NASA scrubs first SLS Moon rocket launch attempt

NASA has scrubbed the first attempted launch of its Space Launch System (SLS) Moon rocket after running into multiple issues, one of which could not be solved in time.

The delay is bad news for the tens to hundreds of thousands of tourists who traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida to witness the launch in person. Worse, by NASA’s own implicit admission, there’s a good chance the main problem SLS encountered could have already been dealt with and rectified in advance of the launch attempt if the space agency had finished testing the rocket earlier this summer.

Ultimately, that omission turned the first SLS launch attempt into more of a continuation of the rocket’s first four wet dress rehearsal (WDR) attempts, none of which ended as expected. NASA engineers will now have to decide how to proceed and whether the SLS rocket can be made ready in time for another launch attempt on September 2nd or 5th. If not, the next opportunity could be weeks away.

As far as SLS test operations go, the August 28/29th launch attempt was fairly ordinary, with the rocket running into multiple issues – a few minor, a few significant, and one identical to a previous problem. The first problem – a hydrogen leak near the SLS rocket’s base – came after a risk of lightning delayed the start of propellant loading by more than an hour. A very similar, if not identical, hydrogen fuel leak had already occurred during official wet dress rehearsal testing in April and July.

That leak was fixed on the fly by properly chilling all related systems, and propellant loading was eventually completed – albeit a few hours late thanks to inclement weather. Shortly after, there were reports of a crack that needed careful analysis. Only later did NASA specify that the suspected crack was in the rocket’s foam insulation rather than its structures, the latter of which could have been a catastrophic problem.

Around the same time, the true showstopper of the day occurred when NASA attempted to chill the SLS Core Stage’s four RS-25 engines, all of which flew several times aboard reusable Space Shuttle orbiters. Three engines performed (mostly) as expected, flowing a bit of liquid hydrogen fuel to cool themselves down, but one – engine #3 – was never able to make progress toward the optimal temperature needed for ignition (~5°C/~41°F). After hours of remote troubleshooting attempts, no progress had been made, and NASA ultimately decided to scrub the launch attempt at T-40 minutes to liftoff.

Over the course of four separate wet dress rehearsal attempts in April and June 2022, NASA was never able to test the core stage’s engine chill capabilities. In a post-scrub press conference, Jim Free – NASA’s Associate Administrator of the Exploration Systems Development Division – revealed that all four engines were warmer than intended, further confirming that skipping a fully nominal wet dress rehearsal was likely a mistake. Clear and present evidence aside, Free stated that he and other executives still believed skipping that test was the right decision, claiming that ending explicit WDR testing reduced the number of times the rocket needed to be moved on its transporter.

Making the situation even harder to explain, Artemis I Mission Manager Mike Sarafin revealed in the conference Q&A that Boeing had changed the design of parts of the SLS engine chill (bleed) system after the Core Stage finally conducted a nominal static fire test at Mississippi’s Stennis Space Center. Completed in March 2021, the SLS rocket then sat inside NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for a full year before attempting its first wet dress rehearsal tests at the launch pad.

The first round of three WDRs were not as smooth as NASA expected and instead uncovered three relatively small issues: a hydrogen leak, a single faulty upper stage valve, and problems with a ground supply of nitrogen gas. Those small issues led NASA to roll SLS back to the VAB for repairs, incurring a minimum multi-week delay that stretched into two months. SLS also failed to complete a fourth WDR attempt in July 2022, but NASA decided to overlook the rocket parts and phases of preflight operations that were never actually tested as planned, one of which was the engine chill system.

If NASA cannot fix the RS-25 chill system within the next few days, it will be forced to roll the entire rocket and mobile launch platform back to the VAB to – at a minimum – replace its flight termination system (FTS). The US Eastern Range requires that all rocket FTS systems be tested no more than 15 days before launch, and NASA was able to secure special permission for a gap of up to 25 days. However, because Boeing’s Core Stage design places the FTS system in a location that is reportedly inaccessible at the pad, the entire SLS rocket will need to roll back to the VAB to have its FTS systems “retested” after that period.

As a result, NASA’s SLS launch debut will be delayed by several weeks (at best) if it can’t recycle for another attempt on September 2nd or 5th. The next window runs from September 20th to October 4th, but the SLS rocket took 10 days to go from its latest rollout to first launch attempt – a figure that doesn’t include the time required to remove the rocket from the pad, roll it back to the VAB, and conduct any necessary repairs or tests while back in the bay. If NASA can’t fix the engine problem at the pad by September 3rd or 4th, the true delay could be more like 4-6 weeks.

With any luck, that won’t happen, but it’s clear that a lot of stress and discomfort could have been avoided if NASA had gone into its first launch attempt knowing that its SLS rocket was truly ready.

(Richard Angle)

(Richard Angle)

(Richard Angle)

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LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS

UFO Over Appalachian Mountains

UFO spotted over Cumber Maryland.

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New MASSIVE triangle UFO sighting over Santa Monica Pier – MUST SEE

These amazing 4 UFO videos were filmed from Santa Monica pier in California on 27th August 2022. It shows a group of people that are witnessing and recording a triangular shaped craft (a possible TR-3B) over the coast.

What do you think about these UAP sighting? I’ve notices some inconsistencies in the the recordings on the phones of the witnesses and the actual movements of the phones. Let me know your thoughts below!

You can watch all four videos in the Youtube video below!

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

New MASSIVE triangle UFO sighting over Santa Monica Pier – MUST SEE

These amazing 4 UFO videos were filmed from Santa Monica pier in California on 27th August 2022. It shows a group of people that are witnessing and recording a triangular shaped craft (a possible TR-3B) over the coast.

What do you think about these UAP sighting? I’ve notices some inconsistencies in the the recordings on the phones of the witnesses and the actual movements of the phones. Let me know your thoughts below!

You can watch all four videos in the Youtube video below!

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

Possible sign of Mars life? Curiosity rover finds 'tantalizing' Red Planet organics

Study Predicts More Long-Term Sea Level Rise from Greenland Ice

The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second-largest body of ice in the world, covering roughly 650,000 square miles of Greenland's surface. If it melts completely, it could contribute up to 23 feet (7 meters) of sea level rise, according to a new study using data from NASA's Operation IceBridge.

Credit: NASA / Jefferson Beck

Greenland’s melting ice sheet could generate more sea level rise than previously thought if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase and warm the atmosphere at their current rate, according to a new modeling study. The study, which used data from NASA’s Operation IceBridge airborne campaign, was published in Science Advances today.

In the next 200 years, the ice sheet model shows that melting at the present rate could contribute 19 to 63 inches to global sea level rise, said the team led by scientists at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. These numbers are at least 80 percent higher than previous estimates, which forecasted up to 35 inches of sea level rise from Greenland’s ice.

The team ran the model 500 times out to the year 3000 for each of three possible future climate scenarios, adjusting key land, ice, ocean and atmospheric variables to test their effects on ice melt rate. The three climate scenarios depend on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere in coming years. In the scenario with no reduction of emissions, the study found that the entire Greenland Ice Sheet will likely melt in a millennium, causing 17 to 23 feet (5 to 7 meters) of sea level rise.

In the scenario where emissions are stabilized by the end of the century rather than continue to increase, the model shows ice loss falling to 26 to 57 percent of total mass by 3000. Drastically limiting emissions so they begin to decline by the end of the century could limit ice loss to 8 to 25 percent. This scenario would produce up to 6 feet (about 2 meters) of sea level rise in the next millennium, according to the study.

The updated model more accurately represents the flow of outlet glaciers, the river-like bodies of ice that connect to the ocean. Outlet glaciers play a key role in how ice sheets melt, but previous models lacked the data to adequately represent their complex flow patterns. The study found that melting outlet glaciers could account for up to 40 percent of the ice mass lost from Greenland in the next 200 years.

By incorporating ice thickness data from IceBridge and identifying sources of statistical uncertainty within the model, the study creates a more accurate picture of how human-generated greenhouse gas emissions and a warming climate may affect Greenland in the future.

A Clearer Picture

Capturing the changing flow and speed of outlet glacier melt makes the updated ice sheet model more accurate than previous models, according to the authors. As ocean waters have warmed over the past 20 years, they have melted the floating ice that shielded the outlet glaciers from their rising temperatures. As a result, the outlet glaciers flow faster, melt and get thinner, with the lowering surface of the ice sheet exposing new ice to warm air and melting as well.

“Once we had access to satellite observations, we were able to capture the surface velocity of the whole Greenland Ice Sheet and see how that ice flows. We recognized that some outlet glaciers flow very fast — orders of magnitude faster than the interior of the ice sheet,” said lead author Andy Aschwanden, a research associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute.

IceBridge’s detailed ice thickness measurements helped the team to be the first to model these areas where outlet glaciers are affected by warmer ocean waters, as well as to model more of the complex feedbacks and processes influencing ice loss than previously possible. They examined the importance of factors like underwater melting, large ice chunks breaking off of glaciers, changing snowfall rates and rising air temperatures. They also examined factors that could slow down ice loss, like the movement of Earth’s surface “bouncing back” from the weight of ice that is no longer there.

“At the end of the day, glaciers flow downhill,” Aschwanden said. “That’s very simplified, but if you don’t know where downhill is, the model can never do a good job. So the most important contributor to understanding ice flow is knowing how thick the ice is.”

Each of the three emissions scenarios used in the study produced different patterns of ice retreat across Greenland. The least severe scenario showed the ice retreating in the west and north, while the moderate scenario showed ice retreat around the island, except for in the highest elevation areas. The most severe scenario, in which emissions continue to increase at their present rate, showed more than half of the model runs losing more than 99 percent of the ice sheet by 3000.

At its thickest point, the Greenland Ice Sheet currently stands more than 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) above sea level. It rises high enough into the atmosphere to alter the weather around it, as mountains do. Today, this weather pattern generates almost enough snowfall to compensate for the amount of naturally melting ice each year. In the future, however, melting and flow will thin the interior, lowering it into a layer of the atmosphere that lacks the conditions necessary for sufficient replenishing snowfall.

“In the warmer climate, glaciers have lost the regions where more snow falls than melts in the summer, which is where new ice is formed,” said Mark Fahnestock, research professor at the Geophysical Institute and the study’s second author. “They’re like lumps of ice in an open cooler that are melting away, and no one is putting any more ice into the cooler.”

The team stressed that despite the need for ongoing research on exactly how glaciers will move and melt in response to warming temperatures, all of the model runs show that the next few decades will be pivotal in the ice sheet’s future outcome.

“If we continue as usual, Greenland will melt,” Aschwanden said. “What we are doing right now in terms of emissions, in the very near future, will have a big long-term impact on the Greenland Ice Sheet, and by extension, if it melts, to sea level and human society.”

Bridging the Data Gap

The model runs were performed on high-performance supercomputers at NASA’s Ames Research Center and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM), an open-source model developed at UAF and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. NASA also provided funding support for the study. While other ice sheet models could perform the simulations they did, the team said, PISM is unique for its high resolution and low computational cost.

NASA’s Operation IceBridge is the world’s largest airborne survey of polar land and sea ice. Using an array of aircraft and scientific instruments, IceBridge has collected data between the end of the first Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) mission in 2010 and the second, ICESat-2, which launched in 2018. It has measured the height of the ice below its flight path as well as the bedrock under the ice sheets.

“NASA’s space and airborne campaigns, like IceBridge, have fundamentally transformed our ability to try and make a model mimic the changes to the ice sheet,” Fahnestock said. “The technology that allows improved imaging of the glacier bed is like a better pair of glasses allowing us to see more clearly. Only NASA had an aircraft with the instruments and technology we needed and could go where we needed to go.”

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April 1, 2021

Greenland Ice Mass Loss 2002-2020

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Greenland ice melting is INEVITABLE because of climate change and will cause sea levels to rise 10 inches

• Researchers studied two decades worth of Greenland Ice Sheet measurements
• Under the best possible situation, the ice sheet will lose 110 trillion tonnes of ice
• This will cause global sea levels to rise by more than 10 inches (27cm)
• While the timeline for this remains unclear, the researchers say most of the committed sea level rise will occur this century

By SHIVALI BEST FOR MAILONLINE 

The melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet will cause global sea levels to rise by more than 10 inches (27cm) – even if the whole world stops burning fossil fuels today, a new study has warned.

Researchers from the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) studied two decades worth of measurements to predict the minimum ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet from climate warming so far.

Their findings suggest that, under the best possible situation, the Greenland Ice Sheet will lose about 110 trillion tonnes of ice.

'In the foreseeable scenario that global warming will only continue, the contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea level rise will only continue increasing,' said Professor Jason Box, lead author of the study.

'When we take the extreme melt year 2012 and take it as a hypothetical average constant climate later this century, the committed mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet more than doubles to 78 cm [30 inches].'

The melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet will cause global sea levels to rise by more than 10 inches (27cm) – even if the whole world stops burning fossil fuels, a new study has warned

Their findings suggest that in the best case scenario, a minimum of 3.3 per cent of the Ice Sheet will be lost, equal to 110 million tonnes of ice, or a sea level rise of 10 inches (27cm)

In the study, the researchers looked at changes in the snow line - the boundary between areas exposed to net melting during summer and areas that are not - of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 2000 to 2019.

Ice across the sheet does not melt equally, with ice along the edges at lower elevations melting the most quickly.

Further up the ice sheet, it's too cold for melting to occur, even in summer.

The snow line is set by the line where the upper layer of winter snow does not melt away in summer, but remains on top, nourishing the ice sheet.

This line varies from year to year, depending on the weather.

For example, a hot summer may move the boundary further up the ice sheet, while a colder year may push the line down towards the ice edges.

Snow falling on the ice during winter turns into new ice over time - that is, if it doesn't melt away during summer.   

For the ice sheet to be in equilibrium, the added mass must equal the lost mass. 

While that is the case in a stable climate, a hot summer causes the layers of snow to be lost by melt. 

Professor Jason Box taking ice samples standing on exposed ice below the snow line of the Greenland Ice Sheet in West Greenland during the melt season

'When we take the extreme melt year 2012 and take it as a hypothetical average constant climate later this century, the committed mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet more than doubles to 78 cm [30 inches],' Professor Box said

That snow will then be missing in the mass budget for years to come, creating a disequilibrium. 

Using a rigorous glaciological theory, the researchers calculated the average snow line needed to bring the ice sheet back into balance.

Their findings suggest that in the best case scenario, a minimum of 3.3 per cent of the Ice Sheet will be lost, equal to 110 million tonnes of ice, or a sea level rise of 10 inches (27cm).

'It is a very conservative rock-bottom minimum,' Professor Box said.

'Realistically, we will see this figure more than double within this century.'

The researchers only looked at the Greenland Ice Sheet, and did not consider sea level rise as a result of melting in Antarctica.

The glaciologist team setting up an automatic weather station on the snowy surface above the snow line during the melt season

While previous studies have estimated sea level rise with climate models, this is the first time that researchers have made estimations based on measurements.

This radically different method has raised some eyebrows in the science community according to Professor Box.

'The ice flow models are not ready in this area,' he explained. 'This is a complimentary way of calculating mass loss that has been lacking.'

Unfortunately, the downside to this method is that it does not give a time frame.

'In order to get the figure that we have, we had to let go of the time factor in the calculation,' Professor Box added.

'But our observations suggest that most of the committed sea level rise will occur this century.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

A UFO, the Pentagon and a 3-year Mission to Save the World. The True Story of Valiant Thor

A UFO, the Pentagon and a 3-year Mission to Save the World. The True Story of Valiant Thor On March 16, 1957, at 8 o’clock in the morning, a 300 ft long spacecraft landed in a field in Alexandria Virginia. Two local police officers arrived on the scene. The door of the craft slowly opened. The officers drew their guns, not sure what to expect. To their surprise, out walked a normal-looking guy. He smiled at the stunned officers and actually waved hello. Before the policemen could say a word, the stranger said, in clear English: “I need to see the president.” Nine months after this event, NASA was founded. This is the story of what happened in-between. This is the story of Valiant Thor. If you don’t know this one, hold on tight. We’re going on a hell of a ride.

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

Strangest Things Found In Siberia

Strangest Things Found In Siberia

Siberia is huge, making up 77% of Russia, but it’s only 23% populated.

In these places completely uninhabited, strange things have been discovered, and many mysterious and unexplained things have happened, like the Tunguska Event.

But scientists discovered something astonishing not long ago; a prehistoric virus that’s been sleeping beneath the ice for millions of years, and even stranger; massive craters are now mysteriously appearing across the frozen Siberian tundra.

What have scientists’ found, and should we be worried about these new discoveries?

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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Astronomers Find a “Massive, Dense Structure” Beneath the Largest Crater on the Moon

"The dense mass—"whatever it is, wherever it came from"—is weighing the basin floor downward by more than half a mile..."

Astronomers have found a strange, humongous, deep-mass structure beneath the largest crater in our solar system; the Moon’s South Pole Aitken basin.

There, researchers discover an anomaly with a massive unexpected mass. Although it’s not aliens, astronomers say that the mysterious mass may very well contain the metallic remnants from the asteroid that slammed into the Moon, forming the crater.

“Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That’s roughly how much-unexpected mass we detected,” said lead author Peter B. James, Ph.D., assistant professor of planetary geophysics in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences.

An oval crater

The crater located on the far side of the Moon is an oval-shaped region around 2,000 kilometers wide.

Measurements throughout the years have revealed it is several miles deep.

The new, anomalous mass beneath the crater is detailed in the study “Deep Structure of the Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin,” published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

To spot the anomaly, astronomers analyzed data from NASA’s Grail Mission, which allowed them to accurately measure gravity strength changes around the Moon.

“When we combined that with lunar topography data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we discovered the unexpectedly large amount of mass hundreds of miles underneath the South Pole-Aitken basin,” James said.

“One of the explanations of this extra mass is that the metal from the asteroid that formed this crater is still embedded in the Moon’s mantle.”

Mysterious structure

The researchers revealed that the dense mass of the structure –“whatever it is, wherever it came from” is causing the entire basin floor to weigh in by more than half a mile.

The researchers’ team revealed through computer simulations of asteroid collisions into the Moon that, under the right conditions, iron-nickel cores from asteroids could have been dispersed into the Moon’s upper mantle during collisions.

{ https://www.thespaceacademy.org/ }

Scientists find mysterious shapes and structures in the brain with up to ELEVEN dimensions that could shed light on how memories form

• Researchers used computer modelling to identify complex brain structures
• They found the mind is made up of shapes and spaces with up to 11 dimensions
• Understanding the shapes could help us to find out how memories are formed

By DAISY DUNNE FOR MAILONLINE

The human brain is one of nature's most complex structures, and scientists are still a long way from understanding its mechanics.

But a new study has come one step closer to unlocking its secrets by unravelling its immense complexity.

The research has revealed that the mind is home to shapes and structures that have as many as 11 dimensions.

And understanding these structures could help us to reveal exactly how memories are formed.

Scroll down for video 

New research has revealed that the mind is home to shapes and structures that have as many as 11 dimensions

(stock image)

The research used in-depth computer modelling to understand how brain cells organise themselves to carry out complex tasks.

'We found a world that we had never imagined,' said neuroscientist Henry Markram, director of Blue Brain Project in Lausanne, Switzerland.

'There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions.

'In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.'

The complex geometric shapes form when a group of brain cells - known as neurons - merge to make what scientists call a 'clique'.

Every neuron connects to its neighbour in a specific way to form an object with complex interconnections.

The more neurons that join in with the 'clique', the more 'dimensions' are added to the object.

Shapes that are three-dimensional have height, width and depth, like any object in the real world. 

The objects discovered in this study don't exist in more than three dimensions in the real world, but the mathematics used to describe them can have five, six, seven or even 11 dimensions. 

'Outside of physics, high-dimensional spaces are frequently used to describe complex data structures or conditions of systems, for instance, the state of a dynamical system in state space,' Professor Cees van Leeuwen, from KU Leuven, Belgium, told Wired.

'The space is simply the union of all the degrees of freedom the system has, and its state describes the values these degrees of freedom are actually assuming.'

The researchers used a type of maths called algebraic topology to model the whereabouts of these structures inside a virtual brain created using software. To test their model, the researchers then carried out experiments on real brain tissue

The researchers used a type of maths called algebraic topology to model the whereabouts of these structures inside a virtual brain created using software.

To test their model, the researchers then carried out experiments on real brain tissue.

They found that the virtual brain could be stimulated to form structures with progressively higher dimensions.

In between these structures were multi-faceted cavities.

'The appearance of high-dimensional cavities when the brain is processing information means that the neurons in the network react to stimuli in an extremely organised manner,' said Ran Levi from Aberdeen University. 

'It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc.

'The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates.'

The big question the researchers are asking now is whether the intricacy of tasks we can perform depends on the complexity of the multi-dimensional 'sandcastles' the brain can build.

Neuroscience has also been struggling to find where the brain stores its memories.

'They may be 'hiding' in high-dimensional cavities,' Professor Markram said. 

Read more:

• A ‘multi-dimensional’ network in our brains could hold the key to where memories are stored | WIRED UK

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Scientists: The Human Brain Has Odd Similarities to the Entire Univers

An astrophysicist and a neurosurgeon walked into a room.

It may sound like the start of a horrible joke, but what a group of Italian academics came up with is a truly galaxy brain take: the structures of the observable universe, they claim, are startlingly similar to the neural networks of the human brain.

In a recent research published in the journal Frontiers in Physics, University of Bologna astronomer Franco Vazza and University of Verona neurosurgeon Alberto Feletti reveal the unexpected similarities between the cosmic network of galaxies and the complex web of neurons in the human brain. According to the researchers, despite being nearly 27 orders of magnitude distant in scale, the human brain and the makeup of the cosmic web exhibit similar levels of complexity and self-organization.

The brain contains an estimated 69 billion neurons, while the observable universe is composed of at least 100 billion galaxies, strung together loosely like a web. Both actual galaxies and neurons only account for about 30 percent of the total masses of the universe and brain, respectively. And both galaxies and neurons arrange themselves like beads on long strings or filaments.

In the case of galaxies, the remaining 70 percent of mass is dark energy. The equivalent in the human brain, the duo said: water.

“We calculated the spectral density of both systems,” Vazza said in a statement about the work. “This is a technique often employed in cosmology for studying the spatial distribution of galaxies.”

“Our analysis showed that the distribution of the fluctuation within the cerebellum neuronal network on a scale from 1 micrometer to 0.1 millimeters follows the same progression of the distribution of matter in the cosmic web,” he added, “but, of course, on a larger scale that goes from 5 million to 500 million light-years.”

The clustering and number of connections emanating from each node also were oddly similar.

“Once again, structural parameters have identified unexpected agreement levels,” Feletti said in the statement. “Probably, the connectivity within the two networks evolves following similar physical principles, despite the striking and obvious difference between the physical powers regulating galaxies and neurons.”

The team is hoping that their preliminary study could lead to new analysis techniques in both cosmology and neurosurgery, allowing scientists to better understand how these structures have evolved over time.

READ MORE:

• Does the human brain resemble the Universe?[University of Bologna]

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ http://amazingastronomy.thespaceacademy.org/ }

We Just Found a 'Super-Earth' That Could Be an Ocean-Covered Water World

An exoplanet just 100 light-years from Earth appears to be the best candidate yet for a sloshy, water-covered ocean world.

It's called TOI-1452b, and measurements of its size and mass suggest a density profile consistent with a global liquid ocean. Scientists believe that worlds like this are possible, but they haven't yet conclusively found one.

We'll need to follow up with observations from the James Webb Space Telescope to study the exoplanet's atmosphere and make a more confident ruling on the nature of TOI-1452b, but the initial results are very intriguing.

"This paper reports the discovery and characterization of the transiting temperate exoplanet TOI-1452b," writes a team of researchers led by astronomer Charles Cadieux of the University of Montreal in Canada in a paper published in The Astronomical Journal.

"The results of our interior modeling and the fact that the planet receives modest irradiation make TOI-1452b a good candidate water world."

It's easy to see why TOI-1452b evaded detection until now, in spite of its relative closeness to the Solar System.

The exoplanet was found orbiting one of a close binary pair of small, dim red dwarfs, separated by a distance of just 97 astronomical units. That's so close together that the two stars appear to be one.

However, the TESS exoplanet-hunting telescope is sensitive enough to have detected regular, faint dips in starlight that indicate an object regularly passing between us and its host star; those passages across the star are known as transits. The researchers followed up with their own highly sensitive instrument also designed to detect exoplanet transits at Mont Mégantic Observatory in Canada.

The observations from both telescopes revealed that there is indeed an exoplanet orbiting one of the stars in the TOI-1452 binary.

By looking at how much light the star emits and how much it dims when the exoplanet passes in front, the researchers were able to ascertain that the exoplanet is relatively small, coming in at 1.672 times the size of Earth – what we call a super-Earth.

It's on an 11-day orbit with its star, which seems insanely close to us, with our comparatively leisurely 365-day orbit. However, because the star is so cool and dim compared to the Sun, this places the exoplanet bang in the middle of the star's temperate zone. This is not so far from the star, out in the cold, that any liquid water on its surface would freeze, nor so close that the water would evaporate under the star's heat.

Next, the researchers took a closer look at the star. Specifically, they studied its radial velocity – the way it moves about due to the gravitational influence of the exoplanet. That's because any two bodies in a system orbit a mutual center of gravity – meaning that the star moves about, just a little, in its orbital arrangement with TOI-1452b.

Changes in the star's light reveal this motion and, even better, allow astronomers to calculate the orbiting body's mass by determining the strength of that movement. So, they were able to derive a mass of 4.82 times that of Earth for TOI-1452b.

And this is where it starts to get really interesting.

Once you have the size and mass of an object, you can infer its average density. For TOI-1452b, that density is 5.6 grams per cubic centimeter, and that's very close to Earth's density of 5.5 grams per cubic centimeter. But a density similar to that of Earth, for an object that has more mass, indicates that the object is composed of a lighter material, the researchers said.

"TOI-1452b is one of the best candidates for an ocean planet that we have found to date," Cadieux says. "Its radius and mass suggest a much lower density than what one would expect for a planet that is basically made up of metal and rock, like Earth."

They modeled the exoplanet's interior composition and determined that as much as 30 percent of its mass could be water.

That's a huge amount of the wet stuff. For comparison, water makes up less than 1 percent of Earth's mass; TOI-1452b's composition seems closer to that of water moons Europa in orbit with Jupiter and Enceladus in orbit with Saturn.

However, with just the measurements we have, it is impossible to say exactly what TOI-1452b is made of. This is where Webb comes in.

You remember how the exoplanet passes between us and its star? Some of the star's light will pass through the exoplanet's atmosphere, if it has one. Webb is sensitive enough to detect the difference in that light in enough detail that scientists can work out what's in the exoplanet's atmosphere.

If TOI-1452b is a water world, Webb is our best shot at discovering it.

"Our observations with the Webb Telescope will be essential to better understanding TOI-1452b," says astronomer René Doyon of the University of Montreal. "As soon as we can, we will book time on Webb to observe this strange and wonderful world."

{ https://blog.sci-nature.com/ }

Mars Biosignature of Life Found? 

By Leonard David

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Has NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover uncovered a “biosignature” of life on Mars?

The wheeled robot investigator of Jezero Crater is gathering detailed data on desert varnish – a potential biosignature.

But is this coating enriched in manganese? If so, then that elevates the case that it is desert varnish…and may well be a potential biosignature, or does it?

“Yes, there are definitely features that look ‘desert varnish-y’ in Jezero right now,” said Amy Williams, a Mars specialist on the Curiosity and Perseverance rover missions at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida.

“On Earth, desert varnish is certainly intimately tied with microbial interactions. But we do know of some unique instances wherein these types of rock coatings can be generated abiotically [absence of life or living organisms]. The question then remains whether microbes ever played a role in the formation of similar rock coatings on Mars,” Williams said.

Sample return

“My take on the biogenicity part [produced by living organisms] is that on Earth we see microbiology associated with desert varnish because Earth is widely inhabited,” Williams told Inside Outer Space. “Based on our findings in terrestrial analog environments, we’re therefore interested in the biogenicity of desert varnish on Mars.”

Williams said, however, that Mars researchers don’t have the ability to determine biogenic character in these Mars varnishes. To do so will take back-on-Earth, lab-based techniques, she said. “But that’s the beauty of Mars Sample Return…we could send these samples back to Earth to address that profound question!”

Depiction shows Jezero Crater — the landing locale of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover — as it might have appeared billions of years ago when it was perhaps a life-sustaining lake. An inlet and outlet are also visible on either side of the lake.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Controversial, complicated question

So what Perseverance is snooping out at present is looking for an answer to a complicated question. 

On Earth, microbes appear to be involved in at least some, if not all, desert varnishes that we find. But that appraisal is still controversial in some people’s minds, notes astrobiologist Penelope Boston, Associate Director for Science Business Development at NASA Ames Research Center in the heart of Silicon Valley in California.

“There is a huge range of compositions in desert varnish, and indeed varnishes even in wetter environments, e.g. protruding boulders in some streams or rivers,” Boston told Inside Outer Space. “The diversity in the varnish makes it hard to make generalities about the phenomenon.”

Newly revised Mars Sample Return campaign makes use of a set of machines, including use of helicopters, to collect Martian soil, rock and atmospheric specimens for return to Earth.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Manganese components

Boston said that under Earth’s surface and near-surface conditions, the iron components of varnish don’t need the presence of microbes to drive the oxidation processes because it so easily oxidizes by itself, albeit microbes are usually present in samples that researchers have examined. 

“The situation with the manganese components is much more indicative of microbial interaction because chemically reduced forms of manganese do not oxidize anywhere near as easily as the iron,” Boston said. “However, a number of organisms have been shown to greatly facilitate the oxidation of manganese compounds, thus, Mn [manganese] could be a more indicative potential biosignature.”

Varnish compositions range from all iron to all manganese or somewhere in between, Boston advised. In addition, usually some sort of clays are present which could be either blown in materials deposited on the rock, or clay weathering products of the rock itself.  Then varnishes vary a great deal in terms of whether an amorphous glassy layer of silica is or is not present, she said.

Credit: NASA

“Lastly, many varnishes have lots of trace metals or other elements also present.  The presence of microorganisms on and partially within varnishes is tantalizing, and I believe them to be intimately involved with the geological processes that produce varnish, but of course, it is hard to definitively demonstrate that…and there are other nuances too,” Boston noted.

Look and see

Definitely, the varnish is an important feature on Mars, Boston added, one that Mars researchers have known to be present for a long time.

“Perseverance is giving us a close-up look at such materials.  Studying it in detail could yield a lot of information about surface climate to which these rocks have been exposed, either with or without biological influences,” Boston said.

Can we tell whether the varnish is bio or abio? 

“I don’t know. Would the biosignatures that we see in Earthly varnish be preserved after the much greater periods of time that the Martian varnish has endured?  I don’t know.  We can only look and see,” Boston concluded.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Adds planetary scientist at Ames, Carol Stoker, desert varnish on Earth is high in manganese. It is Mn that makes the coating dark. 

In another Mars location, NASA’s Curiosity rover has seen a lot of rocks with high Mn which were thought to be coatings, Stoker explains.

“Since Mn coatings are potentially biologically mediated, this should be a high priority rock for sample return,” Stoker said.

Bottom line: Thin dark coatings known as desert varnish are common on rocks in arid regions on Earth and they’re thought to form in part from microbial activity.  Now, on Mars, the Perseverance rover has found similar coatings.

For a short course on this issue, go to this episode of Mars Guy [aka Steve Ruff at ASU] at:

https://youtu.be/tZawXhZys5s

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A UFO captured in declassified military footage.

(Department of Defense/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

U.S. lawmakers have made references in an appropriations bill and accompanying Senate Intelligence Committee report that Congress believes some unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), commonly referred to as UFOs, might not be “man-made.”

Further, Congress notes that threats against the national security of the United States from these “cross-domain transmedium” objects have been exponentially increasing.

The noteworthy admissions are found in a bill (pdf), and a report included as an addendum, to authorize the 2023 fiscal year budget related to America’s Intelligence Community.

The bill seeks to modify Section 1683 of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022 to establish an organization nestled inside the Department of Defense (DoD) tasked with an expanded scope of UFO investigation.

The legislation states that the DoD would have to establish the new office within 120 days after the bill is enacted into law.

The new office would replace the Pentagon’s Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, which was established in November 2021 and replaced the U.S. Navy’s UAP Task Force formed in June 2020.

To prompt the DoD into action, Congress has renamed the UAP Task Force to be the Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena Joint Program Office.

“At a time when cross-domain transmedium threats to United States national security are expanding exponentially, the Committee is disappointed with the slow pace of DoD-led efforts to establish the office to address those threats and to replace the former Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force,” lawmakers said in the report (pdf).

DoD UFO Office Expands to Water Domains

The new UFO joint program office will continue the work of the existing UAP Task Force and have an expanded cross-domain scope that now includes “space, atmospheric, and water domains.”

According to the bill, the Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena Joint Program Office will also be tasked with duties pertaining to “transmedium objects or devices and unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena” and “currently unknown technology and other domains.”

“That change reflects the broader scope of the effort directed by the Congress,” lawmakers said in the report. “Identification, classification, and scientific study of unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena is an inherently challenging cross-agency, cross-domain problem requiring an integrated or joint Intelligence Community and DoD approach.

In April last year, the Pentagon confirmed that a leaked video depicting a U.S. naval stealth ship tracking a UFO was taken by U.S. Navy personnel. The short night-vision video shows a “pyramid-shaped” flying object moving at a constant speed above and beneath the water.

Scope Doesn’t Include ‘Man-Made’ UFOs

Lawmakers noted that the scope of the new DoD office specifically relates to UFOs that are not later found to be man-made.

“The formal DoD and Intelligence Community definition of the terms used by the Office shall be updated to include space and undersea, and the scope of the Office shall be inclusive of those additional domains with focus on addressing technology surprise and ‘unknown unknowns,'” lawmakers said in the report.

“Temporary nonattributed objects,” the report continues, “or those that are positively identified as man-made after analysis, will be passed to appropriate offices and should not be considered under the definition as unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena.”

These notable admissions in official government documents comes “at a time when cross-domain transmedium threats to United States national security are expanding exponentially,” according to the report.

UFOs and National Security

Pentagon officials are treating UAP sightings with increased seriousness for their potential risks to U.S. national security.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report (pdf) last year on the subject—commonly known as the Pentagon UAP report—in which the Pentagon identified 144 UAP sightings from 2004 to 2021, but was only able to explain one.

Since that report was published in June 2021, Scott W. Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence involved in the UAP Task Force, has said that the “UAP Task Force database has now grown to contain approximately 400 reports.”

In May, Pentagon officials showed lawmakers two videos of UAPs in the first open congressional hearing on the subject since 1966.

Among the incidents shared with lawmakers were stories of nuclear ICBMs rendered inoperable during a UFO sighting and footage of flying objects violating the laws of physics.

Pentagon officials told lawmakers that sighting incidents are “frequent” and “increasing,” yet they cannot offer “firm conclusions” on their nature or intent.

The sighting incidents that interest the Pentagon the most are those that exhibit “flight characteristics or signature management that we can’t explain with the data we have available,” Bray told lawmakers when asked about his knowledge of flying objects that seem to move without visible means of propulsion and violate existing principles of physics.

“I would say that we’re not aware of any adversary that can move an object without discernible means of propulsion,” he added.

• Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.

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