NASA Kepler event RECAP: Space agency used Google's artificial intelligence to find new alien planet - PART II
The space agency has used Google's 'neural network' to find a brand new alien planet
Jeff ParsonsTech/Science Reporter
Twitter loves a good bit of space news.
The social network has been having a chatter about the upcoming announcement and throwing the usual questions at the space agency.
Are you revealing about alien planet? #AskNASA
Why am I a bit excited about the @NASA announcement at 6pm? We may get the answer to the question: Are we alone in the universe?
#askNASA #lifeonmars #Extraterrestrial
Back in February, astronomers detected no less than seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting a cool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1, located in the constellation Aquarius.
Three of these planets lie within the star’s “habitable zone” where surface temperatures range from nought to 100 degrees centigrade.
All seven planets could have liquid water – key to life as we know it – under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.
Cambridge astronomer Dr Amaury Triaud said: “Here we have the right target to start the search for life.
“Within the next decade we could know if we are alone in the universe. And that is quite incredible.”
“We’ve made a crucial step toward finding if there is life out there.”
No other star system known to man contains such a large number of Earth-sized and probably rocky planets.
The hosts of today’s announcement will be a panel of experts including:
If the conference follows the same route as previous Kepler announcements, it will start with a brief overview of the mission and an update on the status of the craft and its progress.
Then we’ll get to the meat of the space sandwich and a big reveal of what it’s found. After that, you can expect some more interstellar chatter on the implications of the findings and finally some Q&As.
Members of the public will be able to submit questions through Twitter by using the hashtag #askNASA.
NASA’s Kepler space telescope is the space agency’s dedicated planet-hunting piece of equipment. It scans the stars looking for alien worlds and has - so far - found over 2,000 exoplanets.
Today we might be adding to that number.
NASA has said it will begin the announcement at 1pm Eastern Time - which is 6pm here in the UK. Even though it’s staying tight-lipped until then, plenty of space fans have been speculating about what the announcement could be.
Finding another exoplanet is all well and good, but many will be hoping for a discovery within the so-called “Goldilocks zone”. That is, a planet the right size and distance from its parent star to hold liquid water and - potentially - alien life.
Has NASA finally found aliens? Stick with us to find out.
Tune in tomorrow at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET to http://nasa.gov/live to hear about our planet-hunting @NASAKepler mission’s latest discovery, which was made by researchers using machine learning from @Google. Have questions? #askNASA Details: https://go.nasa.gov/2yPr9hZ
Kendrick Lamar Wants You to Believe His UFO and Abduction Experience
Everybody lookin’ at you crazy (crazy!)
What you gonna do? (what you gonna do?)
Lift up your head and keep moving (keep moving)
Or let the paranoia haunt you (haunt you)?
If those lyrics from the song “i” by Grammy Award winning rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar make you wonder if he’s being haunted by seeing a UFO and possibly from being abducted by extraterrestrials, you’re obviously not familiar with his works … or you heard him talk about those personal experiences on the radio this week. Who do you think was more scared … Kendrick or the aliens?
“Nobody believed me then and [nobody] believes me now. I probably shouldn’t even be talking about it… [but] I’m going to stand my ground. It’s just something I can’t really describe, because it just sounds like, ‘OK, you just saw a dart go past.’ That shit don’t make sense … I remember this. Words just can’t describe – it was just a surreal moment.”
Directions for UFOs?
The discussion took place on The Howard Stern Show. Kendrick revealed to co-host Robin Quivers that he saw a UFO as a 6-year-old in Compton (this is starting to sound like a movie plot) and, while it may not have haunted him, it has stuck with him in a “surreal” way. How surreal? He speculated that, although he doesn’t remember it, he may have been abducted and it influenced his career choice.
“That’s probably why I’m doing music right now. Who knows. They probably gave me the energy.”
This could be chalked up as another instance where guests say strange things just because they’re on the Howard Stern Show … except it’s not the first time Kendrick has talked about his close encounter. In late 2014, he told the same story to another radio host, JoJo Wright, but apparently no one believed him then either, so he was back two years later on a different show with the same story and plea to be believed.
Alien rapper?
Kendrick is a spiritual artist who talks about having a greater purpose. Did that belief come from religion or his alien encounter? Or did it come from the influence of his name? Kendrick was named after Eddie Kendricks, an original member of The Temptations, who sang about being on “Cloud Nine.” Then again, they also sang about what they saw out their window being “Just My Imagination.”
Do artists like Kendrick Lamar attract extraterrestrials or are they just more open to seeing them? Is it time to believe Kendrick?
Cosmic Photobomb! Monster Black Holes Turn Up in New View of Andromeda Galaxy
UFO? Cigar-shaped interstellar space object baffles scientists who DEMAND further tests
GETTY
Further test are wanted on the stange space rock that has stunned scientists
The cigar-shaped space rock first shot past Earth two months ago and caused excitement that it may be an alien space ship.
The Breakthrough Listen project have announced that they will be conducting more tests on the strangely shaped space object after the initial investigation revealed no sign of alien life.
Andrew Siemion, Director of the Berkeley SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center in California said: “Our team is excited to see what additional observations and analyses will reveal.”
The object’s official name is A/2017 UI but has been dubbed “Oumuamua”, which loosely means “a messenger that reaches from the distant past” in Hawaiian.
The bizarre rock is believed to have been wandering among the stars for hundreds of millions of years and it is the first foreign object in our solar system to be spotted.
It was spotted by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii on October 19 and travelling at about 95,000 kilometres per hour.
The space organisation also ran more radio test on Wednesday that might provide more information about Oumuamua.
The six hour observation gathered 90 terabytes of data and scientist will now examine the information the test gathered.
A spokesman for Breakthrough Listen said: “A search for signals that may be of artificial origin has begun, but despite the impressive computational power of the Breakthrough Listen computing cluster at Green Bank, the large data volumes mean that this will take some time to complete.”
GETTY
Oumuamua is the first time an interstellar has passed through the solar system
GETTY
The foreign object is thought to be hundreds of millions years old
Three more observations of the unusual space rock will take lace in coming months.
Mr Siemion added: “It is great to see data pouring in from observations of this novel and interesting source.”
Oumuamua is the first time that scientists have been able to analyse an interstellar asteroid and their findings could provide previously unknown information about other solar systems and galaxies.
So far more than $100million (£74million) has been spent researching the space rock.
15 Things You May Not Know About Close Encounters of the Third Kind
We are not alone. Here are a few facts about Steven Spielberg’s 1977 UFO classic, on its 40th anniversary.
Spielberg’s initial story outline involved UFOs and shady government dealings following the Watergate scandal, which became a script entitled “Watch the Skies.” The idea involved a police or military officer working on Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s official study into UFOs in the 1950s and 1960s, who would become the whistleblower on the government cover-up of aliens. There were numerous rewrites—Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader even took a crack at it, penning a political UFO thriller titled “Kingdom Come” that Spielberg and the movie studio rejected—before the story we know today emerged.
Spielberg partly based his idea on the research of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a civilian scientific advisor to Project Blue Book who eventually admitted that 11 percent of the study’s findings about unidentified flying objects could not be explained using science.
The title (which is never specifically explained in the movie) is actually derived from Hynek’s own alien close encounter classification system: A close encounter of the first kind is sighting of a UFO; the second kind is physical evidence to prove the existence of an alien; and the third kind is actual contact with alien life forms.
Hynek, who also served as a technical advisor on the movie, makes an uncredited cameo in the final scene of the movie. You can spot him pretty easily—he’s the goateed man smoking a pipe and wearing a powder blue suit who pushes through the crowd of scientists to get a better look at the aliens.
The director first offered the part of Roy Neary to actor Steve McQueen, who turned it down because he said he couldn’t cry on cue, something he saw as essential to the character. Spielberg then went to Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, and James Caan who all turned him down as well before asking his friend Richard Dreyfuss, who previously worked with Spielberg on Jaws, to take the part.
Spielberg approached French actors like Lino Ventura, Yves Montand, and Jean-Louis Trintignant to play Claude Lacombe—who was based on famous UFO researcher Jacques Vallée—before settling on director and sometimes-actor François Truffaut. The initially skeptical Truffaut, who was nervous about appearing in a big budget Hollywood movie, accepted the role because he wanted to compile research for a book about acting (he never did write the book).
Many actresses—including a then-unknown Yale Drama School grad named Meryl Streep—auditioned for the part of Roy’s wife Ronnie, but he ultimately cast actress Teri Garr because he saw her in a coffee commercial and loved the way she was able to convey a wide range of emotions in a 30-second clip.
Spielberg wanted to shoot in real suburban locations rather than studio backlots, but the production had trouble finding locations. The biggest question: Where could Spielberg shoot the climactic canyon sequence with the mothership?
The production looked for huge indoor enclosures that would allow for the massive scale of the scene, though they only found ones with center support dividers that spoiled the openness Spielberg wanted for the UFO runway. The only location producers found without center dividers was a 300 foot by 300 foot disused hangar that had been used for dirigibles during World War II at Brookley Air Force base in Mobile, Alabama.
The Nearys' house, which is located at 1613 Carlisle Drive East in Mobile, was actually purchased by the production for $35,000 so they could do whatever they wanted with the interiors. It was later sold for $50,000 after production wrapped, netting a $15,000 surplus that went back into the film’s budget.
Composer John Williams worked with Spielberg to come up with the movie’s distinct five-note musical method of communication between humans and aliens—which Spielberg partly based on the Solfège system of musical education—a year before shooting began.
Williams initially wanted a seven-note sequence, but it was too long for the simple musical “greeting” Spielberg wanted. The composer enlisted a mathematician to calculate the number of five-note combinations they could potentially make from a 12-note scale. When that number proved to be somewhere upwards of 134,000 combinations, Williams created 100 distinct versions, and they simply whittled the combinations down one by one until they had a winner.
Cary Guffey, who plays little Barry Guiler, had never acted before, so Spielberg set up ways to coax a performance out of the 3-year-old. To get a shot of Guffey reacting to the aliens first approaching the Guiler house, Spielberg slowly unwrapped a present for the young actor just off camera, making him smile. Guffey even exclaims “Toys! Toys!” in the final take.
To get the boy to react to the aliens offscreen, Spielberg had Guffey walk up to his mark where—unbeknownst to the little actor—two crewmembers were dressed as a gorilla and a clown standing behind cardboard blinds. When Guffey entered the kitchen, Spielberg dropped the first blind revealing the clown to scare him, and then dropped the other blind to reveal the gorilla, which scared him even more. The gorilla then took off his mask, revealing the film’s makeup man, Bob Westmoreland, who Guffey recognized, causing him to laugh and smile in the final take.
Spielberg originally toyed with the idea of using computer generated images to create the aliens and their ships, even going so far as to have animator Colin Cantwell create a CGI test of three UFOs floating over a stadium. The single-shot test, which took three weeks to complete and was one of the first computer generated images ever created for a film, proved to be unfeasible for the whole movie—so the idea was dropped.
Spielberg wanted the aliens to be non-human beings that glided instead of walked, and he had a weird idea to pull it off: An orangutan dressed in a specially-made suit. For a screen test, the production team outfitted an orangutan in grey spandex and strapped it into roller skates. The orangutan immediately took off the skates and crawled to its owner, so a full test couldn’t be completed, and the team scrapped the idea. The majority of the small aliens in the final movie were played by local elementary school girls from Mobile in specially made grey suits and masks who were heavily backlit to create the final alien silhouette effect.
To create the alien who bids farewell using the musical hand signals at the end of the film, Spielberg enlisted the help of Italian special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi, who designed a fully articulated steel, aluminum, and fiberglass animatronic puppet that Spielberg nicknamed “Puck.” Puck’s expressions were based on photos of Guffey. The puppet was operated by a crew of seven puppeteers, with Spielberg himself controlling the final articulation before the alien leaves to go to the mothership.
Puck would help inspire E.T. after Spielberg asked himself, “What if this little guy didn’t get back on the mothership?” Rambaldi would also go on to design the character of E.T.
Spielberg and his buddy George Lucas both had new movies coming out in 1977; Lucas’s was a little movie called Star Wars. Lucas thought his ramshackle space movie wouldn’t make back its budget, and he knew his friend’s new movie would break box office records just like Jaws had done, so he offered Spielberg a friendly wager. Both agreed to give the other 2.5 percent of the profits of their respective films. Lucas grossly underestimated his movie, which went on to become the second highest grossing movie of all time if adjusted for inflation (in comparison, Close Encounters is #71). The difference ended up being $40 million.
Spielberg wanted to release Close Encounters in the summer of 1978, which would have given him ample time to edit the film and finish its special effects—but Columbia Pictures, which was going through major financial troubles, insisted he have it ready for a November 1977 release, leaving the director with a final cut on a movie he didn’t feel was completely ready.
Three years later, the company allowed Spielberg to “finish” the movie under one condition: That he show the inside of the mothership, which would give the studio’s marketing department an angle to sell this new version. The director capitulated, adding new scenes and cutting others to create a “Special Edition.” The director was unhappy with the scene, though, and later cut it for the “Collector's Edition” home video release.
ADDITIONAL SOURCES:
‘Alien probe’ asteroid is dead quiet, but is that good news or bad news?
A couple of months back, a really, really weird asteroid flew through our Solar System. It looked nothing like any object humanity had ever spotted in space, and was moving might fast. First it was identified as a comet, then an asteroid, and most recently scientists have been wondering if maybe it was actually an alien spacecraft. Now, after spending hours listening to the strange visitor with powerful radio telescopes, scientists say they haven’t heard a peep.
The object, named Oumuamua, is shaped like a cigar. If it’s really an asteroid it would be the very first interstellar asteroid — that is, a rock that originated outside of our Solar System — to be observed by humans, but its bizarre form and speedy entry and exit gave alien hunters reason to believe it might actually be otherworldly technology. Now, it seems, that question will have to wait a little longer to be answered.
Earlier this week scientists from the Breakthrough Listen project pointed their ears towards Oumuamua in the hopes of hearing something, anything, that couldn’t be explained by some natural process. After a preliminary review of the data, they haven’t found anything that would suggest the object is actually an alien probe, but whether or not we should be happy about that is up for debate.
Humanity has been hastily attempting to make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations for decades now. We’ve sent spacecraft out of our Solar System with directions on where to find us, and shot radio wave messages to distant stars in the hopes that someone is listening. If we’re going to meet aliens, these are probably our best shots at making first contact, but should we even be trying?
Every scientist with an itch to find alien life has a counterpart who fears what that meeting may bring. Many astronomers and physicists, including Stephen Hawking, have warned that contact aliens could result in the utter destruction of mankind. We simply don’t know whether intelligent beings living elsewhere in the universe will see us as a friendly neighbor, a threat, or simply a nuisance that should be wiped out simply because we’re annoying them.
“Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they could reach,” Hawking famously said. “If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each new planet for material to build more spaceships so they could move on. Who knows what the limits would be?”
For now, it appears that the strange object that just visited us isn’t relaying messages with alien handlers on a distant star system, and maybe that’s for the best.
Boy Remembers His Past As An Extraterrestrial Being & Provides Startling Details
You might not know it, but children remembering their past lives is nothing new. Reincarnation is no doubt a fascinating subject, even within the scientific community.
Carl Sagan, American astronomer and astrobiologist, even acknowledged the fact that reincarnation deserves serious study, stating that: “children sometimes report details of a previous life, which, upon checking, turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.” (source)
There are some great examples, many of which have been uncovered by University of Virginia psychiatrist Jim Tucker, who is arguably the world’s leading researcher on this topic.
In 2008, he published a review of cases that were suggestive of reincarnation in the journal Explore.
A typical reincarnation case, described by Jim, includes subjects reporting a past life experience. The interesting thing is that 100 percent of subjects who report past life remembrance are children.
The average age when they start remembering their past life is at 35 months, and their descriptions of events and experiences from their past life are often extensive and remarkably detailed.
These children remember things that would be impossible to know about the person they claim that they were. They’ve been taken to their families, confirmed addresses, professions, and various other details of the lives of the people that they used to be.
We recently published an article of 6 great examples that go into more detail; you can read that article here. Again, these are truly astounding, and there would be no other way for these children to know these details.
I personally believe that reincarnation is real, but I don’t think it’s the only option for what takes place after death. I believe it is one of many possible paths for the soul. I believe some souls can reincarnate, as we’ve seen above, into another life.
I also believe some can reincarnate onto other planets, as beings we would consider to be alien. Furthermore, I believe reincarnation is just one option for a soul.
Other possibilities include the option to travel to other dimensions and experience a life there, or to completely forgo reincarnation and experience life in the non-physical realm, free from a physical body.
Perhaps a soul must continue to reincarnate until certain lessons are learned to move to another ‘level?’ Who knows. Perhaps there is an origin from which all souls stem from? So many questions, so many possibilities, and reincarnation could be one of many.
Below is a a video of Boriska in an interview conducted by Kerry Cassidy of Project Camelot. If you went through the cases in the link above, this one is very different, as this one involves a previous life on the planet Mars.
This is no ordinary boy. His mother states that he began speaking at just four months, and pronouncing full words shortly after. At eight months he was speaking in sentences, and at the age of two he could read.
He become a local celebrity for being so intelligent, and when he turned three he could name all of the planets in the Solar System, how many galaxies there were, and a lot more. He knew so much about astronomy that would be impossible for a child of his age.
He also remembers one of his past lives on Mars, where his incarnation apparently took place millions of years ago. In the interview, he made a number of statements such as:
“People from Mars traveled in many galaxies and planetary systems.”
“There were ships of an airplane type. They were triangular. There were ships like a drop.”
He said that these ships used “plasma power, ion power. If they used gasoline the fuel ran out too fast, the engines were too powerful.”
He also talked about teleportation, saying that “portal is the same like teleport. It slows down time and opens a kind of a portal where time is speeding up fast…I can’t say exactly.
“I don’t remember. It opens on one side and in a few seconds or even minutes if the transfer is far away it opens another area of space.”
“Not all ships had the same principle. Ships with plasma engines were limited to travel only in the Solar System on high speed. The ships in a shape of a drop were carrying other ships.”
“Each race had its own technology and innovations. For example, if we had plasma and ion engines others had energy engines.”
He spoke about other people from other planets, planetary cooperation, and wars as well. He also spoke on people that still live on Mars, but who live beneath the surface and inside of the planet. According to him, they breath CO2.
The interview is very detailed and if this interests you, you can watch the whole interview below.
Here is the link to the original interview. Unfortunately, it was not working when we attempted to upload it, but wanted to give credit to the original YouTube channel as it (this particular interview) has amassed almost 2 million views.
Information To Further Validate Some Of Boriska’s Claims
It wasn’t long ago when NASA called for a press conference to announce a major discovery regarding the planet Mars. During the meeting, they revealed some pretty shocking information, completely changing what we once thought about the “red” planet that, suddenly, doesn’t seem so red anymore.
They announced that Mars actually contains rivers of flowing water. What we once believed to be an arid and rocky desert of a planet is actually seasonal, not unlike our own planet Earth.
Lujendra Ojha, a planetary scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, made the discovery by using images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The quotes below are from this press conference if not otherwise sourced.
“Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past … [and] liquid water has been found on Mars.”
– James Green, NASA director of planetary sciences
Obviously, with the announcement that there is water on Mars, the possibility of life near the surface becomes ever more plausible. The press conference also goes into more details about the atmosphere and condition of Mars, and how the planet could have supported life in the past.
“We are going to Mars, our journey to Mars is a science led expedition right now, but soon I hope we’ll be sending humans to the red planet to explore and science will lead the way.
“And today’s announcement of a really fascinating result about current water on Mars is one of the reasons why I feel it’s even more imperative that we send astrobiologists and planetary scientists to Mars to explore the question of, ‘Is there current life on Mars?’”
– John Grunsfeld, five time space flown astronaut, Associate Administrator Head of NASA Science Mission Directive
Here is an interesting quote, given that Boriska said even today, people are living underneath the planet.
“The possibility of life in the interior of Mars has always been very high. There’s certainly water somewhere in the crust of Mars … It’s very likely, I think, that there is life somewhere in the crust of Mars.” – Alfred McEwen, Principal Investigator, HiRISE, University of Arizona
Below are some more interesting quotes, because the boy also said that the planet went through some massive climate shifts.
“The more we observe Mars, the more information we’re getting that it really is a fascinating planet, from the Curiosity Rover we now know that Mars once was like a planet very much like Earth, with long salty seas, with fresh water lakes, probably with snow capped peaks and clouds and a water cycle just like we’re studying here on Earth… Something has happened to Mars, it lost its water.”
– John Grunsfeld, five time space flown astronaut, Associate Administrator Head of NASA Science Mission Directive
John also goes on to discuss the high likelihood that Mars previously sustained life, before whatever happened to the planet that led to its change in climate. Scientists are still struggling to work out what exactly that event or series of events may have been.
“Mars is the planet most like Earth … [and in the past,] Mars was a very different planet, it had an extensive atmosphere, and in fact it had what we believe was a huge ocean, perhaps as large as two thirds the Northern Hemisphere.
“And that ocean may have been as much as a mile deep. So Mars indeed three billion years ago had extensive water resources. But something happened. Mars suffered a major climate change and lost its surface water.”
– James Green, NASA director of planetary physics
These scientists emphasized the fact that something happened to cause major climate change. In the interview above, the boy also speaks to that.
According to Dr. John Brandenburg, PhD, and plasma physicist, life on Mars was eradicated by nuclear war.
He believes that a couple of intelligent civilizations from ancient history were responsbile for this, and in his published works, argues that the coloration and composition of Martian soil points to a series of “mixed-fission explosions” that led to nuclear fallout on the planet. (source) (Life And Death On Mars: The New Mars Synthesis)
Like the astronauts quoted above, Brandenburg is no crackpot. He was involved in the Clementine Mission to the Moon, which was part of a joint space project between the Ballistic Missile Defence Organization (BMDO) and NASA. The mission discovered water at the Moon’s poles in 1994. He was the deputy manager of that mission. (Source: page 16 of 18) (source) (source)
General Stubblebine is a retired United States Major General. He was also the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), and one of America’s most distinguished soldiers and Chief of U.S. Army Intelligence, with 16,000 soldiers under his command, said this about Mars:
“There are structures on the surface of Mars. I will tell you for the record that there are structures underneath the surface of Mars that cannot be seen by the Voyager cameras that went by in 1976.
“I will also tell you that there are machines on the surface of Mars and there are machines under the surface of Mars that you can look at, you can find out in detail, you can see what they are, where they are, who they are and a lot of detail about them.”
- (Dolan, Richard. UFOs And The National Security State: New York: Richard Dolan Press)
Stubblebine was a major proponent of the U.S. governments StarGate Project & remote viewing.
By Arjun Walia
Humanity's Expansion into Deep Space Is Inevitable, Industry Experts Say
Dwarf Planet Ceres' Bright Spots Suggest an Ancient Ocean
"It's possible there is still brine coming up to the surface," lead author Nathan Stein, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Space.com. "It's certainly intriguing." [Awesome Ceres Photos by NASA's Dawn Spacecraft]
Stein and his team categorized the more than 300 bright patches on Ceres' surface into four groups, while planetary geologist Lynnae Quick, of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., examined what could be driving the spots' differences. Along with Carol Raymond, the deputy principal investigator for NASA's Dawn mission, which has been orbiting Ceres since March 2015, the pair presented their results here at the American Geophysical Union meeting on Tuesday (Dec. 12).
As Dawn approached Ceres in the spring of 2015, the spacecraft spotted a handful of bright glints on the dwarf planet's surface. Further investigation revealed a wealth of spots made of salts stretching across the planet, almost all of them in or around craters. Variations in the spots' appearance have helped scientists better understand how they may have formed.
Stein found that the most reflective material on Ceres tends to lie at the bottom of craters. Some of the first spots identified sit on the floor of 57-mile-wide (92 kilometers) Occator Crater, which hosts two prominent bright areas, Cerealia Facula in the center and Vinalia Faculae to the east. Cerealia Faculae is a collection of the brightest material on Ceres, spread over a 6-mile-wide (10 km) pit with a small dome in its center. Vinalia Faculae is fainter and slightly less reflective.
Another type of Ceres bright material perches on the rims of craters, streaking downward. More common than the material on the floor, this stuff was most likely exposed by objects that crashed into Ceres. The third class of material, spread around the edges of craters, was probably ejected by impactors, the researchers determined.
The "lonely mountain" Ahuna Mons, with bright spots on its flanks, is in a class by itself. The only big peak on Ceres, it has no clear connection with a crater. Instead, scientists think Ahuna Mons is most likely a cryovolcano, created by the accumulation of flowing ice.
Freshly exposed material is bright, but, over millions of years, the spots slowly mix with the dark material that covers the surface of Ceres. In the past, thousands of brightly gleaming spots may have speckled the dwarf planet, the researchers said. [What Would It Be Like to Live on Ceres?]
The new study will appear in the journal Icarus.
The source of the bright spots was a question that plagued Quick. Although the spots could have formed via several different means, the team members believe they most likely originated from pockets of brine beneath the surface — the remnants of a liquid layer in the past.
"We believe these bright spots are a sign that Ceres once had a global ocean," Quick said. In fact, she suggested that the activity that is happening on the dwarf planet may also be occurring on a larger scale on the icy moons of the outer solar system, such as Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's satellite Enceladus.
If this interpretation is correct, Ceres' ocean slowly froze out over time, leaving behind what Stein called "discrete pockets of brines." Scientists suspect these are isolated pools rather than a complete liquid layer, because the bright spots themselves are discontinuous, he explained. "Not every new crater exposes [brines]," Stein said.
This new material heals—not cracks—under pressure
What if you could reassemble your coffee cup like a LEGO set after it shattered on the floor? For years, researchers have been trying to develop healable polymers, but they’ve either been too soft to be practical, or they’ve required high temperatures to merge the pieces back together. Now, researchers have developed a new kind of semitransparent polymer called TUEG3 (poly[thioureas] and ethylene glycol), that maintains both rigidity and healing properties, without requiring any external heating.
All that’s needed is a little bit of force. The healing process relies on hydrogen bonds, the electrostatic “glue” that keeps the polymer’s atoms together. The hydrogen bonds form in a such a way that the polymer doesn't crystallize, giving the molecular chains the ability to move freely, and easily combine when pieces of the substance are compressed. After being cut and gently compressed for 30 seconds, a 2-square-centimeter sheet of the new material can hold 300 grams of weight, roughly the same as a full can of soda, the researchers report today in Science. In the future, this rigid polymer could be used in the manufacturing of electronics, and maybe one day help put your mug back together before your coffee’s done brewing.
doi:10.1126/science.aar7628
What Force Created These Bizarre Cubes in Antarctica's Ice?
Oumuamua - Le mystère demeure autour de l’astéroïde qui nous vient d’un autre système sidéral
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Récemment détecté (c'était le 19 Octobre 2017) on savait déjà que ce planétoïde dispose d’une forme exceptionnelle qui rappelle celle d’un cigare, mais voilà maintenant que ce couleur intrigue elle aussi.
L’astéroïde est en effet d’une couleur tirant vers le rouge ce qui est anormal et ce qui intrigue particulièrement les scientifiques.
C'est pourquoi de nombreux chercheurs apportent dorénavant leur contribution à l’étude de cet énigmatique messager (Oumuamua en Hawaïen).
L’étude de sa lumière, indique en effet qu’il doit contenir une grande quantité de métal mais aussi de la matière organique.
Parallèlement, il n’est pas entouré de poussières ou de gaz comme le serait une comète.
Alors de quoi s’agit-il ?
Certains chercheurs tels que le professeur Avi Loeb qui œuvre au Centre d’astrophysique d’Harvard, vont jusqu’à se demander s’il n’aurait pas pu être envoyé par une civilisation extra-terrestre.
Dans ce cadre, Andrew Siemion, de l’Université de Californie à Berkeley indique « Le plus probable, c’est qu’Oumuamua est un astéroïde, éjecté de son étoile hôte lors d’événements chaotiques il y a des milliards d’années et qui s’est retrouvé par hasard dans notre système solaire. Mais il y a d’autres hypothèses si fantastiques qu’elles méritent aussi d’être étudiées».
Pas de signaux artificiels pour l'instant ...
Mercredi 13 Décembre 2017, le radiotélescope de Green Bank installé en Virginie Occidentale aux USA a été orienté sur Oumuamua dans l’objectif d’essayer de savoir si cet objet ne pourrait être le fruit d’une civilisation lointaine.
Cette étude est conduite sous l’égide du programme de recherche privé Breakthrough Listen, dédié à la recherche de signes d’intelligence extraterrestre. Doté de 100 millions de dollars, il est financé par le milliardaire russe Yuri Milner et soutenu par le célèbre astrophysicien britannique Stephen Hawking.
Les premières conclusions n’ont pour l’heure pas mis en évidence d’éventuels signaux artificiels mais la surveillance et les analyses des données continuent.
Source - www.ouest-france.fr - lien ici
5 ‘gestoorde’ complottheorieën van David Icke die nu bewaarheid lijken te worden. Had hij al die tijd gelijk?
De bekende Britse complottheoreticus David Icke kreeg bekendheid toen hij op tv aankondigde dat de aarde in handen is van een groep reptielen die van gedaante kunnen verwisselen.
Hij werd vaak belachelijk gemaakt in de mainstream media, maar het begint er steeds meer op te lijken dat Icke weleens gelijk zou kunnen hebben.
De 65-jarige Icke werd geridiculiseerd omdat hij zei dat de wereld waarin we leven een holografische simulatie is die is gecreëerd door zogeheten ‘Archontische Reptilians’.
Hoewel dit op het eerste gezicht een absurde complottheorie lijkt te zijn, ondersteunen de nieuwste wetenschappelijke theorieën het idee dat we in een gesimuleerd holografisch universum leven.
NASA-wetenschapper Rich Terrile zei onlangs dat hij gelooft dat het universum een ‘digitale holografische simulatie’ is die moet zijn gemaakt door een bepaalde intelligentie. Dit is precies wat Icke jaren geleden in zijn boeken schreef.
In januari dit jaar kondigden onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Southampton aan dat we waarschijnlijk in een hologram leven en dat alles wat we zien wordt geprojecteerd op een plat 2D-oppervlak.
Met andere woorden: alles wat je ziet en ervaart is mogelijk, zoals Icke zegt, een illusie.
Twee jaar voor de aanslagen in New York voorspelde Icke dat in de VS ‘tussen 2000-2002 een zware aanval op een grote stad zou plaatsvinden’.
Of je het nu eens bent met Icke of niet, zijn voorspelling kwam uit.
De Brit zegt al heel lang dat kunstmatige intelligentie een ramp zal zijn voor de mensheid en dat films als de Matrix en Terminator alvast een voorproefje zijn.
Hij werd belachelijk gemaakt vanwege deze uitspraken, maar onlangs heeft professor Stephen Hawking gewaarschuwd voor het gevaar van kunstmatige intelligentie.
“Kunstmatige intelligentie kan het slechtste zijn wat de mensheid ooit is overkomen,” zei hij.
Icke claimde in 1998 dat oud-premier Sir Edward Heath niet alleen een pedofiel, maar ook een satanist was.
Tien jaar na de dood van Heath, in 2005, stelde de politie van Wiltshire een onderzoek in naar beschuldigingen van seksueel misbruik tegen hem.
Er zijn nooit juridische stappen ondernomen tegen Icke, wat volgens hem ‘veelzeggend’ is.
Icke voorspelde de financiële crisis van 2008 al in de jaren negentig. Hij zei dat financiële manipulatie zou leiden tot een catastrofale financiële neergang, en dat is precies wat er gebeurde.
Hij claimde verder dat een geheimzinnige elite het meesterbrein achter de crash was en zo een nieuw bankensysteem wilde introduceren.
De complottheoreticus voorspelt nu dat er een nog grotere crash aan zit te komen.
Foto: SlimVirgin Wikimedia Commons
[The London Economic via SWNS]Giant Interstellar Alien Craft Near Orion Nebula Shows Up Again – The Truth Is Out There!
Artificial intelligence just discovered two new exoplanets This is what happens when you turn machine learning loose on the cosmos. By Rob Verger
The Kepler-90 system; AI helped discover the planet called Kepler-90i.
NASA/Wendy Stenzel
A machine learning technique called a neural network has identified two new exoplanets in our galaxy, NASA scientists and a Google software engineer announced today, meaning that researchers now know about two new worlds thanks to the power of artificial intelligence
Discovering new exoplanets—as planets outside our solar system are called—is a relatively common occurrence, and a key instrument that scientists use to identify them is the Kepler Space Telescope, which has already spotted a confirmed 2,525 exoplanets. But what’s novel about this announcement is that researchers used a AI system to spot these two new worlds, now dubbed Kepler-90i and Kepler-80g. The planet known as 90i is especially interesting to astronomers, as it brings the total number of known planets orbiting that star to eight, a tie with our own system. The average temperature on 90i is thought to be quite balmy: more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Just as exoplanet discoveries are common, so too are neural networks, which is software that learns from data (as opposed to a program that have had rules programmed into it). Neural networks power language translation on Facebook, the FaceID system on the new iPhone X, and image recognition on Google Photos. A classic example of how a neural network learns is to consider pictures of cats and dogs—if you feed labeled images of cats into a neural network, later it should be able to identify new images that it thinks has cats in them because it has been trained to do so.
“Neural networks have been around for decades, but in recent years they have become tremendously successful in a wide variety of problems,” Christopher Shallue, a senior software engineer at Google AI, said during a NASA teleconference Thursday. “And now we’ve shown that neural networks can also identify planets in data collected by the Kepler Space Telescope.”
Astronomers need tools like telescopes to search for exoplanets, and artificial intelligence researchers need vast amounts of labeled data. In this case, Shallue trained the neural network using 15,000 labeled signals they already had from Kepler. Those signals, called light curves, are measures of how a star’s light dips when a planet orbiting it passes between the star and Kepler’s eye, a technique called the transit method. Of the 15,000 signals, about 3,500 were light curves from a passing planet, and the rest were false positives—light curves made by something like a star spot, but not an orbiting planet. That was so the neural network could learn the difference between light curves made by passing planets and signals from other phenomena.
Eventually, Shallue and his collaborator, Andrew Vanderburg, a NASA Sagan postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas, Austin, turned the neural network loose on data from Kepler that wasn’t in its original training set. It sifted through data from 670 star systems, focusing on weak signals that could possibly represent a previously undiscovered planet. And sure enough, they found two new worlds.
“Machine learning really shines in situations where there is too much data for humans to examine for themselves,” Shallue said.
Looking through the weak signals from those 670 stars and finding two planets was “proof of concept” that their neural network works, he says. Their next step is to use it on much more data: signals from about 150,000 additional stars. And Shallue concedes that he’s no an astronomy expert, which is why he collaborated on the project with Vanderburg.
While artificial intelligence tools have been used in this kind of research before, “this is the first time a neural network specifically has been used to identify a new expoplanet,” Shallue said during the press conference.
Mary Beth Griggs contributed research to this report.
NASA ontdekt miniversie van ons zonnestelsel dankzij artificiële intelligentie- HLN.be
Bron:Belga
De ontdekking toont aan dat er een ander stelsel bestaat “gelijkaardig aan ons zonnestelsel met hetzelfde aantal planeten in een baan rond een enkele ster”, aldus de NASA.
Kepler-90 is iets warmer en groter dan onze zon en ligt op 2.545 lichtjaren van de aarde. Wetenschappers hadden al weet van zeven planeten rond de ster, nu is een achtste ontdekt: de rotsachtige exoplaneet Kepler-90i.
De achtste planeet is ontdekt dankzij ‘machine learning’ van technologiebedrijf Google. Machine learning is een vorm van kunstmatige intelligentie waarbij computers leren. In dit geval leerden de computers planeten te identificeren door in de gegevens van de Kepler-telescoop gevallen te vinden, waarbij de telescoop signalen registreerde van planeten buiten ons zonnestelsel (exoplaneten).
Zelfs Stephen Hawking denkt dat deze mysterieuze sigaarvormige asteroïde een buitenaards schip zou kunnen zijn
Een wetenschappelijk instituut dat wordt gesteund door Stephen Hawking onderzoekt momenteel of een sigaarvormig object in ons zonnestelsel een buitenaards ruimteschip is.
Astronomen van de Universiteit van Hawaï ontdekten het mysterieuze hemellichaam in oktober, toen het de aarde passeerde.
Het is het eerste object in het zonnestelsel dat uit een ander deel van de Melkweg lijkt te komen.
Oumuamua heeft een vreemde, langgerekte vorm, wat erg ongewoon is voor een asteroïde. De hoge snelheid, ruim 300.000 kilometer per uur, doet daarnaast vermoeden dat het niet om de zon draait en ons zonnestelsel op den duur weer zal verlaten.
Breakthrough Listen, een project dat wordt gesteund door de Britse natuurkundige Stephen Hawking en de Russische miljardair Joeri Milner, onderzoekt nu of Oumuamua mogelijk een buitenaards schip is.
Met een radiotelescoop in de VS is op woensdag ‘geluisterd’ naar het mysterieuze object, in een poging elektromagnetische signalen op te vangen die niet in de natuur kunnen worden gemaakt.
De detectie van zulke signalen kan erop wijzen dat het object geen interstellaire asteroïde, maar een buitenaards ruimteschip is.
“Onderzoekers die zich bezighouden met ruimtetransport hebben eerder gesuggereerd dat een interstellair ruimteschip hoogstwaarschijnlijk sigaar- of naaldvormig zal zijn, omdat hierdoor schade als gevolg van interstellair gas en stof wordt geminimaliseerd,” aldus Breakthrough Listen in een verklaring.
“Hoewel een natuurlijke oorsprong waarschijnlijker is, kunnen we op dit moment niet met zekerheid zeggen wat het is en Breakthrough Listen is goed in staat om te achterhalen of Oumuamua een artefact is,” vervolgde de organisatie.
Ook als er geen bewijs voor buitenaardse technologie wordt gevonden, kan de zoektocht nog altijd belangrijke informatie over gassen rond het object opleveren.
Voorlopig zijn er nog geen tekenen van buitenaards leven gevonden op Oumuamua.
Foto: Originalwana Wikimedia Commons
[Mirror]Ik zag een UFO en werd meegenomen door buitenaardse wezens. Amerikaanse rapper baart opzien
De Amerikaanse rapper Kendrick Lamar (30) beweert dat hij als klein jongetje een UFO heeft gezien en werd meegenomen door buitenaardse wezens. “Ik zou hier eigenlijk niet eens over moeten praten.”
Als 6-jarige zag de rapper naar eigen zeggen een buitenaards ruimteschip en die ervaring heeft een diepe indruk op hem gemaakt.
“Ze gaven me de energie om muziek te maken,” zei hij in een interview met Howard Stern op zender SiriusXM.
“Niemand geloofde me, zelfs mijn moeder niet,” vervolgde hij. “Het is ook moeilijk te beschrijven wat er precies gebeurd is. Het was gewoon onwerkelijk.”
Als Stern vraagt of hij ook ontvoerd werd door aliens, antwoordt de rapper: “Waarschijnlijk wel, dat is ook waarom ik nu muziek maak. Waarschijnlijk gaven ze mij energie.”
“Ik ben er in ieder geval van overtuigd dat er andere levensvormen zijn,” klonk het nog.
Lamar werd onlangs genomineerd voor zeven Grammy Awards. Zijn album DAMN. was dit jaar een groot succes.
In februari volgend jaar zal hij een optreden geven in de Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. De artiest wordt dan vergezeld door zijn Britse collega James Blake.
Het optreden maakt deel uit van zijn Europese tournee. Die draagt de titel DAMN., afgeleid van zijn meest recente, gelijknamige album.
Beluister het fragment hieronder:
Foto: Joerundfp Wikimedia Commons
[HLN]GROOT MOEDERSCHIP OP BEZOEK BIJ ISS RUIMTESTATION ( VIDEO )
GROOT MOEDERSCHIP OP BEZOEK BIJ ISS RUIMTESTATION ( VIDEO )
Het is een tijdlang enigszins rustig geweest rondom het ISS, het International Space Station, maar dat lijkt nu weer voorbij.
Er zijn nogal spectaculaire beelden opgedoken die moeilijk te verklaren zullen zijn voor NASA en die wijzen in de richting van een behoorlijk groot moederschip.
Degene die het volgende fenomeen heeft weten vast te leggen, is de bij trouwe lezers inmiddels bekende Youtube gebruiker Streetcap1.
In de loop der jaren verschenen talloze UFO's bij het ISS, maar het komt niet vaak voor dat er een op bezoek komt die zo groot is als die te zien in de onderstaande afbeelding.
Je ziet het moederschip zoals we het maar even zullen noemen, verschijnen als een serie lichten, zoals vastgelegd door de camera van het ruimtestation. Dat het iets bijzonders is, is zeker want Streetcap1 heeft ook de beelden die wat vroeger zijn gemaakt bekeken en daar staat niets op.
Even later verschijnen er enkele blauwe stralen. Wat dat zijn weten we niet, maar het lijkt wel enigszins op blauwe laserstralen.
Op de volgende afbeelding zie je de lichten van wat dichterbij en is ook duidelijker te zien dat die ogenschijnlijk afzonderlijke lichten bij hetzelfde object horen.
En dan plotsklaps verschijnt er een soort rode laserstraal in de richting van het ISS. Wat de bedoeling is van die laserstraal is ook niet duidelijk, maar verrassend is het wel.
In de volgende video zie je de bewegende beelden en het commentaar van Streetcap1 zelf. De man is altijd heel voorzichtig en houdt ook nog rekening met de mogelijkheid dat het misschien lensflares zijn.
Wat duidelijk is, is dat er een groot object zichtbaar is dat er eerst niet was en dat er rode en blauwe laserstralen ergens voor worden gebruikt. Red pill, blue pil.
Wie een oplossing weet voor dit raadsel mag het zeggen.
UFO Spotted Moving Over North Korea
Another UFO sighting has sent most conspiracy theorists into a frenzy. The unidentified flying object was spotted moving over the rogue nation of North Korea.
The live-feed of the International Space Station (ISS) enabled the eagle-eyed viewers to spot UFOs moving over the country.
The copy of the video was posted to YouTube. It shows a bright object zooming over the land in D.P.R.K. The white object can be seen shooting across the country in the footage.
YouTube channel UFOmania said that the UFO entered the upper layers of the atmosphere above the communist nation. It added that the object was caught on a camera installed on the International Space Station.
Some believe the mysterious object is a UFO of alien origin, while others think it could be a military craft.
Many people are convinced of the authenticity of the video.
YouTube user Frank Mccracken think it cannot be a plane. Another commenter onigk612 believes it is a UFO because it is an unidentified flying object, but not an alien in origin. He thinks it is a missile test.
Others have a more natural explanation for the strange sighting, saying that it is probably just a Sun’s reflection.
