Big galaxies suck — and no, I’m not being rude. I just mean that they absorb other, smaller galaxies when they run into each other, like a cannibalistic version of bumper cars. It’s how they survive. But some galaxies manage to avoid collisions, and one in a thousand keep all their properties from formation intact. Now, researchers have found one of those oldies, also called a relic galaxy, in our cosmic neighborhood.

Its name is NGC 1277. It has a “million million” stars. It’s at the center of the Perseus cluster, the biggest concentration of galaxies near the Milky Way, which is about 225 million lightyears away from us. In other words, it would take the Millennium Falcon 27 years to get there, if Han Solo was piloting. That seems really far — especially since we can’t travel in hyperspace yet — but it’s actually relatively close.

Best of all, we can affectionately refer to NGC 1277 as a “red nugget” galaxy,thanks to its un-evolved, high-redshift color distribution. NGC 1277 looks the same as it did 12 billion years ago (for context, the universe has only been around for about 13.8 billion years). It’s the fully intact Tyrannosaurus skeleton of the universe.

Researchers Michael Beasley and Ignacio Trujillo of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the University of La Laguna were able to confirm the relic status of NGC 1277 by studying its globular clusters with the Hubble Space Telescope. What they saw was a massive expanse of — you guessed it — red.

Globular clusters are groups of stars formed at the birth of a galaxy that orbit its outskirts. Red clusters are composed of more heavy elements than helium and orbit closer to the galaxy’s center. Blue clusters have fewer metals and are seen only as a result of galactic collisions. NGC 1277 only has red clusters, the largest galaxy of its size to have been observed without them.

That means every star formed in NGC 1277 was formed within 100 million years of its birth, within the first billion years of the universe’s existence. The Milky Way’s rate of one star a year pales in comparison to NGC 1277’s 1,000 stars a year. This makes for a perfect opportunity to study a vast galaxy that remains basically unchanged since the dawn of everything.

So, how did NGC 1277 last all these billions of years without accumulating blue clusters? Beasley and Trujillo think that NGC 1277 formed as a satellite to the central galaxy of the Perseus cluster, which absorbed any material that could have impacted its satellite. Now, NGC 1277 still orbits that central galaxy, at 1,000 kilometers a second. Beasley and Trujillo are hoping to observe more global clusters with the Hubble to find even more relic galaxies.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

Scientists just found the first relic galaxy — it’s remained unchanged since the early universe

Scientists collect interstellar dust that formed the Earth and solar system

 BY TIBI PUIU

Researchers have discovered an enormous body of interstellar dust that predates the formation of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago. The findings might revolutionize our understanding of how the solar system came to be, as well as all other planetary bodies.

Artist impression of an early solar system.

Credit: NASA.

It sounds unbelievable, but some of the original interstellar dust that went to form the sun, Earth, and all the other planets in the solar system can be still be found floating around in our neighborhood, even hitting our atmosphere from time to time. Presolar dust particles can no longer be found in the inner solar system, as it was long ago destroyed, reformed, and reaggregated in multiple phases. However, presolar dust can still be found in the outer solar system, specifically in some comets.

When these comets pass close enough to the sun, they release presolar dust that can reach Earth’s orbit and settle through the atmosphere, where it can be collected and later studied. Dr. Hope Ishii of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and her colleagues used electron microscopy to study such dust particles, as well as data gathered from the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) aboard the Cassini Saturn orbiter during its two-decade mission.

An electron micrograph of an interplanetary dust particle of likely cometary origin.

Credit: Hope Ishii

Ishii and colleagues write that the GEMS likely formed in the interstellar medium due to grain shattering, amorphization, and erosion from supernovae shocks, then later went through subsequent periods of aggregation. Irradiation likely provided enough energy for the amorphous silicates which comprise the dust to absorb small amounts of metal atoms, the authors reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

“With repeated cycling in and out of cold molecular clouds, mantled dust and any aggregates were repeatedly and progressively partially destroyed and reformed. Cassini mission data suggest the presence of iron metal in contemporary interstellar dust,” the researchers wrote in their study.

This first generation of GEMS aggregated with crystalline grains that were likely transported from the hot inner-solar nebula, creating second-generation aggregates. Later this 2nd generation of aggregates was likely incorporated into small, icy cometary bodies.

The researchers concluded that the grains they studied represent surviving pre-solar interstellar dust that formed the very building blocks of planets and stars. As such, they provide unique insight into a pre-solar system environment, ultimately telling us how our planet and others like it came to be. We only have a rough picture of how our solar system formed from a huge disk of dust and gas, and these little grains could be the missing pieces that complete the puzzle. In the future, the researchers plan on collecting more comet dust, particularly that sourced from more well-protected comets that pass by the sun.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

Opportunity braves the worst sand storm it’s ever faced, might not make it

 BY ALEXANDRU MICU

This global map of Mars shows a growing dust storm as of June 6, 2018. The map was produced by the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. The blue dot indicates the approximate location of Opportunity.
Image and caption credits NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

On Sunday morning, NASA received a transmission from the Opportunity rover. Usually, that’s not really out of its character — but the bot is currently braving a massive sandstorm on the Red Planet. The rover hailed home to let ground control know it still has enough juice in its battery to maintain communications, according to NASA. Science operations, however, remain suspended in a bid to conserve energy.

Oppy phone home

The transmission was a welcome break for NASA engineers, as the dust storm has been steadily picking up steam in the past few days. The rover is weathering it out in Perseverance Valley, shrouded in perpetual night. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter first detected the storm on Friday, June 1. The rover team began preparing contingency plans soon afterward.

It’s not the first such storm Opportunity had to face — it braved another in 2007. This event, however, is much worse than the last one. The storm’s atmospheric opacity (how much light it blocks) has been estimated at 10.8 tau as of Sunday morning — the 2007 storm only reached about 5.5 tau. This is roughly equivalent to the incredible smogs we’ve seen in China. Because of this, the bot cannot use its solar panels to recharge.

The storm has grown to over 18 million square kilometers (7 million square miles) since its detection. Such storms aren’t extreme for Mars, but they are infrequent. NASA doesn’t yet fully understand how they form or build in strength, but they seem to be self-reinforcing — a feedback loop that amplifies itself as it grows. Such storms can last up to several months at a time.

This dust blanket could be what makes or breaks Opportunity’s resolve.

Dusty but not yet dead

You could say it’s an Opportunity to show what you’re made of, little rover!
Image credits NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

I say that because the dust is both a boon and a curse for Opportunity as of now. The rover’s main problems are that it cannot recharge (its solar panels are dusted over, and there’s not enough sunlight) and that communication with ground control is spotty at best (radio signals can’t pierce through the storm).

But the dust also hides a silver lining. Data beamed back by the rover shows its internal temperature is roughly stable at about minus 29 degrees Celsius (minus 20 Fahrenheit). The dust storm — which retains heat — seems to be insulating Opportunity from the extreme temperature swings on Mars’ surface. It’s not an ideal temperature by any means, but it’s still not as bad as it could get.

The team’s worst fears right now is that if the rover experiences cold temperatures for too long, it might damage its batteries. This fate befell Spirit, Opportunity’s twin craft in the Mars Exploration Rover mission, in 2010. Engineers plan to use the network to monitor and administer the rover’s energy levels in the following weeks — they need to somehow save as much battery charge as possible while keeping the rover from getting too cold. It has onboard heaters for this purpose, but they drain a lot of energy. One idea the team is considering is activating other equipment to expel energy, which would heat up the bot.

Science operations have been temporarily put on hold for sunnier days. Mission control has requested additional coverage from NASA’s Deep Space Network, a global system of antennas that talks to all the agency’s deep space probes, in an effort to maintain contact with Opportunity.

But I wouldn’t count Opportunity out just yet. It has proved its mettle aplenty in the past. Not only has it gone through dust storms before, but it made it with surprising gusto — the rover has accrued 15 years in the line of duty despite only being intended to last 90 days.

So hang in there little buddy, and don’t let the cold bite your batteries.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

If we were to travel back in time to a much earlier time in Earth’s history—let’s say one million years before the present day—we might be surprised to see how different things were long ago. Of course, our planet looked very different, as did the varieties of life that lived on it in ancient times. However, there were other things we would notice if we traveled back to this world of the distant past, such as the length of each day on our planet: one million years ago, a typical day lasted only 18 hours.

What would have caused the days of long ago to have been so much shorter? It actually had to do with a phenomenon that is still occurring today, and one that is causing days over the slow passage of time to get longer and longer.

According to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the fact that the moon has slowly been moving further away from the Earth has caused our planet’s rotation to slow down gradually over time. The result of Earth’s spin slowing down, of course, has been lengthier days.

All objects in space exert gravitational influence over one another, in relation to their proximity. The same can be said of all the objects in our solar system, ranging from our sun to the constituent planets each of their moons.

For the study, researchers relied on the science of astrochronology, a process that gauges the age of soil deposits and other sedimentary features astronomically, often in relation to precession—a key factor in what are called Milankovitch cycles—or other astronomical data. With the help of this process, researchers aimed to learn valuable geological about the ancient past, which would produce data nearly as reliable as that which can be studied in the present day.

In the early 20th century, Serbian Mathematician Milutin Milankovitch calculated the periodicity of glacial periods on Earth using information from geological proxies. He determined that the likely governing factors included variations in the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun (eccentricity), as well as its precession, and the Earth’s axial tilt.

Milutin Milankovitch

According to the researchers, “beyond about 1.5 billion years ago, the moon would have been close enough that its gravitational interactions with the Earth would have ripped the moon apart.” Earth possess only one natural satellite, while other planets, such as Mars or Jupiter, have numerous satellites in orbit around them, which are often visible from Earth with the visual aid of a telescope. However, Earth’s moon has played a key role in many of the natural forces at play on our planet over the course of the 4.53 billion years since it was formed.

Combining geological data collected via astrochronological processes with statistical data, the study’s authors were able to gauge periods of “maximum volatility” in the ancient past, partially by focusing on what were known as grapoloids, an extinct form of marine invertebrate once a major zooplankton species during the Early Paleozoic.

“We infer that these cycles influenced graptolite speciation and extinction through climate-driven changes to oceanic circulation and structure,” the study’s authors note. “Our results confirm the existence of Milankovitch grand cycles in the Early Paleozoic Era and show that known processes related to the mechanics of the Solar System were shaping marine macroevolutionary rates comparatively early in the history of complex life.”

Another key focus of the study was a 1.4 billion-year-old area in Northern China known as the Xiamaling Formation, as well as 55 million-year-old proxy samples from Walvis Ridge, a deep ocean feature located in the southern Atlantic. Results of the study revealed variations in the direction of the Earth’s axis of rotation (precession), as well as changes in rotational features over time. This data was used to reliably determine that days on Earth during these earlier periods were much shorter when compared with today, since the distance between Earth and the moon is greater now than it was during the Paleozoic Era.

There are times where the remarkable unity between separate scientific disciplines, and their complementary nature to one another, becomes simply fascinating. Here, we learn about ancient astronomy from the study of geology, though it can be said to some degree that the same applies in reverse as well, ever-broadening our overall understanding of geological deep time. The study, titled “Pacing of Paleozoic macroevolutionary rates by Milankovitch grand cycles,” was co-authored by James S. Crampton, Stephen R. Meyers, Roger A. Cooper, Peter M. Sadler, Michael Foote, and David Harte.

As a final note, for more on Milankovitch cycles and their use in determining climate changes on Earth throughout prehistory, see here; and for more on the concept of geological “deep time,” see here.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Is anyone even paying attention to the skies anymore? Think about it: when is the last time you stared at the stars or spent a few idle minutes just watching the clouds roll by? Maybe that’s one of the reasons social media and smartphones exist – to keep us staring down at our hands as opposed to noticing the many mysterious phenomena occurring above our heads lately. UFO sightings are one thing, but between the many unexplained mystery booms being heard and felt nationwide, all manners of secretive satellite activity, and unmarked aircraft circling American cities, there’s enough man-made weirdness in the skies to suggest some sort of shadowy activity is afoot overheard.

Space War 2020: coming soon to a low Earth orbit near you.

The latest unexplained aerospace mystery comes out of Oak Harbor, Washington where high-definition weather cameras captured a true-to-life unidentified flying object on camera. This one, however, clearly has a terrestrial origin – although nobody seems to want to claim responsibility.

The weather cameras captured two images of what appears to be a missile or rocket launching from the northern end of the Kitsap Peninsula near Hansville, not far from the Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. You might remember that air station from last year when fighter pilots created a skydrawing of a giant phallus in the skies above Washington The footage was captured by Greg Johnson, who runs the Skunk Bay Weather website. Johnson quickly posted the footage to Facebook, writing that neither the nearby Naval Air Station Whidbey Island nor the Department of Defense claimed responsibility for the launch.

Naval Air Station Whidbey Island

Local news outlets in the Pacific Northwest have reached out for comment, but so far nobody is offering any answers. Is this merely a classified military launch, or is something far more secretive going on here? These so-called “black” rocket launches seem to be becoming more common over the last year, with everyone from SpaceX to the good ol’ fashion Soviet Union Russia joining in on the clandestine-but-quite-visible fun without offering any explanations. Don’t we have a right to know what’s going on above our heads?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

THE ERIDANUS VOID: A MEGAMASSIVE BLACK HOLE ONE-BILLION LIGHT YEARSACROSS

The apparent development of a large void of some billion light-years in diameter in the Constellation Eridanus appears to be improbable given current cosmological models. A radical and controversial theory proposes that it is a “universe-in-mass black hole” rather than hypothetical dark matter responsible for the phenomenon described as the expanding-accelerating universe. This radical theory of cosmology suggests that stars at the edge of the Hubble length universe are being consumed by a universe-in-mass black hole.

In August of 2007, astronomers at the University of Minnesota located a gigantic hole in the universe. This empty space, stretching nearly a billion light-years across, is devoid of any matter such as galaxies, stars, and gas, and neither does it contain the strange and mysterious dark matter, which can be detected but not seen.

Empty places in the universe are not uncommon. It is already known that matter tends to clump and form stars and galaxies, clusters and superclusters, due to the pulling force of gravity. So astronomers have already seen places in the universe where there are groups of matter and places where matter is more scarce. But this new discovery is much larger than any previously known “hole”.

“Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size,” explains Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. Rudnick was one of the researchers to find the hole. 

Rudnick and his team studied data from a survey of the entire sky imaged by the Very Large Array radio telescope. A map of this area of the sky was already known to be an anomaly. It had been called a “cold spot” after a satellite that charts the cosmic microwave background radiation discovered it was less warm than its surroundings. (Overall the cosmic microwave background radiation is exceptionally cold, and the difference seen was only in millionths of a degree.)

The area of sky in which the hole exists lies in the direction of the constellation Eridanus. Eridanus is the constellation of the River, and can be found winding below Taurus and Cetus.

But the hole is not a part of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which is a remnant of the Big Bang. The hole lies between six to 10 billion light-years away. The cold spot is a result of the CMB radition passing through this blank area on its way to Earth. Supporters of the standard model Big Bang theory say the region is colder because of dark energy.

“The Eridanus black hole sits like a giant black spider in an ocean of nothingness, having swallowed up all surrounding galaxies, gas, and light, ...

Dark energy, which has yet to be verified, can be seen as the opposite of gravity. While gravity pulls matter together, dark energy is what is causing the universe to expand, and at an ever-increasing rate. When the radiation from the Big Bang passed through this void in the universe, it had less energy than the radiation that passed through normal regions of space. In a simplistic explanation, the radiation is given a boost when it nears the pull of matter such as galaxies, and dark energy allows the radiation to propel away from these areas without losing the boost when gravity would pull it back. The radiation passing through the empty space does not get the boost and the energy, therefore it is slightly colder.

A contrary theory proposed in The Journal of Cosmology suggests that our observable universe orbits a super-supermassive hole just as the stars of entire galaxies orbit and eventually are swallowed by the supermassive black holes at their center. Like the stars closest to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy which have a greater velocity than stars on the outer arms (where the Earth is located), stars at the edge of our known, Hubble-length universe, orbit one of these “universe-in-mass holes” at a greater velocity than those stars further away thus effecting the red shift and dimness of light and creating the illusion the universe is accelerating and exanding. 

The illusion of an “accelerating universe” is due to the gravitational effects of a universe-in-mass black hole at the edge of our Hubble length universe. Stars closest to the hole accelerate to their doom.

Galaxies, stars, planets, moons, molecules, atoms, and so on, are continually recreated and destroyed, and matter and energy, including hydrogen atoms, are continually recycled and reassembled via activities associated with “black holes” also known as graviton-holes, gravity holes, super massive black holes, galaxy-in-mass gravity holes, and universe-in-mass gravity holes, depending on their size and gravity-mass.

In an infinite universe, these galaxy-in-mass black holes become more massive yet and eventually consume all the galaxies which have been caught up by its increasing gravitational grip . Once all surrounding galaxies have been consumed, all that is left is a void, a galaxy-in-mass gravity-hole in the fabric of space-time surrounded by eternal night and empty space.

The billion-light-years across “Eridanus black hole” is typical of black holes which have the gravity-mass of millions of entire galaxies. The Eridanus black hole sits like a giant black spider in an ocean of nothingness, having swallowed up all surrounding galaxies, gas, and light, including radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background. 

Based on an analysis of the NRAO VLA Sky Survey data, Rudnick and his team in fact discovered that there was a significant and rather remarkable absence of galaxies even in the distant space surrounding this hole, in the constellation of Eridanus. Thus, the billion-light-years across “Eridnus black hole” must have consumed the gravity-mass of millions of entire galaxies all of which have been collapsed and concentrated into the singularity of this super-galactic hole.

The billion-light-years across “Eridanus black hole” should not be considered unique or as something abnormally large. There appears to be a gravity-hole which may contain the collective mass of all the galaxies which populate a Hubble length universe and which sits just outside our known Hubble length universe; that is, just beyond that region of space which can be observed.

Elsewhere, Is the he VIRGOHI21 black hole an example of what happens when the gravitional mass of an entire galaxy comes to be bound up in the singularity of a single black hole which becomes a galactic orphan devoid of any stars but which would then begin to draw distant galaxies toward it? Stars and entire galaxies are recycled. Stars grow old and die, becoming white dwarfs, brown dwarfs and black holes (Hawking 1990), all of which eventually, in an infinite universe, are swallowed by the supermassive black hole at the galactic center which becomes even more massive in size until all stars, young and old, within its galaxy, disappear inside. 

VIRGOHI21 has swallowed all the stars of its galaxy and has the gravity of an entire galaxy, an estimated total mass of about 1/10th the Milky Way, ten times more dark matter than ordinary matter, and is surrounded by vast clouds of hydrogen. Because of its galaxy-in-mass gravity, VIRGOHI21 has pulled up to 2000 galaxies toward it, creating the Virgo Cluster. 

More recently, in March 2009, astronomers using the the 1.2-metre UK Schmidt Telescope in Australia published a paper which revealed the discovery of an even larger, 3.5- billion-year-wide void while undertaking the Six Degree Field Galaxy Survey in the southern hemisphere. Enormous cosmic voids and giant concentrations of matter have been observed in a new galaxy survey, one of the biggest completed so far. One of the voids is so large that it is difficult to explain where it came from.

Scientists are still analysing the new map, but a few features stand out immediately. The biggest concentration of matter seen by the survey is a previously known giant pileup of galaxies called the Shapley supercluster, which lies about 600 million light years from Earth.

The survey also found some enormous voids – regions of space that are relatively empty, including one that is about 3.5 billion light years across.

“This is as big as I’ve ever seen,” survey team member John Huchra of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told New Scientist.

Source www.dailygalaxy.com 

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

Extinction may silence advanced civilisations

{ https://climatenewsnetwork.net/ }

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER CLOUDS OF DIAMONDS SHIMMERING AROUND DISTANT STARS

A mysterious “glow” from space has been traced to tiny spinning diamonds found around stars.

For decades, scientists have been able to see a faint signal of microwave light coming from parts of the night sky.

Known as the anomalous microwave emission (AME), the glow was an unexpected discovery that first emerged when astronomers took measurements of microwave radiation in space at the turn of the 21st century.

Now, after years of speculation about this unusual glow, a team led by Dr Jane Greaves at Cardiff University has finally pinpointed its source.

“In a Sherlock Holmes-like method of eliminating all other causes, we can confidently say the best candidate capable of producing this microwave glow is the presence of nanodiamonds around these newly formed stars,” said Dr Greaves.

While nanodiamonds are best known as components of meteorites that fall to Earth, these structures were found inside rings of dust and gas surrounding newly formed stars known as protoplanetary discs.

These discs contain the ingredients that ultimately go on to form new planets, and the scorching hot temperatures found inside them provide the perfect conditions for these tiny carbon crystals to form.

Due to a unique arrangement of atoms, nanodiamonds emit radiation as they spin, leading to the glow detected by astronomers on Earth.

As they spin so exceptionally fast, the waves of radiation they emit are small – microwave sized – rather than larger wavelengths that would likely be drowned out by other sources of radiation from space.

To arrive at these conclusions, Dr Greaves and her team zoomed in on three young stars emitting AME light using incredibly powerful telescopes in West Virginia and Australia.

Prior to this it was assumed that some kind of cosmic particle was responsible for the AME effect, but the most likely candidates were dust grains made from molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

However, the scientists were able to take measurements from the stars’ protoplanetary discs and match them with the known infrared signatures of nanodiamonds – confirming them as the source.

They found that the signal specifically matched that given off by nanodiamonds, with layers of hydrogen-bearing molecules on their surfaces.

“This is the first clear detection of anomalous microwave emission coming from protoplanetary disks,” said Dr David Frayer, a co-author of the paper and astronomer at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia.

These results were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“This is a cool and unexpected resolution of the puzzle of anomalous microwaves radiation,” said Dr Greaves.

“It’s even more interesting that it was obtained by looking at protoplanetary disks, shedding light on the chemical features of early solar systems, including our own.”

The scientists also suggest their findings could have implications for those investigating the early days of the universe following the Big Bang.

If the universe expanded very rapidly – faster than the speed of light – a trace of this phenomenon could be found in the background microwave levels in space.

“This is good news for those who study polarisation of the cosmic microwave background, since the signal from spinning nanodiamonds would be weakly polarised at best,” said Dr Brian Mason, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory who co-authored on the paper.

“This means that astronomers can now make better models of the foreground microwave light from our galaxy, which must be removed to study the distant afterglow of the Big Bang.”

Co-author Dr Anna Scaife from the University of Manchester agreed their discovery was “an exciting result”.

“It’s not often you find yourself putting new words to famous tunes, but ‘AME in the Sky with Diamonds’ seems a thoughtful way of summarising our research,” she said.

Source www.independent.co.uk

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

1 Million Habitable Planets Could (Theoretically) Orbit a Black Hole. Here's How

What is the mysterious object caught on video above a military naval base? Stunned motorist claims to have filmed a 'UFO'

• 22-year-old woman was shocked to spot a disk-shaped object flying through sky
• Junelyn Bitalac pulled over and managed to follow the object's flight path on film
• Online commenters quick to reveal it was caught just  6km from military base 

By LAUREN FERRI FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

A bewildered motorist spotted what appears to be a UFO soaring over the road in front of her while she was driving close to a military naval base.    

Junelyn Bitalac, 22, was on her way home from taking her mother to work in Hasting, Victoria in late May when she observed the object in the air.

She pulled over to take a closer look and was shocked to see a circular object, five metres in diameter, flying smoothly through clear skies.

Ms Bitalac managed to capture the unbelievable object on film, following it on its flight path before it disappeared behind trees. 

After reviewing the video and having no idea what it could be, she posted it online in order to get some answers. 

'I really do believe in aliens and extra-terrestrial life so I was quite amazed to spot what I saw – that's why I pulled out my phone straight away,' Ms Bitalac said. 

The strange object pictured appears to be 5m in diameter and was spotted only 6km from a military naval base in Victoria

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Once the video was re-posted on conspiracy page secureteam10, it managed to gain over 100,000 views in just a matter of hours. 

Some online users observed the fact that Hastings is only 6km away from a naval military based - HMAS Cerberus on the Mornington Peninsula, with one user commenting 'Right next to military base - must be a drone'. 

Junelyn Bitalac was on her way home from taking her mother to work in Hasting, Victoria when she observed the object in the air

Ms Bitalac said that most people who watched the video found the object quite unusual.  

'I have never seen anything like it and have no clue what it was. But it is very interesting that I spotted it so close to a military base.'

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/  }

NASA jaagt op 700 triljoen dollar aan zeldzame ruimtegrondstoffen: “Dit kan de hele wereldeconomie vernietigen” - HLN.be

Bron: NASA, Metro UK, BGR.com, The Guardian

Bankiers van Goldman Sachs zeiden het al: de eerste biljonair (iemand die 1.000 miljard bezit) zal geen cryptobelegger of uitvinder zijn, maar wel een ontmijner van ruimtegrondstoffen. De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA schat de totale waarde van de asteroïden binnen bereik op niet minder dan 700 triljoen dollar. Mocht je dat bedrag verdelen onder de wereldbevolking, dan zou elke mens op aarde 100 miljard dollar toegestopt krijgen. Volgens verschillende experten kan een dergelijke kapitaalsinjectie de wereldeconomie zelfs vernietigen.

Lees ook

Marsjeep Curiosity vindt organisch materiaal op Rode Planeet dat kan wijzen op buitenaards leven

Verschillende bedrijven ontwikkelen al technologieën om ruimtegesteente te ontginnen. Deep Space Industries ontwikkelt momenteel een speciale stoomschroef en het Britse AMC (Asteroid Mining Corporation) wil straks kleine ruimtetuigen uitsturen om platina te ontginnen op asteroïden. Het Amerikaanse bedrijf Planetary Resources, dat gesteund wordt door de beroemde Titanic-regisseur James Cameron, is momenteel druk in de weer met het ontwikkelen van robotvoertuigen die zeldzame grondstoffen van asteroïden kunnen halen.

NASA hoopt tegen 2022 de eerste missie de ruimte in te sturen om asteroïden te ontginnnen. De organisatie schat de totale opbrengst van die missie op zo’n 9.000 biljard euro, dat is 9.000 miljoen miljard, een haast onvatbaar bedrag.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Sweeping gene survey reveals new facets of evolution

 by Marlowe Hood

And who would have thought to trawl through five million of these gene snapshots—called "DNA barcodes"—collected from 100,000 animal species by hundreds of researchers around the world and deposited in the US government-run GenBank database?

That would be Mark Stoeckle from The Rockefeller University in New York and David Thaler at the University of Basel in Switzerland, who together published findings last week sure to jostle, if not overturn, more than one settled idea about how evolution unfolds.

It is textbook biology, for example, that species with large, far-flung populations—think ants, rats, humans—will become more genetically diverse over time.

But is that true?

"The answer is no," said Stoeckle, lead author of the study, published in the journal Human Evolution.

For the planet's 7.6 billion people, 500 million house sparrows, or 100,000 sandpipers, genetic diversity "is about the same," he told AFP.

The study's most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

"This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could," Thaler told AFP.

That reaction is understandable: How does one explain the fact that 90 percent of animal life, genetically speaking, is roughly the same age?

Was there some catastrophic event 200,000 years ago that nearly wiped the slate clean?

Simpler, cheaper

To understand the answer, one has to understand DNA barcoding. Animals have two kinds of DNA.

The one we are most familiar with, nuclear DNA, is passed down in most animals by male and female parents and contains the genetic blueprint for each individual.

The genome—made up of DNA—is constructed with four types of molecules arranged in pairs. In humans, there are three billion of these pairs, grouped into about 20,000 genes.

But all animals also have DNA in their mitochondria, which are the tiny structures inside each cell that convert energy from food into a form that cells can use.

Mitochondria contain 37 genes, and one of them, known as COI, is used to do DNA barcoding.

Unlike the genes in nuclear DNA, which can differ greatly from species to species, all animals have the same set of mitochondrial DNA, providing a common basis for comparison.

Mitochondrial DNA is also a lot simpler, and cheaper, to isolate.

Around 2002, Canadian molecular biologist Paul Hebert—who coined the term "DNA barcode"—figured out a way to identify species by analysing the COI gene.

"The mitochondrial sequence has proved perfect for this all-animal approach because it has just the right balance of two conflicting properties," said Thaler.

'Neutral' mutations

On the one hand, the COI gene sequence is similar across all animals, making it easy to pick out and compare.

On the other hand, these mitochondrial snippets are different enough to be able to distinguish between each species.

"It coincides almost perfectly with species designations made by specialist experts in each animal domain," Thaler said.

In analysing the barcodes across 100,000 species, the researchers found a telltale sign showing that almost all the animals emerged about the same time as humans.

What they saw was a lack of variation in so-called "neutral" mutations, which are the slight changes in DNA across generations that neither help nor hurt an individual's chances of survival.

In other words, they were irrelevant in terms of the natural and sexual drivers of evolution.

How similar or not these "neutral" mutations are to each other is like tree rings—they reveal the approximate age of a species.

Which brings us back to our question: why did the overwhelming majority of species in existence today emerge at about the same time?

Darwin perplexed

Environmental trauma is one possibility, explained Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University.

"Viruses, ice ages, successful new competitors, loss of prey—all these may cause periods when the population of an animal drops sharply," he told AFP, commenting on the study.

"In these periods, it is easier for a genetic innovation to sweep the population and contribute to the emergence of a new species."

But the last true mass extinction event was 65.5 million years ago when a likely asteroid strike wiped out land-bound dinosaurs and half of all species on Earth. This means a population "bottleneck" is only a partial explanation at best.

"The simplest interpretation is that life is always evolving," said Stoeckle.

"It is more likely that—at all times in evolution—the animals alive at that point arose relatively recently."

In this view, a species only lasts a certain amount of time before it either evolves into something new or goes extinct.

And yet—another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there's nothing much in between.

"If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies," said Thaler. "They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space."

The absence of "in-between" species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said.

 Explore further: Far from special: Humanity's tiny DNA differences are 'average' in animal kingdom

{ https://phys.org/ }

Albert K. Bender

On March 29, 2016, Albert Bender died at the age of 94. Most people with an interest in UFOs will know of Bender’s name. He was the man who thrust the Men in Black – and the mystery surrounding them – into the public domain in the 1950s. Bender was not the first person to encounter one of the creepy MIB, but there’s no denying it was thanks to him that the enigmatic issue became known widely. When the “modern era” of Ufology kicked off in June 1947 – thanks to the famous encounter of Kenneth Arnold at Mt. Rainier on the 24^th of the month – it prompted numerous people to get involved in the study of the phenomenon. One of those was Albert Bender.

A resident of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Bender was not just a devotee of all-things ufological. He was also heavily involved in – and interested in – all manner of paranormal, supernatural, and occult phenomena. He even converted his attic-based abode into what he termed his “Chamber of Horrors.” It was a dark and foreboding place filled with paintings of demons, witches, ghosts, and more – even an “altar,” one that was designed to summon up who knows what from who knows where.

As Bender’s interest in UFOs expanded, he established his own journal – Space Review – which attracted a sizeable, worldwide audience. And he created his own group too, the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB). It wasn’t long, however, before things began to go wrong for Bender. As in very wrong. Quite out of the blue, in 1953, Bender quit Ufology. He closed down the IFSB, stopped producing Space Review, and walked away from UFOs. It might be more accurate to say he fled Ufology.

Gray Barker – an author and publisher on matters relative to UFOs – was an acquaintance of Bender and ultimately became a friend. When he learned that Bender’s exit from Ufology was prompted by a series of chilling, intimidating visits from a trio of ghoulish men dressed in black – and with nothing less than glowing eyes and sporting fedoras – Barker knew this was a story that had to be told. And it was: in Barker’s 1956 book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. It should be noted, however, that Barker omitted most of the really weird material, preferring instead to imply that the MIB were from nothing stranger than “the government.” Then, six years later, Bender came briefly out of “retirement” to pen his own book on the eerie affair, Flying Saucers and the Three Men. After which, Bender left Ufology for good.

The purpose of this article is not to delve into all of the intricacies of the Bender controversy, but to demonstrate the incredible extent to which Bender’s account influenced the world of entertainment. Five years after Flying Saucers and the Three Men was published, ABC aired a short-lived, but well-remembered show called The Invaders. Running for just two seasons, The Invaders told the story of a man named David Vincent (actor Roy Thinnes) who finds himself caught up in a nightmarish battle against hostile aliens. In the show, the ETs are able to take on human form. The only things that give them away are their mutated little fingers. The show is filled with MIB imagery: the aliens on The Invaders often drive black cars (as do the real MIB), they wear dark suits and fedoras, they are very good at dishing out threats and intimidation, and they can control the human mind – something which has been reported in many MIB encounters. In other words, there’s very little doubt that the Bender saga had a major influence on how the brains behind The Invaders chose to present the alien menace. Not as bug-eyed little critters or as tentacle-waving monsters, but as emotionless men in suits.

The Invaders is hardly a solitary example of how the Men in Black have infected the world of on-screen entertainment. Indeed, there are many. Of course, the most visible and obvious example is the incredibly successful trilogy of Men in Blackmovies starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. In the movies, the primary characters are “J” and “K” (who were named after MIB pursuer and author John Keel, of The Mothman Propheciesfame). Whereas Bender’s MIB were clearly supernatural in nature, in the movies the Men in Black work for a super-secret agency. Nevertheless there’s no doubt that the Hollywood movies – based on Lowell Cunningham’s Men in Black comic-book series of the 1990s – was, to some degree, inspired by Bender’s experiences.

Then, there’s the equally popular and successful Matrix movies, starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Laurence Fishbourne. Those films, too, have their very own Men in Black. They’re known as “The Agents,” computer programs whose job it is to prevent anyone from getting close to the truth of the simulated world of the Matrix of the movies’ titles. The Agents are the Men in Black in all but name. They are emotionless and threatening, and they wear black suits and black sunglasses.

There are also “The Observers” from Fringe, a sci-fi-themed show that ran on Fox from 2008 to 2013. In the show, the Observers dress in dark suits, wear equally dark fedoras and skinny black ties, and have pale skin and emotionless faces and characters. Would they have even existed without Albert Bender’s widely publicized run-ins with the MIB? Probably not. At the very least, not in the form they appeared in the show.

Finally, we come to a 1998 movie that doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. Its title: Dark City. Not unlike The Matrix in many respects, Dark City – which was released in 1998, one year before The Matrix surfaced – is an intriguing production. It stars Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connolly, Richard O’Brien, and William Hurt. As the title suggests, Dark City revolves around a city which exists in perpetual night. We get to meet the people who inhabit it, and we soon learn that the city is not what it appears to be. In fact, reality itself is not what it appears to be. Dark City, too, has its equivalents of Albert Bender’s threatening thugs from beyond. They’re called “The Strangers.” Long black coats and dark hats are their uniforms.

In my view, and based upon my lengthy studies of the MIB phenomenon, the Strangers of Dark City are the closest fictional things to the real Men in Black. Pale-faced, they surface only at night. Threatening and dangerous, they are mind-controllers and manipulators who exude menace. Indeed, Richard O’Brien’s portrayal of one of the anemic-looking Strangers is masterful. Again, the Albert Bender imagery and story are present for all to see.

Dark City, Men in Black, The Matrix, The Invaders, and Fringe – and more – all owe a debt of gratitude to Albert Bender. Had it not been for that strange and sinister series of encounters in Bender’s “Chamber of Horrors” in the early 1950s, it’s highly unlikely any of those shows and movies would have turned out the way they did.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

On their way home two friends noticed a bright light above Lake Mälaren in Strängnäs, Sweden on June 10, 2018.

Misha who has filmed the object, for about 7 minutes before it disappeared, said the object made no noise and it looked like it sucked water from the lake.

The shortened footage shows a bright light above the lake, a reflection of the light is seen on the water, as well as a strange blue object. A bridge is visible in the background.

Carina Lindqvist who put the video on her channel says “My friend Misha is convinced he has filmed a UFO.”

  

OTHER VIDEOS ( peter2011 )

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

On May 27 of this year I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe titled “UFOs: When Governments Come Clean.” The article specifically focused on three incredible UFO incidents documented by the U.K.’s military in the 1950s. The point of the article was to demonstrate that, despite what more than a few UFO researches have said, government and military agencies do release official papers that pretty much confirm the existence of the UFO phenomenon. Not everything of a sensational nature is withheld. Today, with the above in mind, I thought: why not demonstrate how this situation applies to not just the U.K., but to the United States, too?

On more than a few occasions, I have heard people say words to the effect of, “Nothing of any significance, on UFOs, has ever surfaced under the terms of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.” Time and again, I have seen people in Ufology loudly proclaim that all of the “good” material is withheld by the alleged “Black Budget” or “Special Access Programs” that secretly oversee official research into UFOs.

Certainly, there’s no doubt in my mind that important material on the UFO phenomenon most assuredly is withheld from us. But, to maintain that nothing – or hardly anything – of an incredible nature has ever surfaced via FOIA is ridiculous. It’s a statement born, largely, out of overwhelming ignorance. So, I figured it’s time to present you with one, classic example that demonstrates how the Freedom of Information Act has proved to be very useful in securing extremely solid data on UFOs. We’re talking about a December 10, 1948 document which originated with the U.S. Air Force and which is titled “Analysis of Flying Objects in the US.”

Unlike so many official documents that have surfaced via FOIA, this one was originally classified Top Secret, which makes it an important and historic one. Indeed, the UFO records that have surfaced via FOIA are, at most, Secret in nature, with the majority of them having even lower levels of classification.

The USAF document stated that, “A number of reports of unidentified flying objects come from observers who, because of their technical background and experience, do not appear to be influenced by unfounded sensationalism nor inclined to report explainable phenomena as new types of airborne devices.” The Air Force continued that one report which particularly stood out occurred in April 1947. This was two months before Kenneth Arnold’s now-famous sighting of a squadron of unknown aircraft near Mount Rainier, at the Cascade Range. It was a sighting that spawned the term “flying saucer.”

The Air Force noted the following in its “Analysis of Flying Objects in the US” document: “During April 1947, two employees of the Weather Bureau Station at Richmond, Virginia, reported seeing a strange metallic disk on three occasions…One observation was at 15,000 feet when a disk was followed for 15 seconds. The disk appeared metallic, shaped like an ellipse with a flat bottom and a round top…The disk appeared to be moving rather rapidly, although it was impossible to estimate its speed.”

Then, there is the following from the USAF, which describes a notable encounter on June 28, 1947, just four days after Kenneth Arnold’s historic encounter. According to the Air Force, “While flying at 10,000 feet on a course of 300 degrees, 30 miles northwest of Lake Meade, Nevada, an Air Force lieutenant reported seeing five or six while circular objects in close formation and traveling at an estimated speed of 285 miles per hour.”

Less than  twenty-four hours later, the Air Force documentation shows, “…a party of three, two of them scientists, were motoring along Highway 17 toward the White Sands, New Mexico, V-2 firing grounds and reported seeing a large disk or sphere moving horizontally at a high speed and an estimated altitude of 10,000 feet. It was of uniform shape and had no protruding surfaces such as wings. The object was in sight for about 60 seconds before it disappeared to the northeast. The three observers agreed on the details of the sighting except that one thought he had seen vapor trails.”

Then there are the events which occurred on July 7, also referenced in the Air Force documentation: “On 7 July 1947, five Portland, Oregon police officers reported varying numbers of disks flying over different parts of the city. All observations were made within a minute or two of 1305 hours. On the same day, William Rhoads of Phoenix, Arizona allegedly saw a disk circling his locality during sunset and took two photographs. The resulting pictures…show a disk-like object with a round front and a square tail in plan form. These photographs have been examined by experts who state they are true photographic images and do not appear to be imperfection in the emulsion or imperfections in the lens.”

And the reports just kept coming and coming: “On 10 July 1947, Mr. Woodruff, a Pan-American Airways mechanic reported a circular object flying at high velocity, paralleling the earth’s surface and leaving a trail which appeared as a ‘burning up’ of the cloud formation. The sighting occurred near Harmon Field, Newfoundland. Two other persons also saw the trail which remained in the sky for about an hour and was photographed by another PAA employee. The resulting photographs support Mr. Woodruff’’s observation as far as the sky cleavage is concerned.”

Moving into 1948, the Air Force noted no shortage of high-quality encounters involving military personnel in that year, too. One such case is written-up in the following fashion: “On 5 April 1948, three trained balloon observers from the Geophysics Laboratory Section, Watson Laboratories, N.J. reported seeing a round, indistinct object in the vicinity of Hollman Air Force Base, New Mexico. It was very high and fast, and appeared to execute violent maneuvers at high speed. The object was under observation for approximately 30 seconds and disappeared suddenly.”

In July 1948, there was an astonishing encounter involving no less than a dozen UFOs, all of significant size: “On 1 July 1948, twelve disks were reported over the Rapid City Air Base by Major Hammer. These disks were oval-shaped, about 100 feet long, flying at a speed estimated to be in excess of 500 mph. Descending from 10,000 feet, these disks made a 30-degree to 40-degree climbing turn accelerating very rapidly until out of sight.”

And the list of remarkable sightings – all of which were recorded in official, Top Secret documentation – continued. As the report shows, various theories were addressed to try and determine who, or what, was flying the UFOs. Theories addressed included domestic programs of the U.S. military and similar projects initiated by the Soviets, specifically in the field of radical aircraft design.

The Air Force’s conclusions: “Since the Air Force is responsible for control of the air in the defense of the U.S., it is imperative that all other agencies cooperate in confirming or denying the possibility that these objects have a domestic origin. Otherwise, if it is firmly indicated that there is no domestic explanation, the objects are a threat and warrant more active efforts of identification and interception…It must be accepted that some type of flying objects have been observed, although their identification and origin are not discernible. In the interest of national defense it would be unwise to overlook the possibility that some of these objects may be of foreign origin.”

In view of all the above, if you find yourself on the receiving end of claims that the FOIA is ineffectual when it comes to UFOs, refer them to the “Analysis of Flying Objects in the US” document.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Inside Area 51 Bob Lazar

Area 51, flying saucers from another world – and the program to create a fierce technology. Bob Lazar has lived a wild life. He remains the singular most famous and controversial name in the world of UFOs. The reason you know about Area 51 is because Lazar came forward and told you about it. His disclosures have turned his life upside-down and he has tried to stay out of the spotlight. For this reason, he has never let any filmmaker into the private world of his daily life – that is – until now. Jeremy Corbell’s film will explore Lazar’s claims through the lens of thirty years – providing rare and never before revealed footage – guaranteed to alter the landscape of the debate. Bob Lazar feature length documentary coming December 2018!

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }