Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
Donderdag 25 oktober 2018
Stonehouse man comes face to face with mysterious UFO
Stonehouse man comes face to face with mysterious UFO
One of the previous UFO sightings spotted above Whiteshill in Stroud.
A MAN from Stonehouse has described his shock after a UFO flew within 50 foot of him and his dog.
The unidentified flying object was spotted at around 2.30pm in September by the resident who claimed they 'had never seen anything like it in their life'.
This is the second sighting reported to the SNJ in just two weeks, with another spotted hovering above the trees just below Rodborough.
He saw the bizarre flying object approach through a clearing in the wood around Hazlewood, but they did not expect it to get so close to their location.
"The UFO was hovering about 50 foot away from me, but we could not smell fuel or anything, I was shocked that it did not hit our house," they explained.
"It seemed like it was trying to fly below the radar, so it could avoid being scanned - at the time my dog was going mental at it."
As they studied the strange object shaped like a 'huge tube with intricate ship style rivets' they described how it made surreal sci-fi style sounds.
"When I came across it coming through the forest I thought it must be a plane or hot air balloon, but it was clearly not and it was making sci-fi like sounds," added the eyewitness.
"Before it shot off into the clouds at immense speed the engines turned bright white, I've never seen anything like it."
Unfortunately, the resident was in shock after the sighting and said they 'did not think to take a photo' of the UFO.
UFO landing tracks? Alien hunters stunned by discovery in Argentina snow
(Image: UFO SIGHTINGS DAILY)
Alien hunters were up in arms when a young man named Rodrigo spotted what looks like a landing print left in the snow in a small village called Moquehue.
Two separate prints were left – one is a swirling shape while the other looks similar to a star on October 15.
What makes UFO investigators believe it was left by an alien spaceship is that the marks are fresh and there are no footprints in the surrounding snow.
Rodrigo told local newspaper LM Neuquén: "Their size and perfection were striking.
After returning to his family, he made them aware where they returned and took photographs of the ‘UFO landing’.
Rodrigo continued: "I was surprised that there were no footprints nearby. This in an area that is rarely visited.
"I believe UFOs exist. Perhaps it was them.”
Two UFO tracks were discovered (Image: UFO SIGHTINGS DAILY)
Many people in Argentina believe aliens are trying to contact them, it would seem.
A UFO ‘landing pad’ was built in the wilderness of Argentina by a man who claims aliens told him to create the site.
The strange monument is believed to have been built by a Swiss man called Werner Jaisli.
The landing pad is a collection of white and brown rocks placed in the shape of an ‘ovniport’ – a monument which resembles a star which conspiracy theorists have linked with extraterrestrial activity.
A UFO landing pad was built in the desert of Argentina
(Image: YOUTUBE)
Mr Jaisli built the monument in the Argentinian desert just outside of the small town of Cachi in the province of Salta.
The larger monuments is surrounded by smaller pieces and can be seen from the skies, which would be handy for any UFO’s driven by aliens as they near Earth.
The site attracts hundreds of visitors a year and Mr Jaisli decided to build it when he claims he received a “telepathic message” from extraterrestrials in which they told him they needed a place to land when they arrive at our planet.
He told Argentine newspaper El Tribuno: “I was in Fuerte Alto with my neighbor Luis. It was midnight on November 24, 2008.
“'It's a UFO night,' I said to Luis. And the sentence was not over, when two luminous objects advanced about 200 meters above the Calchaquí River.
“They were solid, circular and like burnished metal. I do not know why, but mentally I asked them to come closer. And they did it!
“They asked me telepathically to build the airport.”
Secret 'X-FILES' group in US gov believe in UFOs and want TRUTH exposed - shock claim
A GROUP of leading scientists and officials in the US government believe in UFOs and extraterrestrials and want the truth exposed, according to shock claims.
Nick Pope, who investigated the strange phenomena for the Ministry of Defence, compared the believers to the X-Files series character Fox Mulder.
The famous fictional FBI agent, portrayed by David Duchovny, investigated alleged paranormal mysteries alongside his sceptical colleague doctor Dana Scully, played by Gillian Anderson.
The US government has acknowledged a top-secret project at the Pentagon – called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) – ran for four years officially from 2008.
Mr Pope stars in a new documentary called Aliens at the Pentagon, director by Michael Long, which lifts the lid on the Pentagon secret programme.
And Mr Pope claims it is not long before a full disclosure could reveal everything the US government knows about UFOs.
He said: “I identify what I think can best be described as a 'believer faction' within the US government, a maverick group of scientists and defence officials who genuinely think UFOs might be alien, and who are interested in a wide range of other paranormal phenomena.
“These real-life Fox Mulders were thrilled when the Pentagon got money to look at all this, but the government needed to distance itself from these topics, so a lot of the work was contracted out to Robert Bigelow's company, Bigelow Aerospace.
GETTY
PENTAGON: A secret group of X-Files types wants to expose UFO truth – it's claimed
“One reason the government wanted to distance itself from this was because interest in UFOs and the paranormal went against the religious beliefs of some senior Pentagon officials, who regarded such things as demonic.
“Aliens at the Pentagon is aimed at reigniting interest in the story of the Pentagon's UFO project at a critical moment in history.
“The US Congress is demanding to know how the millions of dollars pumped into UFO research were spent and what taxpayers got for their money.
“Washington is abuzz with rumours that formal Congressional hearings are imminent, and we may be closer than ever to getting an answer to the question of what the US government knows about UFOs.”
The influential US Armed Services Committee has been investigating the money spent on the top-secret X-Files project.
It emerged that former Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, who pushed for AATIPs creation in 2007, suggested the US military could harvest technology from UFOs to be more powerful than enemies.
Reid wrote "the technological insight and capability gained will provide the US with a distinct advantage over any foreign threats and allow the US to maintain its preeminence as a world leader".
Dobberen er sponzen in ondergrondse meren op Mars? Misschien wel!
Tim Kraaijvanger
Onderzoekers beweren in een nieuw paper in Nature dat simpele levensvormen zelfs vandaag de dag nog kunnen overleven op de rode planeet.
Het gaat hierbij om gepekeld water onder het oppervlak van Mars. In dit gepekelde water is nét genoeg moleculair zuurstof aanwezig om aerobe microben in leven te houden. Aeroben zijn organismen die zuurstof gebruiken. Zelfs simpele dieren – zoals sponzen – zouden in theorie op Mars kunnen overleven.
Op aarde kwamen aeroben en fotosynthese tegelijkertijd op, waardoor de hoeveelheid zuurstof aanzienlijk toenam. Op Mars is zuurstof schaars. Er wordt een klein beetje zuurstof geproduceerd door de afbraak van koolstofdioxide door licht. Voorheen gingen wetenschappers ervan uit dat het te weinig zou zijn om organismen in leven te houden.
Zo zien aardse sponzen eruit. Wist je dat de meeste sponzen slechts een paar millimeter per dag verplaatsen?
Onderzoeker Vlada Stamenković en zijn collega’s hebben nu berekend hoeveel moleculair zuurstof kan worden opgelost in gepekeld water onder verschillende specifieke omstandigheden op Mars. Ze ontdekten dat de hoeveelheid moleculaire zuurstof nabij de polen opvallend hoog is. Sommige bronnen van gepekeld water zouden wel eens genoeg moleculair zuurstof kunnen bevatten om organismen in leven te houden. In het verleden vonden Marsrovers verschillende geoxideerde stenen. De bevindingen van de onderzoekers verklaren mogelijk hoe deze stenen zijn ontstaan.
Op 1,5 kilometer diepte En hoe diep moeten rovers boren om mogelijk leven te vinden? In het paper spreken de onderzoekers over gepekelde wateren met een temperatuur van 205 Kelvin (omgerekend -68 graden Celsius) op een diepte van 1,5 kilometer onder het Martiaanse oppervlak. Dat is dus nog best een uitdaging, maar niet onmogelijk. Enkele jaren geleden hebben de Russen wel eens door 3,5 kilometer diep ijs geboord om in het Vostokmeer te kijken. Wellicht dat we in de verre toekomst ook wel een soort boorplatform op Mars kunnen bouwen. Elon Musk, lees je mee?
Geen bewijs dat er ook daadwerkelijk leven is In de conclusie van het paper benadrukken de onderzoekers dat dit niet betekent dat er leven op Mars is. “We weten niet of er leven op Mars is”, schrijft de auteur. “We hebben ons alleen gefocust op de vraag of Mars leefbaar is. (..) Als er een alternatieve bron van zuurstof aanwezig is op een planeet, dan vergroot dit de kans om leven te vinden op andere planetaire lichamen.”
Geen warmtebronnen te vinden nabij vermeende waterpluimen op maan Europa
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Het roept de vraag op of die waterpluimen dan überhaupt wel bestaan.
Onderzoekers weten al langer dat Saturnus’ maan Enceladus waterpluimen genereert. En op de plek waar die waterpluimen ontstaan, vinden we een duidelijke temperatuurverhoging: een hotspot. Aangenomen wordt dat de maan – die opgebouwd is uit een rotsachtige kern met daarboven een oceaan en daar weer boven een ijskorst – over hydrothermale bronnen beschikt die de ijskorst op sommige plekken dunner maakt en zelfs laat scheuren. Door die scheuren zou waterdamp – afkomstig uit die oceaan – ontsnappen (zie afbeelding hieronder).
Hydrothermale bronnen zouden aan de waterpluimen op Enceladus ten grondslag liggen.
Afbeelding: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Southwest Research Institute.
Europa De laatste jaren vinden onderzoekers steeds meer aanwijzingen dat Enceladus niet de enige maan in ons zonnestelsel is die over dergelijke geisers beschikt. Ook Europa – een maan van Jupiter – zou waterpluimen genereren. Zo maakte Hubble in 2016 foto’s van Europa waarop mogelijk waterpluimen te zien zijn. En recent dachten onderzoekers ook in oude data – verzameld tijdens de Galileo-missie – aanwijzingen te zien voor de aanwezigheid van waterpluimen.
Niets bijzonders Wetenschappers hebben zich nu nog eens over die vermeende waterpluimen op Europa gebogen en gekeken of er ook op de plek waar deze pluimen zouden ontstaan, sprake is van een temperatuurverhoging. Ze bogen zich daartoe opnieuw over data verzameld tijdens de Galileo-missie (Galileo bestudeerde Jupiter en zijn manen tussen december 1995 tot september 2003). “Een nieuwe analyse van de temperatuurgegevens die tijdens de Galileo-missie werden verzameld, laat niets bijzonders zien op de plekken waar de pluimen mogelijk zijn waargenomen,” vertelt onderzoeker Julie Rathbun. “Dat is verrassend, omdat de Enceladus-pluimen duidelijk gepaard gaan met een verhoogde temperatuur.”
Implicaties Maar wat betekent dat dan precies? “Het suggereert dat de pluimen of Europa óf heel anders zijn óf slechts incidenteel opduiken óf dat ze niet bestaan óf dat de lokale temperatuurverhoging zo klein is dat we die in de huidige data niet opmerken.”
Hoe het precies zit? Daarvoor zouden we Europa eigenlijk van wat dichterbij moeten kunnen bekijken. Gelukkig worden daar plannen voor gesmeed. Zo wil ESA in 2022 de JUpiter ICy moons Explorer(kortweg JUICE) lanceren. Deze zou zeven jaar later bij Jupiter arriveren en specifiek onderzoek gaan doen naar Europa, Callisto en Ganymedes. Ondertussen werkt NASA aan de Europa Clipper: een missie die ergens tussen 2022 en 2025 werkelijkheid moet worden en moet uitzoeken of Europa geschikt is voor leven.
Very Large Telescope maakt prachtige foto van een kosmische piraat
Vivian Lammerse
In dit actieve stervormingsgebied gebeurt van alles.
ESO heeft een bijzondere foto vrijgegeven van het actieve stervormingsgebied NGC 2467. Op de foto is goed de grote, grijzende mond van het doodshoofd te zien, waar dit stervormingsgebied bekend om staat. De foto is gemaakt met het FORS-instrument van de Very Large Telescope.
Het actieve stervormingsgebied NGC 2467. Op deze foto is alleen de gapende mond van de Doodshoofd-met-gekruiste-beenderen-nevel te zien.
Afbeelding: ESO
Schedel Het stervormingsgebied heeft de bijnaam ‘Doodshoofd-met-gekruiste-beenderen-nevel’. En op zich is dat niet zo heel verwonderlijk. De jonge, heldere formatie heeft namelijk veel weg van een menselijke schedel; zo is er – in een uitgezoomde weergave – een dreigend hol gezicht met een gapende mond te zien.
Schip NGC 2467 verschuilt zich in het sterrenbeeld Puppis – ofwel Achtersteven – dat verwijst naar het verhoogde achterste deel van een schip. Samen met de sterrenbeelden Carina (Kiel), Pyxis (Kompas) en Vela (zeilen) maakt Puppis deel uit van een groep die aan de zuidelijke hemel te zien is. Samen vormden zij het voormalige sterrenbeeld Argo Navis (Schip Argo). In zekere zin maakt NGC 2467 dus deel uit van een enorm piratenschip, een gepast onderkomen voor de Doodshoofd-met-gekruiste-beenderen-nevel.
Deze kaart toont de locatie van NGC 2467 in het sterrenbeeld Puppis.
Afbeelding: ESO, IAU and Sky & Telescope
Sterrenhopen Hoewel het lijkt alsof er een open sterrenhoop te zien is, bestaat NGC 2467 eigenlijk uit meerdere nevels. Toevallig lijken deze nevels vanuit de aarde gezien op één lijn te staan, waardoor het de illusie wekt dat het om één sterrenhoop gaat. Daarnaast is NGC 2467 erg actief; zo worden er in de kleurrijke nevel talloze nieuwe sterren geboren als gevolg van een overmaat van waterstofgas.
Hoewel de foto voor astronomen niets nieuws vertelt, levert het ons wel een prachtig plaatje op dat zowel onheilspellend als mooi is. Daarnaast krijgen we een bijzonder inkijkje in de kolkende zuidelijke hemel.
NASA ziet ene na andere ruimtemissie in de problemen komen
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Na Hubble, Opportunity, Curiosity en Kepler is ook ruimteobservatorium Chandra tijdelijk uit de running.
Het ruimteobservatorium ging eind vorige week opeens in veiligheidsmodus, zo laat NASA in een korte verklaring weten. Onduidelijk is nog waarom.
Veiligheidsmodus Wanneer Chandra in veiligheidsmodus gaat, verandert de oriëntatie van het observatorium, waardoor de zonnepanelen de maximale hoeveelheid zonlicht opvangen. Ook wordt de belangrijkste hardware ontlast. Voor zover we nu weten, is Chandra succesvol in veiligheidsmodus gegaan en functioneren alle systemen zoals men in zo’n situatie zou verwachten.
Gyroscoop Tot zover het goede nieuws. Het slechte nieuws is namelijk dat NASA nog niet weet waarom het observatorium uit de running is gegaan. Mogelijk is het het resultaat van een probleem met een gyroscoop. Vervolgonderzoek moet dat uitwijzen.
Negentien jaar Chandra is in zekere zin al ver over de datum; oorspronkelijk had de missie maar vijf jaar moeten duren. Maar inmiddels is Chandra al negentien jaar actief. Toch verwachtte NASA tot voor kort dat het observatorium zeker nog een aantal jaren mee zou kunnen.
Chandra is niet het enige zorgenkindje van NASA. Al enkele maanden zijn er grote zorgen omtrent Marsrover Opportunity waarvan nog altijd onduidelijk is of deze de heftige stofstorm op Mars heeft overleefd. En ook Marsrover Curiosity is nog herstellende van technische problemen. Ook heeft NASA al enkele maanden de handen vol aan Kepler; de planetenjager loopt op zijn laatste benen en heeft er zo langzamerhand een gewoonte van gemaakt om in slaapstand te gaan. En vorige week werd duidelijk dat ook ruimtetelescoop Hubble met technische mankementen kampt. Eind vorige week was er temidden van al die tegenslagen gelukkig ook een beetje goed nieuws. Zo is het NASA gelukt om Kepler wakker te maken en zover te krijgen dat deze het laatste beetje data dat tijdens de laatste waarneemrun is verzameld, gaat downloaden.
Update (16 oktober) Inmiddels is duidelijk wat er met Chandra aan de hand is: er is inderdaad iets mis met één van de gyroscopen. NASA verwacht in staat te zijn om een andere gyroscoop in te schakelen en het falende exemplaar voorlopig op de reservebank te zetten. Naar verwachting kan Chandra tegen het eind van deze week weer aan de slag.
This Hunk of Metal Fell From Space and Landed in California
By Rafi Letzter, Live Science Staff Writer
What would you do if you saw this thing in your walnut orchard?
Credit: Kings County Sheriff's Office
A walnut farmer in central California found a strange metal object in his orchard on Oct. 13.
He called the local sheriff's office, according to a KGET report. The sheriffs reached out to Vandenberg Air Force Base, and experts there reportedly said the burnt husk was likely a fuel tank from an Iridium communications satellite. Specifically, it came from Iridium 70, which according to the satellite tracking site n2yo.com fell out of its orbit three days earlier, on Oct. 10.
Iridium 70 was part of a constellation of communications satellites first launched in the late 1990s. This one, according to Astronautix.com, rode a Delta 7920-10C rocket into space on May 17, 1998 along with Iridiums 72, 73, 74 and 75. (Coincidentally, the launch site was Vandenberg Air Force Base.) Of those satellites, only Iridium 73 is still in orbit.
Iridium 70 hung in low-Earth orbit for 20 years, 4 months and 23 days; and for its operational lifetime, it supported satellite phone calls on the global Iridium network. According to KGET, this is the first piece recovered from an Iridium satellite after re-entry. As Live Science has previously reported, it's wildly unlikely that any given de-orbiting object will drop significant debris on land, let alone anywhere where the debris might be recognized.
Though photographs may present the barren landscapes of Antarctica as eerily calm and peaceful, at least when no storms are raging, the largely lifeless continent and the ice shelves surrounding it produce a medley of bizarrely beautiful sounds. As noted by Earther, the frozen region’s ambient sounds include the Rice Crispies-like crackle of melting ice releasing long-trapped air bubbles to the steady groans, screeches, and pops of massive floating ice sheets shifting and breaking apart as they buckle under the weight of fresh snow in the winter or melt during the summer.
The only catch is that you might not be able to hear all the notes in this spectacular natural symphony if you’re listening with human ears, because many occur on timescales or at frequencies that are not compatible with our auditory abilities. But if you have the right equipment to first capture and then remix the acoustic waves, a whole new soundtrack can be revealed. On top of being really cool to listen to, these recordings help scientists better understand the climatological and geologic processes that shape the Antarctic.
In an astounding new example, a team led by Julien Chaput of Colorado State University and the University of Texas, have revealed how the "songs" created by vibrations in the Ross Ice Shelf can be used to continuously monitor the changing conditions within the ice mass' top five meters (16.4 feet).
“Deploying sensitive seismographs across Earth’s largest ice shelf (the Ross Ice Shelf) for 2 years, we discovered that the shelf nearly continuously sings at frequencies of five or more cycles per second, excited by local and regional winds blowing across its snow dune-like topography,” they wrote in their paper, now published inGeophysical Research Letters. “We find that the frequencies and other features of this singing change, both as storms alter the snow dunes and during a (January 2016) warming event that resulted in melting in the ice shelf’s near surface.”
The Texas-sized ice shelf floats on the Southern Ocean, fused to the mainland off western Antarctica. From this position, the shelf – itself composed of glacier ice that spilled out from the interior of the landmass – acts as a buttress to lessen the flow of ice melt that occurs each warm season. Climate change-driven increases in temperatures have already caused other ice shelves to thin and recede, resulting in sea level rise from unblocked glacier drainage. Currently holding back enormous glaciers that would contribute 5 meters (16.4 feet) of sea level rise if introduced into the water, researchers are anxious for ways to measure the integrity of the Ross Ice Shelf.
As part of that endeavor, Chaput and his colleagues had buried 34 extremely sensitive seismographs under the snow on the ice’s surface and analyzed the vibrations recorded between late 2014 and early 2017.
Installation of a seismic station near the northern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, with a solar halo created by fine ice crystals created by spray from the nearby Southern Ocean.
Rick Aster.
Soon into the project, the team realized that the snowy coating on the shelf is, in fact, vibrating nearly constantly from the effects of heating and wind. And, similar to a musical instrument, different tones are created when different forces act upon it.
"It's kind of like you're blowing a flute, constantly, on the ice shelf," Chaput said in a statement. "Either you change the velocity of the snow by heating or cooling it, or you change where you blow on the flute, by adding or destroying dunes," he said. "The response of the ice shelf tells us that we can track extremely sensitive details about it."
Mercury capsule exhibit to preview Cosmosphere satellite location
The Mercury spacecraft "Liberty Bell 7," seen here on exhibit at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas, will be the early centerpiece of a new exhibit at the museum's satellite location in Overland Park opening in February 2019. µ
(Cosmosphere)
— The historic capsule that carried the second American to fly into space is set to land in the second most populous city in Kansas in early 2019.
"Liberty Bell 7," the Mercury spacecraft that was piloted by NASA astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom on a 1961 suborbital spaceflight, will be the early centerpiece of a new exhibit by Cosmosphere Innovation Space at Bluhawk in Overland Park. The Innovation Space is the planned satellite facility for the Cosmosphere International SciEd Center and Space Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas, which hosts the largest combined collection of U.S. and Russian space artifacts in the world.
Bluhawk is a $750 million, 277-acre mixed-use development that in addition to the Cosmosphere will feature an indoor multi-sport complex, hotel and restaurant and retail marketplace.
"We have an exceptional plan that meets the needs of Cosmosphere, Bluhawk and the public, which is eager to see tremendous exhibits like Liberty Bell 7 as soon as possible," said Jim Remar, president and CEO of the Cosmosphere, in a statement. "Opening a temporary Cosmosphere location in early 2019 is a big win for all parties as we continue forward with the plans for our satellite location."
An artist's concept of Cosmosphere Innovation Space at Bluhawk in Overland Park, Kansas.
(Bluhawk)
Launched on July 21, 1961 on Grissom's 15-minute Mercury-Redstone 4 mission, Liberty Bell 7 sank due to a premature hatch jettison soon after splashing down. It remained on the ocean floor for 38 years until July 1999, when it was recovered by a private expedition organized by Discovery Channel and the Cosmosphere. The museum's SpaceWorks division restored the spacecraft before sending it on a six-year nationwide tour.
Liberty Bell 7 is slated to return from Indiana to the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson in mid-December.
The capsule's new temporary exhibition will give visitors to Bluhawk the chance to learn more about space history and the role the Mercury spaceflights played in the United States winning the space race with the former Soviet Union.
"We are very pleased that Overland Park residents and visitors will have an early look at this historic exhibit and others," said Doug Price, president of Price Brothers, the developer of Bluhawk. "This new exhibition is a great venue for the Cosmosphere to test new ideas while we are developing extensive plans for its new satellite location."
The Liberty Bell 7 exhibit at Bluhawk is scheduled to open in February 2019. It will be followed a few months later by an exhibit devoted to Mission Control, featuring consoles restored by the Cosmosphere and used in the filming of the movie "First Man." Other displays are anticipated to rotate on a regular basis.
A conceptual aerial view of the Bluhawk development in Overland Park, Kansas, including Cosmosphere Innovation Space. (Bluhawk)
Cosmosphere Innovation Space is planned as a 60,000 square foot facility located at 159th Street and U.S. Highway 69 in Overland Park. The Bluhawk site is not intended as a substitute for the Hutchinson museum, but will expose more people to the Cosmosphere brand, allow them to experience the SciEd Center's approach to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and see artifacts currently not on display due to space limitations.
Cosmosphere Innovation Space is part of the first phase of Bluhawk, scheduled to break ground in 2019 and open the following year.
La NASA cacherait, aux yeux du monde, l’existence de la vie sur Mars. Récemment, une énorme explosion s’est produite sur la planète rouge, ravivant de nombreuses théories …
La NASA a été au centre de nombreuses théorie du complot au cours de ces derniers mois. En septembre, le Rover Curiosity, de l’agence spatiale américaine, a subi une mystérieuse anomalie qui a provoqué une panne complète de son système.
Quant au rover Mars Opportunity, il est hors ligne depuis des mois après qu'une énorme tempête de poussière ait envahi la planète rouge à la fin du printemps.
Après cette multitude de pannes, toutes plus étranges les unes que les autres, une activité étrange a été photographiée à la surface de la planète rouge.
Une série de clichés semble montrer un panache de fumée provenant peut-être d'un volcan à la surface de la planète rouge. Toutefois, aucun rapport de la NASA n’y fait référence.
Les théoriciens du complot pensent que la vérité est soigneusement dissimulée au monde entier.
Tyler Glockner a utilisé sa chaîne YouTube pour informer ses abonnés de cette nouvelle sensationnelle. Sa vidéo a déjà enregistré plus de 320 000 visites.
«Il y a eu une explosion - je ne sais pas s'il s'agissait d'un volcan ou de quelque chosed’autrequi a explosé», a-t-il déclaré sur sa chaîne baptisée secureteam10.
Les internautes qui suivent cet ufologue semblent être d’accord avec lui.
« Le gouvernement doit commencer à dire la vérité sur ce qui se passevraimentdans l'espace », affirme l’un d’eux.
Un autre a ajouté : « Si cela estvéridique, cela pourrait être énorme - je pensais que Marsn’avait aucune activité volcanique. »
Un troisième s'est écrié : « La NASA n'adéfinitivementplus aucune crédibilité ».
Ces images constituent-elles une preuve que Mars est habitée par une quelconque civilisation ? Ce genre d’hypothèse semble difficile à croire et pourtant ces images ne peuvent que nous faire douter …
Conspiracy theorists went into overdrive after spotting a ‘mysterious plume of smoke’ near a dormant Martian volcano, with many claiming this as proof that alien life exists on the red planet and we’re being lied to here on Earth.
Allegations of a NASA-led cover up spread like wildfire online, with popular conspiracy theory YouTube channel secureteam10 producing an eight-minute long exposé entitled, ‘Something MAJOR Happened On Mars.. Are They Hiding It?’
"There was an explosion – I don't know whether it was a volcano or something detonated," Tyler Glockner of secureteam10 told his audience, during a video which has amassed almost 390,000 views since publication on October 20.
One commenter on the video drew upon his welding experience to lay bare the terraforming operations already underway on Mars, citing craters formed by lightning strikes as evidence of alien technology reshaping the planet’s atmosphere. “Too many coincidences here to ignore any more. NASA needs to stop being the police of the scientific community.”
“NASA is a BS agency, staffed by self-sanctimonious liars. Mars is a living planet, as anyone who has studied Mars for the last 50 years [knows],” another commenter agreed.
This secureteam10 video was then picked up by a British tabloid, which fanned the conspiratorial flames while connecting the disparate dots of NASA’s clever ruse: the Mars Curiosity Rover suffered a mysterious glitch, rendering it offline for months after a huge dust storm in late Spring; the Hubble and Chandra telescopes were recently put in “safe mode” allowing for only basic functionality; and NASA was conspicuously silent about the 2,000km-long plume of smoke stretching across Martian skies. Wake up, sheeple!
RT✔@RT_com
Mysterious UFO stuns onlookers across China, Inner Mongolia (VIDEOS) https://on.rt.com/9gc2
Reddit was also abuzz, though the comments were more climatological than conspiratorial, discussing atmospheric conditions that might lead to such cloud formations. To spoil the fun and settle the debate, RT.com contacted the ESA for an explanation of the contentious images of the red planet.
“No ground or space based observations of Mars or its atmosphere have produced any credible evidence for active volcanism occurring in the present day or recent history,” party-pooper and planetary scientist Elliot Sefton-Nash, who works on several ESA projects including Mars Sample Return, ExoMars and Mars Express, told RT.com.
“Observations made on 24th September by the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) aboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a cloud oriented approximately east-west and around ~2,000km long, as well as the shadow that it cast onto the Martian surface below.”
“Clouds are known to form seasonally in this region, and are associated with the volcanoes because their topography influences atmospheric conditions,” he continues. “This is a well documented phenomenon and several scientific articles exist documenting and explaining the process and highlight the seasonal regularity of the occurrence in this region.”
For comparison, Sefton-Nash highlighted a very similar cloud caused by these topographical forces at Arsia Mons, observed in 2015 (in higher resolution) by the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission.
Right now, the ESA is concentrating on Mercury, which is posing some interesting questions about the formation of our Solar System.
"We have a problem with #Mercury..." because it’s falling out of our overall understanding of the Solar System. We don't understand how such a planet could have formed and evolved, so we not only need to send outstanding instruments there: we send a full laboratory #BepiColombo
Something Big Is Coming! NASA's Planetary Defense Budget Suddenly Increased
Recent developments at NASA have revealed that the proposed budget for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination office (PDCO) has increased by 90 million dollars.
Our current political climate consists of a budget that is stretched to its’ maximum. This fact about the current budget makes this significant increase for the PDCO a strange occurrence. The PDCO is only two years old and oversees finding near-Earth objects such as asteroids that could cause harm to the planet. The PDCO is important because one hit from an asteroid could significantly damage Earth and its’ inhabitants. In years past, NASA has consistently stated that there is no serious threat. This significant increase in the budget brings into question this assumption.
Humanity is unprepared for a catastrophic event
A recent Politico article stated that the Trump administration increased the PDCO budget because humanity is unprepared for a catastrophic event, such as an asteroid impact. The significant increase is, according to the Trump administration, a defensive measure rather than a reaction to an imminent threat.
According to NASA, there are more than 25,000 asteroids near us of 140 meters in size at a minimum. Additionally, there are plenty of other near-Earth objects that could be a threat to our planet. The PDCO has stated that it plans to be prepared in case an object is threatening.
Russia: Asteroid will surely hit Earth sometime in the 2030s
The asteroid Apophis was discovered on June 19, 2004.
NASA has insisted there is no current threat to be worried about. The PDCO states that such an event would, however, be devastating, and that preparation is vital to ward off an attack or to prepare government agencies and the public if such a threat cannot be stopped. For example, the head of the Russian space agency has recently stated that a large asteroid named Apophis will surely hit Earth sometime in the 2030s. The PDCO recognizes this and asserts that now is the time to either stop this asteroid from hitting Earth, or to be prepared when it does.
Does the shutdown of multiple satellite telescopes and earthbound telescopes have anything to do with the sudden increase in budget? Do they want to protect humanity from something we don't know yet? Or is this a normal increase because you want gold-plated toillets?
A planetary nebula isn’t related to planets. It’s an old star, sloughing off its outer layers. Now astronomers have spied 2 ultra-close stars at a planetary nebula’s heart. The pair orbits in only 3 hours!
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the planetary nebula M3-1. Its central star is a binary system – 2 stars orbiting a common center of gravity – extremely close together, moving around each other very fast.
An international team of astronomers have discovered two stars in a binary pair that complete an orbit around each other in a little over three hours, residing in the planetary nebula M3-1. Remarkably, the stars could drive a nova explosion, an entirely unexpected event based on our current understanding of binary star evolution. The team, led by David Jones of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the Universidad de La Laguna, reporttheir findings in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.
Planetary nebulae are the glowing shells of gas and dust formed from the outer layers of stars like our own sun, which they throw off during the final stages of their evolution. In many cases, interaction with a nearby companion star plays an important role in the ejection of this material and the formation of the elaborate structures seen in the resulting planetary nebulae.
The planetary nebula M3-1 is located in the constellation of Canis Major, at a distance of roughly 14,000 light-years from Earth. M3-1 was a firm candidate to host a binary central star, as its structure with prominent jets and filaments is typical of these binary star interactions.
Using the telescopes of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, Jones’s team looked at M3-1 over a period of several years. In the process they discovered and studied the binary stars in the centre of the nebula. Brent Miszalski, researcher at the Southern African Large Telescope, and co-author of the study, commented:
We knew M3-1 had to host a binary star, so we set about acquiring the observations required to prove this and to relate the properties of the nebula with the evolution of the star or stars that formed it.
The two stars are so close together that they cannot be resolved from the ground, so instead the presence of the second star is inferred from the variation of their observed combined brightness – most obviously by periodic eclipses of one star by the other which produce marked drops in the brightness. Henri Boffin, researcher at the European Southern Observatory in Germany, said:
When we began the observations, it was immediately clear that the system was a binary. We saw that the apparently single star at the center of the nebula was rapidly changing in brightness, and we knew that this must be due to the presence of a companion star.
The team discovered that the central star of the planetary nebula M3-1 has one of the shortest orbital period binary central stars known to date, at just over three hours. The ESO observations also show that the two stars – most likely a white dwarf with a low-mass main sequence companion – are almost touching.
As a result, the pair are likely to undergo a so-called nova eruption, the result of the transfer of material from one star to the other. When this reaches a critical mass, a violent thermonuclear explosion takes place and the system temporarily increases in brightness by up to a million times. Paulina Sowicka, a Ph.D. student at the Nicolas Copernicus Astronomical Center in Poland, said:
After the various observing campaigns in Chile, we had enough data to begin to understand the properties of the two stars – their masses, temperatures and radii. It was a real surprise that the two stars were so close together and so large that they were almost touching one another. A nova explosion could take place in just a few thousand years from now.
Theory suggests that binary stars should be well separated after the formation of a planetary nebula. It should then take a long time before they begin to interact again and events such as novae become possible.
In 2007, astronomers observed a different nova explosion, known as Nova Vul 2007, inside another planetary nebula.
Jones commented:
The 2007 event was particularly difficult to explain. By the time the two stars are close enough for a nova, the material in the planetary nebula should have expanded and dissipated so much that it’s no longer visible.
The new event adds to the conundrum, said Jones:
In the central stars of M3-1, we’ve found another candidate for a similar nova eruption in the relatively near future.
The team now hopes to carry out further study of the nebula and others like it, helping to shed light on the physical processes and origins of novae and supernovae, some of the most spectacular and violent phenomena in the universe.
Bottom line: Astronomers have spied 2 ultra-close stars at the heart of a planetary nebula called M3-1. The two stars are almost touching and orbit each other in only 3 hours!
Open Minds UFO Radio: Nick Pope – Renewed Government Interest in UFOs
Open Minds UFO Radio: Nick Pope investigated UFOs for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) for several years in the early 1990s. He was skeptical about the phenomenon when he began looking into the matter. However, after having reviewed several credible cases Nick concluded that there was UFOs pose a real mystery, and unidentified vehicles in our airspace could pose a threat to national security. Since he has left the MoD, Nick has authored a book on the UK’s most credible and famous UFO case, Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World’s Best-Documented UFO Incident. He is also a journalist and media commentator.
In this episode, we discuss the renewed interest the U.S. government appears to be showing in the UFO topic since the revelation that the Pentagon has its own UFO research program, that allegedly continues to this day. We discuss the fact that several individuals have addressed congressional subcommittees recently, and what that means to the future of government involvement in UFO research. Nick gives his unique perspective a being one of the few who has worked on a government-sponsored UFO research program. For more about Nick visit: http://nickpope.net/
Watch Nick’s new documentary Aliens at the Pentagon on iTunes:
UFO Recorded On Video In Clear Daylight Above Mexico City
A worker in Mexico observed an unidentified flying object in broad daylight.
The mysterious craft was seen travelling in the sky above Mexico City, and the witness captured the strange aerial activity on video.
As the UFO was moving across the sky, a couple of metres off the ground, it emanated a blurry field that was commonly reported from UFO enthusiasts.
Many viewers of the video believe the latest UFO sighting is substantial evidence of the existence of space aliens visiting Earth and it would have been definitive proof of the existence of extraterrestrials had the camera quality been better.
YouTube user Carlos Sanchez originally captured the video and conspiracy theorists around the internet quickly picked it up.
Some UFO hunters believe it is a genuine sighting of an alien spacecraft.
The dark craft reportedly came right out into the open, and a worker noticed it when they came outside for their break.
Some observers said that the UFO somewhat tilted as it moved, which was what many unidentified flying objects did to control their direction.
Unfortunately, the video looks blurry.
Some UFO enthusiasts think the video would be definitive proof of the existence of space aliens has it been an iPhone 7 or 8 being used.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) is using off-the-shelf machine learning technology from Nvidia and Google to advance its mission of finding other forms of life in the universe.
Using these tools, a newly hired graduate student last fall discovered the richest signal dataset found to date.
“I didn’t believe him, actually, but eventually that was borne out to be true. And in fact the thing that took the longest was actually writing the paper and getting it through peer review,” Berkeley SETI Research Center director Andrew Siemion said.
Siemion spoke with Pandorabots CEO Lauren Kunze today at VB Summit 2018, a two-day conference for company executives held at the Seminary in Mill Valley, California.
The work consists of searching for signals that could come from technology used by an intelligent life form — such as electromagnetic activity or radio or laser signals.
“So fast radio bursts or FRBs are some of the most exciting sources that we know about in astronomy,” Siemion said. “We just discovered them about 10 years ago. We know of about 50 or so sources of them, and one of them is known to repeat — it’s in fact the only one that’s known to repeat. And as far as we know, for the moment it’s the only source that behaves this way. Some have suggested that the actual progenitor of the source might be some kind of technology.”
SETI looks for these signals by placing large telescopes around the world that are capable of producing hundreds of gigabytes of data a second, petabytes of which are stored by the SETI Breakthrough Listening program on an annual basis. Machine learning is then used to scour the data for anomalies.
Last fall, the team detected 21 FRBs over the span of six hours from data generated by the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia. A month later, an algorithm developed by a graduate student found an additional 72 bursts, making it the richest dataset SETI has ever come across.
Commodity hardware helps keep costs down for SETI, a nonprofit organization, and prevent it having to rely on old tools. In radio astronomy, Siemion said, building instrumentation for a telescope is traditionally done by creating something from scratch that takes years to develop and is outdated by the time it’s ready to be used.
“We only have about a dozen full-time employees in the group at Berkeley, and certainly not enough people — or certainly the expertise — to develop a machine learning framework and algorithm and pipeline from the ground up,” he explained.
We are not alone, Siemion said, adding that an approach that uses commodity technology rather than custom solutions is becoming more and more common in astronomy.
“There are all kinds of opportunities to leverage these kinds of algorithms, software tool kits that are being developed, and we’re very interested in continuing to apply these to make additional discoveries. In fact, we probably have many, many more FRBs, and perhaps even some signals from extraterrestrial intelligence, buried in our data that are just waiting to be uncovered,” he concluded.
The Purported Plumes of Jupiter's Moon Europa Are Missing 'Hotspot' Engines
By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor
An artist's illustration of a plume of water vapor spouting from the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.
Credit: K. Retherford/SWRI/NASA/ESA
If Jupiter's moon Europa has geysers, the natural engines that power them are well-hidden.
Scientists have re-examined data from NASA's Galileo mission in greater detail in search of regions on Europa warm enough to be linked to plumes of water vapor. If hotspots exist on this moon — which harbors a huge ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell — they will most likely remain hidden until NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft arrives at Jupiter in the late 2020s or early 2030s, the researchers determined.
In 2016, scientists announced the provisional detection of a faint plume on Europa using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. A second unconfirmed plume was announced the following year. Since then, the moon has remained quiet, and scientists have debated whether the features spotted by the space telescope were actually caused by wafting water vapor. [Possible Water Plumes on Europa: The Discovery in Images]
In an effort to solve the mystery, Julie Rathbun and her colleagues turned to data collected by Galileo when it orbited Jupiter in the 1990s and early 2000s. Rathbun is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. The researchers had searched the moon for heat signals almost a decade ago, before the potential plumes were spotted. Now, they returned to examine the two potential source regions more closely, looking for signs of heat that might indicate geological activity. The results were less than encouraging.
"We didn't see any hotspots at those locations," Rathbun said yesterday (Oct. 22) during a news conference at the American Astronomical Society's annual Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee.
But that doesn't necessarily mean Europa isn't spouting off, added Rathbun.
The case of the missing hotspot
Plumes are common throughout the solar system. Jupiter's moon Io is constantly shooting volcanic material into the air. Saturn's icy moon Enceladus famously blasts water vapor and other material from its subsurface ocean into space via a set of geysers near the south pole. And Earth is rich in geysers, from Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful to Iceland's Great Geysir.
Firing off the gas that makes up these plumes requires an energy source, which usually heats up the ground around the plume source. Enceladus, Io and Earth all have hotspots around their geysers and volcanoes.
But not Europa, as far as we can tell. Rathbun and her colleagues saw no hotspots at either of the purported plume locations described in the Galileo data.
There are four possible reasons for this result, Rathbun said. First, it's possible that the jets don't exist. It's also possible that the hotspots exist but are subtler than could be detected with Galileo or the Earth-based Atacama Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). Another option is that the plumes are sporadic and just didn't fire off while Galileo was nearby. Finally, Europa's plumes may operate differently from the geysers on other worlds.
Both Europa and Enceladus are icy moons, and each is thought to host a subsurface ocean. So, it's no surprise that the planetary scientists based their Europa search on the geysers confirmed on Enceladus. The geysers from Saturn's moon come from long, narrow "tiger-stripe" fissures with roughly the same area as that probed on Europa, and the expected temperatures are also similar.
It's possible, however, that Europa's plume regions have a different configuration than those of the Saturn satellite.
"I don't think it's a tiger stripe [that produced the plume], but there could be some small source that's there that we're just not detecting," Rathbun said.
Timing is another concern. Galileo explored Jupiter and its moons from 1995 to 2003, more than a decade before Hubble spotted the plumes. If Europa's fountains are sporadic, their hosting sites may not yet have become active while Galileo was looking. Similarly, ALMA peered at the moon several months after Hubble's observations, potentially giving the area time to cool off.
Sunlight further complicates the issue. At the beach, sand and rocks heat up and cool at different rates based on their composition. After the plumes were first spotted, ALMA identified a region near a young crater called Pwyll that seemed warmer than surrounding areas. However, Rathbun said that Galileo showed that the same region is coolerthan its environment on the nightside; ALMA's observations, like all those made from Earth, show only the moon's dayside. Rathbun said that the variations most likely originated from features with different compositions.
"It's much more consistent with different thermal properties than there being a hotspot," she said.
Ideally, the same instrument would compare daytime and nighttime observations to rule out heat from the sun as an explanation for the temperature differences, but unfortunately, Galileo didn't gather daytime images of the puzzling region.
Rathbun said the final possibility is that the plume-generating mechanism on Europa doesn't heat things up the way familiar geyser features do. It's currently unknown what kind of mechanism could do that, but she said the possibility can't be ruled out.
"I am constantly amazed at how many things we find in the outer solar system that don't make any sense," she said.
While there isn't enough data to determine which of the four explanations likely represents reality, Rathbun said that her favorite option is the bizarre answer.
"I'd love it if there's something different going on," she said. "That's always the most fun."
Europa probably won't be able to keep such secrets for much longer. NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, which is currently scheduled to launch in 2022, will make 45 flybys of Europa at altitudes ranging from 1,700 miles to 16 miles (2,700 kilometers to 25 km).
One of the instruments Clipper will carry is the Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), a heat detector that will take thermal images of the moon at various wavelengths.
"If there is a hotspot somewhere on Europa, then E-THEMIS will see it," Rathbun said.
NASA's Found a Weird, Rectangular Iceberg in Antarctica
By Rafi Letzter, Live Science Staff Writer
Credit: NASA IceBridge
Look at that iceberg. It's beautiful. Perfectly rectangular. An object of near geometric perfection jutting into a polar sea of the usual squiggly, chaotic randomness of the natural world. It calls to mind the monolith from "2001: A Space Odyssey.
But, unlike the monolith from that very weird movie, this iceberg was not deposited on this world byspace aliens. Instead, as Kelly Brunt, an ice scientist with NASA and at the University of Maryland, explained, it was likely formed by a process that's fairly common along the edges of icebergs.
"So, here's the deal," Brunt told Live Science. "We get two types of icebergs: We get the type that everyone can envision in their head that sank the Titanic, and they look like prisms or triangles at the surface and you know they have a crazy subsurface. And then you have what are called 'tabular icebergs.'" [In Photos: Huge Icebergs Break Off Antarctica]
Tabular icebergs are wide and flat, and long, like sheet cake, Brunt said. They split from the edges of ice shelves — large blocks of ice, connected to land but floating in the water surrounding iced-over places like Antarctica. This one came from the crumbling Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.
From yesterday's #IceBridge flight: A tabular iceberg can be seen on the right, floating among sea ice just off of the Larsen C ice shelf. The iceberg's sharp angles and flat surface indicate that it probably recently calved from the ice shelf.
Tabular icebergs form, she said, through a process that's a bit like a fingernail growing too long and cracking off at the end. They're often rectangular and geometric as a result, she added.
"What makes this one a bit unusual is that it looks almost like a square," Brunt said.
It's difficult to tell the size of the iceberg in this photo, she said, but it's likely more than a mile across. And, as with all icebergs, the part visible above the surface is just the top 10 percent of its mass. The rest, Brunt said, is hidden underwater.
In the case of tabular icebergs, she said, that subsurface mass is usually regular-looking and geometric, similar to what's visible above. This iceberg looks pretty fresh, she said — its sharp corners indicate that wind and waves haven't had much time to break it down.
But despite the berg's large mass, Brunt said, she wouldn't advise going on a walk on its surface.
"It probably wouldn't flip over," she said.
The thing is still much wider than it is deep, after all. But it's small enough to be unstable and crack up at any moment.
So, it's probably best to marvel at the thing from a distance.
Asteroid or Comet? Weird Blue Space Rock 'Phaethon' Gets a Close-Up
By Hanneke Weitering, Space.com Staff Writer
An artist's impression of the blue asteroid 3200 Phaethon
Credit: Heather Roper/University of Arizona
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A bizarre, blue asteroid that acts like a comet and appears to be responsible for the annual Geminid meteor shower made a close flyby of Earth last year, giving astronomers an opportunity to study the object in unprecedented detail. They found that the asteroid is even weirder than they had imagined.
Asteroid 3200 Phaethon is a special space rock with a rare blue color and an extremely eccentric orbit that has the object pass superclose to the sun and then out past the orbit of Mars. One orbit takes about 1.4 Earth years. This kind of orbit is more typical for comets than asteroids.
But while Phaethon acts like a comet, it doesn't look like one. When comets get close to the sun, they form a cloud known as a "coma" and a long tail of dust and gas. Phaethon, however, always looks like a tiny speck floating through space. [The 7 Strangest Asteroids in the Solar System]
On Dec. 16, 2017, the asteroid Phaethon made its closest approach to Earth since 1974, passing within 6.4 million miles (10.3 million kilometers) of our planet. While backyard astronomers pointed their telescopes toward the space rock to catch a glimpse of the historic flyby, astronomers in observatories around the world took the opportunity to learn more about what the object is and where it came from.
Teddy Kareta, a graduate student at the University of Arizona who led an international effort to investigate Phaethon during the flyby, presented his team's findings here at the 50th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences today (Oct. 23). Kareta and his colleagues observed Phaethon's close approach using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and the Tillinghast telescope on Mount Hopkins in Arizona.
One of their findings may overturn the current prevailing theory about the origin of Phaethon. Astronomers have long suspected that Phaethon is a fragment of the much larger blue asteroid Pallas. "However, Pallas' albedo [or reflectivity] is about twice what we found for Phaethon's albedo," Kareta said. With an albedo of about 8 percent, Phaethon is slightly brighter than charcoal and only about half as bright as Pallas, Kareta said.
The researchers also found that the surface of Phaethon is equally blue all around, which means that the object has been "evenly scorched" or "cooked" by the sun's heat. Phaethon's blue color indicates that the rock has undergone intense heating, Kareta said. During Phaethon's trips around the sun, it gets heated to temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius), which is "so hot that metals on the surface turn to goo," he said.
Creating the Geminid meteor shower
The Geminid meteor shower, which arrives every year in December, is the only meteor shower that appears to have originated from anything other than a comet. Comets are icy bodies containing a mixture of ice, rock, dust and frozen gas. When a comet gets close to the sun, some of this material gets vaporized and small pieces of the comet break loose, leaving behind a trail of comet crumbs in space. When Earth passes through such a trail of debris, we get meteor showers.
Asteroids like Phaethon are rocky objects that don't behave the same way as comets do when they get close to the sun, and astronomers aren't sure how Phaethon could have created the Geminids. Before Phaethon was discovered, in 1983, astronomers had no idea where the Geminids came from. Having observed that Phaethon's orbit matched the trail of debris that causes the annual meteor shower, though, astronomers determined that Phaethon must be the source.
This diagram shows the highly eccentric orbit of 3200 Phaethon.
Credit: NASA JPL
Exactly how Phaethon created that trail of debris remains a mystery, Kareta said. While it is possible that material swept off the asteroid's surface could contribute to the debris, "the amount of dust that gets swept off is nowhere near enough to sustain the Geminids," he said. One possibility is that Phaethon collided with another object in space and the Geminids are the debris from that "catastrophic breakup," he said. "So, in that case, you're essentially seeing dust, which is kind of like blood splatter, to be gruesome, from this really violent event."
Another possibility is that Phaethon is a dormant comet, or a comet that turned into an asteroid over time. "If it was cometary at some point in the past, maybe it made the meteor shower the normal way and left behind those comet crumbs … but since then, it's been cooked through and turned off and it just looks like a rock," Kareta said.
Phaethon may look more like an asteroid than a comet, but it displays qualities of both types of objects. It doesn't have the coma and tail that are characteristic of comets, but it does release "a tiny dust tail when it gets closest to the sun in a process that is thought to be similar to a dry riverbed cracking in the afternoon heat," University of Arizona officials said in a statement. "This kind of activity has only been seen on two objects in the entire solar system — Phaeton and one other, similar object that appears to blur the line traditionally thought to set comets and asteroids apart."
A mission to Phaethon: DESTINY+
Findings from this new research will come in handy for scientists with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which is currently planning a mission to Phaethon. The mission is called DESTINY+ (an abbreviation for Demonstration and Experiment of Space Technology for Interplanetary Voyage, Phaethon Fyby and Dust Science), and it is currently scheduled to launch in 2022.
DESTINY+ will fly by Phaethon and other near-Earth objects to study how dust is ejected from these objects. This should help to explain Phaethon's tiny dust tail. DESTINY+ could help scientists figure out whether Phaethon is an asteroid, a comet or something else. "It's probably somewhere in the middle," Kareta said.
Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience.
Meer van UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
Stonehouse man comes face to face with mysterious UFO
