A photograph of Ryugu's surface captured by the MASCOT lander.

(Image: © Jaumann et al., Science (2019))

One reason scientists may want to learn more about Ryugu is because its orbit brings it close — potentially dangerously close — to Earth. 

"Knowing the composition and geological structure of asteroids and comets is essential to [developing] mitigation strategies in the case of potential collision scenarios," study lead author Ralf Jaumann, a planetary scientist at the Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, told Space.com.

In addition, previous research suggested Ryugu may contain primordial material from the nebula that gave birth to the sun and its planets. Hayabusa2 is designed to return samples from the asteroid to shed light on the formation of the solar system.

To investigate Ryugu's surface, Hayabusa2 deployed the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) lander. This shoebox-size robot took photos both as it dropped from the main Hayabusa2 spacecraft onto Ryugu and after it landed on the asteroid's surface, where it operated for a little more than 17 hours before its batteries ran out.

"To have this small lander reaching the surface and providing detailed images of the surface was very exciting," Jaumann said.

MASCOT found Ryugu was covered with two kinds of rocks and boulders — one dark with a cauliflower-like, crumbly surface and the other bright with smooth faces and sharp edges. Both types are nearly evenly distributed on the surface of the asteroid, suggesting Ryugu was a pile of rubble that coalesced after two parent bodies crashed into one another, "indicating a violent history of asteroid collision," Jaumann said. 

Close-up images of Ryugu's dark, rough stones revealed they often seem to possess small, colored inclusions similar to those found in one of the most primitive and rare types of meteorites, known as carbonaceous chondrites.

"Carbonaceous material is the primordial material of the solar system, from which all planets and moons originate," Jaumann said. "Thus, if we want to understand planetary formation, including the formation of Earth, we need to understand its building parts." He said the new findings support long-standing speculation that carbonaceous chondrites come from C-type asteroids — dark-gray, carbon-rich space rocks such as Ryugu.

Unexpectedly, the MASCOT images of Ryugu showed no fine dust, which scientists had expected would accumulate on the asteroid's surface due to micrometeoroid impacts and other forms of weathering. The mission's predecessor, Hayabusa, found that another rubble-pile asteroid, Itokawa, also seemed dust-free.

The researchers suggested that some as-yet-unknown force removes dust from Ryugu's surface. Electric fields on the asteroid might cause dust to float away, Jaumann said, or micrometeoroid impacts and seismic vibrations could be responsible.

The scientists detailed their findings online on Aug. 22 in the journal Science. 

•  These Photos of Asteroid Ryugu from the Successful MASCOT Landing Are Amazing 
•  See the First Photo of Asteroid Ryugu from the Hopping MASCOT Lander! 
•  'Crazy' Rocky Surface of Asteroid Ryugu Revealed in MASCOT Lander Images 

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Biodiversity on Some Alien Planets May Dwarf That of Earth

By Mike Wall 

We don't have optimum ocean-circulation patterns, it would seem.

The artist's concept depicts Kepler-62f, a super-Earth exoplanet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. 

(Image: © NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech)

Earth's dazzling biodiversity may not be so remarkable in the cosmic scheme of things, a new study suggests.

Alien planets with more favorable ocean-circulation patterns might support life in even greater abundance and variety than our own world does, the study determined.

"Life in Earth's oceans depends on upwelling (upward flow), which returns nutrients from the dark depths of the ocean to the sunlit portions of the ocean where photosynthetic life lives," study leader Stephanie Olson, of the University of Chicago, said in a statement. 

"More upwelling means more nutrient resupply, which means more biological activity," added Olson, who presented the new research today (Aug. 22) at the Goldschmidt Conference in Barcelona, Spain. "These are the conditions we need to look for on exoplanets."

• Related: 10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life

The new study provides a step in this direction. Olson and her team used computer models to determine which types of alien worlds have the most efficient ocean upwelling and are therefore probably especially good places for life as we know it to thrive.

"We found that higher atmospheric density, slower rotation rates and the presence of continents all yield higher upwelling rates," Olson said. 

"A further implication is that Earth might not be optimally habitable — and life elsewhere may enjoy a planet that is even more hospitable than our own," she added, describing this conclusion as "surprising."

"We expect oceans to be important in regulating some of the most compelling remotely detectable signs of life on habitable worlds, but our understanding of oceans beyond our solar system is currently very rudimentary," Chris Reinhard, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in the same statement. 

"Dr. Olson's work represents a significant and exciting step forward in our understanding of exoplanet oceanography," added Reinhard, who was not involved in the new study.

Oceans are probably incredibly common across the Milky Way galaxy. After all, observations by NASA's Kepler space telescope and other instruments suggest that about one in four stars hosts a potentially Earth-like planet — a rocky world at the right orbital distance to host liquid water on its surface.

And our own solar system hosts multiple ocean worlds, though most of them are very different from Earth. Jupiter's moons Europa, Callisto and Ganymede are all thought to harbor big oceans of liquid water beneath their icy shells, for example, as does Saturn's moon Enceladus. 

The oceans of Europa and Enceladus are thought to be in contact with the moons' rocky cores, making possible complex chemical reactions that may well have led to life, scientists say.

• 6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in the Solar System
• 5 Bold Claims of Alien Life
• 9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven't Found Aliens Yet

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Pentagon Finally Admits They Investigate UFO Sightings

The Pentagon has finally uttered the words it always avoided when discussing the possible existence of UFOs — “unidentified aerial phenomena” — and admits that it still investigates reports of them.

In a statement provided exclusively to The Post, a Department of Defense spokesman said a secret government initiative called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program “did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena.”

And while the DOD says it shut down the AATIP in 2012, spokesman Christopher Sherwood acknowledged that the department still investigates claimed sightings of alien spacecraft.

“The Department of Defense is always concerned about maintaining positive identification of all aircraft in our operating environment, as well as identifying any foreign capability that may be a threat to the homeland,” Sherwood said.

“The department will continue to investigate, through normal procedures, reports of unidentified aircraft encountered by US military aviators in order to ensure defense of the homeland and protection against strategic surprise by our nation’s adversaries.”

Nick Pope, who secretly investigated UFOs for the British government during the 1990s, called the DOD’s comments a “bombshell revelation.”

Pope, a former UK defense official-turned-author, said, “Previous official statements were ambiguous and left the door open to the possibility that AATIP was simply concerned with next-generation aviation threats from aircraft, missiles and drones — as skeptics claimed.

“This new admission makes it clear that they really did study what the public would call ‘UFOs,’ ” he said.

“It also shows the British influence, because UAP was the term we used in the Ministry of Defence to get away from the pop culture baggage that came with the term ‘UFO.’ ”

John Greenewald Jr. — whose website The Black Vault archives declassified government documents on UFO reports, “Bigfoot” sightings and other subjects — also called the Pentagon’s use of the term “unidentified aerial phenomena” unprecedented in its frankness.

“I’m shocked they said it that way, and the reason is, is they’ve seemingly worked very hard not to say that,” he said.

“So I think that’s a pretty powerful statement because now we have actual evidence — official evidence — that said, ‘Yes, AATIP did deal with UAP cases, phenomena, videos, photos, whatever.’”

Greenewald said he hopes that the Pentagon will release more information about the AATIP, either by voluntary disclosure or through requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

“But at least we’re one step closer to the truth,” he said.

The existence of the AATIP was revealed in 2017, along with a 33-second DOD video that shows an airborne object being chased by two Navy jets off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

At the time, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took credit for arranging $22 million in annual funding for the AATIP, telling the New York Times that it was “one of the good things I did in my congressional service.”

Reid’s home state of Nevada hosts the top-secret military installation known as “Area 51,” long rumored to be the storehouse for an alien craft which crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Reid, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.

NOTE: The above image is CGI.

KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.KENPFEIFERDISCOVERIES.COM

THANKS TO THE NEW YORK POST.

Source: 

• http://worldufophotosandnews.org/?p=24646

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

© Copyright (c) NineForNews.nl

One thing you can say about Elon Musk – he’s always thinking. (OK, there’s a lot of things you can say about Elon Musk, but we don’t have that kind of bandwidth.) Take, for example, his ideas about terraforming Mars, which came from his idea that people living inside of artificial environment enclosures on the planet might not do too well physically and mentally (think Biosphere 2), which came from his idea of colonizing Mars, which … you get the idea – Elon is always thinking. How could humans live on Mars without airtight habitats? By turning the planet into a junior Earth, and the best way to do that is by creating an ultra-fast evolution from barren dirt to bountiful rainforests … or at least enough food and atmosphere to live, work and survive outside. And his original idea for doing that was …

Seriously?

This goes back to 2015 when Musk first said his solution for raising the temperature on Mars to make it habitable for humans would be to “Drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.” Once the smoke cleared, Musk figured enough trapped CO2 would be released from Martian soil to create an instant Earth atmosphere and kickstart an evolution. Scientists – both environmental and rocket – as well as ethicists and other humans have been objecting to this idea ever since, but busy idea-man Elon has just gotten around to coming up with a new one.

“Might make sense to have thousands of solar reflector satellites 

 to warm Mars vs artificial suns (tbd)”

That’s a mighty big ‘to be determined’ – starting with how does one get thousands of solar reflector satellites into Martian orbit – but it’s less radioactive (both literally and figuratively) so it has generated some consideration and reflection. Not because Elon said it but because Rigel Woida, an optical sciences and engineering student at the University of Arizona, wrote an award-winning paper in 2007 on using large aperture, lightweight orbital mirrors for terraforming targeted areas on the Martian surface. He proposed orbiting a 1.5-km array of 150 segmented, 150-meter-diameter mylar balloons that would collect sunlight and beam it to a square-kilometer area of the Martian surface.

“I adjusted the aperture so the reflector would heat a square-kilometer of Mars’ surface to roughly Tucson daytime illumination and temperatures. This would have immediate benefits for the astronauts. It would increase the light level, solar panel energy collection and bring the temperature of that part of the planet up to Earth’s. Astronauts wouldn’t have to work in freezing temperatures or spend energy thawing frozen water – water they need for manufacturing fuel to return to Earth, as well as water needed for consumption. Eventually, using techniques like these, humans might cultivate plants on Mars.”

It’s a start

That’s EXACTLY what I mean, Elon is probably thinking but certainly not saying for obvious reasons. Woida received a $9,000 NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Student Fellows Prize for his idea. Musk received … well, that’s “tbd.” This idea seems more scientifically possible and certainly less radioactively controversial. But, is it ethical to terraform any other world to turn it into a junior Earth for the purpose of Earthlings colonizing it? Remember what happened on Earth so many times when settlers brought their own plants and animals to new lands? Are they the invasive species … or is it the humans who thought it was a good idea?

That answer requires more than just thought, doesn’t it? Elon?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

UFO Sighting Video Over Amsterdam

A mysterious UFO above Amsterdam triggered a lot of speculations online about space alien craft sightings and even dark angels.

A strange aerial event was recently observed in the skies above the Dutch capital just as a tornado wreak havoc across the city centre last week.

YouTube channel Mavi777 uploaded the video online showing what seems to be a glowing UFO in the sky close to the top of the swirling column. The footage was reportedly recorded on August 10 as stated in the caption, but the integrity of it could not be immediately confirmed.

The unusual event shown in the clip led several social media users to suspect a possible appearance of a UFO with some of them claiming that these objects and the plasma orb lights are dark angels or the fallen ones that cauterise and kill animals for genetic parts and suck all the blood out as a sacrifice.

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

Mysterious Oregon cattle killings, mutilations alarm ranchers

Silvies Valley Ranch/David Zaitz Photography

Silvies Valley Ranch is a 140,000-acre property in Oregon’s largest county, where cattle outnumber people 14-to-1.

By Diana Kruzman | The Oregonian/OregonLive

They’re still baffled by the circumstances. There were no wounds. No signs of a struggle. And the bulls’ genitals and tongues had been carefully removed.

The killing and mutilation of the 4 and 5-year-old Hereford bulls in the prime of their productive lives has since spurred a multi-agency investigation in eastern Oregon, but detectives have turned up no leads and haven’t yet even settled on a cause of death.

“How somebody put these bulls on the ground at what would be arguably a fairly close range — and to do it in a way that didn’t leave any signs, no trace evidence, no footprints, no struggle marks from the animal, no broken limbs — I have no idea,” said Colby Marshall, vice president of the Silvies Valley Ranch.

The mystery deepens because there’s no obvious reason someone would want those animal parts. They aren’t prime targets for black market sales, authorities said.

The deaths are eerily similar to a rash of livestock killings and mutilations across the West in the 1970s, when hundreds of cows and bulls turned up dead, also of seemingly unknown causes and with their genitals and tongues missing.

Back then, theories ran the gamut from a government conspiracy and UFOs to natural deaths and scavengers. Today, the circumstances at Silvies Valley Ranch point to humans as the probable culprits because of the precise cuts on the bulls.

In this case, poisoning is unlikely, given the number of bulls involved and the plants in the area, he said. Larkspur typically flowers earlier in the year, while hemlock, another deadly plant, grows only around rivers and streams — not the dry forests where the bulls were found.

Plus, the fact that all five cattle killed were bulls, Bohnert said, is statistically unlikely to occur in nature — they make up only about 4% to 6% of a herd.

That leaves human activity as the most likely cause, he said. Adding to the evidence is the surgical precision with which the genitals and tongues were removed. Scavengers would leave obvious signs of tearing with teeth, claws or beaks, he said.

Bohnert said he has heard rumors of bull testicles being considered an aphrodisiac, and both tongues and genitals can be eaten — the famous “Rocky Mountain Oysters” come to mind. But he could think of no reason why someone couldn’t just legally buy the animal parts.

Yet the human explanation comes with its own difficulties.

Taking down a 2,000-pound bull is no easy feat, and Marshall said there were no signs of a struggle — the bulls were all lying on their sides as if they had just fallen over and died.

He said he could only think that some kind of toxic dart might kill a bull from a distance. But he has no proof of it and may never find it. It’s not clear if a dart would leave a detectable imprint.

In the meantime, tissue samples taken from the carcasses are still being analyzed for toxins and no results are available yet, Marshall said. Even with the tests, the killings may remain an enigma. The bulls had been left to decompose for several days, making a toxicology screen difficult to do, he said.

Until a suspect is found, ranch employees are on high alert, particularly those who patrol vast areas alone on ATV or on horseback.

Rosa said the news had also concerned other ranchers — but that greater awareness could also lead to faster answers in the tight-knit ranching community.

“The neighbors and the folks that are in those areas know each other,” Rosa said. “And when there’s someone strange or different that’s out and about, they take notice of that, and they let each other know.”

• -- Diana Kruzman; dkruzman@oregonian.com; 503-221-5394; @DKruzman

{ https://www.oregonlive.com/ }

They’re real and contain hidden messages, scientist says

A SCIENTIST who has dedicated his life to researching UFO crop circles says there are “puzzles” in them containing secret messages.

Megan Palin

Crop circles have been appearing around the world for centuries.

Source:Supplied

IT all started with a UFO sighting.

Dr Horace Drew, 61, was just 10 years old when he allegedly saw an unidentified, silver, windowless craft hovering in the sky near his suburban home, in Jacksonville, Florida. The encounter lasted only moments but led to a lifelong fascination with the extraterrestrial.

“I saw a UFO, so I knew they were real from an early age,” Dr Drew told news.com.au.

The scientist, who holds a PhD in Chemistry from Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, and worked for CSIRO as a molecular biologist, has been researching crop circles and aliens for 20 years. Dr Drew relocated to Australia in the 1980s but most of his work has taken him overseas, predominantly to Europe.

“They’re quite rare in Australia,” he said.

He, along with many conspiracy theorists, believe crop circles are the work of aliens or human time travellers. Sceptics say most are probably man-made.

A crop circle is typically defined by standing wheat stems that have been flattened in the shape of a circle or more complex pattern. They tend to appear mainly in developed Western or secularised countries — including Japan.

The cause of many of the circles is unknown despite various natural and unorthodox explanations having been put forward. Some crop circles have been proven to be hoaxes.

But according to Dr Drew, a number are legitimate and contain puzzles that can be decoded and linked to time travel and alien life.

He told news.com.au he had visited about “two dozen crop circles” around the globe in his career. Typically, they were between 50-500m in length, he said.

“For the past 20 years I have been studying UFOs or crop circles. Just as other mainstream scientists study conventional subjects,” Dr Drew told guests at the March UFO & Paranormal Research Society of Australia (UFO-PRSA) seminar in Sydney on Wednesday night.

“This has led to at least one major breakthrough the discovery of a more advanced binary code than our computers currently use.”

Dr Drew claimed that aliens or human time travellers have been leaving the crop circles on Earth as messages to “us or themselves”.

Sightseers visit an incorporated oversized crop circle in a cornfield, not far from the small community of Mammendorf near Munich, southern Germany, on August 3, 2016. The crop circle had a diameter of 180 metres.

Picture: AFP / Christof StacheSource:AFP

WHY ARE THERE CROP CIRCLES?

Dr Drew said he was one of a handful of scientists around the world who had worked to successfully decode some of the messages in crop circles.

According to him, some crop circles provide general descriptions of the future.

“Other crop (circles) show schematic images of the future for astronomical or human events,” he said.

He said some of the decoded messages read: ‘Much pain but still time. Believe. There is good out there’; ‘Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises’; ‘We oppose deception. Conduit closing’.

Dr Drew has developed at least two theories as to the purpose of the circles by reading their “advanced (version of) binary codes”.

“One theory is that they are trying to introduce themselves to us peacefully, like we do using bubbles with dolphins,” he said.

“When (humans) want to talk with dolphins we put little bubble circles under the ocean with a generator. We watch the dolphins come up and play and investigate, and we study them.

“This is called the ‘dolphin communication project’.”

He said the dynamic between the way humans interact with dolphins and whales was likely comparable to how extraterrestrials communicate with us.

“Barack or Trump have never said to a dolphin: ‘take me to your leader I want to sign a treaty with you’,” he said.

“And (the extraterrestrials are) not interested in making a treaty with us.

“They are ahead of us like we are ahead of the dolphins and the whales.”

His second theory was that the messages “are not even for us”.

Dr Drew said human time travellers from the distant future could be creating the circles as directional markers, to help them navigate “in their distant past, which is our present”.

“There are definitely humans living there in about 5000 years with time travel capability,” he said.

“They’re coming back and flying all over Earth.

“They seem to just say ‘this is a certain day’ and mark it.

“So the trouble is we don’t know space time physics enough to understand what’s happening. It’s beyond our knowledge.

“Maybe they don’t want us to know about it. It might be just for them.”

It’s a theory shared by many in his field of work.

A crop circle once appeared in field of wheat at Clay Hill, Warminster, Wiltshire. The site, made famous by UFO sightings in the 60s and 70s, had crop circle experts baffled over the 200 foot design.

Source:Supplied

HOW ARE THEY MADE?

Dr Drew said the circles appeared to be created by an “unknown energy that heats the crops up”.

“It’s like microwave energy but is something beyond earth’s science,” he said.

“It can pattern the wheat.

“No one sees or hears anything and that's why its so hard to prove. If there’s a craft, it’s silent, noiseless.”

But there’s nothing to fear, according to him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.

REAL OR A HOAX?

Telling the difference between a real crop circle and a hoax is like differentiating between an original painting and a fake, according to Dr Drew.

“There are some things to look for,” he said.

Crops that are bent “halfway up” their stems, rather than on the ground ,is one telltale sign “cereologists”, or someone that advocates paranormal explanations of crop circles, look for to determine that it’s not a hoax.

“You can’t absolutely prove a crop circle wasn’t a hoax but you can give a high probability and judgment,” he said.

“If there’s a hoax the word of it gets around very fast, people are aware, people are not that easily fooled.”

Scientist Dr Horace Drew said he took this photos in a “newly found crop” circle at Etchilhampton near Decizes, England in July, 2012. “About 25 per cent of fallen wheat stems inside the picture were bent by unknown energies,” he told a conference on Wednesday.

Source:Supplied

In 1991, English pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley took credit for most of the crop circles across southern England made since 1978. They were inspired by the Tully “saucer nest” case in Australia, where a farmer found a flattened circle of swamp reeds after observing a UFO.

Using basic tools including a plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in a straight line, they said they made complex crop circles in England — which others then copied all over the world into the 1980s.

They made a circle for journalists, which was later declared authentic by a cereologist. They then revealed their hoax to the world, spurring on even more copycats.

Scientist Dr Horace Drew has been researching crop circles and aliens for 20 years.

Source:Supplied

Dr Drew said there was a lot of scientific evidence to show that some crop circles were made by human time travellers or extraterrestrial beings. “Laboratory results on plant or soil samples taken from a crop circle in Brazil in October of 2016 show that it was formed by unknown sterilising images,” he said.

The earliest mention of a crop circle dates back to the 1500s. A woodcut from the time showed a “mowing devil” making the pattern.

An aerial view shows people strolling through a crop circle on a field near Mammendorf, southern Germany, on July 26, 2016. The pattern had a diameter of 180 meters.

Picture: AFP / Sven Hoppe.Source:AFP

GOVERNMENT SECRETS?

Earlier this month, US TV host Jimmy Kimmel asked former US President George Bush if he went through “secret files, the UFO documents” when he was in office.

But instead of laughing off the question, the former commander in chief replied: “Maybe.”

Mr Kimmel then asked him if there were “any great secrets you know that you can’t share with people?”

“Yeah, there are,” Mr Bush said. “But I’m not telling you.”

Many conspiracy theorists and some scientists, including Dr Drew, argued that Mr Bush’s comments indicated the US government knows much more about extraterrestrial life than it has publicly revealed.

“The politicians are scared they'll lose votes if they talk about it,” Dr Drew said.

He said international media had also played a part in causing the public to doubt the legitimacy of crop circles and aliens.

But according to him, its important for humans to keep seeking answers.

“The ET visitors have technologies which would benefit us greatly, for example, how to make safe, clean energy without burning oil, coal or gas,” Dr Drew said.

“Ultra-fast propulsion systems, based on gravity and inertia, could carry us safely to distant planets or stars.

“We may also need to upgrade our planetary defences soon, to protect against ET’s who may not be friendly.”

There’s still a lot more to be understood but Dr Drew’s hope is that he one day gets a closer look at what was inside the UFO he believes he saw as a child.

“I’d like to meet (the extraterrestrials or human time travellers) in person,” he said.

“But I don’t think they're going to do that.

“Whichever scientific team is doing this I don’t think we’re supposed to have full knowledge of it because it will interrupt their program, whatever they're doing.”

• megan.palin@news.com.au

{ https://www.news.com.au/ }

Some exoplanets may have better conditions for life than our own planet

Scientists discovered the first planet outside of our solar system in 1992, and today more than 4,000 exoplanets have been confirmed. In a new study, researchers have found that some of these exoplanets may have conditions that are even more well-suited to host life than our own planet.

“This is a surprising conclusion,” said Dr. Stephanie Olson, who led the investigation, “It shows us that conditions on some exoplanets with favorable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth.”

Because it is impossible to reach such distant planets with space probes, scientists are working with remote sensing tools like telescopes to explore the conditions on various exoplanets, and sophisticated models must be used to interpret these remote observations. Dr. Olson’s team used ROCKE-3D software, which was developed by NASA to simulate the climates and ocean habitats of different types of exoplanets.

“NASA’s search for life in the Universe is focused on so-called habitable zone planets, which are worlds that have the potential for liquid water oceans. But not all oceans are equally hospitable – and some oceans will be better places to live than others due to their global circulation patterns,” said Dr. Olson.

“Our work has been aimed at identifying the exoplanet oceans which have the greatest capacity to host globally abundant and active life. Life in Earth’s oceans depends on upwelling (upward flow) which returns nutrients from the dark depths of the ocean to the sunlit portions of the ocean where photosynthetic life lives. More upwelling means more nutrient resupply, which means more biological activity. These are the conditions we need to look for on exoplanets.”

Artist’s concept shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

After modeling a variety of exoplanets with potential, the experts were able to define the types of exoplanets which stand the best chance of sustaining life.

“We have used an ocean circulation model to identify which planets will have the most efficient upwelling and thus offer particularly hospitable oceans,” said Dr. Olson. “We found that higher atmospheric density, slower rotation rates, and the presence of continents all yield higher upwelling rates. A further implication is that Earth might not be optimally habitable – and life elsewhere may enjoy a planet that is even more hospitable than our own.”

“There will always be limitations to our technology, so life is almost certainly more common than ‘detectable’ life. This means that in our search for life in the Universe, we should target the subset of habitable planets that will be most favorable to large, globally active biospheres because those are the planets where life will be easiest to detect – and where non-detections will be most meaningful.”

The research was presented by Dr. Olson at the 2019 meeting of the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Congress in Barcelona.

By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

{ https://www.earth.com/ }

It’s official, NASA is going alien hunting. The space agency announced Tuesday that the next phase of the Europa Clipper mission is confirmed, meaning that within the next four to six year NASA will be sending a spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon Europa to determine if it can support life and maybe, just maybe, find a handful of aliens.

Europa is seen as one of the best, if not the best, candidates for extraterrestrial life within our solar system. Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon and has a crust composed mostly of water ice. Europa also has an oxygen atmosphere, although it is extremely thin and would be indistinguishable from the vacuum of space for the purposes of not suffocating.  But it’s not the ice surface or the thin oxygen atmosphere that excites scientists about the moon.

Because Europa is a very young moon, relatively speaking, and has the smoothest surface of any body in the solar system, scientists hypothesize that the thin ice crust of the moon actually hides a massive subsurface ocean. Estimated to be approximately 61 miles thick, this moon-wide ocean would be kept liquid by tidal flexing as the orbits close to Jupiter. Scientists believe that the ocean pulls down chemicals from the moon’s surface. A big, warm-enough-to-be-liquid, salt water ocean that sucks in chemical compounds. Sounds like a prime alien-fishing hole.

Europa

(credit: NASA/JPL/Galileo Project)

The Europa Clipper mission would be the first spacecraft to study the surface of Europa. Previous missions have flown by and taken some stunning pictures, but none have been able to study what’s happening on  or below the surface. the confirmation of the mission allows the next steps to be taken in the construction and testing of the spacecraft and science payload. In a press release, Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said:

“We are all excited about the decision that moves the Europa Clipper mission one key step closer to unlocking the mysteries of this ocean world. We are building upon the scientific insights received from the flagship Galileo and Cassini spacecraft and working to advance our understanding of our cosmic origin, and even life elsewhere.”

Artist’s concept of a water plume on Europa

(credit: NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI)

So when will we see it launch? 20 years? 40? Actually, it should be much sooner than that. NASA says that in the interest of cost-efficiency they are planning to have the equipment built and ready for launch as early as 2023. However they say that failing a 2023 launch date, the latest it would launch is 2025.

So it will launch pretty soon, relatively speaking. After it does launch however, Europa Clipper will take roughly six years to reach its target. This is due to space being big. So we have until 2031, on the outside range, to see if there are any alien-fish or space-dolphins out there. That is, of course, unless things go weird at Area 51 next month.

{  https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

NASA has discovered an exoplanet with three “suns” in its sky. Star Wars, anyone?

Astronomers think they've spotted an alien planet with three suns on its horizon, but that still isn't the most interesting thing about the strange new world's sky.

Scientists found the world, which they've dubbed LTT 1445Ab, in data gathered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

LTT 1445Ab orbits just one of the three stars, all of which are red dwarfs in the latter half of their lives, and the system is about 22.5 light-years away from Earth.

"If you're standing on the surface of that planet, there are three suns in the sky, but two of them are pretty far away and small-looking," co-author Jennifer Winters, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told New Scientist. "They're like two red, ominous eyes in the sky” reports Space.com.

RT America’s Trinity Chavez has the details.

  

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

Nasa geeft steen op Mars de naam ‘Rolling Stones’ - HLN.be

De “Rolling Stones Rock” is iets groter dan een golfbal, zo liet de Nasa donderdag weten op een persconferentie in het Californische Pasadena.

De steen was in beweging gezet door de turbulentie die door de motor van het landingstuig Insight werd veroorzaakt bij de landing in november 2018. Daardoor was de steen enkele meters verderop gerold. De sporen daarvan zijn op oranjerode foto’s van het Marsoppervlak te zien. Het is de eerste keer dat een Nasa-ruimtevaarttuig op een vreemde planeet een steen op die manier in beweging heeft gezet, aldus de Nasa.

“Dit is een mijlpaal in onze lange en bewogen geschiedenis”, lieten de Stones donderdagavond weten op hun concert in Pasadena.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Archeologen ontdekken drie ‘buitenaardse’ schedels in Kroatië - HLN.be

De schedels werden in 2013 reeds teruggevonden op een archeologische site in Osijek. De jaren daarop werden de merkwaardige schedels geanalyseerd en die analyse werd nu gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift PLOS One.

Doodsoorzaak
Uit de resultaten van de archeologen blijkt dat de schedels wel degelijk afkomstig waren van drie ‘gewone’ jongens die zo’n 1.550 jaar geleden stierven. Op dat moment waren de tieners vermoedelijk 12 tot 16 jaar oud. Daarbij waren ze duidelijk ondervoed, maar onduidelijk is nog of ze daaraan ook gestorven zijn.

Hun geschatte sterfdatum (415 tot 560 na Christus) komt immers overeen met de val van het Romeinse Rijk. Daarop kwamen nieuwe bevolkingsgroepen en culturen aan in Europa, alsook strubbelingen en nieuwe ziektes. 

Lees ook

Mysterie rond meer vol menselijke skeletten neemt toe

Misvormde schedels

En wat dan met die vreemd gevormde schedels? Het klinkt misschien gek, maar het fenomeen waarbij de schedel opzettelijk vervormd werd, kwam in verschillende werelddelen voor. Mensen met zo’n vreemd hoofd vervulden doorgaans een hogere positie in de samenleving, wilden hun intelligentie in de kijker zetten, en/of dichter bij de geesten staan. 

Het vervormen van de schedel gebeurde voornamelijk bij kinderen, omdat een kinderhoofd nog tamelijk ‘plooibaar’ is. Bij de kinderen werd het hoofd dan tussen twee houten planken gewikkeld waardoor een geforceerde en onnatuurlijke groei werd opgedrongen. Het resultaat? Langwerpige en puntige schedels die een onaardse indruk nalaten.

Natuurlijk liepen de praktijken waarbij het hoofd werd vervormd, niet altijd succesvol af. Zo zijn er reeds talrijke restanten ontdekt van kinderen die hoogstwaarschijnlijk stierven na het uitvoeren van een zogenaamde schedelbinding.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Earth is an Exoplanet to Aliens. This is What They’d See

The study of exoplanets has matured considerably in the last ten years. During this time, the majority of the over 4000 exoplanets that are currently known to us were discovered. It was also during this time that the process has started to shift from the process of discovery to characterization. What’s more, next-generation instruments will allow for studies that will reveal a great deal about the surfaces and atmospheres of exoplanets.

This naturally raises the question: what would a sufficiently-advanced species see if they were studying our planet? Using multi-wavelength data of Earth, a team of Caltech scientists was able to construct a map of what Earth would look like to distant alien observers. Aside from addressing the itch of curiosity, this study could also help astronomers reconstruct the surface features of “Earth-like” exoplanets in the future.

The study that describes the team’s findings, titled “Earth as an Exoplanet: A Two-dimensional Alien Map“, recently appeared in the journal Science Mag and is scheduled for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The study was led by Siteng Fan and included multiple researchers from the California Institute of Technology’s Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Artist’s impression of an exoplanet atmosphere reacting from interaction with its star. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STSci)

When looking for potentially habitable planets beyond our Solar System, scientists are forced to take the indirect approach. Given that most exoplanets cannot be observed directly to learn of their atmospheric composition or surface features (aka. Direct Imaging), scientists must be satisfied with indications that show how “Earth-like” a planet is.

As Fan told Universe Today via email, this reflects the limitations that astronomers and exoplanet studies are currently forced to contend with:

“Firstly, current exoplanet studies have not figured out what the least requirements are for habitability. There are some proposed criterions, but we are not sure if they are either sufficient or necessary. Secondly, even with these criterions, current observation techniques are not good enough to confirm the habitability, especially on Earth-like exoplanets due to the difficulty of detecting and constraining them.”

Given that Earth is the only planet we know of that is capable of supporting life, the team theorized that remote observations of Earth could act as a proxy for a habitable exoplanet as observed by a distant civilization. “Earth is the only planet we know that contains life,” said Fan. “Studying what the Earth looks like to distant observers would give us the direction of how to find potential habitable exoplanets.”

Direct image of exoplanets around the star HR8799 using a Vortex coronagraph on a 1.5m portion of the Hale telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Palomar Observatory

One of the most important elements of Earth’s climate (and which is critical to all life on its surface) is the water cycle, which has three distinct phases. These include the presence of water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds of condensed water and ice particles, and the presence of bodies of water on the surface.

Therefore, the presence of these could be considered potential indications of habitability and even indications of life (aka. biosignatures) that could be observed from a distance. Ergo, being able to identify surface features and clouds on exoplanets would be essential in order to place constraints on their habitability.

To determine what Earth would look like to distant observers, the team compiled 9740 images of Earth that were taken by NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite. The images were taken every 68 to 110 minutes over a two year period (2016 and 2017) and managed to capture light reflected from Earth’s atmosphere at multiple wavelengths.

Fan and his colleagues then combined the images to form a 10-point reflection spectrum plotted over time, which were then integrated over the Earth’s disk. This effectively reproduced what Earth might look like to an observer many light-years away if they were to observe Earth over a two year period.

Surface features could be more discernible using a new method developed at Caltech. Credit: IAU/L. Calçada

“We found that the second principal component of Earth’s light curve is strongly correlated to the land fraction of the illuminated hemisphere (r^2=0.91),” Fan said. “Combining with the viewing geometry, reconstructing the map becomes a linear regression problem.”

After analyzing the resulting curves and comparing them with the original images, the research team discovered which parameters of the curves corresponded to land and cloud cover. They then picked out the parameters that most closely related to land area and adjusted it to the 24-hour rotation of the Earth, which gave them a contoured map (shown above) that represented what Earth’s light curve would look like from light years away.

The black lines represent the surface feature parameter and correspond roughly to the coastlines of the major continents. These are further colored in green to provide a rough representation of Africa (center), Asia (top right), North and South America (left), and Antarctica (bottom). What lies in between represents the Earth’s oceans, with the shallower sections denoted in red and the deeper ones in blue.

These kinds of representations, when applied to the light curves of distant exoplanets, could allow astronomers to assess whether an exoplanet has the oceans, clouds, and icecaps – all necessary elements of an “Earth-like” (aka. habitable) exoplanet. As Fan concluded:

“The analysis of light curves in this work have implications for determining geological features and climate systems on exoplanet. We found that the variation of light curve of Earth is dominated by clouds and land/ocean, which are both crucial to the life on Earth. Therefore, Earth-like exoplanets which harbor this kind of features would be more likely to host life.”

Earth-like planets.

Image Credit: JPL

In the neat-future, next-generation instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will allow for the most detailed exoplanet surveys to date. In addition, ground-based instruments that are coming online in the next decade – like the Extremely Large Telescope(ELT), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) – are expected to enable direct imaging studies of smaller, rocky planets that orbit closer to their stars.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

The iconic film ‘Alien’ came out 40 years ago. A scientist explains why Hollywood depictions of extraterrestrials have changed since then.

Aylin Woodward