A laser beam (green) shoots into the sky alongside the 124-metre-high telecommunications tower on Säntis mountain in the Swiss Alps.

Credit: TRUMPF/Martin Stollberg

A rapidly firing laser can divert lightning strikes, scientists have shown for the first time in real-world experiments¹. The work suggests that laser beams could be used as lightning rods to protect infrastructure, although perhaps not any time soon.

“The achievement is impressive given that the scientific community has been working hard along this objective for more than 20 years,” says Stelios Tzortzakis, a laser physicist at the University of Crete, Greece, who was not involved in the research. “If it’s useful or not, only time can say.”

Metal lightning rods are commonly used to divert lightning strikes and safely dissipate their charge. But the rods’ size is limited, meaning that so, too, is the area they protect.

Physicists have wondered whether lasers could enhance protection, because they can reach higher into the sky than a physical structure and can point in any direction. But despite successful laboratory demonstrations, researchers have never before succeeded in field campaigns, says Tzortzakis.

Bolt from the blue

To change that, a group of roughly 25 researchers set up the Laser Lightning Rod project, which trialled a specially created €2 million (US$2 million) high-power laser in the Swiss Alps. The scientists placed the laser next to the Säntis telecommunications tower, which is hit frequently by lightning. “This is one of those projects that everyone was waiting for the results of,” says Valentina Shumakova, a laser physicist at the University of Vienna.

A sufficiently intense laser beam can create a conductive path for lightning to travel down, just as a metal wire can. Physicists think that it does this by shifting the properties of air so that the beam focuses into a thin, intense filament. This rapidly heats the air, reducing its density and creating a favourable path for lightning. “It’s like drilling a hole through the air with the laser,” says Aurélien Houard, a physicist at the Laboratory of Applied Optics in Paris, who led the project.

Rather than try to divert lightning from the tower, the Säntis experiments were designed to show that the laser could guide a strike’s path through the structure’s lightning rod. In future use, similar beams would guide strikes away from sensitive installations and onto a distant lightning rod, says Houard.

Guided lightning

Over 10 weeks of observation, the team spotted the laser channelling 4 lightning events during 6 hours of thunderstorms. A high-speed camera clearly showed one strike following the straight line of the laser beam, rather than taking a branching path.

“For 100% of the strikes where the laser was present, we measured an effect of the laser,” says Houard. But Tzortzakis notes that the laser was also active for many hours without channelling strikes. This suggests that although the laser diverted lightning, it did not force thunderclouds to discharge, which would be a better protection strategy, he says.

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The latest effort succeeded where others had failed, says Tzortzakis, because previous attempt had used a laser that fired just a few pulses per second. This team used a specialist laser that fires 1,000 high-energy pulses per second, which would have boosted its chance of intercepting the lightning.

However, the fact that the project’s laser is one of a kind is also its biggest limitation, because it will take time to shrink the system and make it cheaper and more practical, says Houard.

• doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00080-7

{ https://www.nature.com/ }

You’re Looking at a Map of the Milky Way’s Magnetic Field

“These new maps give a detailed description in a new frequency range, from 10 to 40 GHz, complementing those from space missions such as Planck and WMAP,” said José Alberto Rubiño, lead scientist of the QUIJOTE Collaboration, in a press release. “We have characterized the synchrotron emission from our Galaxy with unprecedented accuracy. This radiation is the result of the emission by charged particles moving at velocities close to that of light within the Galactic magnetic field. These maps, the result of almost 9,000 hours of observation, are a unique tool for studying magnetism in the universe.”

The work on this mapping project started in 2012, and the team has now published a series of 6 scientific papers that provide the most accurate description to date of the polarization of the emission of the Milky Way at microwave wavelengths. Polarization is a “property of transverse waves such as light waves that specifies the direction of the oscillations of the waves and signifies the presence of a magnetic field,” the team explained.

With the new maps, astronomers not only have more detailed information about the structure of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, but their findings also is helping to understand the energetic processes which took place close to the birth of the Universe.

“Scientific evidence suggests that the Universe went through a phase of rapid expansion, called inflation, a fraction of a second after the Big Bang,” said Rubiño. “If this is correct, we would expect to find some observable consequences when we study the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. Measuring those expected features is difficult, because they are small in amplitude, but also because they are less bright than the polarized emission from our own galaxy. However, if we finally measure them, we will have indirect information of the physical conditions in the very early stages of our Universe, when the energy scales were much higher than those that we can access or study from the ground. This has enormous implications for our understanding of fundamental physics.”

The new maps from QUIJOTE have also provided new data for studying a recently detected excess of microwave emission from the center of our Galaxy. The origin of this emission is currently unknown, but it could be connected to the decay processes of dark matter particles.

Additionally, the data from the  QUIJOTE collaboration allows scientists to  study over 700 sources of emission in radio and microwaves, of both Galactic and extragalactic origin, meaning that the data is helping scientists to decipher signals coming from beyond our galaxy, including the cosmic microwave background radiation.

 “One of the most interesting results we have found is that the polarized synchrotron emission from our Galaxy is much more variable than had been thought” said Elena de la Hoz, a researcher at the Instituto de Física de Cantabria (IFCA). “The results we have obtained are a reference to help future experiments make reliable detections of the CMB signal.

Below are links to the 6 papers published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society:

•  ‘QUIJOTE scientific results – IV. A northern sky survey in intensity and polarization at 10–20 GHz with the Multi-Frequency Instrument’, Rubiño-Martin et al.
• “The microwave intensity and polarization spectra of the Galactic regions W49, W51, and IC443”, Tramonte et al.
•  “The Haze as seen by QUIJOTE”, Guidi et al.
• “Galactic AME sources in the QUIJOTE-MFI North Hemisphere wide survey”, Poidevin et al.
• “Diffuse polarized foregrounds from component separation with QUIJOTE-MFI”, de la Hoz et al.
•  “Radio sources in the QUIJOTE-MFI wide survey maps”, Herranz et al.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Newly Released US Government UFO Report Reveals Details

According to a report released by the Pentagon, the number of UFO sightings has increased significantly over the past couple of years. Many of these incidents can be attributed to weather phenomena or drones. However, around half of these sightings remain unexplained. The agency that monitors these sightings noted that further analysis is necessary.

According to CNN’s Kristen Fisher, the report revealed that the number of sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) has increased significantly. In 2021, the DNI was not able to explain 144 incidents. This time around, the agency noted that there were over 300 new UAP sightings.

One of the most interesting findings of the report is that some of the UAPs exhibited unusual flight capabilities. It’s not clear if these are the results of advanced technology or foreign agents such as Russia or China. The US government has not officially stated its theory regarding the cause of these incidents.

• Further Appearances of the Mysterious Bright UFO Continue to Puzzle Witness

The report provided a total of 163 explanations as to how these objects came into being. Most of these incidents were attributed to balloon-like structures or other similar objects. Some were also said to be caused by airborne clutter, such as debris and weather phenomena.

Members of Congress stated that the report sheds light on the various factors that contributed to the growing number of UAPs sightings, and it shows that the government is taking the issue seriously. However, they noted that the DNI and the Pentagon still need to provide more concrete answers regarding the nature of these objects.

Full report is available at this link: 

• https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Unclassified-2022-Annual-Report-UAP.pdf

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

Pilot David Hastings captures a photo of an unidentified flying object while flying over the Mojave Desert on September 9, 1985

On September 9, 1985, pilot David Hastings and his co-pilot were flying back to their home base after attending a convention in McAfee, New York. They had decided to fly during the day and had already made stops in Dayton and Albuquerque. As they were approaching the Mojave Desert, they encountered something unexpected.

According to Hastings, they suddenly saw something coming in their 12 o’clock at high speed. They were both convinced that they were going to have a mid-air collision and braced for impact. However, the object passed over them and they were left unharmed. The object left behind a large shadow that darkened the whole cockpit and the sky above them, but there was no sound or Shockwave.

The co-pilot and Hastings both had a strange sensation that something was still nearby, even though they couldn’t see anything. They felt that whatever it was, it was moving so fast that the human eye couldn’t register it in detail. They had the sensation that it was going up, but they couldn’t see anything.

• Mysterious UFO spotted over Tamaulipas highway, Mexico

Hastings and his co-pilot were left with many questions and no answers. They were both experienced pilots, and they couldn’t explain what they had seen. It was a mystery that still baffles them to this day.

In conclusion, on September 9, 1985, pilot David Hastings and his co-pilot had a close encounter with a UFO while flying over the Mojave Desert. The object passed over them and left behind a large shadow, but there was no sound or Shockwave. They both had a strange sensation that something was still nearby, even though they couldn’t see anything. The incident remains a mystery to this day.

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

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 18/01/2023

SpaceX launches Space Force's 'Amelia Earhart' GPS satellite, nails landing

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the GPS III Space Vehicle 06 "Amelia Earhart" from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Jan. 18, 2023.

The first stage of the rocket landed on the 'A Shortfall of Gravitas' droneship in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after separation.

Credit: SpaceX

NASA Astronauts Spot Something Terrifying On The Moon

NASA Astronauts Spot Something Terrifying On The Moon. Something very strange happened during the Apollo 8 mission while the astronauts were on board the spacecraft. Something that even NASA cannot explain even till this day. A strange light, like fire, with smoke coming out of it.

• nasa #apollomission #alien

Starship 25 Prepared for Engine Testing | SpaceX Boca Chica

Starship 25 was lifted onto Pad B, presumably for engine testing. Meanwhile Ship 22 was moved out of the Rocket Garden to be scrapped and a Starlink deployer aka Pez Dispenser mechanism was spotted being installed in Ship 30's payload section.

SpaceX - Falcon Heavy Incredible Views 01-15-2023

No SpaceX or NASA footage. All original content except for SpaceX announcer. Huge crowds came out for this launch! Thanks to Ed Geiger and Pete Carstens (maxQproductions) for awesome tracking! Thanks to Cory Foy for the aerial drone footage! Thanks for subscribing and Donating !! We are a US disabled veteran run, non-profit video production company whose mission is to bring other disabled US Veterans to witness a launch, experience US Space History and become part of our report. Our nonprofit 501(c)(3) is 100% tax deductible, just go to our webpage

Dark Curvature, Navigating the Oort Cloud, Future of Space Toilets | Q&A 207

Should we change "Dark Matter" to "Dark Curvature"? How do you navigate through dense asteroid fields? What's the future of space toilets? Do aliens block their outgoing signals? All these and more in this week's Q&A with Fraser Cain.

Most Distant Halo Stars in Milky Way Are Halfway to Andromeda Galaxy

SpaceX Falcon Heavy separation is genius engineering just SHOCKED Scientists, unlike others...

It's been a few days since SpaceX's spectacular USSF-67 Falcon Heavy rocket launch, but the echoes of that launch are still covered through newspapers, websites, and forums around the world.
This is because just under five years after its February 2018 debut, there had still never been a Falcon Heavy launch ‘jellyfish’ or ‘nebula.’ That thankfully changed on Sunday.
Indeed, from start to finish, Sunday’s Falcon Heavy launch delivered spectacular moments, unlike the others.
Find out everything about this in today's episode of Alpha Tech:

First and foremost, USSF-67 is an incredible success mission.
On January 15th, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off for the second time in 75 days to launch another batch of US military payloads into orbits tens of thousands of kilometers above Earth’s surface.

Six and a half hours later, the US Space Systems Command (SSC) confirmed that Falcon Heavy had again completed the exceptionally difficult launch without issue. To deliver the USSF-67 mission’s payloads directly to geosynchronous orbit (GSO), the giant SpaceX rocket had to sacrifice one of its potentially reusable boosters and complete a complex six-hour ballet of rolls, burns, and spacecraft deployments. And for the second time in a row, Falcon Heavy did so without apparent issue.

In an SSC press release, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, said that the group “had another fantastic launch today on a Falcon Heavy.” He added that “while the launch itself was impressive,” he was “most proud of the fact that we placed important [national] capabilities into space.”
SpaceX Falcon Heavy separation is genius engineering just SHOCKED Scientists, unlike others...

Can The Planet From Interstellar Really Exist?

The Proof Is Out There: UFO Crash Spotted in NASA Photo (Season 3)

A researcher finds evidence of a UFO crash in a NASA photo. See more in this clip from Season 3, “Aswang, Crashed on Mars, and Giant Wolves.”

Watch all new episodes of The Proof Is Out There on Fridays at 10/9c, and stay up to date on all of your favorite The HISTORY Channel shows at http://history.com/schedule.

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{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

A Black Hole is Savoring its Meal, Feeding on the Same Star Over and Over Again

Our own Sun is massive and incorporates 99.86% of the mass in the Solar System. That gives it enormous gravitational power. Its reach extends from tiny, speedy Mercury, its nearest neighbour, all the way out to the Oort Cloud, the hypothesized home of icy long-period comets up to 200,000 astronomical units, or 3.2 light-years, away.

But SMBHs are so massive that the Sun barely registers in comparison. An SMBH’s gravitational force is so mighty that it seems to hold their entire galaxy together.

In a new study, a team of astronomers observed an SMBH in a galaxy hundreds of millions of light-years away as it ate a star. The SMBH has an inferred black hole mass greater than 50 million solar masses. That an object that massive can completely destroy a star, puny in comparison, is axiomatic.

This TDE is a result of what’s called a Hills Capture. That’s when a binary star approaches a black hole, and gravity separates the once-bound pair of stars. One star becomes a hypervelocity star and is ejected from the galaxy’s central regions at a speed of about 1000 km/second.

But there’s no escape for the other star. It enters into an orbit around the black hole, and its fate is foretold. The black hole will eventually destroy it, even though that doesn’t happen instantly.

The fact that the star was once part of a binary pair explains how it keeps passing close enough to the black hole to be partially stripped without being destroyed. “Typically, tidally disrupted stars are on approximately parabolic orbits, which begs the question of how a partial TDE could yield a brightening,” the authors write in their paper. For an SMBH this size, and a star similar in mass to the Sun, the orbit should last about 1,000 years, much longer than the star at AT 2018fyk. “One can bind the partially disrupted star more tightly if the star was initially part of a binary system that was destroyed through Hills capture.”

But this TDE isn’t like most other TDEs. The light coming from the event shows that the star wasn’t completely destroyed, and that the black hole is taking repeated bites from it.

“…the assumption has been that when we see the aftermath of a close encounter between a star and a supermassive black hole, the outcome will be fatal for the star,”

Thomas Wevers, ESO

The paper is “Live to Die Another Day: The Rebrightening of AT 2018fyk as a Repeating Partial Tidal Disruption Event.” It’s published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The lead author is Thomas Wevers from the European Southern Observatory.

“Until now, the assumption has been that when we see the aftermath of a close encounter between a star and a supermassive black hole, the outcome will be fatal for the star, that is, the star is completely destroyed,” Wevers said in a press release. “But contrary to all other TDEs we know of, when we pointed our telescopes to the same location again several years later, we found that it had re-brightened again. This led us to propose that rather than being fatal, part of the star survived the initial encounter and returned to the same location to be stripped of material once more, explaining the re-brightening phase.”

The TDE is called AT 2018fyk (AT: Astrophysical Transient), and it’s a transient first discovered in 2018 by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. Different teams of scientists have been observing the event since its discovery, and this new research is a continuation of the attempt to understand it.

During a TDE, gas from a star falls toward a black hole. But it doesn’t fall directly into the hole. It accumulates on the accretion disk swirling around the SMBH. This heats the gas up, and it emits brilliant light. This event gives astronomers an opportunity to study the fascinating region around black holes as they’re briefly lit up.

But AT 2018fyk is different. Usually, a TDE consists of one jump in brightness as the star is destroyed. But not this one. Instead, it looks like the SMBH is stripping away the less dense outer layers of the star on each of its closest approaches, leaving a denser core unaffected.

This TDE is a result of what’s called a Hills Capture. That’s when a binary star approaches a black hole, and gravity separates the once-bound pair of stars. One star becomes a hypervelocity star and is ejected from the galaxy’s central regions at a speed of about 1000 km/second.

But there’s no escape for the other star. It enters into an orbit around the black hole, and its fate is foretold. The black hole will eventually destroy it, even though that doesn’t happen instantly.

The fact that the star was once part of a binary pair explains how it keeps passing close enough to the black hole to be partially stripped without being destroyed. “Typically, tidally disrupted stars are on approximately parabolic orbits, which begs the question of how a partial TDE could yield a brightening,” the authors write in their paper. For an SMBH this size, and a star similar in mass to the Sun, the orbit should last about 1,000 years, much longer than the star at AT 2018fyk. “One can bind the partially disrupted star more tightly if the star was initially part of a binary system that was destroyed through Hills capture.”

In AT 2018fyk’s case, the black hole can’t quite destroy it all at once because even though the star is closely-bound to the SMBH, it doesn’t cross the tidal radius. The tidal radius is where the black hole’s gravity is stronger than the gravity holding the star together. Instead, about every 1200 days, the black hole gets another chance as the star makes its closest approach. It strips more of the star’s envelope away each time, forming the bright accretion disk around the SMBH. The evidence is in the light coming from the region. Our X-Ray and Ultraviolet /Optical telescopes can observe the light even though it’s hundreds of millions of light-years away.

When astronomers first spotted AT 2018fyk, they thought it was like any other TDE. But subsequent observations showed how complex the TDE is. It was bright in x-ray emissions for about 600 days, then darkened and became undetectable. The decline in luminosity was quick, whereas other TDEs show a gradual decline. The abrupt decline was when the stellar core returned to its closest approach.

“When the core returns to the black hole, it essentially steals all the gas away from the black hole via gravity, and as a result, there is no matter to accrete, and hence the system goes dark,” said study co-author Dheeraj Pasham, an astrophysicist at MIT.

But then, 600 days after the drop in x-ray emissions, the region was bright again. The researchers think this is when material shed from the star starts accreting again.

It’s difficult to determine how long this can go on and how many passes the star can make. The researchers estimate that up to 10% of the star’s mass is stripped away on each approach, but it could also be as low as 1%. The TDE is hundreds of millions of light-years away, so understanding and modelling the light is challenging. But if the 10% figure is correct, the star is already gone.

“If the mass loss is only at the 1% level, then we expect the star to survive for many more encounters, whereas if it is closer to 10%, the star may have already been destroyed,” said co-author Eric Coughlin, a physicist at Syracuse University.

Now that astronomers have spotted the unusual AT 2018fyk and come up with a theoretical explanation, it could explain other repeating flares in the heart of other galaxies. In fact, this research might entice researchers to revisit other flaring black holes for additional activity. Will repeated TDEs be more common than thought? Can they only result from binary stars and the Hills Mechanism?

“In the future, it is likely that more systems will be checked for late-time flares, especially now that this project puts forth a theoretical picture of the capture of the star through a dynamical exchange process and the ensuing repeated partial tidal disruption,” says Coughlin. “We’re hopeful this model can be used to infer the properties of distant supermassive black holes and gain an understanding of their ‘demographics,’ being the number of black holes within a given mass range, which is otherwise difficult to achieve directly.”

Some of what the team has come up with to explain the TDE is testable. That fact, combined with more observations of phenomenon like AT 2018fyk, could teach us a lot about the extreme environments around black holes and the physics of partial TDEs.

“This study outlines methodology to potentially predict the next snack times of supermassive black holes in external galaxies,” says Pasham. “If you think about it, it is pretty remarkable that we on Earth can align our telescopes to black holes millions of light years away to understand how they feed and grow.”

More:

• New Research: Live to Die Another Day: The Rebrightening of AT 2018fyk as a Repeating Partial Tidal Disruption Event
• Older Research: Stellar Revival and Repeated Flares in Deeply Plunging Tidal Disruption Events
• Universe Today: A Black Hole Consumed a Star and Released the Light of a Trillion Suns

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

UFO spotted floating over Area 51 on Google Maps excites fans

Google Maps has added an Easter egg for those searching for Area 51, one of the most mysterious and highly classified facilities in the United States. When users drag the “yellow man” in the corner to Street View, it transforms into a UFO. This is just one of several Easter eggs that Google Maps has added over the years. For example, searching for Loch Ness will turn the map into a strange green monster, and searching over Hawaii will turn the map into a mermaid.

Area 51 is located in Nevada, just 83 miles north-northwest of Las Vegas. It is officially a United States Air Force facility, but is believed by many to be the home of the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems. The US Air Force acquired the site in 1955, but the CIA did not acknowledge its existence until 2013.

Despite its official purpose, many conspiracy theorists believe that the facility is used to store, examine, and reverse engineer crashed alien spacecraft, including material supposedly recovered from the 1950s Roswell crash. In 1989, Bob Lazar claimed that he worked at Area 51, where tests on aliens and their spacecraft were carried out in massive underground workstations connected by an underground railway. However, his claims were never confirmed by officials.

• Golden UFO Pictured Rising From The Ocean - But Why?

• You can find out more about Bob Lazar at this tag.

Google Maps’ Easter egg adds a playful touch to the mystery surrounding Area 51, and will likely continue to delight conspiracy theorists and UFO enthusiasts alike.

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

On this day in UFO history, a researcher in Yokohama, Japan captured a photograph of a metallic UFO flying above his house

On January 17th, 1957, a UFO was captured on camera by UFO researcher Yusuke J. Matsumura at the Flying Saucer Research group in Japan. The UFO was estimated to be around 20 to 30 feet in diameter and was seen hovering for approximately one to two minutes at a height of 60-70 feet.

Matsumura, who was outside his residence in Yokohama at the time, reported that he was leaving his house to go to Tokyo when he saw a metallic flash just above his house. Quickly, he grabbed his Primoflex Automatic camera and was able to snap a picture of the object before it took off at an estimated Mach 152 in a 70-degree elevation.

The UFO was seen heading in the general direction of Tokyo Bay, southeast of Matsumura’s location. The incident took place at around 13 minutes to 10 in the morning and was reported by the witness to have occurred at 1687 Hama Isogo Ku Yokohama.

The incident, which was captured on camera by Japanese researcher Yasushi Matsumura, is regarded as one of the most credible sightings of UFOs in history. Experts have analyzed the photo and found no evidence of manipulation or tampering.

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

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 17/01/2023

FINALLY! SpaceX is on the edge of Starship's first orbital launch attempt..

It's been over a year and a half since we've seen a prototype of SpaceX's next-gen Starship spacecraft fly, with its first flight with a Super Heavy rocket having been perpetually pushed back during that time.
However, this is finally going to change soon as SpaceX's shiny Starship has now inched closer to leaving the atmosphere.

Find out everything about this in today's episode of Alpha Tech:

Elon Musk took to Twitter last Thursday morning to post a photo of Starship sitting atop its Super Heavy rocket, rising above the coastal fog in South Texas. The photo was arresting, and Musk appended a short comment: "Starship launch attempt soon."
Soon, of course, is a relative word in spaceflight. But SpaceX also tweeted Jan. 12 that it was moving ahead with a final series of tests of its Starship vehicle and Super Heavy booster at its Starbase test site in Boca Chica, Texas. The company installed a Starship vehicle called Ship 24 on top of a Super Heavy booster designated Booster 7 on the launch pad there Jan. 9.

Now, see why March seems possible?
Much work remains before Starship launches on Super Heavy, of course. The combined vehicle must undergo a wet dress rehearsal. Then the Starship's upper stage will be removed so that the Super Heavy rocket can undergo a full static fire test of its 33 Raptor engines.

In fact, the Starship team recently targeted a launch date of January 20, according to people familiar with the planning, but the date was postponed to conduct testing, which was delayed in part due to road repairs near the test site, one of the people said. The company is now targeting January 20 for what is known as a “static fire test” to make sure all 33 engines on the rocket function properly, the people said.
FINALLY! SpaceX is on the edge of Starship's first orbital launch attempt...

The Proof Is Out There: "I Hope I Don't Get Taken" UFO HOVERS OVER OKLAHOMA HOME (Season 3)

On May 26th, 2017, an eyewitness spotted a strange disc hovering above his home. See more in this clip from Season 3, "ISS UFO Swarm, Yale Lake Leaf Monster, and Rat King."

SpaceX Falcon Heavy boosters land in awesome drone view + launch time-lapse

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched the USSF-67 mission for the US Space Force on Jan. 15, 2023. The rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

[Full Story](https://www.space.com/spacex-falcon-h...)

Several minutes after launch the side boosters touched down safely back at SpaceX's landing zones at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Credit: SpaceX | edited by Space.com's Steve Spaleta (https://twitter.com/stevespaleta)

See Ingenuity's footprints on Mars in flight 39 time-lapse + statistics

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity completed its second flight of 2023 on Jan. 11. See a time-lapse of the flight, color images and statistics.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | edited by Steve Spaleta (https://twitter.com/stevespaleta)

Scientists Have Just Announced An Unknown Cosmic Object Has Been Detected Close To A Black Hole

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The Planet That Was Willed Into Being | Vulcan

...because of Newtonian physics. But Albert Einstein and relativity had other ideas. Enjoy 10% off 6” and 8.5” MOVA Globes with code ASTRUM. Shop now at https://bit.ly/astrumxmova

Scientists Have Just Detected Something Huge That's Been Hidden Behind The Milky Way Galaxy

Scientists Plan to Leave Earth For Good

Ever since humanity discovered that there are other places outside of Earth, we've thought about leaving it. On this episode of What If we're going to do just that. But where would we go? Is building a ring world in space a possibility? Maybe terraforming Venus is our best option for a sustainable life. If we were to leave earth and create something like a ring world, where would we find the materials to do so? And if we lived on Venus, how different would it be from Earth? But before we blast off, why would we ever want to leave?

00:00 Scientists Plan to Leave Earth For Good?

00:48 Earth becomes one of Jupiter's moons

13:33 Living on a ringworld or terraforming Venus?

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

January 13, 2023: Webb Confirms its First Exoplanet, China's Mars Rover is Gone, Huge Increase in UAP Sightings, And More...- PART I

Arecibo Studied 191 Asteroids That Flew Past the Earth. All the Data are Available in a new Paper

Even though the Arecibo Observatory collapsed a few years ago, it gathered mountains of data that astronomers are still studying. One of the largest data dumps is a collection of 191 Near-Earth Asteroids reviewed by Arecibo as they flew past our planet from December 2017 to December 2019. They were scanned using a delay-Doppler radar, which allowed astronomers to map the surfaces of the asteroids, revealing their rough overall shape with a resolution of 7.5 meters.

• Read the full story by Andy Tomaswick

Another Rover's Dead // Green Comet Incoming // JWST’s First Exoplanet

Keep your eyes on the sky for a comet, another Mars rover has died, the leaky Soyuz is going to be replaced, JWST dominates the American Astronomical Society meeting, and is Starship just around the corner

LAST WEEK: Eruption on Io, Moon Navigation, Space-Based Power Test

NASA is looking for dangerous asteroids, Io is blasting lava into space, the solar wind could be creating water on the Moon, space power is finally getting a test.

• Read the full story by Anton Pozdnyakov

New JWST Image Shows That Grand Spiral Galaxies had Already Formed 11 Billion Years ago

Our Milky Way seems like a modern and mature galaxy formation evolution, resulting from billions of years of mergers from smaller dwarf galaxies. Astronomers have been surprised to discover that grand spiral galaxies were already there in the Universe just a few billion years after the Big Bang. The images were captured using JWST, revealing six spiral galaxies over 8.4 billion years old and two older than 11 billion years. This means they already had this structure less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

• Read the full story by Scott Alan Johnston

Are Chemical Rockets or Solar Sails Better to Return Resources From Asteroids?

The future of human space exploration depends on learning how to extract resources from asteroids. Unfortunately, the asteroids are far away from the places where we want to use them, like orbital space stations and lunar bases. What's the best way to get these resources back home? Solar sails don't require any onboard propellant, but they're slower, while chemical rockets can be quicker, but you have to expend propellant to move.

• Read the full story by Andy Tomaswick

Is Space Power a Good Idea? A new Spacecraft is Going to Find Out!

Engineers have proposed harvesting solar power from space and beaming it back to Earth. The idea has been around for decades. But nobody has ever tested it until now. A new technology demonstration satellite, Transporter 6, was just launched to orbit on a SpaceX Falcon rocket. The satellite is equipped with solar panels and a microwave transmitter to send power to a ground station on Earth. If this prototype functions, scientists will know if it's possible to scale it up to an industrial level.

• Read the full story by Matt Williams

Comet E3 ZTF Brightens as the First Good Comet of 2023

Keep your eyes on the sky over the next few weeks for your first chance to see a comet in 2023. Designated C3/2022 ZTF, the comet was first discovered in March 2022, and it has been getting closer to Earth and brightening. It's expected to reach its brightest point in early February, taking a path through the sky to bring it close to the Big Dipper and Cassiopea. Astronomers have calculated that it's on a 50,000-year orbit, so it's been eons since its last visit. It should look great in a pair of binoculars or a small telescope.

• Read the full story by David Dickinson

China Unable to Reestablish Contact With its Zhurong Mars Rover

The terrible dust on Mars has claimed another victim. This time it's China's Zhurong rover, which was supposed to wake up from hibernation on December 26th. China's Nationational Space Administration has tried to reestablish communications with Zhurong, but they've been unsuccessful. The rover was put into hibernation six months ago to help it survive the Martian winter when temperatures get down to -100C. A regional dust storm also cloaked the area, reducing the energy it could use to keep its batteries operational.

• Read the full story by Nancy Atkinson

133 Days of the Sun’s Glory

NASA has released a fantastic hour-long timelapse that shows the Sun's activity over 133 continuous days. The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the images, which have been observing the Sun continuously since its launch in 2010. Each photo was taken 108 seconds apart in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength. Watch the video, and you can see the Sun rotating, with the twisting magnetic fields surrounding the sunspots on its surface. You can also see the occasional bright flare and coronal mass ejection.

• Read the full story by Evan Gough

How Could We Detect Life Inside Enceladus?

Saturn's moon Enceladus has an icy outer shell surrounding a vast ocean of liquid water. Could there be life? It will be challenging to find out since you need to get through kilometers of ice to access the oceans and sample them for life. But Enceladus cryovolcanoes spew plumes of water ice into space. By flying through these plumes, a future mission could test them for organic chemicals or even life, finally answering the question if there's life anywhere else but Earth.

• Read the full story by Matt Williams

The JWST is the Shiny New Space Telescope, but the Dependable Hubble is Still Going Strong

Astronomers can finally work with the mighty James Webb Space Telescope, but that doesn't mean they've forgotten about the Hubble Space Telescope. Here's a beautiful image of the globular cluster NGC 6355, located about 50,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus. The picture was taken by Hubble, which can collect a vast range of wavelengths of light, from near-infrared through visible to ultraviolet. Hubble's powerful optics allow it to resolve the individual stars in the cluster so astronomers can examine them.

• Read the full story by Evan Gough

Need a Project? You can Build a Paper Model of the Extremely Large Telescope

Got a little extra time on your hands? Here's to keeping you busy. The European Southern Observatory has released a paper model of its Extremely Large Telescope. Although the actual telescope will measure almost 40 meters across and can see Earthlike planets orbiting sunlike stars, yours will be much smaller, made of paper, and can't make any observations at all. Still, it'll be fun, and you can learn more about the telescope as you craft yours out of paper.

• Read the full story by Nancy Atkinson

Blue Straggler Stars are Weird

By analyzing the composition of stars in a stellar cluster, astronomers can measure their related ages. The largest, hottest, bluest stars live short lives, exploding as supernovae, while the less massive stars sip away at their hydrogen for much longer, lasting billions of years. But astronomers have discovered a strange anomaly called "blue stragglers." These are seemingly young, hot stars surrounded by much older stars in a dense cluster. How could they have formed? One theory is that the blue stragglers result from stellar collisions, making old stars act new again.

• Read the full story by Paul M. Sutter

Newly Found Stars are Technically in the Milky Way, but They’re Halfway to Andromeda

The Milky Way measures about 130,000 light-years across, and the closest large galaxy, Andromeda, is about 2.5 million light-years away. The two galaxies are rushing toward each other, but it's expected that they'll take billions of years to merge. Except, it appears they're already starting to merge. New observations have shown that the most distant stars in the Milky Way in our galaxy's outer halo are halfway to Andromeda already. Andromeda is even larger than the Milky Way, so its stars are halfway to us. The merger has already begun.

• Read the full story by Carolyn Collins Petersen

The James Webb Links Modern Green Pea Galaxies to Ancient Galaxies in the Cosmic Dawn

This week the American Astronomical Society is meeting for the first time since the James Webb Space Telescope became operational, so there's been a mountain of Webb news. One remarkable story is this image of primordial galaxies captured by JWST. These galaxies are just a few thousand light-years across and have so much star formation they're heating the surrounding gas and dust, so it glows in the ultraviolet (redshifted to infrared after billions of years). Their structure matches newly discovered "green pea" galaxies, which have the same behavior and are much closer, and, therefore, easier to study.

• Read the full story by Evan Gough

This Star is Blasting Out a Concentrated Jet of Material at 500 km/s

The Universe is a place of extremes. For example, astronomers have discovered a nearby star hurling jets of material into space at an astonishing 500 km/s. The massive star is surrounded by a photoevaporative disk that produces an outflow focused into twin jets of material. The jets release microwave emissions detected by the ALMA telescope, allowing astronomers to map out their structure and measure speed.

• Read the full story by Evan Gough

Rings Around Stars, Laser Space Propulsion, Life on Cold Moons | Q&A 206

How do we determine the velocities of objects in distant space? Can we use a laser a space engine on a spaceship? Can we find stars with rings? Is it possible to see the same star at different stages of its life? All this and more in this week's Q&A.

How a Rotating Universe Makes Time Travel Possible

Want to build a time machine? No problem, all you need to do is make the entire Universe rotate. This is one of the implications of theories developed by the famous mathematician Kurt Gödel, who often worked with Einstein. He was investigating the implications of General Relativity and developed an artificial model of the Universe, which was rotating and contained only one ingredient: a negative cosmological constant that resists the centrifugal force of rotation to keep the Universe static. If you follow a path in this rotating Universe, you can end up in your past.

• Read the full story by Paul M. Sutter

“To Boldy Go”: The Nichelle Nichols Foundation Continues Actress’ Legacy of Inspiration

Last summer Nichelle Nichols passed away. She famously portrayed Lt. Nyota Uhura in Star Trek, but she was also an activist and musician. A new foundation was created in her honor to continue her legacy of inspiration for women and people of color. The foundation was unveiled on December 28th, 2022, which would have been her 90th birthday.

• Read the full story by Matt Williams

Will Pluto Finally Answer, ‘Are we Alone?’

When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft finally reached Pluto, we saw this fantastic world for the first time with enough resolution to see mountains and vast glaciers on its surface. It appears that Pluto also probably has an ocean of liquid water underneath a thick icy surface. Wherever we find water on Earth, we find life, so could there be life on Pluto? Maybe, but getting down through the ice to find it will challenge future generations.

• Read the full story by Laurence Tognetti

Game of Probes: The First Probe Sent to Another Civilization Won’t Be the First to Arrive

Would you send an interstellar mission to another star system if you knew a future generation would have better technology and their probe would arrive before yours? The famous "Wait Calculation" shows that we can predict a point in the future when a spacecraft won't be overtaken by newer technology. It makes the most sense to wait until then. If we ever find a probe here in the Solar System, it might be the latest model, with older technology arriving later even though it was sent earlier.

• Read the full story by Evan Gough

Astronomers use the World's Biggest Radio Telescope to map new Features of the Milky Way

The largest radio telescope in the world is the enormous Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China. During a recent survey, astronomers used the telescope to locate more than 500 new faint pulsars. During this survey, they recorded detailed spectral data that allowed them to study the structure of the Milky Way itself.

• Read the full story by Matt Williams

Avoiding the Kessler Syndrome With Moriba Jah

Mapping out all the space objects and understanding their orbits is the key to avoiding problems in orbit. What are the technical challenges and what's the current state of affairs? We're discussing it with Dr. Moriba Jah.

The Webb Has Confirmed its First Exoplanet, and it’s the Same Size as Earth.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. That power has led to a string of observational successes: ancient galaxies, obscured star-forming regions, and an exoplanet atmosphere. Now the telescope has identified its first exoplanet, and it’s a rocky planet the same size as Earth.

• Read the full story by Evan Gough

Astronomers Begin to Understand Strange “Backsplash” Galaxies

Gravity pulls galaxies together into vast clusters. But they don't just fall into the center; they keep moving around. Astronomers are using gravitational lensing to study these enormous clusters, which slowly emerged over billions of years by attracting all the nearby galaxies. When galaxies fall into the gravitational well, they fall and back up again, like someone on a swing. Many galaxies in a cluster have already gone through the core and have the tidal bruises to show for it.

• Read the full story by Paul M. Sutter

NASA is Continuing to Build the Titan Dragonfly Helicopter. Here are its Rotors

Wrap your mind around this idea. NASA is building a helicopter with a nuclear battery to explore Saturn's moon, Titan. No, you're not dreaming; this is an actual thing. The Titan Dragonfly is under construction but will fly to Saturn in 2027, arriving at the moon in 2034. NASA gave us an update, showing how engineers test its rotors in a wind tunnel to compare how they'll operate in the thick atmosphere on Titan. Dragonfly will eventually have 8 of these rotors, and the helicopter will be huge, measuring 4 meters by 4 meters.

• Read the full story by Andy Tomaswick

JWST Pioneer Passes Along Advice for Future Space Telescope Builders

Legendary astronomer John Mather is the mind behind the James Webb Space Telescope, detailing how a telescope could see the first galaxies forming at the beginning of the Universe. With Webb active and in space, Mather is working on other ideas for observatories that could push our knowledge even further. In a recent meeting, he talked about the Habitable Worlds Observatory that would go to the same destination as JWST, but unlike its predecessor, it would be designed for robotic servicing and upgrades.

• Read the full story by Alan Boyle

TESS has Found A Second Earth-Sized World in This System. Exoplanet Science is Maturing

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has located a second Earth-sized exoplanet in a star system. The newly-found planet is TOI 700-e, and TESS has already turned up three planets orbiting the star. This brings the total number of planets to four in the system, and it's starting to approach the number in the TRAPPIST-1 system. All the planets are tidally locked to the star, and two might be in the habitable zone, where liquid water might be present.

• Read the full story by Evan Gough

Astronomers Used a Fast Radio Burst to Probe the Structure of the Milky Way

Astronomers have known about Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) for about 15 years. These blasts occur randomly across the Universe, rarely repeating, lasting for just a few milliseconds before fading away. Although the source of FRBs is still a mystery, astronomers have developed a technique to use these blasts to probe the structure of the Milky Way. A new observatory called the Deep Synoptic Array was explicitly built to search for FRBs. Through their analysis of how their emissions move through our galaxy, astronomers have discovered that the Milky Way has less matter than previously theorized.

• Read the full story by Matt Williams

One Day There Could be a Pipeline of Oxygen Flowing From the Moon’s South Pole

When NASA sends humans back to the Moon with Artemis III, they'll land at the lunar south pole, helping to explore the area. This is where it's believed there are vast reservoirs of water ice in the permanently shadowed craters in the region. But this isn't the best place for a base. Instead, liquid oxygen will be extracted from the ice and piped farther away to a more hospitable location. A new NASA NIAC grant is investigating what it would take to install an oxygen pipeline on the Moon.

• Read the full story by Evan Gough

NASA Satellites can Pinpoint the Exact Locations of Excessive CO2 Emissions

Although carbon dioxide emissions come from all aspects of modern society, there are specific polluters like power plants and factories that should be curbing their emissions. Satellite detection has gotten so precise that NASA satellites can pinpoint the exact locations of excessive CO2 emissions. Twin spacecraft called the Orbiting Carbon Observatories were able to home in on the world's fifth-largest coal-fired power plant as a test case, tracking its emissions and changes.

• Read the full story by Matt Williams

UFO Update Says Pentagon’s Case Count Is Rising Rapidly

The Pentagon's task force on UFOs has released a new report, providing an update to their preliminary assessment of unexplained aerial phenomenon they first released in 2021. According to the latest info, there were 144 UAP sightings by the military between 2004 and 2021, and several hundred have been added in the last few years. As of August 30th, there were 510 UAP reports by the military. Of course, it doesn't mean we're under an alien invasion, just that there's a better network within the military to collect and centralize the sightings.

• Read the full story by Alan Boyle

January 13, 2023: Webb Confirms its First Exoplanet, China's Mars Rover is Gone, Huge Increase in UAP Sightings, And More...- PART II

How Life Reshapes the Habitable Zone

A new paper suggests that life has a way of making planets more habitable. Even if a world were marginal to begin with, once life gains a foothold, it'd immediately start changing the nature of the planet's atmosphere to improve its habitability. Researchers have suggested that this can extend the concept of a star's habitable zone due to the impact of life itself. Their term for this is the Gaian habitable zone.

• Read the full story by Paul M. Sutter

Other Interesting Space Stuff

• Astronomers Discover Eight new Super-hot Stars
• Perseverance NAVCAM Images Shows all 5 Sample Tubes
• My 1st Ever Star Trail From Space. More Details in Comments.
• This Star is Blasting out a Concentrated Beam of Hydrogen at 500 km/s
• The First Satellite Launched From Western Europe has Failed
• Binary Dwarf Stars Found Orbiting Each Other Every 20 Hours. They Were Once Almost Touching
• TESS has Found its Second Earth-Sized World
• This is a Radar Scan of the Moon Using an Amazing new System Installed on the Green Bank Telescope
• Worlds Bustling With Plantlife Should Shine in a Detectable Wavelength of Infrared
• A new Propulsion System Could Levitate Vehicles in the Earth's Upper Atmosphere
• A Hybrid Fusion/Fission Reactor Could be the Best way to get Through the ice on Europa
• Future Space Telescopes Could be 100 Meters Across, Constructed in Space and Then Bent Into a Precise Shape
• One day There Could be a Pipeline of Oxygen Flowing From the Moon's South Pole
• A Novel Propulsion System Would Hurl Hypervelocity Pellets at a Spacecraft to Speed it up
• New Nuclear Rocket Design to Send Missions to Mars in Just 45 Days
• Instead of Building Structures on Mars, we Could Grow Them With Help From Bacteria
• Humanity has Never Seen the sky in the Longest Wavelengths. That Could Change With a new Space Telescope
• A Helicopter is Going to Titan. Could an Airplane be Next?
• A new way to Peer Into the Permanently Shadowed Craters on the Moon, Searching for Deposits of Water ice
• If an Earthlike Planet is Within 30 Light-Years, This Space Telescope Will Find it
• Exploring the Outer Solar System Takes Power, Here's a way to Miniaturize Nuclear Batteries for Deep Space
• An Extremely Lightweight Fusion Rocket Could Reach the Solar Gravitational Lens in 15 Years
• A Martian Meteorite Contains Organic Compounds. The raw Materials for Life?
• By Blocking the Light From a Star, Webb Reveals the Dusty Disk Surrounding it
• A Powerful Solar Storm Could be one of the Worst Natural Disasters Ever. But we can Build an Early Warning System
• Cosmic Noon was Billions of Years ago, When Many Galaxies Were Filled With Star-Forming Nebulae Like This
• Scientists Build a Teeny Tiny Tractor Beam
• Unrelenting Atmospheric Rivers Continue to Hammer California. Here's the View From Space
• You're Looking at a map of the Milky Way's Magnetic Field
• If you Were Orbiting Jupiter, This is What you'd see
• Why do Other Systems Have Superearths and we don't?
• A Black Hole is Savoring its Meal, Feeding on the Same Star Over and Over Again
• The Donut That Used to be a Star
• Why Does the Butterfly Nebula Look Like This?

Amazing Astrophotography on @universetoday

This Serpent’s Tail is Made of Starry Nebulae

This is a beautiful image of the nebula Sh2-54, located in the constellation Serpens. This is the same constellation that holds the famous Eagle Nebula and its pillars of creation. It's a star-forming region shrouded in thick dust, hiding many young stars from view. The European Southern Observatory's VISTA telescope can see into the infrared, a wavelength that can pass through the dust, revealing this incredible view of the stellar nebula.

We have featured thousands of astrophotographers on our Instagram page, which has more than 200,000 followers. Want to do a takeover? Use the hashtag #universetoday and I'll check out your photos.

Find your way across the night sky. Choose a variety of astronomy gear. Follow the Moon and the planets. Find deep sky objects across the seasons in both hemispheres. Observe comets, asteroids, satellites and space stations. Learn to do astrophotograph

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An Incredible New Theory Proves Past, Present, And Future Exist Simultaneously

Here’s a fascinating thought. What if you discovered that everything in your life had been pre-planned? What if your history, present, and future are all happening right now?

A fantastic new idea known as the “block universe” theory says that time does not actually “flow like a river,” but rather that everything is always there.

Dr. Bradford Skow, a philosophy professor at MIT, believes that if we “look down” on the universe as if it were a sheet of paper, we would see time spread out in all directions, just as we experience space at any one time.

Is it feasible that we only perceive time as essentially linear because that is what our human brains can comprehend?

Let us explore a little deeper into this intriguing new notion and what it might mean for our existence. Dr. Skow is not the first scientist to wonder about how we perceive time.

In 1915, Einstein postulated a notion of unified space and time. In his general theory of relativity, Einstein proposes that space-time has a manifold or continuous structure. They constitute a four-dimensional vector space when viewed together. This vector is known as the “block theory.”

“The boundary between past, present, and future is nothing more than a tenaciously persistent illusion.”

Einstein’s hypothesis is usually recognized as the most accurate explanation of what the cosmos means in terms of cosmic meaning. As a result, the existence of a block universe is not implausible.

Dr. Skow completely supports this point of view. Rather than believing that time and events pass us by and then vanish, we can consider that they continue to exist and coexist in different parts of space-time. We absolutely cannot get anyplace outside of this block.

When you try to wrap your head around this concept, you’ll see it has the potential to change how we think about time travel.

If this hypothesis is right, we cannot just go back in time and change it. It would be difficult to create “grandfather paradoxes” if everything happened at once — your past, present, and future all laid out in space.

You would not be making any significant changes. Instead, you will just travel through time, experiencing it exactly as it is and has always been. Dr. Skow’s new theory was recently challenged by another, equally divisive theory.

Dr. Julian Barbour, a physicist in the United Kingdom, and other scientists believe that the Big Bang created a mirror world.

And, get this, in this mirror dimension, time is reversed. Individuals awaken from death, live out their old age, and wait until they are old enough to start a profession and then go to school in this parallel universe. Doesn’t it sound odd?

If this theory is right, it may provide a solution to some of the most severe physics difficulties we are now facing.

As an illustration, consider what happened to all of the antimatter after the Big Bang. And why does time only move in one direction? This may appear contradictory to the block universe concept, but it provides solutions to some of our most baffling fundamental physics difficulties.

When we think about time, we all think of entropy. Entropy is the degree of disorder in a system that will eventually lead to its collapse. It’s everywhere, including our bodies, computers, and motors. And as entropy increases exponentially, as it always does, it will consume its system.

Sean Carroll, a professor at Caltech, and Jennifer Chen, a graduate student, decided to take a fresh look at time. They thought about it in terms of gravity.

They discovered evidence for the existence of the mirror universe by studying 1,000 particles and applying Newtonian physics.

All of these new radical notions are intriguing to consider and debate. However, if one of them is right, it creates even more complications.

Is there any likelihood of evolution as we know it if time is constant? So, what is the point and meaning of existence if we live exactly as we are, with no chance of change?

Temporal arguments will always exist in this sense. And it’s questionable whether we’ll ever find any of the answers, let alone fully comprehend them.

Perhaps the magic isn’t in having the solution, but rather in the search for it. It could be our way of grasping our existence.

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UFO Sighting on State Route 51 in Arizona, 2023

On January 15th, 2023, a man and his family had a close encounter with a group of unidentified flying objects while driving on Arizona State Route 51. The witness, who wishes to remain anonymous, was on his way to pick up his wife and two sons from the airport when he noticed extra lights hovering above the highway. At first, he estimates there were six lights, but he was able to confirm seeing five in a pentagon formation, evenly spaced.

The witness was able to capture a photo from the back seat of the car, which confirms the presence of five lights. He also attempted to record a video using his iPhone, but due to the glare from streetlights and the dirty windshield, it was difficult to make out any details. However, the video does show a decrease in the number of lights, from four at the beginning to three in a perfect triangle formation.

The witness reports that the lights were beneath low cloud cover and appeared to be close. He initially thought they may have been flares from the United States Air Force, but upon further reflection, realized they looked different from any flares he had seen before.

• Mysterious UFO spotted over Tamaulipas highway, Mexico

Other witnesses in the area also reported seeing the lights, including a woman in Cottonwood, Arizona, who was unable to upload her own video of the event. The time stamp on the witness’s recording is 9:41 PM.

The witness is unsure of what to make of the sighting, but he is convinced that it is a legitimate encounter with something unknown. He is also curious to know if there was any military activity in the area at the time and wants to rule out flares as the explanation.

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

VIDEO! Teleporting in the Illinois Night Sky: A Father and Son’s Incredible Encounter with a UFO

On January 9th, 2023, a father and son duo from Champaign County, Illinois had a once in a lifetime experience when they spotted a UFO while on their way home. The unidentified flying object was first noticed as an unusually bright object in the night sky, approximately 5-10 miles from their location. At first, the object appeared to be quite high in the sky, estimated to be between 50,000-100,000 feet, but it seemed to be hovering in place.

As the father and son watched, the object suddenly teleported from its previous altitude to a much lower one, with no apparent light trail, estimated to be between 1,000-2,000 feet. Realizing that they had witnessed something that needed to be investigated further, the father deviated from their route home and headed towards the object’s location

As they got closer, the large light that they had seen expanded 4-5 times its original size, becoming a glowing ball of light with geometric light fractals pulsing from the center. This lasted for just a couple of brief seconds before returning to its original size. It was at this point that the son began filming the UFO, the video of which can be seen in media file 1. The second video, filmed by the father, is also included in this post.

The father and son were incredibly excited and hyped about the UFO they saw, and the footage they captured is truly astounding. While the sighting is still being investigated, it is clear that the object they saw was not a conventional aircraft or known phenomenon. This sighting is sure to stir up discussions and debates among UFO enthusiasts and experts. The location of the sighting is Champaign County, Illinois, on the 9th of January, 2023.

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

NASA Admits To Discovering ‘Something Weird’ Happening To Our Universe

The Hubble Space Telescope has reportedly reached a new milestone in its quest to measure the speed at which the universe is expanding, and it strongly implies that something strange is going on in our cosmos.

Astronomers have recently utilized telescopes like Hubble to measure how quickly the cosmos is expanding.

However, when the data were refined, a peculiar finding was made. There is a considerable gap between evidence from the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang and the universe’s current rate of expansion.

The disagreement has been left unsolved by scientists. However, it demonstrates that “something weird”—possibly the result of as-yet-unidentified new physics—is occurring in our universe.

For the past 30 years, Hubble has been gathering information on a series of “milepost markers” in space and time that may be used to determine how quickly the universe is expanding away from Earth.

More than 40 of the markers have reportedly been calibrated by NASA, enabling even greater precision than before.

“You are receiving the most exact gauge of the expansion rate for the universe from the gold standard of telescopes and cosmic mile markers,” said Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

He is the head of a team of researchers that just published a new study article outlining the greatest and probably final substantial upgrade from the Hubble Space Telescope, doubling the prior set of mile markers and reexamining the data already available.

When American astronomer Edwin Hubble saw that galaxies beyond our own looked to be moving away from us – and moving faster the more away they are – he set out to find an exact estimate of how quickly space was expanding. Since that time, researchers have been trying to learn more about that expansion.

Both the rate of expansion and the space telescope that has been researching it bear the name Hubble in recognition of the astronomer’s work.

The cosmos was found to be expanding faster than predicted when the space telescope started gathering data on it. While data indicate that it is closer to 73, astronomers predict that it should be around 67.5 km/s per megaparsec, plus or minus 0.5.

The likelihood of astronomers being off is one in a million. Instead, it suggests that there is still much to learn about how the cosmos is developing and that the universe’s evolution and expansion are more complex than we previously imagined.

The newly launched James Webb Space Telescope, which will soon send back its first observations, will be used by scientists to delve deeper into this difficulty. They should be able to see more recent, far-off, and detailed mileposts as a result.

Citation(s): NASA

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Something big in our solar system has tilted the sun by 6 degrees.

Experts say that compared to the sun’s equator, our Sun is tilted by about 6 degrees. Since the 1970s, astronomers have not been able to figure out why this is happening. Now, experts think they may have found a solution: Planet Nine. Elizabeth Bailey works at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena as an astrophysicist and planetary scientist.

She says that planet nine tilted our sun by six degrees and that the missing planet may have also tilted the other planets over the course of the solar system’s history. Planet Nine is a celestial body that hasn’t been found yet but is thought to be at the very edge of our solar system. Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown predicted its existence in January 2016.

Experts say that all of the planets in our solar system move around the sun in a flat plane that is within a few degrees of each other. But experts say that plane rotates at a six-degree angle to the sun, which makes it look like the sun isn’t in the right place.

No one could figure out how something like this could happen for years.

What could make the sun, which is the biggest object in our solar system, tilt by six degrees? In fact, the sun is the only thing in our solar system that isn’t facing the same way as everything else.

Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy, says, “It’s such a deep-rooted mystery and so hard to explain that people just don’t talk about it.”

Bailey and his team of researchers ran computer simulations to figure out what was going on. They found that the tilt of the eight planets could be explained by Planet nine’s gravitational pull. In an interview with Space.com, Bailey said that this is just one theory and that there may be other reasons for the strange tilt our solar system has taken over its roughly 4.5 billion-year history.

One possibility is that there was an imbalance in the mass of the core of the young sun. According to Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, our sun is probably circled by a massive, unseen planet that is about ten times the size of Earth and has an orbit that is about 20 times farther from the sun than Neptune’s.

Batygin says, “It keeps surprising us. Every time we look closely, Planet Nine explains something about the solar system that had been a mystery for a long time.”

Astronomers haven’t been able to figure out why our sun and the other planets in our solar system tilt in such a strange way for a long time. Experts think that planet nine’s angular momentum—in physics, angular momentum is the rotational equivalent of linear momentum—is having a huge effect on the solar system because of where it is and how big it is.

Even though this is one reason why our solar system tilts in a strange way, scientists still need to find the rogue planet.

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