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.
Dinsdag 26 mei 2020
UFO Following Historic Apollo 11 Mission Module, July 1969, NASA Source, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Following Historic Apollo 11 Mission Module, July 1969, NASA Source, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 1969 but found today Location of sighting: Earths Orbit Source photo:
Here is an interesting UFO I found in the NASA photo archives. The UFO is in earths orbit and its far from earth, but closer to the Apollo 11 module. It makes sense that aliens would want to watch such a historical mission as this one. I mean this is Apollo 11 mission which took three men to the moon. Not much in human history can compare to Buzz Aldrin taking that first step on the moon. Reading about it or watching it on video feels much less personal than being there at the moment it happened. Its understandable that aliens would be at this historical human event. Now the image details tells us a lot. The photo was taken with a world famous Hasselblad camera. The newest and highest tech at the time. So this object in the photo is not an anomaly or glitch the photo.
The unidentified flying object (UFO) was photographed over Palm Springs, California, prompting claims of analiencraft in the skies. According to self-described UFO expert Scott C Waring, the UFO may have come from the highly classified US Air Force base known as Area 51. Area 51 has been at the heart of many UFO stories and alien conspiracy theories, including the 1947 Roswell incident.
This is one of the prime areas that UFOs will be seen from Area S4
Scott Waring, ET Data Base
Mr Waring argued on his blog the UFO could be extraterrestrial in origin and is being used by the US military.
The UFO expert said: "Bob Lazar was a nuclear physicist who worked on one of eight alien disks in Area S4 said that pilots would often take the craft out for testing.
"This craft may well be an alien tech craft being tested out from Area 51."
Although Area 51 has been prime fodder for conspiracy theorists, there is no evidence the Air Force base is home to alien technology.
UFO Seen Over Palm Springs, California May Be Area 51 Secret Project, May 24, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 24, 2020
Location of sighting: Palm Springs, California, USA
Source: MUFON #109069
This UFO was seen over Palm Springs, California this week. The object was only seen for a few seconds. Its located on far southern California so its mostly rocky desert. This is one of the prime areas that UFOs will be seen from Area S4, which is inside Area 51. Bob Lazar was a nuclear physicist who worked on one of eight alien disks in Area S4 said that pilots would often take the craft out for testing. This craft may very well be an alien tech craft being tested out from Area 51.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
Object appeared and quickly disappeared in a blink of an eye A tic tac object with appendages appeared above our pool and just as soon as it appeared and after we took a photo it disappeared in a blink of an eye.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon descends in Medellin, Colombia
On May 10, 2020 when Diego Franco looked out his window, he saw an unidentified aerial phenomenon that moved horizontally and subsequently descended in Itaguí, an area near Medellin, Colombia.
Diego took his cell phone and started recording the phenomenon until it was lost behind some trees, seconds before the recording ends, you can see how the object changed direction, as it was descending and then moved to the left before it was out of sight (video 1).
But when Diego Franco stopped recording, he noticed that another object with similar characteristics was coming, making almost the same route, on which he also recorded the second object. (video 2).
Flashing lights seen and filmed over Cheshire, UK 20-May-2020
In a relatively rare and unconventional sighting, a bizarrely shaped UFO was recorded by a UK family flying over their home. In the clear night sky, an oddly shaped object with lights flashing in an unknown but a predictable pattern was seen. If pattern of flashing lights is looked at and visualised clearly, two things can be predicted about the UFO. First, the size of the UFO can be determined by measuring the area and based on the video it can be surmised that the UFO had a vast expanse. Secondly, the blinking lights formed the patterns that were very similar to the constellations of stars out there in the space. Maybe the spaceship was showing locations in space with the images of different constellations. This kind of lighting pattern is not seen often in the history of UFOs.
Amazing UFO video from Minas Gerais, Brazil 22-May-2020
It seems like the alien invaders have expanded their search area from North America to South America. An unidentified object was seen flying through the sky in a city in Brazil. The person, who shot the video of the UFO was driving his car and suddenly he witnessed an outlandish object gliding past him in the sky and he paused to capture this strange event. As it can be seen in the video recording, an oval shaped object is visible gliding in the sky. There is also visible a streak of lights, four in number, flashing across the UFO body.
Initially the lights were not visible but as the sun started setting and it began getting dark, the UFO turned the lights on perhaps to navigate its way in the dark. This kind of UFO design with streaks of light circumambulating it is seen very rarely on planet earth.
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Scientists have made a shocking discovery – the Earth's magnetic field is weakening.
The magnetic field is vital for life on our planet, as it shields us from cosmic radiation and charged particles emitted from the sun.
A large region of reduced magnetic intensity has been observed between Africa and South America, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, and it has formed a center of minimum intensity in just five years.
Researchers are speculating that the weakening is a sign that Earth is heading to a pole reversal, which is when the north and south poles switch places - and the last time this occurred was 780,000 years ago.
The anomaly is wreaking havoc on satellites and other spacecraft flying through the area, as many are experiencing technical malfunctions.
Scroll down for videos
A large region of reduced magnetic intensity has been observed between Africa and South America, called the South Atlantic Anomaly (blue), and it has formed a center of minimum intensity in just five years
The discovery was made by a team at the European Space Agency (ESA) who pulled data from the agency's Swarm constellation, which is a cluster of satellites.
The satellites are specifically designed to identify and measure the different magnetic signals that make up Earth's magnetic field, allow experts to spot areas that have weakened.
ESA has been studying the magnetic field since the end of 2013.
The mission is comprised of three identical satellites that provide high quality measurements of field in three different orbital planes.
The weakened field has been on the radar of experts for years - they know that it has lost nine percent of its intensity over the last 200 years. However, an even larger area of weakness has recently developed between Africa and South America
Jürgen Matzka, from the German Research Center for Geosciences, said: 'The new, eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and in recent years is developing vigorously.
'We are very lucky to have the Swarm satellites in orbit to investigate the development of the South Atlantic Anomaly.
'The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth's core driving these changes.'
The weakened field has been on the radar of experts for years - they know that it has lost nine percent of its intensity over the last 200 years.
However, an even larger area of weakness has recently developed between Africa and South America.
ESA says this isn't a cause for alarm, adding that 'the intensity dip in the South Atlantic occurring now is well within what is considered normal levels of fluctuations.'
After analyzing data collected by Swarm, the team found that between 1970 and 2020, the strength in this region has depleted from around 24 000 nanoteslas to 22 000.
However, what is more puzzling is that is that the anomaly has grown and moved westward at a pace of around 12 mph.
In addition, the team found that in just the last five years a center of minimum intensity has formed southwest of Africa, suggesting the South Atlantic Anomaly could split into two separate cells.
The shift doesn't happen just overnight, but slowly occurs over the course of a few hundred or even thousand years.
And when this happens, multiple north and south magnetic poles pop up all around the Earth.
One theory for the weakened field is that the Earth may be heading into a pole reversal, which has happened in the past and the researchers say 'we are long overdue,' as it takes place 'roughly every 250,000 years.'
The last time the poles reversed was some 780,000 years ago and then the event nearly happened 40,000 years back.
If the poles are in the process of reversing it will happen over several thousand years, according to scientists, who say it's unlikely the field will disappear completely.
The biggest impact of a magnetic field reversal will be on birds, turtles and other creatures that use the field to navigate. North on a compass will also point to Antarctica rather than Canada.
According to the researchers, one of the reasons scientists don't know much about the magnetic history of the South Atlantic Anomaly region of Earth is because they don't have enough archeomagnetic data - physical evidence of magnetism in Earth's past, preserved in rocks.
A reversing magnetic field could lead problems for turtles, birds and the compass
The Earth's magnetic field regularly flips poles every few hundred thousand years.
The exact impact of this flip isn't known as it hasn't happened in 780,000 years, however geologists and astronomers do have some idea.
One of the biggest impacts will be on animals that use the magnetic field for navigation - such as turtles and birds.
North on the compass will also point to Antarctica rather than Canada.
In terms of the impact on human life - the biggest risk depends on how weak the field gets during its transition.
According to a NASA study there’s no evidence it will disappear completely as 'it never has before'.
However, there is a risk the field will weaken more than usual - it is variable already - during the change.
If it gets too weak more radiation will get to the Earth's surface and could cause cancers and other issues.
However, as it will happen over a few thousand years humanity will have time to prepare for any weakening magnetic field.
The only other notable impact of a weakening magnetic field would be auroras at lower latitudes.
However, the team is saying the anomaly is not a reason to sound the alarm, but satellites and spacecraft flying in the weakened area can experience technical malfunctions.
The speculation of a pole reversal has recently been spotted by researchers from the UK and Denmark.
The team found that the north pole has been moving closer to Siberia at a frantic pace due to two writhing lobes of magnetic force in the Earth's core, research has suggested.
It went from shifting nine miles at most to as much as 37 miles in a year from 1999 to 2005, suggests the study that was published this month.
The magnetic field is vital for life on our planet, as it shields us from cosmic radiation and charged particles emitted from the sun. The anomaly is wreaking havoc on satellites and other spacecraft flying through the area, as many are experiencing technical malfunctions
Lead researcher Phil Livermore, an associate professor of geophysics at the University of Leeds, said: 'We've never seen anything like this before.
'Our predictions are that the pole will continue to move towards Siberia, but forecasting the future is challenging and we cannot be sure,' he told Live Science.
The authors wrote: 'Over the last two decades the position of the north magnetic pole has been largely determined by two large-scale lobes of negative magnetic flux on the core–mantle boundary under Canada and Siberia.'
'The magnetic North Pole wandered slowly around northern Canada from 1590 to around 1990 and then accelerated over the past 20 years moving from around 10 km (6.2 miles) per year to over 50 km (31 miles) per year,' Ciaran Beggan of the British Geological Survey told MailOnline.
'In contrast, the south magnetic pole has barely moved much in the past 100 years as the flow of the outer core there is much more sedate.'
WHAT IS EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD AND HOW DOES IT PROTECT US?
Earth's magnetic field is a layer of electrical charge that surrounds our planet.
The field protects life on our planet because it deflects charged particles fired from the sun known as 'solar wind'.
Without this protective layer, these particles would likely strip away the Ozone layer, our only line of defence against harmful UV radiation.
Earth's magnetic field (blue) is a layer of electrical charge that surrounds our planet. The field protects life on our planet because it deflects charged particles fired from the sun (orange) known as 'solar wind' (artist's impression)
Scientists believe the Earth's core is responsible for creating its magnetic field.
As molten iron in the Earth's outer core escapes it creates convection currents.
These currents generate electric currents which create the magnetic field in a natural process known as a geodynamo.
Earth’s Magnetic Field Weakening For Unexplained Reason, Reveals European Space Agency
The Earth has a moderately strong magnetic field, which is generated by superheated liquid iron that makes up the outer core of our planet. The magnetic field is vital to life as it shields the Earth’s ozone layer from solar winds, cosmic rays, and harmful ultraviolet radiation.
The Earth’s magnetic field is weakening, the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement, citing data from its Swarm mission, a constellation of satellites that was launched in 2013. According to the ESA, over the last 200 years, the Earth’s magnetic has field has lost 9 percent of its strength.
In 1958, scientists discovered the South Atlantic Anomaly, an area that sits between Africa and South America where the magnetic field has been weakening considerably. According to the ESA’s latest study, this area has grown and moved westward at a pace of around 12 miles (20 km) per year and scientists cannot explain why.
Moreover, according to data provided by the Swarm mission, which studies our planet’s magnetic field, a second area with less strength has emerged in South Africa, which the ESA says could be a sign that the South Atlantic Anomaly "could split up into two separate cells".
"The new, eastern minimum of the South Atlantic Anomaly has appeared over the last decade and in recent years is developing vigorously", said Jürgen Matzka, from the German Research Centre for Geosciences. "We are very lucky to have the Swarm satellites in orbit to investigate the development of the South Atlantic Anomaly. The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth’s core driving these changes", Matzka said
The space agency said one hypothesis that may explain the magnetic field’s bizarre behaviour is a reversal of the North and South Poles, a process during which the poles switch places. It has occurred many times throughout the planet’s history and the ESA says "we are long overdue by the average rate of roughly 250,000 years".
The ESA said that at the moment, the weakening of the magnetic field, which protects our planet from cosmic radiation and charged particles emitted by the Sun, poses no risk for humans. However, satellites and spacecraft that fly through an area with reduced field strength are more likely to experience technical malfunctions.
Magnetisch veld van de aarde verzwakt en niemand weet waarom. Wat is er aan de hand?
Het magnetisch veld van de aarde verzwakt, zo heeft de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA laten weten. Volgens de ESA is het aardmagnetisch veld in de afgelopen 200 jaar 9 procent zwakker geworden.
In 1958 ontdekten wetenschappers de Zuid-Atlantische Anomalie, een gebied tussen Afrika en Zuid-Amerika waar het magnetisch veld aanzienlijk verzwakt is.
Uit onderzoek van de ESA blijkt dat het gebied groter is geworden en met 20 kilometer per jaar naar het westen verschuift. Wetenschappers hebben hier geen verklaring voor.
Uitdaging
Er is daarnaast een tweede gebied gevonden boven Zuid-Afrika, wat er volgens het ruimteagentschap op kan duiden dat de Zuid-Atlantische Anomalie ‘in tweeën splitst’.
Het nieuwe deel is in het afgelopen decennium ontstaan en ontwikkelt zich snel, zei Jürgen Matzka van het Duitse onderzoekscentrum voor geowetenschappen. We staan nu voor de uitdaging om te achterhalen welke processen deze veranderingen veroorzaken, aldus Matzka.
Omkering van het aardmagnetisch veld
Een mogelijke verklaring is een omkering van het aardmagnetisch veld, waarbij de noord- en zuidpool van plek wisselen. Dat gebeurde 780.000 jaar geleden voor het laatst.
De ESA zei dat het verzwakken van het magnetisch veld op dit moment geen gevaar voor mensen vormt. Wel is het mogelijk dat satellieten en vliegtuigen die door een gebied vliegen waar het veld verzwakt is, minder goed functioneren.
Rare Black Triangle TR3B cruising at low altitude over London, UK
It doesn't exist officially, but reports generally describe black triangle TR3B crafts as large, silent, black triangular objects hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities and highways. Sightings usually take place at night. These objects are often described as having pulsing colored lights that appear at each corner of the triangle.
Now, on the evening of May 23, 2020 Louis-Julian saw a strange large triangle craft which was certainly not a plane, helicopter or drone hovering at low altitude over London, UK, on which Louis-Julian decided to record the craft which has all the features of the black triangle TR3B.
What would have been the reason to fly this anti-gravity craft at such a low altitude over London.
Alien Base Entrance Found On Google Earth Map, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: May 13, 2020 Location of discovery: Indonesia Google Coordinates: 1°13'42.00"S 129°48'49.43"E I found an entrance to an underground base on a secluded island in Indonesia. The doorway can easily be seen with Google Earth map and when you add contrast to a screenshot...the detail really comes out. We can even tell from looking at it that the UFO that flew through this doorway was leaving the underground base. How do we know this? Because the deeper insides of the tunnel are collapsed and closed in, but the outer surfaces area is still open. This is the perfect place for an underground base...on such a secluded island were few people ever wander. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Daytime UFO filmed over Eagle Pass, Texas 18-May-2020
In yet another bizarre sighting in Eagle Pass, Texas in the last 4 days, an unidentified object (UFO) was recorded gliding across the cloud filled skies. The spectators have claimed of seeing the same object flying across their town several times before as well. The object seemed to possess an EGG shape, which is quite famous and very common among the UFO sightings reported on planet earth. The UFO did not seem to be in such a hurry as it was gliding at snails place.
There have been rumours that the object was a surveillance machine developed by the US Air force and Eagle pass had been chosen as its testing ground. But the organisation refuted the claim and dispelled the rumours. The shape possessed by the UFO is highly uncommon in all the object known to mankind, so it can be, to some extent, believed that the object had out of this world connections
Witness report:
Egg Shaped Flying Object In Sunset Sky. On Thursday 21, 2020, Laughlin Airforce Jets from Del Rio, Texas, presented a flyby over our town earlier in the day around 4PM. Later in the day, I myself was on SnapChat Social Media where I tried looking for local videos of the jets. I went on Snap Map and tapped on the town’s area, as I searched I found a video by someone unknown. I have no idea who uploaded this or the time uploaded. Just the date posted. I share this because I’ve personally sighted this object in my town before. I’ve also submitted the footage of my sighting a while back. I can only assume the area of the video as on Snapchat, a blue “hot spot bubble” was seen over a small neighborhood. I don’t own the video I just found it. Only public account’s videos can be seen in such hot spot bubbles. I have attached a screen recording of the original sighting below. I also added two screenshots of the Snapchat map where the blue hotspot I mentioned can be seen. I also had circled the area where the “blue hotspot” appeared a few days prior.
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UFO VIDEO: Fast object over Montreal, Canada 22-May-2020
Really fast UFO filmed over Montreal, QB, Canada on 22nd May 2020. Few hours prior to the sunset, in the Montreal province of Canada, a lightning fast white flash of light was seen gliding across the orangish skies.
The object, whatever it was, seemed to be travelling at highly fast speeds, much faster than a commercial plane. The object seemed so small and was very difficult to locate if enough attention weren’t paid. The unidentified object seemed to be flying at a very high altitude, much higher than most of the airplanes known to earth do. The object could have been a high technology fighter jet, but generally the flying fighter jets emanate a lot of sound and in this case the object seemed to be noiseless. It could also have been a satellite but none of the satellite timings were synchronised with the time at which the object was filmed. This clearly points to the fact that the object did not belong to this planet and so it has been named a UFO.
Witness report:
Light moving very fast in Montreal. Path with directional change. Around 21:00, I was looking outside from my home and I saw a white bright light moving very fast in the sky. It seems it was faster than a commercial airplane. It passed over the tree, like 10 meters above and ascend very fast and high in the sky. Then it changed color to green and red and make a drastic turn to the right (it was at this moment that I capture the video) and turn drastically to the left. During this drastic turn, another light pop-out like it was come down from the sky like. It looks like a mosquito that moved in chaotic direction, but the were no light around me that could enlight a mosquito like this.
So this light appeared in the sky and went near the other light and then moved out to the left as fast as it came. When the second light went near the first, the latter turn drastically to the same direction than the former and went very fast and high to the North-West
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Man claims to have found entrance to 'underground alien base' on Google Earth
Scott Waring, a UFO hunter who runs the ET Data Base YouTube channel, claims he found the entrance to an 'underground alien base' on an uninhabited island in Indonesia
A UFO hunter has claimed he discovered what he believes could be the 'entrance to an alien base' after spotting an odd formation on Google Earth.
Scott Waring, who runs a YouTube channel and website called ET Data Base, says the peculiar shape is located on a 'small and uninhabited island in Indonesia'.
He says he believes it to be a doorway to an 'underground alien base', as it doesn't fit in with its environment and is in a secluded location where 'aliens would love to have a hidden base'.
Using a tool on Google Earth, he measured the opening to find it was 20 metres across, which he says is big enough to 'get a lot of alien ships in there'.
You can check it out for yourself on Google Earth by searching the coordinates: 1°13'42.00"S 129°48'49.43"E.
Scott said it was the ideal location for an alien hide out(Image: ET Data Base/Youtube)
Writing about the discovery on his website, Scott says: "I found an entrance to an underground base on a secluded island in Indonesia.
"The doorway can easily be seen with Google Earth map and when you add contrast to a screenshot the detail really comes out.
"We can even tell from looking at it that the UFO that flew through this doorway was leaving the underground base. How do we know this? Because the deeper insides of the tunnel are collapsed and closed in, but the outer surfaces area is still open.
He said the shape means the ship was leaving the earth, rather than entering(Image: ET Data Base/Youtube)
"This is the perfect place for an underground base on such a secluded island where few people ever wander."
In a video posted on YouTube, Scott inspects the image further, saying: "That is just amazing to me, that is totally unnatural. That is an alien entrance to an underground base people."
He argues the formation of the opening proves the UFO was leaving the base to go 'to the sky'.
Others praised Scott for the find, with one writing: "I think this is entrance specifically for the interstellar ships. It is well known that Reptiloids (original species of our planet) use cigar-shaped ships or cylindrical shaped ships.
"And now. Look at the shape of the entrance! It's clearly for their ships!"
A second said: "My gut tells me this is 100% legit. Good job man! Now I at least know in what kind of places I can meet Reptiloids."
But not everyone was convince, with another commenting: "You really need to see a doctor my friend!"
Scientists can’t yet rebuild someone with bionic body parts. They don’t have the technology. But a new artificial eye brings cyborgs one step closer to reality.
This device, which mimics the human eye’s structure, is about as sensitive to light and has a faster reaction time than a real eyeball. It may not come with the telescopic or night vision capabilities that Steve Austin had in TheSix Million Dollar Man television show, but this electronic eyepiece does have the potential for sharper vision than human eyes, researchers report in the May 21 Nature.
“In the future, we can use this for better vision prostheses and humanoid robotics,” says engineer and materials scientist Zhiyong Fan of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The human eye owes its wide field of view and high-resolution eyesight to the dome-shaped retina — an area at the back of the eyeball covered in light-detecting cells. Fan and colleagues used a curved aluminum oxide membrane, studded with nanosize sensors made of a light-sensitive material called a perovskite (SN: 7/26/17), to mimic that architecture in their synthetic eyeball. Wires attached to the artificial retina send readouts from those sensors to external circuitry for processing, just as nerve fibers relay signals from a real eyeball to the brain.
The artificial eyeball registers changes in lighting faster than human eyes can — within about 30 to 40 milliseconds, rather than 40 to 150 milliseconds. The device can also see dim light about as well as the human eye. Although its 100-degree field of view isn’t as broad as the 150 degrees a human eye can take in, it’s better than the 70 degrees visible to ordinary flat imaging sensors.
In theory, this synthetic eye could perceive a much higher resolution than the human eye, because the artificial retina contains about 460 million light sensors per square centimeter. A real retina has about 10 million light-detecting cells per square centimeter. But that would require separate readings from each sensor. In the current setup, each wire plugged into the synthetic retina is about one millimeter thick, so big that it touches many sensors at once. Only 100 such wires fit across the back of the retina, creating images that have 100 pixels.
Eye spy
The design for a new artificial eye (illustrated) is based on the structure of the human eye. At the back of the eyeball, a synthetic retina is embedded with nanoscale light sensors. Those sensors measure light that passes through the lens at the front of the eye. Wires attached to the back of the retina ferry signals from those sensors to external circuitry for processing, similar to the way nerve fibers connect the eyeball to the brain.
How a new artificial eye is structured like a real human eye
H. JIANG/NATURE 2020
To show that thinner wires could be connected to the artificial eyeball for higher resolution, Fan’s team used a magnetic field to attach a small array of metal needles, each 20 to 100 micrometers thick, to nanosensors on the synthetic retina one by one. “It’s like a surgical operation,” Fan says.
The researchers’ current method of creating individual ultrasmall pixels is impractical, says Hongrui Jiang, an electrical engineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison whose commentary on the study appears in the same issue of Nature. “For a few hundred nanowires, okay, fine, but how about millions?” Engineers will need a much more efficient way to manufacture vast arrays of tiny wires on the back of the artificial eyeball to give it superhuman sight, he says.
Stunning images of swirling gas and dust may show a planet forming
A small, tantalizing twist in a spiral around a young star hints at where an exoplanet grows
This infrared image, taken by the Very Large Telescope in Chile, shows a giant spiral of planet-forming gas and dust around the young star AB Aurigae, about 520 light-years away in the constellation Auriga. The star itself is blocked out in the center of the image.
A. BOCCALETTI ET AL/ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS 2020, ESO
For the first time, astronomers may have seen direct evidence of a planet forming around a young star.
A spiral disk of gas and dust surrounding the star AB Aurigae contains a small S-shaped twist near the spiral’s center, infrared telescope images show.
That twist “is the precise spot where a new planet must be forming,” says astrophysicist Emmanuel Di Folco of the University of Bordeaux in France.
Previously, astronomers have seen gaps (SN: 11/6/14) and large-scale spirals (SN: 6/14/18) that are thought to be created by unseen planets in disks of gas and dust around young stars. Theories of how planets coalesce and gather material from these disks predict that planets’ motions would further twist the gas around them like swirling skirts, pinpointing a planet’s location (SN: 5/11/18).
Now, Di Folco and colleagues have used infrared observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and the Very Large Telescope, both in Chile, to find a spiral and zero in on one such S-shaped twist around AB Aurigae. The team describes its findings in the May Astronomy & Astrophysics.
A close-up of the disk of gas and dust (seen here in infrared light) around the young star AB Aurigae (left) reveals a bright knot (right, circled in white) where astronomers think a planet is coalescing. For scale, the blue circle represents the size of Neptune’s orbit.A. BOCCALETTI ET AL/ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS 2020, ESO
“It was amazing,” Di Folco says. “It was exactly as we were expecting from the theoretical predictions of planet formation.”
The star, about 520 light-years away in the constellation Auriga, is just 4 million years old, about one one-thousandths of the age of the sun. “It’s really a baby,” Di Folco says.
The potential planet’s exact mass is not known, but it probably would have to be a gas giant like Jupiter rather than a rocky planet like Earth to make such big waves in the disk. And it might not be alone — there’s a hint of another planet near the disk’s outer edge.
Zooming in on the star AB Aurigae, located about 520 light-years away in the constellation Auriga, reveals a swirl of gas and dust that includes a small S-shaped region where a new planet may be forming.
Future astronauts could make lunar buildings out of moon dust and pee.
That’s the suggestion of chemist Anna-Lena Kjøniksen and her colleagues, who made a cement from urea — a major component of urine — and faux lunar soil.
When humans take up long-term residence on other planets or the moon, they will need to pack light, in part because shipping materials from Earth is expensive. NASA has estimated that every pound of material sent into orbit around the Earth costs around $10,000.
Tapping into local resources could keep costs down. Researchers have suggested using lunar soil to make concrete or cement to 3-D print dwellings for astronauts (SN: 2/21/13). But most cement recipes require a lot of water, which is scarce on the moon and awfully heavy to blast into space (SN: 4/15/19).
On Earth, adding a chemical called a superplasticizer to a cement mix reduces the amount of water needed by keeping a drier mix from getting too crumbly, while leaving it flexible enough to be used in a 3-D printer. But most superplasticizers are organic compounds, also in short supply on the moon, says Kjøniksen, of Østfold University College in Halden, Norway.
Then it hit her. “I was thinking, what’s available on the moon? If you add humans, then what do you have available?” she says. Maybe human waste could turn into something useful.
Kjøniksen had previously used urea to make plastic mixtures less viscous. Urea breaks hydrogen bonds between molecules, reducing friction and letting the molecules slide past each other more easily. She’d never heard of someone using it in cement, “but I thought it was worth a try.”
A silica and aluminum oxide powder — a stand-in for lunar dust — is the main ingredient in Kjøniksen’s cement. Its chemical content is similar to fly ash, the main component of common cement mixtures, but with larger and more crystalline grains. The team mixed that powder with powdered urea bought from a chemical supply company, not distilled from real urine, along with some water to make the cement. Compared with two other superplasticizers used in construction on Earth, “the urea worked very well,” Kjøniksen says.
The mixture held its shape under light weight and withstood temperature changes. Extruding the cement through a tube and stacking several layers on top of each other using a 3-D printer made a tiny, stable wall, the team reported in the Feb. 20 Journal of Cleaner Production.
Kjøniksen plans to test the cement in more extreme temperatures and in a vacuum chamber that mimics the moon’s lack of atmosphere. Then, the next step would be scaling the wall up to a more realistic size. She also wants to investigate whether future astronauts would have to purify urine, or if they could use pee in cement directly.
In real life, making urea cement will probably be more complicated than just peeing in a bucket, says materials scientist Belinda Rich of the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, who was not involved in this study but is working with Kjøniksen and colleagues on follow-up experiments. But overall, making cement with urea on the moon could be practical, she says.
“It sounds like such a daft idea,” Rich says. “But here we are — it works.”
On Wednesday (May 27), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to rise from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley toward the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Crew Dragon capsule. The mission, called Demo-2, will be the first orbital crewed flight to launch from U.S. soil since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in July 2011.
And Crew Dragon is indeed a successor to the shuttle — one of two successors, in fact, along with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Both capsules have been developed with funding from NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which got up and running in 2010.
NASA's plan back then was to have at least one private American crewed spaceship flying by 2015. That timeline would limit the nation's total dependence on Russian Soyuz spacecraft — the only astronaut taxi left after the shuttles' grounding — to four years.
It's taken a bit longer than that, of course. But the delay isn't terribly surprising in retrospect, considering that an orbital crewed vehicle had never before been developed via such a public-private partnership.
"There were a lot of skeptics back in the day, and a lot of uncertainty about whether or not this model was a good idea even," former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, a professor of astronautics practice at the University of Southern California, told Space.com.
"You had government, industry and NASA administration all, at various different times, looking like they were going to shut this down," said Reisman, who worked for SpaceX from 2011 to 2018. He served as the company's director of crew operations during the latter part of that run and remains a consultant to SpaceX today.
A new paradigm
The groundwork for commercial crew was laid in 2006, with the establishment of NASA's commercial cargo program. This project ended up nurturing two operational robotic ISS resupply craft, SpaceX's cargo Dragon and the Cygnus vehicle, which is built by Northrop Grumman. Dragon made its first trip to the ISS in 2012, and Cygnus followed suit the next year. Both are still flying today.
Commercial cargo served as a model for commercial crew, Reisman said. The latter program awarded its first contracts in 2010, doling out a total of $50 million to five companies: Blue Origin, Boeing, Paragon Space Development Corp., Sierra Nevada and United Launch Alliance (ULA).
These "CCDev-1" deals — the program was then known as Commercial Crew Development — aimed to encourage the maturation of a range of human spaceflight technologies. Paragon got money to work on key aspects of a life-support system, for example, and ULA's funding was intended to help human-rate its workhorse Atlas V rocket.
SpaceX's first Crew Dragon to carry astronauts and its Falcon 9 rocket stand atop Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center ahead of a planned May 27, 2020 launch. (Image credit: SpaceX/Elon Musk via Twitter)
The next funding round, CCDev-2, was announced in April 2011. These deals were richer, awarding a total of $270 million to Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada and SpaceX. Boeing got $92 million to work on Starliner, and SpaceX received $75 million to aid development of Crew Dragon.
The money got bigger still with the Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap) contracts, which were announced in August 2012. Sierra Nevada received $212 million to continue work on its Dream Chaser space plane, and Boeing and SpaceX got $460 million and $440 million, respectively.
The final cull came two years later, and NASA didn't end up putting all of its eggs in one basket. In September 2014, the agency announced that Boeing and SpaceX had won Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) deals, which covered final development work on their spaceflight systems as well as six operational crewed flights to and from the ISS. Boeing's deal was worth $4.2 billion, and SpaceX got $2.6 billion.
"I think it was a wise decision to pursue two suppliers for launch services," space policy expert John Logsdon, a professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington, D.C, told Space.com. "That decision will pay off."
Around the time the CCtCap contracts were awarded, NASA officials said they wanted at least one of the new private astronaut taxis to be operational by late 2017.
That didn't happen, of course. Funding shortfalls may have contributed to the delay; over the years, Congress has repeatedly given less money to Commercial Crew than the White House asked for in federal budget requests. Technical challenges have played a role as well. Spaceflight is hard, after all, and human spaceflight is especially so.
For instance, SpaceX looked poised to launch Demo-2 last year. In March 2019, Crew Dragon visited the ISS for the first time, acing an uncrewed, eight-day mission called Demo-1. But a month later, that same capsule exploded during a ground test of its launch-abort system. The schedule moved to the right, obviously, as SpaceX investigated the cause of the mishap (a faulty valve) and made some design changes to ensure it won't happen again.
Boeing has experienced some bumps in the road as well. Starliner launched on its version of Demo-1, called Orbital Flight Test (OFT), in December 2019. But things didn't go as planned. The capsule suffered a glitch with its timing system and got stranded in an orbit too low to allow a rendezvous with the ISS. Starliner will refly OFT before carrying astronauts, and it's not clear when that makeup mission will lift off.
But all that being said, Crew Dragon is now sitting atop its Falcon 9 rocket on the launch pad, waiting for Behnken and Hurley to ride it into history.
And Demo-2 will will be just the beginning, if all goes according to plan. For example, SpaceX sees the mission as a key step toward a bold future in which the company helps humanity colonize Mars, among other ambitious exploration feats.
For its part, NASA wants Demo-2 to kick off a new era of public-private exploration that allows the United States to accomplish great things in the final frontier. For instance, the space agency is also relying heavily on private industry in its Artemis program of lunar exploration, which aims to land two astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2024 and establish a sustainable human presence on and around the moon by 2028. (SpaceX is one of three companies that just received funding to develop a lunar landing system for Artemis.)
Demo-2 "will be a reminder of the US aspiration to lead the development of the space frontier," Logsdon said. "It will remind us of what we could be doing and, in my view, should be doing."
But we can't take NASA's exploration goals for granted, he stressed. After all, history books are full of grand space dreams that withered on the vine, and only time will tell if the momentum generated by Demo-2 will last.
"Is there a national will to continue down the path [laid out by] this mission and the progress on Artemis?" Logsdon said. "Is the country serious about this?"
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom orFacebook.
The satellite is apparently part of Russia's missile-warning network.
Russia launched a military satellite to orbit on Friday (May 22), and the mission generated plenty of action in the downward direction as well.
A four-stage Soyuz-2 rocket lifted off from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwestern Russia early Friday morning, carrying a classified payload that's believed to be the fourth satellite for the country's EKS OiBU missile-warning network, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com.
The Soyuz successfully delivered the satellite to its intended orbit, the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced Friday afternoon.
The rocket's third stage was expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere over southeastern Australia, with any surviving debris from that part of the booster targeted to splash down in the Pacific Ocean south of Tasmania, RussianSpaceWeb.com reported.
Many people in the region, from central Victoria to northern Tasmania, saw a brilliant fireball overhead at the appropriate time, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported. This was no coincidence; they were witnessing the fiery death of the Soyuz's third stage.
A Soyuz-2 rocket launches a missile-warning satellite from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on May 22, 2020. (Image credit: Roscosmos)
"The slow speed, about 6 kilometres per second, is a very telltale sign that it is space junk," Jonti Horner, an astrophysics professor at the University of Southern Queensland, told the ABC. (Asteroids and other space rocks that slam into our atmosphere are going much faster than that.)
Not every hunk of space junk comes down as quickly as this piece of the Soyuz did. Indeed, Earth orbit is littered with dead satellites, spent rocket bodies and other debris. NASA estimates that there are 500,000 pieces of junk up there at least as big as a marble. And even such small objects can cause serious damage if they hit a spacecraft, considering that bodies in low-Earth orbit zip around our planet at about 17,500 mph (28,160 km/h).
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom orFacebook.
Video of the fireball taken near Portland, Victoria, Australia.
Quote from The Pixatrix text:“Through this ancient manuscript…the reader could attract and channel the energy of the cosmos so that a certain event develops according to the will of the practitioner, zodiacal magic; which is said to help master and dominate with accuracy—through the force of the universe—nature and its surroundings.”
The Picatrix explains not only how to create and ensoul magical statues and talismans, but even speaks of whole cities constructed using the principles of astrological magic.
The Pixatrix—as it’s called today—is an ancient, 400-page magical grimoire of originally written in Arabic under the title غاية الحكيم Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm. Experts believe it was composed in the 11th century although some argue it was created in the first half of the 10th century. The work is divided into four books, which exhibit a marked absence of systematic exposition.
In the thirteenth century, the king of Castile Alfonso X (also known as Alfonso “The Wise”) ordered the translation of the ancient text to Spanish and. The translation into Latin gained notable popularity in Europe between the XV and XVIII centuries.
Although the Castilian version is said to be lost, the Latin translation (Liber Picatrix) spread throughout the West and reached a notable success between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Picatrix is believed to have been written by Abū- Maslama Muhammad ibn Ibrahim ibn ‘Abd al-da’im al-Majrīt, an astronomer, mathematician, and alchemist of Al-Andalus who wanted to gather all the knowledge of the Middle East from the 8th and 9th centuries.
Arab historian, Ibn Khaldun, ascribed authorship of Picatrix (referring to the original Arabic version, under the title Ġāyat al-Ḥakīm) to the mathematician, al-Majriti, who died between 1005CE and 1008CE.
Although there are those who disagree with such authorship and attribute this magical grimoire to an unknown apprentice of a mysterious Middle Eastern magic school—mostly due to the style in which the work is presented which looks like a kind of notebook—the enigmatic grimoire was extremely popular and promised to teach its reader, among other things, how to obtain energy from the planets of the cosmos. Many authors summarize the work as being “the most thorough exposition of celestial magic in Arabic”.
The contents fo this ancient magical grimoire are fascinating and in it, we find a reference to talismanic magic and astrological references to animals, plants, metals, stones, etc. Through them, the reader could attract and channel the energy of the planets so that a certain event develops according to the will of the practitioner, zodiacal magic which is said to help master and dominate with accuracy—through the force of the universe— even nature and the surroundings.
The ancient magical grimoire also gives insight into numerology and lunar calendars that supposedly would help plan rituals considering the most propitious moment so that the energy of the universe favored the result.
However, there’s more to this mysterious magical grimoire than numerology and astrology. This ancient text includes different bizarre recipes for countless spells that had to be composed using ingredients as dangerous as hashish, opium, and other psychoactive plants that were used in large quantities to induce altered states of consciousness and astral journeys.
If on the other hand, the intention was to contact the spirits and master the forces of the spirits, then the ingredients that had to be used were different: blood, sperm, urine, earwax, tears, and saliva were all mixed together specifically to obtain the best results and master the world we cannot see on a daily basis. Interestingly, Picatrix explains not only how to create and ensoul magical statues and talismans, but even speaks of whole cities constructed using the principles of astrological magic.
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