or records created in presidential administrations other than their own."
Furthermore, under NARA regulations, the incumbent president also has the right to assert executive privilege to withhold records from the former president, with the archivist providing notice of any request made by a former president to the incumbent.
President Joe Biden has restricted Trump from some information, specifically intelligence briefings, arguing the former president could reveal sensitive information. Speaking to CBS Evening News in February 2021, Biden said the decision had been motivated by Trump's "erratic behavior, unrelated to the insurrection."
Asked what his worst fear was if Trump continued to receive the briefings, Biden said: "I'd rather not speculate out loud."
"What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?"
'Unidentified aerial phenomena' filmed by US Navy pilots. Pic: US Dept of Defence
While this restricts some documentation, these briefings are usually only offered as a courtesy and, in any case, are unlikely to contain information about UAPs unless they present an immediate or near-future security risk.
However, under the Presidential Records Act, Trump can only access material that originated in his four years as president per the archivist's approval, according to Gail Helt, a former CIA official and a professor of political science at King University.
"These would be documents that originated inside his White House, not the intelligence community or DOD," Helt told Newsweek.
"He would have no continued access, nor the right to such continued access, to any classified documents that originated with the CIA, FBI, DOD, etcetera, at all. Those are not his property; those belong to the intelligence community (IC) or, rather, to the nation, which trusts the IC to keep them secret."
Helt added that "if he wanted a briefing on a particular national security issue, or to access the classified intelligence record on UAPs from his four years in office, he would need to request that access from the White House."
There has been no suggestion that the documents found at Mar-a-Lago contained any information on UAPs.
Though Helt said, "I don't think that the fact that classified documents related to UAPs were not mentioned as having been present in the Mar-a-Lago stash suggests that they were not there.
"We don't know exactly what was in that trove of documents, and given the sensitivity of the topic of UAPs generally, I doubt anyone would call out the existence of such documents even in vague terms.
"Such documents could well have been present, and we may never know."
"Reporting and evidence suggests that there are still missing documents or boxes that were not found or searched, perhaps at Bedminster," Lindsay Chervinsky, an award-winning presidential historian, told Newsweek.
"Accordingly, there is no evidence to suggest he has those documents among the items that were collected and returned, but we don't really know what he has that we don't know about."
Some documents released by the Pentagon and NASA on UAPs are declassified and Trump requesting these would be no different from any other member of the public accessing them, with no additional privileges granted to presidents.
An anomalous object shows up on video captured by a Navy fighter jet in 2021.
Credit: AARO / DoD
So what's left?
Based on the descriptions given to experts about Trump's privileges, and the fact that the only papers he could access would be those created in the White House while he was in office—and not from security agencies that are coordinating investigations into UAP sightings—it is not entirely clear what information he could have, if any.
In 2023, Trump told podcast host Hugh Hewitt that he had been briefed about UAPs while in office, saying that he interviewed "a couple of people from the Air Force" without elaborating. This could be the information he may be referring to, but what more those briefings would have revealed beyond the reports that have already been declassified and investigated by the Pentagon isn't clear.
In December 2020, Trump signed a $2.3 trillion government funding bill that also compelled intelligence services to provide Congressional committees with an unclassified report about UAPs, helping the topic's popularity to skyrocket. However, that effort was engineered by Congress, not the president, and Trump was out of office for more than a year by the time it was released.
While it's feasible that Trump may have held notes or information that passed through the White House at some point, when pressed for detail Trump has remained vague.
Considering what little he has said, his limited access to White House documents, no access to Pentagon documents, and the fact that the great deal of Congressional and Washington attention to UAPs has occurred during the Biden presidency, it seems unlikely that Trump is holding on to any wild truths or information not already revealed through committee hearings and Pentagon reports. That does not mean he has nothing, but in all likelihood, whatever he possesses may be pretty slim and inconsequential.
New insights into the function of the world’s oldest analog computer, the famous Antikythera mechanism, have been made with help from an unlikely source: technology developed for the study of gravitational waves.
The Antikythera mechanism is regarded as the world’s oldest known analog computing device. An example of precocious “lost” ancient technology, the early science instrument dates back more than 2000 years and was used by astronomers to predict the positions of celestial objects by as much as decades.
Originally discovered among the wreckage of a shipwreck along the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, the mysterious mechanism has long intrigued modern scientists and engineers, primarily because it appears to be a singular invention, with no other similar devices from this period known to exist.
Now, researchers with the University of Glasgow have employed statistical modeling techniques originally developed for analyzing ripples in spacetime to determine how many holes likely existed in one of the famous Antikythera mechanism’s broken rings.
At the time of its discovery, the Antikythera mechanism was in a highly eroded state, having spent close to two thousand years amidst the wreckage of a ship that sank near the Aegean Island of Antikythera, the device’s namesake.
Roughly the size of a shoebox, the device features an array of intricately tooled gears that are surprisingly complex for any innovation from the second century BCE. Over the decades, studies of the device have revealed that it likely functioned as a hand-operated computer that would have allowed its operator to predict the arrival of eclipses, as well as calculate the positions of planets over time.
The Antikythera mechanism was recovered from a shipwreck in 1901 (Credit: Wikimedia Commons.)
Fast forward to 2020, when X-ray images of one of the device’s components, which researchers identify as its calendar ring, unveiled new features that included a series of regularly spaced holes beneath the ring. Given its highly eroded state, the presence of rings could be discerned, although the number remained unclear, with estimates suggesting anywhere between 347 and 467 of the holes having once existed along this damaged portion of the device.
Now, in new research published in the Horological Journal, Glasgow researchers outline their use of a pair of statistical techniques in a new effort to refine the previously estimated number of holes that once existed in this region of the Antikythera mechanism. Applying Bayesian analysis and, notably, new techniques from gravitational wave research, the team determined that the ring likely contained 354 holes.
This is significant since the 354 holes on the device would have perfectly aligned with the Greek lunar calendar, as opposed to the Egyptian calendar’s 365 holes. Based on the new analysis, the presence of 354 holes is hundreds of times more probable than the previously considered 360-hole count.
Professor Graham Woan, a co-author of the paper, explained that he became interested in the problem after being introduced to data by YouTuber Chris Budiselic, who was creating a replica of the calendar ring.
“Towards the end of last year, a colleague pointed to me to data acquired by YouTuber Chris Budiselic, who was looking to make a replica of the calendar ring and was investigating ways to determine just how many holes it contained.”
Woan said Budiselic’s conundrum “struck me as an interesting problem, and one that I thought I might be able to solve in a different way during the Christmas holidays.” Woan then went to work employing statistical techniques to see if a definitive answer could be obtained.
Dr. Joseph Bayley, a colleague of Woan’s at the University’s Institute for Gravitational Research, further refined the research by adapting techniques used in analyzing LIGO gravitational wave data to study the calendar ring. Their combined approaches, including Markov Chain Monte Carlo and nested sampling, confirmed the probability of 354 or 355 holes with a precision of about 1/3 mm.
Additionally, the new analysis also reveals the extraordinary accuracy of the holes’ placement, with an average radial variation of just 0.028mm. According to Bayley, the use of these dual approaches to resolving the lingering questions about the Antikythera mechanism showcases the truly remarkable skill employed by the device’s mysterious builder(s).
“It’s given me a new appreciation for the Antikythera mechanism and the work and care that Greek craftspeople put into making it,” Bayley said. “[T]he precision of the holes’ positioning would have required highly accurate measurement techniques and an incredibly steady hand to punch them.”
Professor Woan says using contemporary techniques to study an ancient device designed to track celestial events will enhance the research community’s appreciation of ancient technological achievements like the Antikythera mechanism, which represents a singularly unique and innovative construction.
“We hope that our findings about the Antikythera mechanism, although less supernaturally spectacular than those made by Indiana Jones, will help deepen our understanding of how this remarkable device was made and used by the Greeks,” Woan said in a statement.
Woan and Bayley’s study, “An Improved Calendar Ring Hole-Count for the Antikythera Mechanism,” appeared in the July 2024 issue of The Horological Journal.
A couple were left stunned after they spotted UFOs 'as bright as the sun' hovering above a river in Canada.
Justin Stevenson and his wife Danielle Daniels-Stevenson were driving through Fort Alexander on May 14 when they saw the bright lights above the Winnipeg River.
Several sun-like flying objects were spotted above the Winnipeg River in Canada.Kennedy News & Media
Kennedy News and Media
He pulled over at a clearing where Danielle, 32, filmed two 'sun-like' balls of light floating above the tree line without making a sound.
Justin, 49, can be heard declaring 'I think we're seeing some aliens' as another two appear 'from nowhere' and begin moving downwards.
Other clips show two UFOs continuing to hover while the bemused pair sit in their vehicle for half an hour to watch them.
Observers called the footage a “strange anomaly” and “a clear shot of UFOs.
”Kennedy News & Media
Justin, previously a sceptic of extraterrestrial life, said the experience felt 'like he was in a sci-fi movie' and it's given him 'proof there's something out there other than humans'.
Danielle posted one of the clips on Facebook later that night where it's been viewed more than 650,000 times with users calling it a 'strange anomaly' and 'a clear shot of UFOs'.
Others have claimed they're helicopters, drones or flares dropped from planes but mechanic Justin disagrees and is adamant there's no explanation for the sighting.
Justin, from Manitoba, Canada, said: 'My wife saw lights and we were confused at what they were so we drove to a clearing where we could see properly.
'There were two really bright lights above the river almost like the sun shining but the sun had set by this time. They were super bright like a fire in the sky.
'They were sitting above the tree line for the longest time then they started to move down and then two more popped up right out of nowhere.
'There were six all together and they didn't even make a sound.
'I just thought 'what the f**k?'. That's when I realized it wasn't a fire and I questioned if it was aliens.
Justin Stevenson and his wife Danielle Daniels-Stevenson were driving through Fort Alexander on May 14 when they spotted bright lights above the Winnipeg River
He pulled over at a clearing where Danielle, 32, filmed two 'sun-like' balls of light floating above the treeline without making a sound
Justin, 49, can be heard declaring 'I think we're seeing some aliens ' as another two appear 'from nowhere' and begin moving downwards
'It was pretty surreal and it felt like we were in a sci-fi movie.
'I was skeptical before I saw this but now this has given me the proof I need that there's something out there other than humans.
'There's no explanation so we posted it because we wanted people to describe for themselves what that is.
'The naysayers can have their opinion but I disagree.'
Danielle's post read: 'We saw this just a few mins ago. What is it? It lasted like half an hour.'
Social media users were quick to offer their thoughts on what the UFO could be
One social media user commented: 'Oh wow!! You're brave to record this. I would've taken off.'
A second wrote: 'Oh my word! What is that? Pretty scary that it's so close to home, yikes!'
A third added: 'That is one strange anomaly.'
A fourth said: 'UFO that's a nice clear shot ... Wow.'
However some disagreed and wrote: 'Looks like helicopters.'
Another commented: 'It could be flares that planes drop.'
Australian intelligence officials met with their United States counterparts to discuss "unidentified anomalous phenomenon collection planning", documents released under freedom of information laws show.
WATCH: An unidentified object has illuminated the sky in Northern Territory on Thursday, May 25, 2023.
The meeting was held at the Pentagon in May 2023 and involved the so-called Five Eyes - US, Australia, Canada, UK, New Zealand - to brief the alliance about UAPs, the modern term for UFOs.
The Australian Defence Force previously denied attending the briefing, however the agenda released by the US government shows the Five Eyes alliance met for a "caucus working group" to "cultivate shared awareness of allies' UAP issues, detection, and mitigation activities and challenges".
The allies discussed the need for "networks to share Five Eyes UAP reporting", including documents marked "top secret" and "special intelligence".
"The intention is to develop a framework for future UAP collaboration," one document said.
The document also highlighted the need to share databases "showing known objects using various sensors".
It's unclear if the "UAP collection planning" discussion was related to the collection of data or crashed craft.
It should be noted the term UAP can apply to objects such as drones or the Chinese surveillance balloon, which caused an international incident when it flew over the US and Canada, and was subsequently shot down, in early 2023.
Australia discussed future UAP collobration plans with its Five Eyes allies.
Image digitally altered
In November, it was reported a wing of the CIA - the Office of Global Access - coordinated the retrieval of crashed UAPs around the world.
The briefing flagged sharing "Talent Keyhole" data, which is among the USA's most highly-classified data and refers to the information collected by satellites, spy planes and other sensor data.
Each country, including Australia, presented their allies with an update on their latest internal UAP information.
The meeting closed with a conversation about the future UAP meeting scheduling, along with talks about what other Five Eye forums the issue could be tied into, such as "emerging and disruptive technologies".
Australian Defence Force quiet on UAPs
WATCH: NASA held its first public meeting to show footage of UAPs.
The Australian Defence Force has refused to officially acknowledge any interest in the subject, and says it does not collect UAP reports, as "there was no scientific or other compelling reason to continue to devote resources to the recording and investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena".
ACM, publisher of this masthead, asked Defence Minister Richard Marles if Australia had discussed sharing UAP data and reports, or a UAP collaboration plan with its allies.
However, Mr Marles declined to respond to questions. Instead, the Department of Defence pointed to the Australian representative attending the Five Eyes meeting.
Last year, the Department of Defence denied attending the Five Eyes UAP briefing multiple times, including in a response to a question on notice by Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson in the May Senate estimates
Internal talking points prepared the day after the The Canberra Times' story (February 11), and secured under freedom of information, reveal Defence was unaware it had a representative at the Five Eyes briefing when responding to questions and FOI requests.
"On 2 November 2023, Senator [Peter] Whish-Wilson submitted a question on notice asking whether Defence attended the UAP Forum ... in responding to this QoN, Defence identified a Defence representative from the Australian Embassy in Washington had attended the UAP Forum," the memo stated.
It's also understood the representative was from one of Australia's intelligence agencies.
An FOI request relating to the Washington representative was refused under Section 7(2A), which states intelligence agencies are exempt from the FOI Act.
Freedom of information reveals department briefings
Briefing notes prepared for Air Marshal Robert Chipman and Defence Chief Science Professor Tanya Monro state "the United States has shared intelligence on UAP".
"Defence will continue to monitor and engage with the [All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office] on UAP, especially if they are deemed to be a security or safety threat," the document stated.
The FOI dossier also revealed the Australian Space Agency requested information from the Defence Space Command to prepare a brief on "unidentified aerial phenomenon".
The Canberra Times asked ASA who the brief was prepared for, if it was internal or for a minister, to what extent the ASA leadership had been brief on UAPs and if the organisation had engaged with NASA on the topic of UAPs.
However, ASA refused to respond to questions.
"The Australian Space Agency does not comment on internal briefings," a spokesperson said.
NASA Release 3D Visualization of ‘Pillars of Creation’
NASA Release 3D Visualization of ‘Pillars of Creation’
Using images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have produced a new 3D visualization of the Pillars of Creation, three towers of gas and dust within the Eagle Nebula.
The Pillars of Creation are three towers of gas and dust located some 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens.
They are a fascinating but relatively small feature of the Eagle Nebula (also known as Messier 16), which was discovered in 1745 by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux.
The Pillars of Creation are approximately 4-5 light-years long, while the nebula is 55-70 light-years wide.
They arise when immense, freshly formed blue-white O- and B-type stars give off intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds that blow away less dense materials from their vicinity.
“By flying past and amongst the pillars, viewers experience their 3D structure and see how they look different in the Hubble visible-light view versus the Webb infrared-light view,” said Dr. Frank Summers, principal visualization scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
“The contrast helps them understand why we have more than one space telescope to observe different aspects of the same object.”
“The four Pillars of Creation, made primarily of cool molecular hydrogen and dust, are being eroded by the fierce winds and punishing ultraviolet light of nearby hot, young stars.”
“Finger-like structures larger than the Solar System protrude from the tops of the pillars. Within these fingers can be embedded, embryonic stars.”
“The tallest pillar stretches across 3 light-years, three-quarters of the distance between our Sun and the next nearest star.”
A mosaic of visible-light (Hubble) and infrared-light (Webb) views of the same frame from the Pillars of Creation visualization.
Image credit: Greg Bacon / Ralf Crawford / Joseph DePasquale / Leah Hustak / Christian Nieves / Joseph Olmsted / Alyssa Pagan / Frank Summers, STScI / NASA’s Universe of Learning.
The movie takes visitors into the 3D structures of the Pillars of Creation.
“The Pillars of Creation were always on our minds to create in 3D,” said Dr. Greg Bacon, also from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
“Webb data in combination with Hubble data allowed us to see the Pillars in more complete detail.”
“Understanding the science and how to best represent it allowed our small, talented team to meet the challenge of visualizing this iconic structure.”
The new visualization helps viewers experience how two of the world’s most powerful space telescopes work together to provide a more complex and holistic portrait of the pillars.
Hubble sees objects that glow in visible light, at thousands of degrees. Webb’s infrared vision, which is sensitive to cooler objects with temperatures of just hundreds of degrees, pierces through obscuring dust to see stars embedded in the pillars.
“When we combine observations from NASA’s space telescopes across different wavelengths of light, we broaden our understanding of the Universe,” said Dr. Mark Clampin, astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters.
“The Pillars of Creation region continues to offer us new insights that hone our understanding of how stars form.”
“Now, with this new visualization, everyone can experience this rich, captivating landscape in a new way.”
Stel dat er op vele lichtjaren afstand een intelligente beschaving op ontdekking wacht, dan gaan we die misschien wel vinden dankzij broeikasgassen die deze intelligente aliens met opzet in hun atmosfeer pompen.
Met dat wilde idee komen Amerikaanse onderzoekers op de proppen in het blad The Astrophysical Journal.
Atmosfeer Afgaand op het grote aantal planeten in het universum en het feit dat bouwblokken voor leven in datzelfde universum alomtegenwoordig zijn, zou je verwachten dat ook elders in de ruimte leven te vinden is. Toch hebben we het tot op heden niet kunnen vinden. Maar de zoektocht is nog altijd in volle gang. Een belangrijke rol is daarbij onder meer weggelegd voor de ruimtetelescoop James Webb, waarmee onderzoekers in de atmosfeer van buitenaardse werelden kunnen jagen op zogenoemde biosignaturen: gassen die hinten op de aanwezigheid van leven, zoals bijvoorbeeld (hoge concentraties) zuurstof, methaan en/of ozon.
Maar er zijn nog meer gassen die de aanwezigheid van (intelligente) aliens kunnen verraden, zo schrijven Amerikaanse onderzoekers nu. In hun nieuwe studie tonen ze namelijk aan dat het mogelijk moet zijn om broeikasgassen die aliens met opzet in hun atmosfeer pompen, met behulp van James Webb te detecteren.
Intelligente actie Met opzet broeikasgassen in je atmosfeer brengen: dat klinkt misschien – met wat wij weten over de gevolgen van de broeikasgassen die we zelf in onze atmosfeer hebben gebracht – niet direct als een heel intelligente actie. Toch kan het zomaar zijn dat intelligente aliens er – op vele lichtjaren afstand van de aarde – bewust voor kiezen om hun atmosfeer met broeikasgassen te bewerken. Bijvoorbeeld om een naderende ijstijd af te wenden of een iets te koude planeet geschikt te maken voor kolonisatie.
Fluor De aliens zouden daar verschillende gassen voor kunnen gebruiken, zo onthullen de onderzoekers. Ze denken dan bijvoorbeeld aan met fluor verrijkte versies van methaan, ethaan, propaan, stikstof en zwavel. Dergelijke gassen komen in de natuur niet in significante hoeveelheden voor. Dat betekent dat als James Webb ze in hoge concentraties in buitenaardse atmosferen aantreft, dat een sterke aanwijzing kan zijn voor de aanwezigheid van intelligente aliens die deze gassen eigenhandig hebben gemaakt, omdat ze ontevreden zijn met hun klimaat en het willen veranderen.
Artist's concept of an exoplanet in the process of being terraformed.
CREDIT - Thibaut Roger/University of Bern
Weinig en lang Maar waarom zou een alien nu uitgerekend een met fluor verrijkte versie van methaan of zwavel inzetten om zijn klimaat aan te passen? Daar zijn meerdere goede redenen voor te bedenken, zo stellen de onderzoekers. Een groot voordeel van dergelijke gassen is dat het heel effectieve broeikasgassen zijn. Zo is een verbinding van zwavel met fluor – ook wel zwavelhexafluoride genoemd – een 23.000(!) keer potenter broeikasgas dan CO2. Met relatief kleine hoeveelheden kun je dan ook al een flinke klimaatverandering realiseren. Een ander voordeel van dergelijke gassen is dat ze heel lang in de atmosfeer blijven hangen; tot wel 50.000 jaar. Dat betekent dat de aliens niet voortdurend nieuwe gassen in de atmosfeer hoeven te pompen om het door hen veranderde klimaat ook langdurig te kunnen handhaven.
Zichtbaar Kortom: er zijn verschillende goede redenen waarom aliens die ontevreden zijn met hun klimaat naar deze gassen zouden kunnen grijpen. En als ze dat op een relatief nabije exoplaneet doen, kunnen we daar met bestaande instrumenten – zoals de James Webb-telescoop – getuige van zijn, zo meent onderzoeker Edward Schwieterman. “Als in een atmosfeer zoals de onze slechts 1 op elke 1 miljoen moleculen zo’n broeikasgas is, zouden we het mogelijk nog kunnen detecteren. En een dergelijke concentratie zou ook genoeg zijn om het klimaat te veranderen,” voegt hij eraan toe.
Hoewel we natuurlijk niet met zekerheid kunnen concluderen dat aliens met behulp van deze gassen hun klimaat aanpassen, staat voor de onderzoekers wel vast dat als ze het doen, wij dat waarschijnlijk kunnen zien. Een goede reden om naast de zoektocht naar biosignaturen ook onze ogen open te houden voor deze ‘technosignaturen’; signalen voor de aanwezigheid van technologisch geavanceerd en intelligent buitenaards leven. “Je hoeft geen extra inspanning te doen om naar deze technosignaturen te zoeken op het moment dat je met een telescoop al bezig bent om een planeet om andere redenen nader te karakteriseren,” merkt Schwieterman op. “En het zou adembenemend zijn als we ze vinden.”
De telescoop tuurde naar het gebied boven de beroemde Grote Rode Vlek van Jupiter en ontdekte een reeks nieuwe, nog nooit eerder waargenomen kenmerken.
Jupiter is zonder twijfel een van de meest opvallende objecten aan de nachtelijke hemel. Bovendien is de enorme gasreus op een heldere nacht eenvoudig te aanschouwen. Afgezien van de heldere noorder- en zuiderlichten in de poolgebieden van de planeet, is de gloed van Jupiters bovenste atmosfeer zwak, waardoor het moeilijk is om met aardse telescopen details te zien. Maar gelukkig hebben we de James Webb-telescoop, die dankzij zijn infraroodgevoeligheid in staat is om de bovenste atmosfeer van Jupiter direct boven de Grote Rode Vlek met ongeëvenaarde precisie te bestuderen.
Meer over Jupiter’s Grote Rode Vlek Planeet Jupiter staat bekend om zijn kleurrijke banden en reusachtige, wervelende stormen. De bekendste storm is – misschien zelfs de bekendste in het hele zonnestelsel – de Grote Rode Vlek; een gigantische anticycloon die al heel wat jaren op de gasreus woedt. De Grote Rode Vlek is een immense atmosferische wervelwind, zo is hij bijna net zo groot als de aarde in diameter. Aan zijn buitenranden razen de winden met snelheden tot 450 kilometer per uur. De rode kleur ontstaat door chemische reacties in de atmosfeer, wat een opvallend contrast vormt met de bleke wolken van de gasreus. De Grote Rode Vlek heeft generaties van wetenschappers gefascineerd. Dat heeft onder andere met zijn omvang te maken, maar ook met het feit dat de storm zelfs zichtbaar is met kleine telescopen. Afgelopen week werd nog bekend dat de Grote Rode Vlek toch jonger is dan gedacht. Hoewel de immense storm met een respectabele leeftijd van 190 jaar nog altijd de langstlevende wervelwind in het zonnestelsel is, blijkt hij niet dezelfde te zijn als die astronoom Giovanni Cassini in 1665 waarnam.
De bovenste atmosfeer van Jupiter is de overgangslaag tussen het magnetisch veld van de planeet en de onderliggende atmosfeer. In dit gebied zijn de heldere en levendige noorder- en zuiderlichten te zien, aangedreven door vulkanisch materiaal dat wordt uitgestoten door Jupiters ‘pizzamaan’ Io. Dichter bij de evenaar wordt de structuur van deze atmosfeer beïnvloed door het binnenkomende zonlicht. Omdat Jupiter slechts 4 procent van het zonlicht ontvangt dat de aarde bereikt, dachten astronomen dat dit gebied vrij uniform zou zijn.
Saai In juli 2022 werd Jupiters Grote Rode Vlek geobserveerd met Webb’s Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec), waarbij de Integral Field Unit van het instrument werd gebruikt. Het doel was om te bestuderen of het gebied direct boven de beroemde wervelstorm echt zo saai is als wetenschappers vermoedden. Maar tot hun verrassing hebben ze nu ontdekt dat de bovenste atmosfeer een verscheidenheid aan ingewikkelde structuren bevat, waaronder donkere bogen en heldere vlekken, zo valt er te lezen in Nature Astronomy. “We gingen er misschien wat naïef vanuit dat dit gebied echt saai zou zijn,” zegt teamleider Henrik Melin. “Maar het blijkt eigenlijk net zo interessant te zijn als de noorderlichten, zo niet interessanter. Jupiter blijft ons altijd verrassen.”
Links: infraroodbeeld van Jupiter. De gasreus schittert in verschillende kleuren, vooral bij de polen en op de Grote Rode Vlek, die zich als een ronde storm rechtsonder op de planeet bevindt. De Grote Rode Vlek wordt omgeven door een scherp rechthoekig kader. Rechts: een close-up van dat gebied in verschillende kleuren. De blauwere tinten vertegenwoordigen de lagere hoogtes in de atmosfeer van Jupiter, terwijl roder aangeeft dat het om hogere hoogtes gaat. Afbeelding: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, Jupiter ERS Team, J. Schmidt, H. Melin, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
Zwaartekrachtsgolven Kortom, het gebied dat vroeger als onopvallend werd beschouwd, blijkt nu dus een diverse verzameling van complexe structuren en activiteiten te bevatten. Hoewel de lichtuitstraling van dit gebied wordt veroorzaakt door zonlicht, suggereert het team dat er een ander mechanisme moet zijn dat de vorm en structuur van de bovenste atmosfeer beïnvloedt. “Een manier om deze structuur te veranderen is door zwaartekrachtsgolven,” legt Henrik uit. “Dit is vergelijkbaar met golven die op een strand breken en rimpelingen in het zand veroorzaken. Deze golven ontstaan diep in de turbulente lagere atmosfeer rondom de Grote Rode Vlek. Ze kunnen omhoog bewegen naar hogere lagen, wat leidt tot veranderingen in de structuur en uitstoot van de bovenste atmosfeer.” Dergelijke atmosferische golven kunnen soms ook op aarde worden gezien, maar ze zijn veel zwakker dan die waargenomen op Jupiter door Webb.
Vervolgonderzoek Het team hoopt in de toekomst vervolgonderzoek te doen met Webb naar Jupiters complexe golfpatronen. Zo willen ze bijvoorbeeld achterhalen hoe deze patronen zich in de bovenste atmosfeer van de planeet bewegen. Ook willen ze meer inzicht krijgen in de energiebalans in dit gebied en bestuderen hoe de kenmerken ervan in de loop van de tijd veranderen.
Juice Maar dat niet alleen. Deze ontdekkingen kunnen ook van belang zijn voor de ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), die op 14 april 2023 werd gelanceerd. Juice zal uitgebreide waarnemingen doen van Jupiter en zijn drie grote manen met oceanen – Ganymedes, Callisto en Europa (lees hier meer over de missie). De missie heeft tot doel deze manen te karakteriseren, terwijl het ook Jupiters complexe omgeving in detail zal onderzoeken.
Dankzij de nieuw opgedane kennis van de atmosferische processen en dynamiek op Jupiter, krijgen we een steeds beter beeld van deze nog altijd raadselachtige planeet en zijn manen. En hopelijk zal dit niet alleen ons begrip van ons eigen zonnestelsel vergroten, maar ook bijdragen aan onze kennis van gasreuzen en hun manen elders in het universum.
Tot daar dan die kolonisatie? Bijna dagelijks vallen meteorieten op Mars, die stevige kraters maken
Redelijk relevant nieuws voor toekomstige missies naar Mars: de planeet krijgt haast dagelijks te maken met inslagen door meteorieten. Uit onderzoek van Zwitserse en Britse wetenschappers blijkt dat de planeet zelfs ruim vijf keer meer inslagen kent dan eerder geschat. De meteorieten laten kraters achter met een diameter van minstens acht meter.
In het verleden werden de inslagen op Mars gemeten door modellen te vergelijken die observaties van meteorietenkraters op de maan naast foto’s van Marskraters legden. Door de karakteristieken van de rode planeet in de modellen te integreren, blijkt dat die vergelijking niet correct was. Mars is veel massiever dan de maan, en ligt ook veel dichter bij de belangrijkste asteroïdengordel van het zonnestelsel. Daardoor is Mars een belangrijk doelwit voor grote rotsen die door de ruimte dwalen.
Bovendien kan de planeet, die bijna geen atmosfeer heeft, er niet op rekenen dat dit beschermende schild sommige meteorieten of delen ervan zal desintegreren.
Geluiden
Een internationaal team wetenschappers van de ETH in Zürich en het Imperial College in Londen heeft een nieuwe kijk op de zaak gebracht door geluiden in kaart te brengen. “Het lijkt efficiënter om te luisteren naar het geluid van de inslagen om te bepalen met welke frequentie ze gebeuren”, klinkt het bij Gareth Collins, mede-auteur van het artikel dat in ‘Nature Astronomy’ is verschenen.
De zogenaamde SEIS-seismograaf, een instrument geproduceerd onder toezicht van het Franse CNES (National Centre for Space Studies), werd in november 2018 op Mars geïnstalleerd dankzij de InSight-lander van NASA. Die seismograaf wordt nu gebruikt om de inslagen te meten op basis van hun geluid.
Jaarlijks tussen 280 en 360 meteorietinslagen
Uit het onderzoek blijkt dat Mars jaarlijks tussen 280 en 360 meteorietinslagen te verwerken krijgt, die een krater van minstens acht meter diep nalaten. Dat is vijf keer meer dan wat eerst werd gedacht. Elke maand zou de planeet getroffen worden door een meteorietinslag die een krater van dieper van dertig meter nalaat. Bijna dagelijks wordt Mars getroffen door meteorieten ongeveer zo groot als een basketbal. Kleinere inslagen meten is moeilijk aangezien de planeet te maken heeft met zandstormen die de minder diepe kraters vaak bedekken en onzichtbaar maken.
“Omdat inslagen met hoge snelheid explosiezones creëren die nog eens vaak minstens 100 keer groter zijn dan de krater, is het voor de veiligheid van missies - nu met robots, maar in de toekomst ook met mensen - belangrijk om het exacte aantal inslagen te kennen”, aldus de onderzoekers.
“De studie is de eerste in haar soort die seismologische gegevens gebruikt om de frequentie van meteorietinslagen te berekenen. Met de resultaten moet rekening gehouden worden bij het inplannen van toekomstige missies naar Mars”, beklemtoont professor Domenico Giardini van ETH Zürich.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas of “Marker Band Valley” at two times of day on April 8.
(Photo: Nasa)
NASA’s InSight used its Instrument Context Camera (ICC) beneath the lander’s deck to image these drifting clouds at sunset. This series of images was taken on April 25, 2019, the 145th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, starting at around 6:30 p.m. Mars local time.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Zo heeft Curiosity op acht november een opname gemaakt van zonsopgang tot zonsondergang.
Happy Asteroid Day! Schweickart Prize Spotlights Planetary Defense
Every year on June 30, Asteroid Day marks the anniversary of a meteor airburst in 1908 that leveled hundreds of square miles of Siberian forest land. But a more recent meteor blast — and a new plan for getting advance warning of the next one — is receiving some added attention for this year’s Asteroid Day.
The proposal from astronomy Ph.D. student Joseph DeMartini calls for setting up a consortium of ground-based observatories, anchored by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, to focus on the twilight sky just after sunset and just before sunrise. Those are the times of day when astronomers have the best chance of finding sunward near-Earth objects (NEOs) that spend much of their time within Earth’s orbit.
“It’s a very interesting proposal that we hope gets picked up,” Rusty Schweickart said.
DeMartini’s concept for what he calls the Sunward NEO Surveillance and Early Twilight detection collaboration — or SUNSET for short — was judged the top entry in the competition for the Schweickart Prize. The award, which is a program of the California-based B612 Foundation, recognizes graduate students who come up with innovative ideas for planetary defense. As the prize winner, DeMartini will receive a $10,000 cash prize and a trophy topped by an authenticated meteorite during a ceremony on June 29 at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, Calif.
“The thing that actually got me to put my idea forward was the meteorite fragment,” said DeMartini, who’s earning his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. “I saw that and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really want that.’ But maybe that’s just me being an asteroid nerd.”
DeMartini said the idea behind SUNSET came out of discussions he had with a colleague about the asteroid that sparked the Chelyabinsk blast. “The reason we didn’t have any warning was because it came from the direction of the sun, and we can’t look in the direction of the sun,” he said. “That got me thinking, ‘Wow, that’s a region we should really monitor.'”
It turns out that the Rubin Observatory is looking into conducting just such a monitoring effort after it gets up and running next year. DeMartini suggests that the SUNSET network could augment the sightings made at the Rubin Observatory, and confirm the precise orbits traced by sunward NEOs.
“If these other telescopes know where to point in advance, then they can follow up on anything that Rubin discovers in a night, and then we can get these confirmations more easily,” he said.
The current focus of DeMartini’s research actually has to do with a different topic: numerical simulations of asteroid surfaces and interiors, and how close encounters with Earth might change those values. But when his faculty adviser told him about the Schweickart Prize, DeMartini decided to enter the competition.
From left: Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart; the Schweickart Prize, topped by a meteorite; and the first winner of the prize, University of Maryland astronomer Joseph DeMartini. (Credits: RustySchweickart.com; Christopher Che via SchweickartPrize.org; University of Maryland)
It should come as no surprise that Rusty Schweickart himself was one of the judges. In his post-NASA career, he has focused on the challenges of asteroid threat detection and mitigation. He’s the founder and past president of the Association of Space Explorers, which took up the NEO threat as one of its causes. He’s also a co-founder of the B612 Foundation, which raises awareness about planetary defense, and a co-founder of Asteroid Day as well.
“What we’re talking about here in planetary defense is having the capability to ever so slightly, but critically, reshape the solar system to enhance the future of life on Earth,” Schweickart said. “To prevent this existential threat — that is what I’ve dedicated the last 20 years of my life to bringing about.”
Thanks in part to a congressional mandate, more than 90% of the biggest near-Earth asteroids, exceeding a kilometer (0.6 mile) in diameter, are thought to have been identified and are being tracked. That’s the kind of asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs roughly 66 million years ago. “But it’s the ones that are the city-killers — the 40- to 50-meter-diameter guys — that you can’t see until they’re pretty close to the Earth,” Schweickart said. “That means looking interior [to Earth’s orbit] is going to be more productive than looking exterior.”
DeMartini’s proposal was selected as the winner because it addresses one of the biggest gaps in asteroid monitoring, and because it takes advantage of advances in observational firepower.
The Rubin Observatory’s Survey Cadence Optimization Committee, or SCOC, says doing the kind of twilight sky survey that DeMartini discusses in his SUNSET proposal would be “scientifically compelling.” It recommends starting such a survey soon after the telescope begins science operations next year.
“We currently are simulating the effect of adding low-solar-elongation observations during the start and end of twilight, spending about 15 to 20 minutes of the start and end of about a quarter of the survey nights observing at high airmass toward the sun,” Lynne Jones, an astronomer who’s part of the Rubin team, said in an email. “This gives us the opportunity to detect asteroids interior to the Earth, even down to parts of the sky which are closer than 40 degrees from the sun.”
This time-lapse simulation illustrates how the Rubin Observatory could focus on twilight zones at the start and end of a survey night.
Credit: Lynne Jones / Aerotek / Rubin Observatory.
DeMartini said the Rubin Observatory’s twilight survey campaign would be “step one” in his vision for the SUNSET collaboration. “The next bit, I suppose, would be networking. Hopefully, this event that I’ll be going to when I’m receiving the prize will be a good opportunity for that. And that’s something that B612 can really help with,” he said.
“If it takes off, I don’t know what it looks like in 10 years. But my hope is that we’re safer because of it,” DeMartini added.
Randy Schweickart, who is one of Rusty’s sons and the chair of the prize program’s judging committee, said he and other family members are committed to funding the Schweickart Prize for at least five years. “The hope is that — similar to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, which has expanded tremendously from its beginnings — there would be support from other sources as we move in time and are able to get more of the word out,” he said.
Rusty Schweickart said that the prize is meant for more than astronomers. “The really toughest problems related to planetary defense are the governance issues — the non-technical, geopolitical and legal issues,” he said. “So, in the future, what we want to do is move more in that direction, and get law students, economics students, public-safety people, emergency-response people to be involved in this. Because in the end, they’re going to be very critical.”
Schweickart, who’ll turn 90 next year, hopes the prize will carry on his legacy when he’s “pushing up daisies.”
“It seems to me that that we have, as human beings, a special responsibility to do whatever we can to see that this evolutionary experiment that we’re having here on planet Earth continues,” he said. “I’m not quite sure why that’s the responsibility, but I think it is. And if so, I feel obligated to do what I could.”
Scores of events have been scheduled around the world to mark Asteroid Day, including a two-day festival in Luxembourg.The award ceremony for the Schweickart Prize will take place at 3:30 p.m. PT June 29 at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, Calif. The event will feature a presentation by Rusty Schweickart, plus comments from NASA astronauts Steve Smith and Nicole Stott, and from YouTube space commentator Scott Manley. Click to purchase tickets.
Could We Detect an Alien Civilization Trying to Warm Their Planet?
This artist's illustration shows a hypothetical Earth-like inhabited planet being terraformed with artificial greenhouse gases. We could detect these chemicals with infrared spectroscopy. Image Credit: Sohail Wasif, UC Riverside/Schwieterman et al. 2024
Could We Detect an Alien Civilization Trying to Warm Their Planet?
Humanity is facing an atmospheric threat of our own device, and our internecine squabbles are hampering our ability to neutralize that threat. But if we last long enough, the reverse situation will arise. Our climate will cool, and we’ll need to figure out how to warm it up. If that day ever arises, we should be organized enough to meet the challenge.
If there are other civilizations out there in the galaxy, one may already be facing a cooling climate or an ice age. Could we detect the greenhouse chemicals they would be purposefully emitting into their atmosphere in an attempt to warm their planet?
New research in The Astrophysical Journal explains how the JWST or a future telescope named LIFE (Large Interferometer For Exoplanets) could detect certain chemicals in an exoplanet’s atmosphere that signal an intentional attempt to warm it. The title is “Artificial Greenhouse Gases as Exoplanet Technosignatures.” The lead author is Edward Schwieterman, Assistant Professor of Astrobiology at UC Riverside and a Research Scientist at Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle, Washington.
“Atmospheric pollutants such as chlorofluorocarbons and NO2 have been proposed as potential remotely detectable atmospheric technosignature gases,” the authors write in their paper. “Here, we investigate the potential for artificial greenhouse gases, including CF4, C2F6, C3F8, SF6, and NF3, to generate detectable atmospheric signatures.”
The first three are perfluorocarbons, potent and long-lived greenhouse gases (GHGs.) SF6 is Sulfur hexafluoride, and NF3 is Nitrogen trifluoride. They’re both greenhouse gases with global warming potentials 23,500 times greater and 17,200 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period.
These artificial GHGs could be a technosignature of a civilization actively trying to warm their planet. They’re long-lived, have low toxicities, and have low false-positive potential. They also occur only in small amounts naturally. Their presence indicates industrial production.
“For us, these gases are bad because we don’t want to increase warming. But they’d be good for a civilization that perhaps wanted to forestall an impending ice age or terraform an otherwise-uninhabitable planet in their system, as humans have proposed for Mars,” said UCR astrobiologist and lead author Edward Schwieterman.
These chemicals could persist in an atmosphere for up to 50,000 years, making them near ideal for a civilization facing a freezing future. “They wouldn’t need to be replenished too often for a hospitable climate to be maintained,” Schwieterman said in a press release.
Unlike CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), which damage the ozone layer, these chemicals are largely inert. Any civilization smart enough to engineer their atmosphere would avoid CFCs. CFCs also don’t last long in an oxygen atmosphere and wouldn’t be great technosignatures.
“If another civilization had an oxygen-rich atmosphere, they’d also have an ozone layer they’d want to protect,” Schwieterman said. “CFCs would be broken apart in the ozone layer even as they catalyzed its destruction.”
But from our ETI-seeking viewpoint, the best thing about the chemicals the researchers are studying is their prominent infrared signatures at extremely low concentrations.
“With an atmosphere like Earth’s, only one out of every million molecules could be one of these gases, and it would be potentially detectable,” Schwieterman said. “That gas concentration would also be sufficient to modify the climate.”
To understand these chemicals and their detectability, the research team simulated the atmosphere of TRAPPIST 1-f. This well-studied rocky exoplanet is in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star about 40 light-years away, making it a realistic observational target at that distance.
This artist’s illustration shows the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f, a potentially rocky Super-Earth orbiting in a red dwarf’s habitable zone. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This study is based on the potential results of the LIFE telescope, which is still a concept. Its purpose is to examine the atmospheres of dozens of warm, terrestrial exoplanets. LIFE builds on telescope concepts from a couple of decades ago, like the European Space Agency’s Darwin spacecraft. Darwin wasn’t built, but the idea behind it was two-fold: to both find Earth-like exoplanets and to search for evidence of life.
Darwin was conceived as an interferometer, and so is LIFE. LIFE would have four separate space telescopes acting as one.
This artist’s illustration shows LIFE’s four telescopes and its central unit acting as an interferometer. Interferometers create a large and powerful “virtual telescope.” Image Credit: LIFE/ETH Zurich
With LIFE, the GHGs would be easier to see than other standard biosignatures like O2, O3, CH4, and N2O. But unlike these chemicals, which can give false positives without a planetary context, the GHGs are more akin to technosignatures, which can be understood more independently from atmospheric chemistry. “In contrast to biosignatures, many technosignatures may provide greater specificity (less “false positive” potential), as many putative technosignatures have more limited abiotic formation channels when compared to biosignatures,” the authors explain in their research.
These figures show some of the simulation transmission spectra from the research. The top panel shows how different concentrations of three of the GHGs show up in MIR spectrometry for a simulated Earth-like TRAPPIST 1-f planet. The bottom panel shows how different concentrations of NF3 show up. O3 is shown because it shows up in the same band. The black line is the atmospheric spectrum without the GHGs. The 100 ppm results are from observing the planet for 10 transits. Image Credit: Schwieterman et al. 2024.
One desirable aspect of the search for these technosignature GHGs is that astronomers can find them as part of a general effort to study atmospheres.
“You wouldn’t need extra effort to look for these technosignatures, if your telescope is already characterizing the planet for other reasons,” said Schwieterman. “And it would be jaw-droppingly amazing to find them.”
These figures show some of the simulated emission spectra for the GHGs compared to Earth with no technosignatures. They also show some of the technosignatures at different PPM concentrations and Earth’s O3, CO2, and H20. The spectra are different than the transmission spectra. Image Credit: Schwieterman et al. 2024.
This is not a futuristic scenario awaiting the development of new technology. We have the capability to do this soon, according to Daniel Angerhausen. Angerhausen is from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology/PlanetS, a collaborating organization on LIFE.
“Our thought experiment shows how powerful our next-generation telescopes will be. We are the first generation in history that has the technology to systematically look for life and intelligence in our galactic neighborhood,” said Angerhausen.
This concept figure illustrates a hypothetical Earth-like inhabited planet terraformed with various combined abundances of artificial greenhouse gases C3F8, C2F6, and SF6 and its resulting qualitative MIR transmission (top) and emission (bottom) spectra. Image Credit: Sohail Wasif, UC Riverside/Schwieterman et al. 2024.
“While all technosignature scenarios are speculative, we argue that it is unlikely fluorine-bearing technosignature gases will accumulate to detectable levels in a technosphere due only to inadvertent emission of industrial pollutants (or volcanic production),” the authors write.
They also explain that before individual GHG technosignatures were identified, anomalous MIR or NIR absorption signatures “… would be consistent with the presence of artificial greenhouse gases in a candidate technosphere.”
In their conclusion, they say that GHGs are viable technosignatures that can be found during routine exoplanet characterizations. “Both positive or negative results would meaningfully inform the search for life elsewhere,” they conclude.
That’s No Planet. Detecting Transiting Megastructures
One of the easiest ways to find exoplanets is using the transit method. It relies upon monitoring the brightness of a star which will then dim as a planet passes in front of it. It is of course possible that other objects could pass between us and a star; perhaps binary planets, tidally distorted planets, exocomets and, ready for it…. alien megastructures! A transit simulator has been created by a team of researchers and it can predict the brightness change from different transiting objects, even Dyson Swarms in construction.
51 Pegasi-b was the first exoplanet discovered in 1995 and it sparked the development of numerous ground-based and space-based instruments. The launch of the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2018 popularised the transit method, leading to the discovery of over 4,000 exoplanets. As instruments have become increasingly sensitive and precise, research has progressed from simply detecting exoplanets to studying their detailed characteristics.
Illustration of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Transit photometry has uncovered signatures of many interesting phenomena beyond the detection of exoplanets and eclipsing binaries. This technique has been instrumental in identifying features such as star-spots, and signatures of tidal interactions between host stars and exoplanets leading to significant growth in the sub-field of Asteroseismology
The study of transiting exoplanets and their timing variations has led to many discoveries. Non-transiting planets in distant solar systems have been found, orbital decay, disintegrating planets, exocomets and exomoon candidates has all been identified. Additionally, and perhaps of particular interest is that transit photometry has detected signals that have sparked interest in the search for technosignatures for the evidence of advanced civilizations.
It is important to note that no technosignatures have been confirmed yet but such signatures would not arise form natural processes and would demonstrate the presence of intelligent life. The signatures would come from a wide range of astroengineering projects like Dyson Spheres (a theoretical shell surrounding a star to capture its energy output) or the newly conceptualised Dyson Swarms (habitable satellites and energy collectors that orbit the star in formation.
The research team led by Ushasi Bhowmick from the Indian based Space Application Centre has reported that they have developed a transit simulator that can not only generate light curves for exoplanets but also for any object of any size or shape! The simulation uses the Monte-Carlo technique that predicts all possible outcomes of an uncertain event. In this instance it can predict the light curve when an object of any shape or size transits across the disk of star.
Artist’s impressions of two exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system (TRAPPIST-1d and TRAPPIST-1f). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
When the simulation was tested against actual exoplanet systems such as Trappist-1 it nicely predicted the light curve. It can also be used to model tidal distortions in binary star systems and even predict the light curve of non-natural objects such as the alien megastructures. The simulator has shown itself to be an invaluable method for understanding a wide range of transit phenomena.
A Single Robot Could Provide a Mission To Mars With Enough Water and Oxygen
Utilizing regolith on the Moon or Mars, especially to refill propellant for rockets to get back off the surface, is a common theme in the more engineering-minded space exploration community. There have been plenty of proof-of-concept technologies that could move us toward that goal. One of the best supported was the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR). Let’s take a look at what made this project unique.
It was initially conceived at Swamp Works, NASA’s version of Skunk Works, the famous Lockheed Martin development facility that worked on the SR-71 Blackbird and F-117 stealth plane. So far, it has gone through two iterations, known as 1.0 and 2.0, released in 2013 and 2016, respectively.
RASSOR consists of a chassis, a drive train, and two large bucket drum excavators. The excavating elements are on opposing sides of the rover, allowing the system to cancel out any horizontal forces caused by the excavating activity. On Earth, those horizontal forces would be offset by the physical weight of the digging machinery. Since weight is a precious commodity on space missions, this force-canceling technology is arguably the most crucial innovation in the system.
Video showing testing of the RASSOR 2.0 prototype. Credit – NASA Video Collection YouTube Channel
The RASSOR 2.0 prototype had several design goals, but it’s probably most helpful to walk through a use-case scenario. According to the soil samples collected by Curiosity and other rovers, around 2% of the regolith on Mars is water, even in the relatively “dry” regions outside the poles. Collecting that water could help refuel rockets and supply settlements with drinking water, radiation shielding, or water for agriculture.
NASA commonly uses a mission structure involving four astronauts on a journey to Mars. In a paper describing the 2.0 version of the robot back in 2016, the authors, including Robert Mueller, the founder of the Swamp Works facility and a doyen of ISRU research, describe a mission structure that would see RASSOR mining 1,000,000 kg of Martian regolith per year and supplying 10,000 kilograms of oxygen to the mission.
To do so, it would utilize a lander with processing capabilities for separating the useful parts from the chaff and would trek from the lander site to the regolith collection site about 35 times a day. With a charging cycle that would take about 8 hours a day, that would leave upwards of 16 hours to continuously mine the surface of Mars for these valuable materials.
Fraser describes how to live off the land in space using ISRU.
The paper goes on to describe the design process for the RASSOR’s various subsystems, including the powerful actuators that make up the majority of the weight of the system. They also used 3D-printed titanium to make the bucket drum excavating tools, which required some ingenious machining by Swamp Work’s machinists.
But in the end, they did make a working prototype. They tested it with improvements like a 50% drop in weight and an autonomous mode that utilizes simple stereo-vision cameras. The team believes this project is ready to move on to the next phase, taking a step closer to making it a reality.
That paper, however, was published eight years ago. A relatively detailed internet search doesn’t produce any results for RASSOR 3.0 other than a brief mention at the end of the 2.0 paper. So, for now, it seems the project is on hold. However, another NASA project, the Lunabotics Challenge, keeps university teams working toward effectively mining regolith for us in ISRU systems. Maybe one of those teams will pick up where the RASSOR team left off – or come up with a completely new design. We’ll have to wait and see.
Deflecting potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) is one of humanity’s most critical long-term efforts to ensure we don’t suffer the fate of the dinosaurs. There are plenty of suggested mission architectures to move a PHA out of the way, the most famous of which was the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which successfully changed the orbit of Dimorphos, a harmless small asteroid. That proof of concept bodes well for our chances of deflecting any future PHAs as long as they are discovered in time. But when it comes to the safety of the planet, we can’t be too careful, so developing more ways to deflect a PHA is better, and a paper from researchers at Beihang University details a methodology that is gaining some traction lately – using an asteroid’s regolith as a propellant.
The paper details a mission known as deflecting an asteroid by dusting (DAD) and describes a potential proof-of-concept mission to Apophis. This asteroid recently captured the imagination as potentially hazardous, though it has been proven to be no threat to Earth lately. As part of the mission design, the paper describes a seven-step process.
First, an orbiting spacecraft would assess potential landing sites that might be good for dust collection and for the orbital mechanics of the thrust redirection efforts. A lander would then descend and characterize the asteroid’s internal structure, including assessments for any elements that might provide a higher level of thrust.
Finding a PHA is the first step in moving it, as Fraser discusses.
The next step would be to complete a full 3D model of the asteroid’s surface, followed by using a high-powered laser to force the dust off the surface and into a storage tank. In the storage tank, the dust would be pulverized even more, with a thruster motor pushing the dust out from the rover in a direction that causes thrust against the asteroid’s surface, thereby changing its orbit.
The dust thrust deflection would be monitored from Earth, and an orbiting probe would be used to close the loop. If necessary, several other autonomous rovers could make their way along the asteroid’s surface, coordinating their thrusting efforts to increase the deflection force.
All this requires a lot of new technologies, coordination, and testing to become a reality. The authors suggest a potential test case to be ready for the close approach of Apophis in 2029. However, even if a lander is prepared and ready for that time, it could take upwards of 20 years for a perceptible deflection to happen – assuming that nothing goes wrong with the system in that time frame. Any engineer will tell you that having a system operate non-stop for 20 years is almost unheard of, though admittedly, some space probes are the exception to that.
Fraser discusses ideas to stop a potential asteroid strike.
One major advantage of this technique, though, would be its dual use as a proof of concept for asteroid deflection and mining. Many of the technologies would overlap, and there would be an incentive for governments and non-profits to invest in a potentially world-saving technology—at least more so than for them to invest in an as-yet unproven mining technology.
For now, this idea remains on the drawing board. But, if there is ever a real push to try out different methods of asteroid redirection, it could crop up again, especially if it’s supported by one of the major space agencies. And humanity might even get the benefit of a fully functional asteroid miner out of it.
The world is becoming clogged with plastic. Particles of plastic so tiny they cannot be seen with the naked eye have been found almost everywhere,from the oceans’ depths to themountaintops. They are in the soil, in plants, in animals, and inside us. The question is: what harm, if any, are they causing?
When plastic trash is dumped in a landfill or the sea, it breaks down very slowly. Sunlight and waves cause the surface of the plastic to become brittle, and particles are shed into the environment. Collectively known as “small plastic particles,” they range in size from five millimeters or smaller (microplastics) to less than one-thousandth of a millimeter (nano plastics). The smallest can only be detected with special scientific instruments.
It remains unclear how microplastics and nanoplastics get inside living things, but several entry points have been suggested. For example, they might pass through the gut from food or drink contaminated with small plastic particles. Or they may be breathed in, or absorbed through the skin.
Our research suggests that, for some animals, nanoplastics are bad news. We injected plastic nanoparticles into chicken embryos. We found that the particles traveled quickly in the blood to all tissues, especially the heart, liver, and kidneys. They were also excreted by the embryonic kidneys.
We noticed, too, that plastic nanoparticles tend to stick to a certain type of stem cell in the embryo. These cells are essential for the normal development of the nervous system and other structures. Any damage to stem cells could put the development of the embryo in jeopardy.
We suspect that the chicken embryo stem cells have substances on their surface called “cell-adhesion molecules,” which stick to the polystyrene nanoparticles that we used. We are following up on this finding because when nanoplastics stick to cells and get inside them, they can cause cell death and even serious birth defects in chickens and mice.
Similar studies cannot, of course, be carried out on people, so it is not yet possible to say what the implications of our animal research are for humans. What we know is that nanoplastics are found in the blood of human beings, in other bodily fluids, and in several major organs and key body tissues.
In recent years, microplastics and nanoplastics have been found in the brains, hearts, and lungs of humans. They have been discovered in the arteries of people with arterial disease, suggesting they may be a potential risk factor for cardiovascular disease. And they have been detected in breast milk, the placenta, and, most recently, penises.
Chinese researchers reported earlier this year that they had found microplastics in human and dog testes. More recently, another Chinese team found microplastics in all 40 samples of human semen they tested. This follows an Italian study that found microplastics in six out of ten samples of human semen.
Our fear is that microplastics and nanoplastics might act in a similar way to deadly asbestos fibers. Like asbestos, they are not broken down in the body and can be taken up into cells, killing them and then being released to damage yet more cells.
Nanoplastics have even been found in breastmilk.
Dzmitry Kliapitski / Alamy Stock Photo
REASSURING, FOR NOW
But there is a need for caution here. There is no evidence that nanoplastics can cross the placenta and get into the human embryo.
Also, even if nanoplastics do cross the placenta and in sufficient numbers to damage the embryo, we would expect to have seen a big increase in abnormal pregnancies in recent years. That is because the problem of plastic waste in the environment has been growing enormously over the years. But we are not aware of any evidence of a corresponding, large increase in birth defects or miscarriages.
That, for now, is reassuring.
It may be that microplastics and nanoplastics if they cause harm to our bodies, do so in a subtle way that we have not yet detected. Whatever the case, scientists are working hard to discover what the risks might be.
One promising avenue of research would involve the use of human placental tissue grown in the laboratory. Special artificial placenta tissues, called “trophoblast organoids,” have been developed to study how harmful substances cross the placenta.
Researchers are also investigating potentially beneficial uses for nanoplastics. Although they are not yet licensed for clinical use, the idea is that they could be used to deliver drugs to specific body tissues that need them. Cancer cells could, in this way, be targeted for destruction without damaging other healthy tissue.
Whatever the outcome of nanoplastics research, we and many other scientists will continue trying to find out what nanoplastics are doing to ourselves and the environment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation by Michael Richardson and Meiru Wang at Leiden University. Read the original article here.
AI is fueling a lot of wild ideas for our tech-driven future. If everything pans out, we won’t have to write our own essays, take our own notes, drive our own cars — hell, we might not even have to make our own art.
That’s a tall order, obviously, but with AI’s rapid growth it’s hard not to give at least some of those lofty visions credence; even the most sci-fi ones; even — hear me out — freakin’ Star Wars-level humanoid robots.
There are a lot of humanoid bots now and a lot more seemingly on the way — Figure’s AI robot, Unitree’s speed demon, Agility’s workhorse — but arguably most important of all is Tesla’s Optimus.
I don’t mean that Optimus is necessarily more advanced than the rest of the aforementioned — in fact, Tesla’s competition is pretty fierce right now — but Optimus has something that the other robots don’t: clout.
As some of you may already know, Elon Musk, despite Optimus’ nascency, has been bullish on the robot’s future. In fact, this year, Musk went as far as to suggest that Optimus could make Tesla a $25 trillion company. I know, I know...
If you’re rolling your eyes, you’re justified. Musk is often (and not infrequently wrongly) optimistic about future technologies. But his carnival barking is a huge asset, not just for Tesla, but for the prospects of functional, real-world humanoid robots writ large.
What I mean is that, for better or worse, since Tesla awkwardly introduced Optimus on stage last year with a weird interpretive dance, a lot has happened. When Tesla and Musk talk, people, regardless of their opinion of the pair, listen. If Musk says robots are on the way, maybe they actually are, and that added confidence gives other non-Tesla upstarts more opportunities as well.
While Musk and Tesla have paved the way with their own fuel to the humanoid robot fire, AI is an equally powerful hype train that is doing the same thing concurrently.
AI, specifically large language models (LLMs) like the ones that power ChatGPT, is opening up a world of possibilities for what people think humanoid robots are capable of. That means making them more collaborative, helping them understand commands more easily, and maybe more importantly, making them feel more human.
Take Figure’s robot, for example — in lots of ways, it functions like every other humanoid robot of its ilk. But when paired with ChatGPT, things start to look truly futuristic.
It’s crucial to take Figure’s demo with a grain of salt. Right now, chatbots have a way of making things look functional on the surface, but in practice, the results are rocky. But even as a proof of concept, it’s clear AI has a place in the humanoid robot future and there’s interest in figuring out what that place is.
And sure, being conversational isn’t as important as say, making a robot with the fine motor skills to fold a shirt properly, but if these things are going to be in your home, they better have some manners, right?
READY FOR THE SBOTLIGHT
There are obviously a lot more factors than just Tesla and AI at play when it comes to the popularity of humanoid robots. Research paved years ago by companies like Boston Dynamics and the prospect of bots’ applications in factories have been equally pivotal.
But this time around, humanoid robots feel as though they’ve found themselves in front of an even bigger and brighter spotlight; it’s not just Tesla that’s putting them there. Nvidia is getting in on the game, providing its own expertise with systems like GR00T which is meant to help robots train themselves. Similarly, OpenAI seems to be interested in the robotics game and there’s a job opening as proof.
It’s hard to say what will come of all the attention, but if history is an example, money and hype usually mean progress. And if that means I don’t have to haul my own dirty clothes to the laundromat, then consider me a humanoid robot truther.
The search for life beyond Earth requires expanding the very definition of what life can be.
Some exoplanets, especially those orbiting cooler red dwarfs, might host purple plant life rather than the green-hue vegetation found on Earth.
A new study from Cornell University discovered that a particular purple “light fingerprint” could be indicative of extraterrestrial life.
While the Earth is often called “the Pale Blue Dot” thanks to its bountiful oceans, most of the planet’s land masses are dominated by the color green. Plants use chlorophyll (which absorbs red and blue light but, reflects green light) to captures solar energy, and use carbon and water to make food through a process known as photosynthesis. While this fourth grade biology lesson outlines the predominant way plant life thrives on our planet, life on other Earth-like exoplanets (especially those orbiting red dwarf stars) could use a different method entirely—one that would turn the whole world purple.
Scientists from Cornell University analyzed how alien plants that rely on infrared radiation for photosynthesis might transform the hues of alien worlds. These kinds of bacteria, which include phototrophic anoxygenic bacteria and photoheterotrophic bacteria, could emit a distinctive “light fingerprint” that could be detectable by upcoming observatories, including the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope. The results of the study were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“Purple bacteria can thrive under a wide range of conditions, making it one of the primary contenders for life that could dominate a variety of worlds,” Cornell University Ph.D. student Lígia Fonseca Coelho said in a press statement. “They already thrive here in certain niches… just imagine if they were not competing with green plants, algae and bacteria: A red sun could give them the most favorable conditions for photosynthesis.”
To understand the color and chemical signature such a world would emit, Coelho and her colleagues gathered 20 specimens of purple sulfur and purple non-sulfur bacteria from various places around the world—including hydrothermal vents and even ponds near Cornell’s campus. These bacteria rely on low-energy red and infrared right for a photosynthesis-like process, and while purple bacteria might be a biological niche today, some scientists theorize that an ancient Earth was likely much more purple than it is today.
When the molecule chlorophyll evolved on Earth—thanks in no small part to a rise in oxygen levels—the Sun’s green light was already being absorbed by retinal-leveraging plants. So, instead, the molecule absorbed all other available light. Even though the Sun emits less light in that spectrum, chlorophyll were part of a more advanced, efficient system at producing photosynthesis, and Earth’s green hue began to take shape.
But on oxygen-poor exoplanets orbiting cool, red dwarf stars, things might be drastically different. Coelho developed various models of Earth-like planets across a range of wet and dry environments, and many of the simulated “light fingerprints” came back purple.
“If purple bacteria are thriving on the surface of a frozen Earth, an ocean world, a snowball Earth or a modern Earth orbiting a cooler star,” Coelho said in a press statement. “We now have the tools to search for them.”
So, when aliens finally do reach Earth, don’t count on “little green men.” As for flying purple people-eaters... well, now we’re on to something.
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A Mysterious Object Is Emitting Microwaves in Deep Space. It's Unlike Anything Ever Known.
A Mysterious Object Is Emitting Microwaves in Deep Space. It's Unlike Anything Ever Known.
Story by Darren Orf
Scientists found an unknown object emitting microwaves near the Milky Way’s center. The object's unique characteristics don't fit known celestial categories.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) interferometer detected a strange object that appears to only be emitting microwaves near the Milky Way’s center.
Now, a new study compares this object to known celestial objects in this chaotic region of deep space. After doing so, the scientists behind the study discovered that none of the known objects’ descriptions fit this new object perfectly.
While the authors guess the object could be the remnants of stellar merger or an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH), future studies in millimeter and mid-infrared bands will need to be conducted in order to definitively identify this currently unknown phenomenon.
Space is a big place.
But despite our diminutive size among the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way (which is itself among hundreds of billions of galaxies), scientists have slowly pieced together a long list of all the strange stuff we might encounter throughout the cosmos. However, sometimes humanity’s collection of orbital space telescopes, ground-based arrays, and interplanetary spacecraft come across something that’s a bit of a head-scratcher.
Meet the latest one—the millimeter ultra-broad-line object, or the MUBLO for short.
Identified in a new paper published last week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the object in question lies near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which the researchers describe as containing “tens of millions of solar masses of gas, a supermassive black hole, a tenth of our Galaxy’s ongoing star formation, and an extensive graveyard of stellar remnants.”
Although it’s a cosmic mess, it’s among this interstellar chaos where new celestial objects will be discovered, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) interferometer is one of the most powerful tools in humanity’s star-gazing arsenal. Composed of 66 radio telescopes, this array (as its name suggests) can analyze electromagnetic radiation emanating from space at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.
While gazing at our galaxy’s center, researchers stumbled upon a compact source subsequently labeled “G0.02467–0.0727,” otherwise known as the MUBLO. Made of cold dust and fast-moving gas, the MUBLO also exhibited another strange behavior—it only emitted microwave radiation. Adam Ginsburg, the lead author on the paper, and his team went through the long list of celestial explanations and came up short.
“We consider several explanations for the [MUBLO], including protostellar outflow, explosive outflow, a collapsing cloud, an evolved star, a stellar merger, a high-velocity compact cloud, an intermediate-mass black hole, and a background galaxy,” the paper reads. “Most of these conceptual models are either inconsistent with the data or do not fully explain them. The MUBLO is, at present, an observationally unique object.”
According to Nature, the gas molecules are also not traveling in a simple ring, which could point to having been blown away by a stellar explosion. But the MUBLO lacks certain chemicals that would be tell-tale signs of such an event.
Among the various celestial phenomena examined in the paper, the authors point out two that could explain the MUBLO—a stellar merger or an intermediate-mass black hole (IMHO). However, neither of these hypotheses are perfect. While the stellar merger idea is compelling, the MUBLO has “dust mass is substantially larger, by more than an order of magnitude, than observed toward any other merger remnant.” As for the IMHO suggestion, it “does not explain all of the observed features of the MUBLO.”
To understand this new phenomenon—or, perhaps, a well-disguised known object— uture millimeters and mid-infrared studies will need to analyze the MUBLO and discern previously unseens features that, hopefully, will point toward what it is.
For now, add another galactic mystery to the list.
Nu in Las Vegas * Mythische en mysterieuze monoliet duikt weer op: toeval of niet?
Nu in Las Vegas * Mythische en mysterieuze monoliet duikt weer op: toeval of niet?
Door Micajkov
RTL Nieuws
In de natuur bij Las Vegas is er weer eentje verschenen: een zilveren monoliet. Zo reflecterend, dat de zuil bijna opgaat in het landschap eromheen. De afgelopen jaren doken zulke zuilen al vaker op, dus echt nieuw zijn ze niet meer. Hoe komt het dat we deze voorwerpen in de vrije natuur dan toch nog ervaren als mysterieus?
Toen de politie van Las Vegas maandag de meest recente monoliet vond, stond er boven de bijbehorende X-post in koeienletters: 'mysterious monolith'. Op de foto is het zilveren object te zien, in een natuurgebied bij Nevada.
Drie maanden geleden stond er ook al eentje in Wales. In 2020 doken ze wereldwijd op: eerst in de Amerikaanse staat Utah, om vervolgens weer te verdwijnen, en tevoorschijn te komen in Roemenië. Later stonden ze ook in Californië, New Mexico, het Britse Isle of Wight en, jawel, ook op verschillende plekken in Nederland.
Onder andere in Friesland, Delft, Maasbracht en Oosterhout is er in 2020 eentje neergezet. Hoewel er flink over gespeculeerd werd, is van de monolieten in Nederland nooit komen vast te staan waar ze vandaan kwamen.
Web van speculaties
Alleen van de monoliet in Californië is bekend wie die daar heeft neergezet. Eind 2020 claimde kunstenaarscollectief The Most Famous Artist het object te hebben gemaakt. Over de oorsprong en makers van de andere monolieten blijven we gissen.
We ervaren de monolieten als mysterieus, en dat is niet gek, want ze vormen iets 'onnatuurlijks' dat in de natuur staat, vertelt Taede Smedes, godsdienstfilosoof en docent theologie aan de Radboud Universiteit. "Als iets gemaakt is, dan moet er ook een maker zijn."
Space Odyssey en goden
Dat we niet weten waar de monolieten vandaan komen, is volgens Smedes de voornaamste reden dat we er zo gefascineerd door zijn. Ook zijn er connecties met mythes, films en buitenaardse theorieën waardoor de objecten in ons hoofd blijven hangen.
Mysterieuze monoliet duikt op in Wales: 'Lijkt op een soort ufo'
Zo staan de monolieten steeds op onherbergzame plekken, benadrukt Smedes. Boven op een berg, midden in de woestijn of ergens in het bos. "Dat zijn plekken die we van oorsprong associëren met heilige en religieuze locaties. Maar ze doen ook denken aan mythes, waarin de top van een berg bijvoorbeeld de plek is waar de goden elkaar ontmoeten."
Dan is er de cultfilm 2001: A Space Odyssey, naar het gelijknamige boek van Arthur C. Clark. In de film zijn er opeens zwarte objecten, die ook monolieten worden genoemd. Ze worden in verband gebracht met buitenaards leven. "Die associaties over de buitenaardse monolieten uit Space Odyssey en de monolieten bij ons op aarde komen daardoor bij elkaar. We vermoeden altijd wel dat ze door mensen gemaakt zijn, maar net zoals bij graancirkels of UFO', blijft er altijd de vraag: stel dat?"
Zo zien de monolieten eruit in de film 2001: A Space Odyssey:
2001: A Space Odyssey
Al die vragen, zonder antwoorden, maakt dat de zilveren monoliet wordt bestempeld en ervaren als mysterieus. Maar zodra er antwoorden komen, zijn we eigenlijk alweer uitgecheckt, vertelt Smedes. "Het mysterie lonkt, maar als dus een kunstenaarscollectief laat weten een van de monolieten te hebben gemaakt, dan blijft het eigenlijk niet echt hangen."
Toeval of niet?
Is het dan toeval dat de monolieten nu weer opduiken? Niet helemaal, denkt Smedes. In 2017 verschenen verschillende Amerikaanse filmpjes waarop het lijkt alsof er UFO's te zien zijn. In de jaren daarna is er gewerkt aan verder onderzoek naar meldingen van vliegende objecten die niet meteen konden worden geïdentificeerd. "Daardoor kwam er veel discussie over buitenaards leven. Die discussie is er nog steeds, en binnenkort gaat het congres in de VS het weer over UFO's hebben."
Dat er, zodra het onderwerp opleeft, objecten opduiken die mensen associëren met buitenaards leven, is dus niet heel vreemd, besluit Smedes.
Een mysterieuze monoliet is verschenen in een bergketen in de buurt van Las Vegas, Nevada, maar niemand kan verklaren hoe hij daar is gekomen. Laten we er meer over te weten komen.
Monoliet ontdekt bij Las Vegas: waar komt hij vandaan?
LVMPD/X
De mysterieuze monoliet die in de bergen van Las Vegas is gevonden, stak uit de rotsen, maar zijn verschijning moet nog worden verklaard. Monolieten zijn solide geologische structuren die meestal uit één steen of rots bestaan en die door erosie aan het licht komen. De herkomst van het object in kwestie is echter onbekend.
Lokale autoriteiten hebben besloten om de formatie te verwijderen. Op de X-pagina van de Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department staat in een bericht van 21 juni 2024: "Velen van jullie hebben vragen gesteld over de mysterieuze monoliet die onlangs is gezien in het noorden van Las Vegas. Gistermiddag hebben we geassisteerd bij het verwijderen van het object omwille van de openbare veiligheid en het milieu." De politie heeft bekendgemaakt dat "het onbekend is hoe het object op zijn locatie is gekomen of wie er verantwoordelijk voor zou kunnen zijn." De afmeting van de monoliet is 19,5 meter.
Monolieten over de hele wereld, een mysterie begonnen in 2020
Meteen na de ontdekking werd de monoliet weggehaald, maar het bracht een mysterie aan het licht dat teruggaat tot 2020, toen deze vreemde lichtgevende objecten over de hele wereld begonnen op te duiken. De monoliet in kwestie werd gevonden door het zoek- en reddingsteam van de politie van Las Vegas in de buurt van Gass Peak, dat deel uitmaakt van het uitgestrekte Desert National Wildlife Refuge.
Momenteel is dit de laatste verschijning van deze mysterieuze gespiegelde zuilen. In november 2020 verscheen een soortgelijke monoliet in de rode rotswoestijn van Utah, Mountain West, VS. Daarna zijn er monolieten gezien in Californië, New Mexico, Roemenië en zelfs in het centrum van Las Vegas op Fremont Street. Het gemeenschappelijke kenmerk is dat ze plotseling verschenen en net zo snel weer verdwenen. Nick Street, de luitenant van het Utah Department of Public Safety, verklaarde: "Dit ding komt niet van een andere wereld".
Waarom de monoliet van Las Vegas werd verwijderd
LVMPD/X
De formatie in Utah was ingebed in de rotsen in een gebied dat zo verspreid lag dat de locatie aanvankelijk verborgen werd gehouden, om te voorkomen dat mensen erop uit zouden trekken om ernaar te zoeken en het risico liepen te verdwalen. De coördinaten werden echter ontdekt en veel nieuwsgierige toeristen gingen er met de auto naartoe, waarbij ze de natuur beschadigden en veel afval achterlieten. De reden waarom de autoriteiten besloten de monoliet uit Las Vegas te verwijderen, is om te voorkomen dat dezelfde dynamiek zich herhaalt.
Het Desert National Wildlife Refuge, een federaal gebied, is een enorm natuurreservaat waar dikhoornschapen, schildpadden en zeldzame planten leven, allemaal soorten die hier beschermd zijn. Op dit moment bevindt de monoliet, die bestaat uit een plaat reflecterend metaal gemodelleerd naar een prisma en gelast met betonijzer en beton, zich na uit de grond te zijn getrokken waar het een diep gat achterliet, in een geheime opslagplaats, in afwachting van een beslissing van de autoriteiten over de beste manier om zich ervan te ontdoen.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.