The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
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UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
25-08-2016
Exoplanètes: «Une preuve de vie extraterrestre d'ici dix ans»
Exoplanètes: «Une preuve de vie extraterrestre d'ici dix ans»
ESPACE L'astrophysicien Michaël Gillon nous en dit plus sur la découverte de la planète Proxima B...
Vue d'artiste de la planète Proxima B, avec son étoile, la naine rouge Proxima du Centaure, au loin - M. Kornmesser / EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY / AFP
Jamais on n’avait découvert d’exoplanète aussi proche de nous. La confirmation, mardi dans Nature, de la découverte de Proxima B, dans l’orbite de l’étoile Proxima du Centaure, se double d’une jolie surprise : La planète tourne autour de son étoile à une distance qui rend possible la présence d’eau liquide et de vie à sa surface.
Proxima du Centaure est bien connue des chercheurs qui traquent les planètes situées en dehors du système solaire, car c’est la plus proche de notre soleil. L’astrophysicien belge Michael Gillon, de l’Université de Liège, co-découvreur de plusieurs exoplanètes « potentiellement habitables », analyse l’importance de cette découverte.
On a découvert plus de 3.000 planètes en dehors du système solaire, depuis la première en 1995. Pourquoi ne découvre-t-on que maintenant celle qui tourne autour de Proxima du Centaure ?
Parce que le système de Proxima du Centaure n’est pas facile à examiner. L’étoile est proche, mais beaucoup moins brillante que le soleil (670 fois moins), elle pèse 10 % de son poids et émet essentiellement de la lumière infrarouge. D’ailleurs, de la Terre on ne la voit pas à l’œil nu, il faut une lunette pour l’observer…
Dans mon équipe nous avons déjà essayé de scruter ce système par la méthode du « transit » (on guette la baisse de luminosité qui résulte du passage d’une planète devant l’étoile), sans rien détecter. Là, ils ont pu utiliser une autre méthode, gravitationnelle (on détecte indirectement les mouvements de la planète), avec une quantité de données très importante.
Cette planète, Proxima B, est située à une distance de 4,2 années-lumière, soit quarante mille milliards de kilomètres. Que change cette découverte ?
C’est très enthousiasmant qu’une étoile si proche de nous dispose d’une planète potentiellement habitable. Et il est possible qu’avec certains instruments on soit assez rapidement capables d’observer directement l’image de cette planète, et de détecter une atmosphère, si elle en a une.
La prochaine étape, c’est la découverte de vie extraterrestre. Comment procède-t-on ?
On cherche des signes de cette vie en guettant, par exemple dans la lumière émise par la planète, des traces de molécules caractéristiques de la vie. Ce sont des « biomarqueurs ». Cela peut-être de l’oxygène en grande quantité, si on prouve qu’aucun autre phénomène n’a pu le produire. Avec les nouveaux instruments qui sont en train d’être mis en place, je pense que l’on peut espérer une telle découverte d’ici une dizaine d’années.
Exoplanètes: «Une preuve de vie extraterrestre d'ici dix ans»
Exoplanètes: «Une preuve de vie extraterrestre d'ici dix ans»
ESPACE L'astrophysicien Michaël Gillon nous en dit plus sur la découverte de la planète Proxima B...
Vue d'artiste de la planète Proxima B, avec son étoile, la naine rouge Proxima du Centaure, au loin - M. Kornmesser / EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY / AFP
Jamais on n’avait découvert d’exoplanète aussi proche de nous. La confirmation, mardi dans Nature, de la découverte de Proxima B, dans l’orbite de l’étoile Proxima du Centaure, se double d’une jolie surprise : La planète tourne autour de son étoile à une distance qui rend possible la présence d’eau liquide et de vie à sa surface.
Proxima du Centaure est bien connue des chercheurs qui traquent les planètes situées en dehors du système solaire, car c’est la plus proche de notre soleil. L’astrophysicien belge Michael Gillon, de l’Université de Liège, co-découvreur de plusieurs exoplanètes « potentiellement habitables », analyse l’importance de cette découverte.
On a découvert plus de 3.000 planètes en dehors du système solaire, depuis la première en 1995. Pourquoi ne découvre-t-on que maintenant celle qui tourne autour de Proxima du Centaure ?
Parce que le système de Proxima du Centaure n’est pas facile à examiner. L’étoile est proche, mais beaucoup moins brillante que le soleil (670 fois moins), elle pèse 10 % de son poids et émet essentiellement de la lumière infrarouge. D’ailleurs, de la Terre on ne la voit pas à l’œil nu, il faut une lunette pour l’observer…
Dans mon équipe nous avons déjà essayé de scruter ce système par la méthode du « transit » (on guette la baisse de luminosité qui résulte du passage d’une planète devant l’étoile), sans rien détecter. Là, ils ont pu utiliser une autre méthode, gravitationnelle (on détecte indirectement les mouvements de la planète), avec une quantité de données très importante.
Cette planète, Proxima B, est située à une distance de 4,2 années-lumière, soit quarante mille milliards de kilomètres. Que change cette découverte ?
C’est très enthousiasmant qu’une étoile si proche de nous dispose d’une planète potentiellement habitable. Et il est possible qu’avec certains instruments on soit assez rapidement capables d’observer directement l’image de cette planète, et de détecter une atmosphère, si elle en a une.
La prochaine étape, c’est la découverte de vie extraterrestre. Comment procède-t-on ?
On cherche des signes de cette vie en guettant, par exemple dans la lumière émise par la planète, des traces de molécules caractéristiques de la vie. Ce sont des « biomarqueurs ». Cela peut-être de l’oxygène en grande quantité, si on prouve qu’aucun autre phénomène n’a pu le produire. Avec les nouveaux instruments qui sont en train d’être mis en place, je pense que l’on peut espérer une telle découverte d’ici une dizaine d’années.
VIDEO. Faites chauffer la fusée, une potentielle «seconde Terre» découverte à deux pas de chez nous
VIDEO. Faites chauffer la fusée, une potentielle «seconde Terre» découverte à deux pas de chez nous
ASTRONOMIEProxima du Centaure est l'étoile la plus proche du Soleil, et le système abrite une planète sans doute rocheuse...
Vue d'artiste de Proxima b, la planète la plus proche de la Terre. - ESO, M. KORNMESSER
C’est le Graal de l’astronomie. Des chercheurs ont bien découvert une exoplanèteautour de l’étoile la plus proche du Soleil, Proxima du Centaure, dans une zone où l’eau liquide peut exister à la surface. La rumeur, qui courrait depuis deux semaines, a été confirmée mercredi par la publication officielle dans le magazine Nature. « La chasse à la vie peut commencer », écrit son auteur principal, l’astronome Guillem Anglada-Escudé, de l’université Queen Mary de Londres.
Cette fois, il ne s’agit pas d’une erreur
Avant de réserver son billet pour un aller simple, plusieurs précisions importantes s’imposent. Proxima b, située à 4,2 années-lumière du Soleil, a une masse minimum de 1,3 fois celle de la Terre. Les chercheurs supposent qu’elle est rocheuse mais ils n’en ont pas la preuve. Ils ne savent pas non plus si elle possède une atmosphère, de l’eau liquide et tous les composés nécessaires à l’éclosion de la vie telle que nous la connaissons.
Les sceptiques se rappelleront encore que la dernière découverte d’une planète « candidate » autour de Proxima du Centaure avait finalement été rétractée. Mais cette fois, les mesures réalisées avec deux télescopes différents laissent peu de place au doute. « Les instruments ont fait d’immenses progrès. Après avoir lu l’étude, je suis convaincu que cette planète est réelle », juge l’astronome Phil Plaitsur son blog Bad Astronomy.
Le tour de son étoile en 11 jours
Proxima b se trouve à seulement 7,5 millions de kilomètres de son étoile. C’est 20 fois plus près que la Terre du Soleil. Elle en fait le tour en seulement 11,2 jours. Mais parce que Proxima du Centaure est une naine rouge de faible intensité, de l’eau liquide peut, sur le papier, exister à la surface.
La donne est cependant compliquée par la configuration de la planète, en verrouillage gravitationnel avec son étoile, comma la Terre avec la Lune. Traduction : c’est toujours la même face qui est au « soleil », et il n’y a pas de saison. On ne parle même pas des violentes éruptions solaires, face auxquelles une protection (atmosphère dense, champ magnétique) est indispensable. Bref, il va falloir observer la planète directement, et le télescope spatial James Webb, qui doit prendre la relève d’Hubble en 2018, arrivera à point nommé.
Si près et pourtant si loin
A 4,2 années-lumière, Proxima b est la planète la plus proche de la Terre. Mais avec les systèmes actuels de propulsion, il faudrait entre 20.000 et 80.000 ans à une sonde pour s’y rendre. Le projet Starshot, qui mise sur une voile solaire accélérée par des rayons laser pour atteindre 20 % de la vitesse de la lumière, permettrait toutefois de réduire la durée du voyage d’une micro-sonde à une vingtaine d’années. Allez, on espère être encore vivant pour assister à ce grand moment…
(CNN)In a discovery that has been years in the making, researchers have confirmed the existence of a rocky planet named Proxima b orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun, according to a new study. It is the closest exoplanet to us in the universe.
Given the fact that Proxima b is within the habitable zone of its star, meaning liquid water could exist on the surface, it may also be the closest possible home for life outside of our solar system, the researchers said.
Because of its location, the researchers hope it provides an opportunity for possible "robotic exploration in the coming centuries."
This artist's impression shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b.
"The good news is that it is so close," study author Ansgar Reiners said. "It is not only nice for having it in our neighborhood, but it's a dream come true for astronomers if we think about follow-up observation."
Proxima Centauri coexists with a binary star in Alpha Centauri, a well-studied star system that serves as a neighbor to our sun.
Proxima b is a mere 4.2 light-years away from our solar system, or 266,000 times the distance between the Earth and the sun, which are 92.96 million miles apart. Previous rocky exoplanet discoveries, like those orbiting ultracool red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, were previously described as "close" at 40 light-years away.
"It's not only the closest terrestrial planet found, it's probably the closest planet outside our solar system that will ever be found because there is no star closer to the solar system than this one," said lead study author Guillem Anglada-Escudé.
"The only thing you can hope to find between that is Planet Nine, but that would (require) a solar system object or a brown dwarf that hasn't been discovered," researcher Pedro Amado added.
Here is what we know about the planet, as well as the questions that researchers hope to be able to answer.
Meet Proxima b
Proxima b is a rocky, terrestrial planet with a surface -- unlike a gas giant, such as Jupiter -- that is 1.3 times the size of Earth and orbits its star every 11.2 days. It is in a close orbit of Proxima Centauri: only 5% of the distance between the Earth and the sun. They are even closer together than Mercury and the sun. But because its star is much cooler and fainter than our sun, Proxima b has a temperature that is suitable for liquid water to exist on the surface without evaporating.
Researchers estimate that if the planet has an atmosphere, which could be assumed but isn't known, it may be between 86 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (31 to 40 degrees Celsius) on the surface. Without an atmosphere, it could be -22 to -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 to -40 degrees Celsius). To put that in perspective, Earth would be -4 degrees (-20 degrees Celsius) if it didn't have an atmosphere, Reiners said.
Given the proximity to its star, Proxima b is also subject to less pleasant factors like ultraviolet and X-ray flares that are 100 times the intensity of what Earth receives from the sun. In the paper, researchers estimated it to be 400 times the intensity, but recent research has caused them to create a new estimate, they said. If there is life on the planet, it would be affected by this radiation, but it is pure speculation as to what kind of effect.
This infographic compares the orbit of the planet around Proxima Centauri (Proxima b) with the same region of the Solar System.
What took so long?
If the Alpha Centauri system is well-studied and Proxima Centauri is our sun's cozy star neighbor in the universe, why did it take so long to find Proxima b?
It comes down to an understanding of the star this planet orbits, as well as how data collection has evolved during the last 16 years.
Proxima Centauri is a low-mass red dwarf star, known as an M-class dwarf, that happens to be close to the bright binary star Alpha Centauri AB, which outshines its cool stepbrother, so to speak. All of these stars are within the faint Centaurus constellation, which can't be seen with the unaided eye.
M-class dwarves are not well understood in comparison with other types of stars, Reiners said. Because of that, researchers don't know much about the history of these stars or their radiation in the early days.
"But within the field of exoplants, [researchers] have recently realized that looking for planets around M dwarves is what is going to be the most spectacular, because you can find these plants in the liquid water zone more easily than other stars," Reiners said.
Because it's an active star, Proxima Centauri can behave in varied ways that mimic the presence of a planet, according to the study. Researchers wanted to observe it for a long period of time, so for the first half of this year, telescopes around the world were pointed at Proxima Centauri. The researchers looked for a "Doppler wobble," or back and forth wobble of Proxima Centauri that would be caused by the gravitational pull of a planet in orbit.
This was combined with research, data and published studies of Proxima Centauri dating to 2000.
"The significance of the detection went sky high," Anglada-Escudé said. "Statistically, there was no doubt. We have found a planet around Proxima Centauri."
The research around Proxima b will continue, and the researchers have more questions they want to answer. They don't know whether there is water on the surface or if the planet has an atmosphere, although both are likely. They also don't know whether, like Earth, the planet has a protective magnetic field to help with some of the radiation it receives.
Perhaps one of the biggest questions includes the history of the star and the planet. How did they form?
"What happened during the formation?" Reiners asked. "Was the star more active than the sun is today, and where during that phase was Proxima b located?"
This would indicate whether the plant was rich with water in its early days or started out dry, as well as whether there was any high-energy radiation that could have blasted away an atmosphere during formation of the planet.
A view of the southern skies over the ESO 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile with images of the stars Proxima Centauri (lower right) and the double star Alpha Centauri AB (lower left).
There is also some debate over whether this planet is Earth-like, which comes with some connotations. Depending on its formation, perhaps it could be like Venus.
Learning the answers to these questions about formation are possible with research. The habitability of a planet like Proxima b is also "a matter of intense debate," according to the study, due to arguments against it: tidal locking, strong stellar magnetic fields, strong flares, and high ultraviolet and X-ray fluxes. But, as they point out, none of those has been proved definitive, either.
Growing excitement
Researchers have long looked to Alpha Centauri for study. Now, they want us to go there.
Programs like Mission Centaur intend to design and build a space mission with a small telescope to point at the star system. It would look for exoplanets by imaging or other techniques that could find more of them around these three stars. Given how long it took us to confirm Proxima b and the fact that the researchers encountered a puzzling extra signal in some of their data and models, it's entirely possible that there are more planets to be found.
It is also the target of the Starshot project, which aims to create and send ultra-fast light-driven nanocraft that would reach the system 20 years after launch and beam home images. This is on the list of Breakthrough initiatives,an effort whose board includes Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg.
Join the conversation
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Because Proxima b exists outside our solar system, it doesn't change our well-known roster of planets (and we know some of you are still rather upset over Pluto). But it does add to the field of exoplanet research that's underway, some of which hopes to identify Earth-like planets that future telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, can use for observation.
Many researchers hope that we can actually image these planets in the future, getting an idea of their atmospheric makeup and surface composition, and strive to answer the question of "Are we alone in the universe?"
"We know that there are terrestrial planets around stars. The excitement is because it's the nearest one, and we expect to characterize it and maybe visit in a couple of centuries," Anglada-Escudé said.
Mediterraans mysterie: Woonde de mythische beschaving van Atlantis op Sardinië?
Mediterraans mysterie: Woonde de mythische beschaving van Atlantis op Sardinië?
Luchtbeelden die onlangs zijn gemaakt lijken de theorie te bevestigen dat de mythische beschaving van Atlantis mogelijk op het Italiaanse eiland Sardinië woonde. Dat meldt de krant La Stampa.
De Italiaanse journalist Sergio Frau stelt dat Sardinië exact overeenkomt met de beschrijving die Plato gaf: een land dat rijk is aan water en bossen, met een zacht klimaat, waardoor men het hele jaar door kan oogsten.
Tsunami
Plato noemde de inwoners van Atlantis daarnaast ‘torenbouwers’. Op Sardinië staan veel oude stenen forten. Eén van deze monumenten werd gevonden in de gemeente Barumini. Het kostte archeologen 14 jaar om het bouwwerk onder een 12 meter dikke laag modder vandaan te halen.
Uit luchtbeelden blijkt dat vrijwel alle oude bouwwerken die zich vlak boven de zeespiegel bevinden, bedekt werden door modder, terwijl de overige gebouwen buiten schot bleven. Mogelijk was de modderstroom het gevolg van een tsunami, die volgens de legende de inwoners van Atlantis wegvaagde.
Zuilen van Hercules
Plato schreef dat Atlantis 9000 jaar geleden werd vernietigd, maar in die tijd waren er nog geen beschavingen in het Middellandse Zeegebied. Plato bedoelde mogelijk 9000 maanden in plaats van jaren, omdat in zijn tijd vaak in maanden werd gerekend.
In dat geval verwijst Plato naar 1200 voor Christus. In die periode deden zich op het Italiaanse eiland krachtige aardbevingen voor. Het is bekend dat Atlantis zich ten westen van de Zuilen van Hercules bevond. Volgens de legende waren die tot de derde eeuw voor Christus niet in de Straat van Gibraltar, maar in de Golf van Tunis gelegen, tussen Sicilië en Tunesië.
Ligt buitenaards leven dan toch niet zo ver van ons af als we dachten? Gisteren had de Europese Zuidelijke Sterrenwacht ESO groot nieuws voor de wereld: er is bewijs gevonden dat rond de meest nabije ster een planeet draait die levensvatbaar kan zijn. Mogelijk is er dus een nabije woonplaats voor leven buiten ons zonnestelsel. Nu ja, zo nabij is Proxima b nu ook weer niet: 4,22 lichtjaar, ofwel 40 biljoen kilometer. Hoe kunnen we ooit zo ver reizen?
Vorig jaar kwam de New Horizons-sonde van NASA aan op Pluto na een trip van 4,8 miljard kilometer. De sonde was negen jaar onderweg geweest en haalde snelheden tot 84.000 kilometer per uur. Mochten we de New Horizons naar Proxima b sturen, dan zou die 54.400 jaar onderweg zijn. Niet echt een optie dus.
Vorige maand haalde de Juno-sonde van NASA, die in een baan rond Jupiter draait, een snelheid van 265.000 kilometer per uur. Met die snelheid komen we weliswaar vroeger aan op Proxima b, maar dan nog zou het 17.157 jaar duren.
In de jaren 90 pakten het Amerikaanse leger en NASA uit met Project Longshot, waarbij een sonde dankzij waterstofbommen snelheden zou halen tot 13.400 kilometer per seconde. Mocht dat ooit lukken, dan zijn we er binnen 100 jaar.
Proxima b bereiken, is dus een werk van heel lange adem, laat staan dat we er ooit voet aan land kunnen zetten. Maar dankzij een nieuwe technologie wordt het misschien mogelijk om Proxima b over 50 jaar te bereiken. Met project 'Starshot' wil miljardair Joeri Milner een sonde de ruimte insturen die wordt voortgedreven door een laserstraal en in 'amper' 20 jaar Proxima b bereikt. Ook Stephen Hawking steunt het project.
Een laserstraal zou, in theorie althans, een flinterdunne sonde met 215 miljoen kilometer per uur kunnen laten reizen. Dat is ongeveer 20 procent van de lichtsnelheid. Het zou nog 20 à 25 jaar duren voor die 'lasersonde' klaar is, dus we moeten toch nog zeker een kleine 50 jaar wachten voor we Proxima b ooit te zien krijgen. Bovendien zou het project zo'n 10 miljard dollar kosten.
10 miljard dollar uitgeven aan een reis naar een verre planeet, is dat wel de moeite waard? Wat als we op een gigantische ontgoocheling botsen?
Een trip naar Proxima b is zeker de moeite waard, dat bewees New Horizons al toen hij aankwam op Pluto. De sonde schoot unieke beelden van de dwergplaneet die we vanop de aarde nooit zouden kunnen genomen hebben. De sonde bezorgde ons een schat aan informatie over Pluto, dus een bezoekje aan de nieuwe Aarde is sowieso de moeite waard.
Ontdekken we over 50 jaar leven buiten ons zonnestelsel? Lees het antwoord hier in 2066.
China hoopt in juli of augustus 2020 een robotjeep naar Mars te lanceren. Het heeft via de staatsmedia een tip van de sluier over de verkenner gelicht.
Het is de bedoeling dat een Lange Mars-5 draagraket van op de nieuwe lanceerbasis Wenchang het tuig meeneemt en op een traject naar de Rode Planeet brengt. Na een reis van ongeveer zeven maanden moet de lander zich van een "orbiter" losmaken en uiteindelijk neerstrijken nabij de evenaar. Dan zal het gedurende een negentigtal dagen het Marsoppervlak en de omgeving bestuderen.
Tweehonderd kilo De jeep zal tweehonderd kilo wegen. Hij zal zes wielen en vier zonnepanelen hebben. Dertien instrumenten doen onderzoek naar sporen van water en ijs.
In het kader van zijn ambitieus ruimtevaartprogramma heeft Peking al een robotjeep op de Maan neergezet, om daar onderzoek te doen. India was het eerste Aziatisch land dat in september een sonde rond de Rode Planeet bracht.
Mislukken De opdracht zou niet gemakkelijk zijn. Zelfs de grote ruimtevaartmogendheden zagen zowat minstens de helft van missies naar Mars, in het bijzonder landingen, mislukken.
België is momenteel met apparatuur op de Europees-Russische sonde en lander ExoMars op weg naar de Rode Planeet.
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‘Aarde Twee': Levensvatbare planeet ontdekt bij buurster van de zon
‘Aarde Twee': Levensvatbare planeet ontdekt bij buurster van de zon
Astronomen hebben bewijs gevonden dat rond de meest dichtstbijzijnde ster een bewoonbare planeet draait. Dat laat de Europese Zuidelijke Sterrenwacht (ESO) weten.
De sterrenkundigen ontdekten met behulp van een reuzentelescoop in Chili een aardachtige planeet rond de ster Proxima Centauri. Dat is onze meest nabije buur. De planeet, Proxima b gedoopt, is 1,3 keer zo zwaar als de aarde en bevindt zich in de leefbare zone rond de ster.
Binnen bereik
Er is hoogstwaarschijnlijk vloeibaar water mogelijk op de planeet. Volgens het onderzoeksteam kan er leven aanwezig kan zijn op Proxima b. Er zijn intussen zo’n 200 aardachtige planeten bij verre sterren ontdekt, maar die staan stuk voor stuk op vele honderden lichtjaren.
Proxima Centauri staat op slechts 4,2 lichtjaar en komt langzaam maar zeker binnen het bereik van onze ruimtevaartuigen. Miljardair Joeri Milner wil binnen nu en 15 jaar een zogeheten ruimtezeil naar de ster sturen. Het ruimteschip zal ongeveer 20 jaar over de reis doen.
Een jaar op Proxima b duurt maar 11 dagen omdat de planeet veel dichter bij zijn ster staat dan de aarde bij de zon. Toch is het er niet heel warm, omdat Proxima Centauri een rode dwerg is, die veel koeler is dan onze zon.
Grootste ervaring
“De eerste waarnemingen waren er al in 2013, maar toen waren de waarnemingen niet overtuigend genoeg,” aldus onderzoeksleider Guillem Anglada-Escudé. “Sindsdien hebben we hard gewerkt om meer waarnemingen te doen.”
Hij voegde toe dat de vondst van de dichtstbijzijnde aardachtige exoplaneet de grootste ervaring van zijn leven is. De astronomen hebben hun bevindingen gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijke vakblad Nature.
UFOs Hover Over Vegas While Helicopters buzz past to investigate, Aug 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFOs Hover Over Vegas While Helicopters buzz past to investigate, Aug 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News
Date of sighting: August 23, 2016
Location of sighting: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Here is an awesome video of some helicopters and planes buzzing past the three UFOs over Vegas. I'm sure radar must have seen these three UFOs...because if it didn't then we need to rethink better radar for protection of air accidents. This is in an area close to a Tall White base at Nellis AFB. Possibly aliens wanting to get as close as possible to the night life in Vegas...and who could blame them, but know, and adult Tall White is over 3 meters tall and would stand out in Vegas...also, if you accidentally touched them, they would take pleasure in your immediate death, so its best to avoid them.
I shot this video from my backyard in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas, Nevada on the night of August 23, 2016. The weather has improved greatly even though a wicked storm passed through later in the night. I could hear the wind and hail hitting the windows. Earlier it was actually really nice other than a tad bit of wind and haze. The night started off slowly and then all of a sudden things started happening. I got a short clip of a UFO in the southern valley and then I noticed the amazing UFOs over in the Henderson area. They were in a location where it's very rare to see anything. Once they began to move they ended up in a spot where I see them more routinely. This was just the beginning as I have more footage from the Blue Diamond Hills that I still need to publish.
Glowing UFO Tries To Escape Detection At Space Station, Aug 2016, UFO Sighting News.
Glowing UFO Tries To Escape Detection At Space Station, Aug 2016, UFO Sighting News.
Date if sighting: August 2016 Location of sighting: Earths orbit at ISS Once again, a UFO has been caught at the space station using the live cam. Streetcap1 had a watchful eye on the cams and was fortunate enough to record it for us. It looks like this UFO didn't want to be recorded, because it was seen moving away and high speed. But this just goes to show, that aliens are not gods or angels, but flawed beings just like us. They are not perfect, they make mistakes, just like this alien pilot made in this video...which will forever be on Youtube to show the world that the alien F#$%ed up. How does that feel aliens...having your flubs on Youtube for all the human race to see, laugh at and comment about? Scott C. Waring www.ufosightingsdaily.com Streetcap1 states: Not a clue what this is. Other people must have seen this too. It disappears into the Earth Light and does not reappear. Short sequence repeated several times over. Streetcap1.
The star closest to the sun hosts a planet that may be very much like Earth, a new study reports.
Astronomers have discovered a roughly Earth-size alien world around Proxima Centauri, which lies just 4.2 light-years from our own solar system. What's even more exciting, study team members said, is that the planet, known as Proxima b, circles in the star's "habitable zone" — the range of distances at which liquid water could be stable on a world's surface.
"We hope these findings inspire future generations to keep looking beyond the stars," lead author Guillem Anglada-Escude, a physics and astronomy lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, said in a statement."The search for life on Proxima b comes next." [In Pictures: The Discovery of Planet Proxima b]
A long search
The discovery of Proxima b was a long time in the making.
Astronomers have been hunting intensively for planets around Proxima Centauri for more 15 years, using instruments such as the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) and the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), both of which are installed on telescopes run by the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
This artist’s impression shows the exoplanet Proxima b, which orbits the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. The double star Alpha Centauri AB appears in the image between the exoplanet and its star.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
UVES, HARPS and other instruments like them allow researchers to detect the slight wobbles in a star's movement caused by the gravitational tugs of orbiting planets.
Astronomers found hints of such a wobble back in 2013, but the signal was not convincing, Anglada-Escude said. So he and a number of other researchers launched a campaign to ferret out the planet. They called this effort the Pale Red Dot — a nod to Carl Sagan's famous description of Earth as a "pale blue dot," and the fact that Proxima Centauri is a small, dim star known as a red dwarf.
The Pale Red Dot team focused HARPS on Proxima Centauri every night from Jan. 19, 2016, through March 31 of this year. After they combined this new data with UVES observations from 2000 through 2008 and HARPS observations from 2005 through early 2014, the signal of a possible planet came through loud and clear.
Then, after analyzing observations of the star's brightness made by several other telescopes, Anglada-Escude and his colleagues ruled out the possibility that this signal could be caused by the variable activity of Proxima Centauri.
"The conclusion: We have found a planet around Proxima Centauri," Anglada-Escude said Tuesday (Aug. 23) during a news conference. [The Search for Another Earth (Video)]
How did Proxima b remain undetected for so long, in an era when astronomers are finding exoplanets thousands of light-years from Earth?
"The uneven and sparse sampling, combined with the longer term variability of the star, seem to be the reasons why the signal could not be unambiguously confirmed with pre-2016 data, rather than the total amount of data accumulated," the researchers wrote in the new study, which was published online today (Aug. 24) in the journal Nature.
The news confirms rumors first reported earlier this month by German magazine Der Spiegel.
Incidentally, the team also spotted possible signs of an additional Proxima Centauri planet, which would have an orbital period of between 60 and 500 days. But that second signal is much weaker and might be caused by stellar activity, the researchers said.
Artist's illustration of the surface of Proxima b, a potentially Earth-like world that circles the nearest star to the sun.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
An Earth-like world?
The HARPS and UVES data indicate that Proxima b is about 1.3 times more massive than Earth, which suggests that the exoplanet is a rocky world, the researchers said. [6 Strange Facts About Planet Proxima b]
Proxima b lies just 4.7 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) from its host star and completes one orbit every 11.2 Earth days. As a result, it's likely that the exoplanet is tidally locked, meaning it always shows the same face to its host star, just as the moon shows only one face (the near side) to Earth.
For comparison, Earth orbits about 93 million miles (150 million km) from the sun. But Proxima b's relatively tight orbit puts it right in the middle of the habitable zone, because red dwarfs are so much cooler and dimmer than sun-like stars, team members said. Not much else is known about Proxima b, so it's unclear just how hospitable the planet may be to life. In fact, there are reasons to be pessimistic on this front, noted Artie Hatzes, an astronomer at the Thuringian State Observatory in Germany.
Proxima Centauri fires off powerful flares, and the planet therefore experiences a much higher dose of high-energy X-ray radiation than Earth does, Hatzes, who is not part of the discovery team, wrote in an accompanying "News and Views" article in the same issue of Nature.
"Energetic particles associated with the flares may erode the atmosphere or hinder the development of primitive forms of life," Hatzes wrote. "We also don't know whether the exoplanet has a magnetic field, like Earth, which could shield it from the dangerous stellar radiation."
But the higher X-ray flux is not a "showstopper" for life, Anglada-Escude and his colleagues said.
"None of this does exclude the existence of an atmosphere, or of [surface] water," co-author Ansgar Reiners, a professor at the University of Göttingen's Institute of Astrophysics in Germany, said during Tuesday's news conference.
How Proxima Centauri behaved in the distant past is more relevant to the newfound planet's potential habitability than current radiation levels are, Reiners added.
A 'Habitable' Planet Found Around Nearest Star Proxima Centauri
"What is more interesting is the history of the planet — whether in the early ages, the young ages, of this planet the star was so active, and the star emitted so much high-energy radiation, that it blew away the atmosphere and may have blown away the water also," he said.
Other aspects of the planet's history also have a bearing on just how wet Proxima b may be. For example, if the alien world formed far from the star but then migrated inward, it is likely water-rich; if it formed near its present position, it likely started out much drier, study team members said. (But even this latter scenario doesn't preclude the existence of large amounts of water on Proxima b, Anglada-Escude stressed; comet and/or asteroid strikes could deliver the substance, as apparently happened here on Earth, he said.)
Tidally locked planets were once regarded as inhospitable to life — baked too hot on the star-facing side, and freezing cold on the dark side. But recent research suggests that such worlds may indeed be habitable; winds in theiratmospheres could distribute heat, smoothing out temperature extremes.
And if Proxima b is potentially habitable, life-forms have a long time to gain a foothold there: Red dwarfs keep burning for trillions of years, in contrast to stars like the sun, which die after 10 billion years or so.
"Proxima Centauri will exist for several hundreds or thousands of times longer than the sun," Hatzes wrote in his "News and Views" piece. "Any life on the planet could still be evolving long after our sun has died."
The sun is 4.6 billion years old. Proxima Centauri is thought to be slightly older — perhaps 4.9 billion years or so, study team members said.
New Earth Found - Gliese 581c Planet (NASA Documentary)
Proxima b likely does not "transit," or cross the face of, its host star from Earth's perspective, Anglada-Escude and his colleagues said.
That characteristic will make it tougher to study Proxima b further; astronomers can learn a lot about the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets by studying the starlight that passes through them. (NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in late 2018, will use this method to look for possible signs of life in the atmospheres of nearby alien worlds.)
But Proxima b is close enough to Earth that scientists may soon be able to image it directly. Indeed, it should be possible to resolve the planet (separately from its host star) using a telescope with an aperture of 11.5 feet (3.5 meters), provided that the scope is outfitted with some advanced technology, such as a starlight-blocking coronagraph, Reiners said. (For perspective, NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope has an aperture of 7.9 feet, or 2.4 m.)
"We are quite far from it right now, but physics allows us to do it," he said. "And then, you can study the light coming from the planet itself, and that gives you the opportunity to learn about the atmosphere spectroscopically or photometrically, or whatever you want."
This past April, scientists and engineers announced the $100 millionBreakthrough Starshot project, which aims to develop the technology required to accelerate tiny, sail-equipped "nanocraft" to 20 percent the speed of light using powerful lasers.
Breakthrough Starshot team members said they hope to eventually launch flotillas of such postage-stamp-size probes to Alpha Centauri — a binary star system about 4.37 light-years from the sun. (In 2012, incidentally, astronomers analyzing HARPS data announced the discovery of a roughly Earth-size world around the star Alpha Centauri B, but later work suggested that the putative planet does not actually exist.)
Spacecraft traveling at 20 percent the speed of light could make the trip to Alpha Centauri in about two decades, as opposed to thousands of years for conventionally powered probes.
Proxima Centauri lies just 0.24 light-years from Alpha Centauri, and is regarded by some scientists as part of the latter system — so Breakthrough Starshot team members are recalibrating possible mission profiles a bit now.
"With today's announcement, we now know that there's at least one planet, the one orbiting Proxima Centauri, that has some characteristics similar to the Earth," Pete Worden, chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, said during a news conference today.
"Over the next decade, we will work with experts here at ESO and elsewhere to get as much information as possible about the Proxima Centauri planet, perhaps as noted, even including whether it might bear life, prior to launching mankind's first probe towards the star," Worden added. "We also hope to obtain similar data about the other nearby stars, Alpha Centauri A and B."
Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel
Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel
Andreas Tziolas is drafting a blueprint for a mission to a nearby star. Here, he discusses how we’ll get there — and why we try.
We humans have known for a very long time that going to the stars will be difficult, if not impossible. The motto of NASA, Per Aspera Ad Astra, a latin phrase meaning “through hardship to the stars,” comes down to us all the way from Seneca the Younger, a contemporary of Nero. Even today, when our metaphors of exertion and ambition are many –“swing for the fences,” “go for gold” — when we strain to capture the difficulty of a task, or the enormity of an achievement, “reach for the stars” is the first and most natural phrase that comes to mind. Our hierarchy of the ultimate human accomplishments is in this sense remarkably stable at the top.
And with good reason, because interstellar travel is in fact very difficult. With today’s best propulsion technology, chemical rockets, it would take between 50 and a 100 millennia to reach Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The ideas we have about how to expedite such a journey are just that: ideas. They belong to the realm of speculation. Nonetheless, they are beginning to take on an empirical glow. To be sure, the bundle of technologies that could conceivably send a spacecraft to another star won’t be here within the decade, or even within several, but neither are those technologies mere magical realism — indeed, planning for their development has begun in earnest.
In September of last year DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, convened a conference in Orlando, Florida, to discuss and promote one of its newest and most intriguing research projects: The 100 Year Starship Study. According to DARPA, the study is intended to “develop and mature a technology portfolio that will enable long-distance manned space flight a century from now.” To that end, DARPA is now negotiating a grant of $500,000 to ex-astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison, whose personal foundation will team up with Project Icarus, a division of Icarus Interstellar, to seed the plans for an interstellar mission that could span several centuries.
Project Icarus, which will focus on the mission’s technological challenges, is a theoretical engineering study that was launched in 2009 by the British Interplanetary Society with the purpose of designing an interstellar spacecraft. It brings together an international group of volunteer aerospace engineers from government space agencies, universities and the private sector with the purpose of generating technical reports on the engineering layout, functionality, physics, operation, and mission profile of an interstellar probe. You can think of it as a kind of repository for bleeding-edge thinking about interstellar travel.
Project Icarus takes its inspiration from Project Daedalus, a five-year study launched by the British Interplanetary Society in 1973 to determine whether interstellar travel was feasible at all. Project Daedalus ultimately concluded that interstellar was possible, but acknowledged that the technical challenges were significant. Icarus aims to pick up where Daedalus left off, by trying to chip away at some of those technical challenges. Andreas Tziolas, a former research fellow at NASA who holds a Ph.D. in Gravitation and Cosmology, is the Project Leader for Project Icarus. Yesterday I spoke to Tziolas about how and, more interestingly, why we might someday send a mission to the stars.
How did you first get interested in interstellar travel?
Tziolas:I’ve been interested in interstellar travel ever since I was a young boy. I’m not ashamed to say that I was a child of Star Trek. When I was growing up in Greece, I remember Star Trek would come on very early on Sunday mornings, but that didn’t stop me from watching — I never missed an episode. My mother used to joke, “if only you would get up for school with the same excitement that you get up on Sundays.”
When it came time to choose a career, I knew it had to be this, because for something like this to get done someone has to say “I’m going to dedicate my life to this, to this thing that is difficult, this thing that is on the fringe of science, so that we can put down a kind of stepping stone, and the next generation can step on it in order to enter into this interstellar culture.”
And that’s what I’ve been doing these past 25 years. My first degree was in spacecraft engineering, after which I worked on several space missions for NASA. I worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, the Galileo Mission to Jupiter; I worked on the Mars Pathfinder, and on the Mars Polar Lander. And after a pretty intense period of involvement, I realized that from an employment perspective, these projects were kind of tenuous. When you work on a space mission, especially a planetary explorer, you’re generally out of a job once you make it to launch. Maybe two or three people out of the twenty working on the mission will stay on as support staff, with the rest looking for work elsewhere. So it’s not the best way to pursue a career. At the time I was interested in more analytical and computational physics, so I went back and did a Ph.D. in Cosmology at Baylor University. In doing this, I was trying to balance my capabilities, both the theoretical and technical capabilities, and I think it worked, I think it gave me an advantage.
When Project Icarus was first started, one of the main reasons we thought it was important was that people the original Daedalus team, and several of the very important researchers in the field of interstellar engineering had been slowly passing away, or else retiring. Suddenly you had this situation where there wasn’t a new generation of interstellar engineers on the market. There was no one working on this.
When we started up, one of our first objectives was to raise up this new generation of interstellar engineers — we wanted volunteers, anyone, whether they are Ph.D.’s or garage inventors, or just people who are passionate, people who spend every evening reading about interstellar exploration. There are several people around the world who have extraordinary technical expertise, but don’t necessarily look good on paper, and so they don’t have an opportunity to contribute to NASA or ESA or any of the other major space agencies. And so where do those people go? They end up working in I.T. or they end up working as clerks, but in their hearts they have this burning fire to do research. So what we do is corral all of those people with that fire and we organize them, and we organize the research in a detailed way, so that wecan harness the power of inclusiveness in doing this kind of research.In Greek, Daedalus means “cunning worker,” and in Greek mythology of course Daedalus is this master craftsman, the mythical embodiment of man as a maker of technology. But his son Icarus was another story. He’s famous for ignoring his father’s warnings about flying too close to the sun, and for drowning as a result of that. So why Icarus?
Tziolas:Well there are two reasons. First of all Dr. Allen Bond, who was the project leader for Daedalus, left a note to future generations in the final program report for the Daedalus spacecraft. In it he said “we’ve laid down some stepping stones, the first pebbles, and we set a direction, but it will be the sons of Daedalus, perhaps an Icarus, that will have to come through and make this a much more feasible design.” Because remember what Daedalus was trying to achieve was just a feasibility study, a study to see if this was even possible. And the Daedalus reports are very underappreciated. This was the first time in human history that some team proved that interstellar exploration is feasible using the physics of today. That had never been done before by NASA or anyone else. It was a significant milestone.
So that’s why we chose “Icarus,” but besides that we have a clever way of seeing the Icarus myth, which brushes away some of the inhibitions people have. Because we hear it a lot, that we picked the wrong name, that “hey isn’t this the guy who tried to fly with his father’s wax wings and fell into the ocean.” But that was a myth, a myth from 2,500 years ago, and like many myths it’s flexible, especially in a time like ours when we have Hollywood and CGI, which are tools that allow you to reshape a myth. In our version, Icarus falling into the ocean wasn’t the final chapter. We believe that he washed up on a beautiful deserted island, and he looked for his father in the sky and didn’t see him. So he started a fire on the beach, and tried to think about how he might get back to the sky. And at that moment he looked toward the sky and he saw his destiny, and his destiny was to forge new wings of steel and fire so that he could try again. And he wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of his father, who after all had fashioned the original wax wings. He would improve on his father’s design.
A lot of reasons have been offered for why this project, this general project of going to the stars, is important for humanity. Some have said that in the long term the project is necessary as a means of “backing up the biosphere,” that we need to find another planet in order to ensure that humans survive future extinction events on earth. Others point to the potential for scientific knowledge, especially in the areas of cosmology or astrobiology. And then there’s the idea that deep space is a kind of proving ground for humanity, that it provides the ultimate test of our intellectual and creative capacities. In your eyes, what is the most compelling reason we ought to pursue this?
Tziolas: This could be a very long conversation. At Project Icarus we keep adding new reasons and new motivations for going interstellar, as we call it. First is obviously the survival of humankind. If humanity is capable of achieving interstellar flight but does not pursue it, does not pursue a program of seeding other planets and other solar systems, then really we risk receiving a Darwin Award as a civilization. If you can save yourself, but you don’t, for whatever reason — how can you justify that?
“Why do we pay this obsessive attention to backing up a document, which we can reproduce, when we pay no attention to backing up our civilization?”
When you’re working on a sensitive document on your computer, the first thing you do is back it up. You make a copy of it, you email it to yourself, you put it in your dropbox, and your flash drive — sometimes all these things at once. Why do we pay this obsessive attention to backing up a document, which we can reproduce, when we pay no attention to backing up our civilization? There is no greater endeavor than ensuring the survival of humankind.
You also want to push technological boundaries. If you don’t have one of these huge problems to solve, that’s hard, really hard, then you won’t motivate yourself to solve it. If the human population had never risen past one billion people, everyone would live very comfortably, spread out, there might not be high rises, transportation would be different — the whole civilization would be different. The unique problems that come with high populations have given rise to these technologies, to these ways of living. Similarly, had we never decided to go into space, our civilization would be very different. We wouldn’t have cell phones, we wouldn’t have satellite systems, and we wouldn’t have this type of computational power. We would have been fine, but we would be stuck at a certain level of technological advancement.
In order to achieve interstellar flight, you would have to develop very clean and renewable energy technologies, because for the crew, the ecosystem that you launch with is the ecosystem you’re going to have for at least a hundred years. With our current projections, we can’t get this kind of journey under a hundred years. So in developing the technologies that enable interstellar flight, you could serendipitously develop the technologies that could help clean up the earth, and power it with cheap energy. If you look toward the year 2100, and assume that the 100 Year Starship Study has been prolific, and that Project Icarus has been prolific, at a minimum we’d have break-even fusion, which would give us abundant clean energy for millennia. No more fossil fuels. We’d also have developed nanotechnology to the point where any type of technology that you have right now, anything technology-based, will be able to function the same way it does now, but it won’t have any kind of footprint, it will only be a square centimeter in size. Some people have characterized that as “nano-magic,” because everything around you will appear magical. You wouldn’t be able to see the structures doing it, but there would be light coming out of the walls, screens that are suspended that you can move around any surface, sensors everywhere — everything would be extremely efficient.
An artist’s rendering of a blueprint from Project Daedalus (Image courtesy of Nathan Fowkes)
Project Daedalus favored a nuclear fusion pulse engine, in which small pellets of fusion fuel would be injected at high velocity into a reaction chamber and ignited by high-energy electron beams. Is that still the favored propulsion technology?
Tziolas:Project Icarus is focused on a fusion-based propulsion system, but the flavor of fusion is still up for debate. One of the problems with the Daedalus fusion propulsion system is that it runs on Helium3 and Helium3 is very scarce on the surface of the earth. In fact, in order to collect enough Helium3 to visit another star, you’d need to mine the atmospheres of the gas giants like Neptune and Jupiter. So our current thinking is that this is probably not the best way to go to another star if it requires that we mine half of the solar system just to get enough fuel. So, we’re trying to present a new fuel source or a new type of fusion, of which there are several.
There are also other alternatives, such as beam propulsion, which uses a ground station or an orbital station that focuses energy from the sun into a beam, a stream of particles or radiation, in order to push a spacecraft to the other star. The physics and engineering of this are both well understood. We know how light reflects off of surfaces and we have experience with solar panels, so we don’t have the same disconnect that we have with fusion. Because remember we haven’t actually achieved fusion, sustained fusion, in the laboratory. But the major problem is that the beam that you transmit is going to diverge to a certain degree, and as a result you are going to lose some thrust. The other obstacle is the sail you’d need to capture the beam; to complete a mission like the one we’re talking about you’d need a sail that was roughly a hundred square kilometers in area, and that isn’t feasible right now.
The third option is nuclear fission, which Project Orion intends to use, and there you have small-scale nuclear warheads — although we don’t call them that, we use something more diplomatic like “fission pulse units” — and you detonate them behind the spacecraft to push it through space. Freeman Dyson has been an advocate of this approach.
Obviously there would be enormous challenges involved in communicating with a starship at such great distances. What is the latest thinking on how that might be accomplished?
Tziolas: Yes that’s a major concern. If you can’t communicate with the ship then you don’t know what the results are of your mission. It’s an active area of research, and we’re considering several alternatives. One idea is to moderate the fusion pulses in the main engine, and using it to encode signals — but that’s a worst case scenario. We’re also considering point-to-point laser communications, but the challenge there is the power drain would be enormous. It would probably require a second fusion reactor, and that’s fine but you have to design that in.
Another, more interesting option is the use of relays, and this was explored in the previous phase of our research at Project Daedalus. The idea is that when you drop the empty fuel tanks along the way, you design them so that they can double as relay stations. You could power them with small reactors, and use them to relay signals back to earth. We have two studies on this, and one says this could work and the other says it can’t, so we’re working on it.
What are the main considerations involved in choosing a destination star?
Tziolas:Well we’re somewhat limited by the timescale we’ve chosen. We want this to be a hundred year mission, and that puts our maximum range at fifteen light years, using the best estimates about fusion technology. Right now we’re designing around Alpha Centauri because it’s the easiest, and because it’s a double star we expect it to be very interesting scientifically. However, if a terrestrial planet is discovered and it has a few oceans and it’s within 22 light years instead of our maximum of 15, we would button down and make that our mission. Habitability is the prime consideration.
“To us, proliferating the human race must always come first.”
Interesting. I’m surprised it’s that and not extraterrestrial life, but then I suppose they overlap.
Tziolas: If there were two planets: one of them is teeming with life, but it’s not habitable because it’s methane or sulfur based life, and the other is an Eden with an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and only eighty percent our gravity, so everyone would be a superman, and they’re in opposite directions, where would we go if you had to pick one? To us, proliferating the human race must always come first. We would go to the Eden and not think twice about it.
Do you expect that the current exoplanet fever — sparked by, among other things, the recent data from the Kepler Space Telescope — will lead to more attention and investment in interstellar travel? Are there any other developments, be they cultural or technological, that could give momentum to a serious public desire for a mission to the stars?
Tziolas: The investment in exoplanet research is not going to end any time soon. It’s something you can keep on doing for a very long time, and it’s a nest that astrophysicists will be able to build and nurture, with advances in capabilities on the scale of the great particle colliders on the Earth. You can always go to higher power, you can always go to higher magnification, you can try interferometric methods, better angular resolution, more spacecraft, the James Webb Space Telescope, the list goes on. So once we find this Eden, this beautiful place that is in our solar neighborhood, people are going to want to go there. There will be a push for an interstellar mission and it’s our hope that Project Icarus is in a position to deliver when that happens.
In the meantime we are trying to raise the profile of interstellar travel. It’s something I often think about because I’m in charge of education and outreach for the project. One thing we’re doing is adding courses in interstellar engineering to aerospace programs in the United States and in Europe. We expect the first of those to begin this Fall. But more interestingly, we’re also opening a new gaming division. For a while we’d pictured these as educational games, but when we got to the 100 Year Starship conference, the feedback we got was: “It doesn’t have to be that educational — just make some spaceships that reflect your designs and let people fly around and explore Alpha Centauri.” And so we came back the next week and we started looking into that, and now we’re designing these games that we can use to attract people to the concept of exploring another star.
This is something that is a constant focus for us, because while it’s certainly true that a mission of this kind needs a dedicated engineering program, it also needs mindshare. We need people to believe that interstellar travel is a reality, and we need them to adopt it as the next great space exploration effort that humankind is going to undertake. And to do that we’re going to need a cultural shift in the way that we think about space, and the way we think about the universe.
Have you and your colleagues given any thought to including something like the Golden Record that was stowed away on the two Voyager probes, the disc of sounds and images from Earth compiled by Carl Sagan?
Tziolas:We have, actually. It only took a week after the project began for people to start putting together a new record, and to start thinking about what the content of the record would be, but we haven’t really agreed on what the message would be. After the core design team had the initial discussion, we decided that the message should not be designed by physicists and engineers but rather by a sociologist or an anthropologist, but that was the limit to what we agreed on. We all agreed that what Carl Sagan sent was great; we just need to adapt it to our own time. Since then we’ve been actively trying to recruit anthropologists and sociologists to the team.
One of my concerns is that if we send another golden disc, it might not be well suited to reaching its audience. The chances of an extraterrestrial finding it and reading it are worse than a needle in a haystack; it’s like a particle in a universe. So my preference is to design some kind of module that was more technological than the analog disc, that way you could send it in to orbit around your target star, equip it with solar panels, have it charge up and once every twelve hours or so it gives out a pulse. And that would be just to give this other civilization something to look at, and when they design the capabilities to go check it out, they would, and then inside there would be something static, something like the golden record.
Lillium promises an electric vertical take-off personal jet by 2018
Lillium promises an electric vertical take-off personal jet by 2018
f you live in suburbia and have a long commute to work, wouldn’t it be nice to have your own plane? But, oh yeah, you need a runway and your kids and the neighbor’s kids are always leaving things in the yards and in the streets. What you really need is maybe a helicopter, but they’re harder to fly and so noisy the neighbors won’t be happy (not to mention the FAA and your town zoning board).
Well, get ready to toss your aviator scarf around your neck because startup company Lilium Aviation expects to start selling the Lilium all-electric VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) personal jet aircraft in 2018, according to International Business Times. So start saving. No price has been announced yet, but it will be a lot, so just start saving.
Previously, VTOL aircraft were only for the military. In an effort to bring the technology to the masses, or at least the affluent, engineers and students from the Technical University of Munich founded Lilium Aviation, which is backed by the European Space Agency (ESA). The goal is to design and produce planes that are quiet, environmentally clean, and relatively easy to fly. Oh, and they can go straight up and down as well as forward.
The two-seat Lilium will have a top speed just under 250 mph and a range at cruising speed of about 310 miles. The all-electric plan will have a 320kW battery to power the fan engines, retractable landing gear, fly-by-wire joystick controls, wings doors, and windows all around. You won’t have to worry too much about landing and taking off, the two most troublesome parts of flying, because an onboard computer will handle both. You’ll also have help staying on course with GPS-assisted navigation.The ESA’s plans are for the Lilium to fly only on good days, meaning daytime with good weather, and only up to 3km, about 1.8 miles, where the airspace isn’t very crowded. But not just anyone can fly one. You’ll need a valid pilot’s license and a minimum 20 hours training.
There will be ample storage, Lilium Aviation promises, so if you’re taking your daughter or son to soccer practice (though only one at a time, please), you’ll have plenty of room to store their gear.
What do aliens look like? The clue is in evolution
What do aliens look like? The clue is in evolution
Speculating about what aliens look like has kept children, film producers and scientists amused for decades. If they exist, will extra terrestrials turn out to look similar to us, or might they take a form beyond our wildest imaginings? The answer to this question really depends on how we think evolution works at the deepest level.
Hollywood has given us its fair share of humanoid aliens over the years. Initially this was through necessity, as special effects required someone to clamber into a rubber suit. Ironically, now that CGI makes anything possible, aliens sometimes look even more human in order to help the cinema goer make an emotional connection with them – such as in James Cameron’s Avatar.
At present, the only life forms we can study are here on Earth. These had a single origin around 3.5 billion years ago, but this common ancestor gave rise to perhaps 20m living species of animals alone. These have bodies organised according to about 30 different body plans in major groups called phyla.
But when animals first diversified some 542m or more years ago in the Cambrian “explosion”, there may have been an even greater diversity of fundamental body plans. Consider the five-eyed and trunked Opabina in the image above, or the stalked and almost flower-like Dinomischus alongside our own distant relative, the chordate Pikaia.
Pikaia – an early chordate,the group to which humans belong. Credit: Nobu Tamura/wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Rerunning the tape of life
In a famous thought experiment, biologist Stephen Jay Gouldasked what might happen if we were to rewind the “tape of life” and rerun it. Gould argued for the importance of chance in evolution: change one small thing early on, and the consequences magnify through time. In the version of history we know, Pikaia(imaged below) or something very like it survived and ultimately gave rise to fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and ultimately ourselves. But what if it had perished? Might some other group have given rise to intelligent beings, and might you now be reading this with five eyes rather than the customary two? If our own origins on Earth really turned on such fine hinges, why should aliens – evolving on different planets – even remotely resemble us?
The answer, according to evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris, lies in the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence: the process by which distantly related animals come to closely resemble each other. For example, the similar streamlined shape of dolphins, tuna fish and the extinct ichthyosaurs all evolved independently in response to the same selective pressures for moving efficiently through water at speed.
But what aspects of alien biology might we expect? Carbon-based biochemistry is likely given that carbon forms stable backbone chains, and makes stable but readily breakable bonds with other elements. Other elements, notably silicon and sulphur, make less stable bonds at Earth-like temperatures. Water or some other solvent also seems necessary. For evolution to occur there needs to be some mechanism for storing and replicating information with moderate fidelity, such as DNA, RNA or some analogue. Although the first cells appeared on Earth quite early, multicellular animals took nearly 3 billion more years to evolve. So it may well be that life on other planets could get stuck at the single-celled stage.
On an Earth-like planet it is also likely that radiation from the alien sun or suns would be used in biochemical pathways as a source of energy. For moderately large multicellular primary producers, harnessing light efficiently probably necessitates a light gathering system of leaves and branches. Similar shapes and habits have evolved convergently on Earth, so we might expect “plants” with broadly familiar forms on Earth-like planets.
With few exceptions, animals either eat the primary producers or each other, and there are only so many ways of doing this. Pursuing food often necessitates moving with the mouth first, so the animal has a head and tail end. Teeth and probably jaws evolve to hold and tackle food items. Moving against a hard surface requires specialised structures (such as cilia, a muscular foot or legs) at the interface, so that there is a back and front side. Typically, this also imparts bilateral (left/right) symmetry: indeed, most animals belong to a “super-group” called the Bilateria.
The giant weta: one of the largest insects. Credit: New Zealand Department of Conservation, CC BY-SA
Why not giant intelligent “insects”?
But what about the large brained and intelligent creatures that might be capable of crossing interstellar distances? Insects are by far the most species rich group on Earth: why shouldn’t aliens look more like them? Unfortunately, having your skeleton on the outside makes growth difficult, and entails periodic shedding and regrowth. On Earth-like planets, all but relatively small terrestrial animals with external skeletons would collapse under their own weight during moulting, and some critical size may be necessary for suitably complex brains.
Relatively large brains, some degree of tool use and problem-solving abilities appear to be correlated on Earth, and have evolved multiple times: in apes, whales, dolphins, dogs, parrots, crows and octopuses. However, the apes have developed tool use to a vastly greater degree. This is at least partly the result of walking on two legs, which frees up the front limbs, and because of the dexterity of our fingers (which may also be a key to the origins of written language).
Ultimately, the jury is out on the extent to which intelligent aliens – if they exist – would resemble us. It may or may not be significant that humans have just two eyes and ears (just enough for stereo vision and hearing), and just two legs (reduced from the initially more stable four). Many other organs also come in pairs as a consequence of our evolutionarily deep-seated – and perhaps inevitable – bilateral symmetry. Still other elements of our body plan are probably nothing more than chance. The fact that we have hands and feet with five digits is a consequence of the fixation on five in our early tetrapod ancestors – close relatives experimented with seven or eight.
Indeed, most species have been subject to an accidental “locking down” during development – making body plans become stereotyped and inflexible with evolutionary time. Untangling the functional from the accidental is one of the big outstanding challenges in evolutionary biology – and may help us better understand how alien lifeforms could differ from us.
The main way we now search for intelligent life in space is by listening for radio or gamma transmissions. These efforts are increasingly being concentrated on star systems with Earth-like planets, as these are believed to be the most likely to harbour life. After all, it is easier to search for “life as we know it” than life as we don’t.
Since the beginning of human civilization, we have looked up at the stars and wondered in amazement. The vastness of the universe was unknown to early humans, but in recent decades and centuries, we have begun to realize just how incredibly large the universe truly is. With hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone, and with hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe, a normal question was bound to arise… Is anyone else out there?
This has fascinated everyone from conspiracy theorists and kings to modern astronomers and Hollywood producers, but back in 1961, a man named Frank Drake came up with an equation that would measure the likelihood of making contact with intelligent life in our galaxy. That is the essential goal of the Drake Equation, and while it has been hotly debated for decades, it remains one of the most concise and trusted methods of estimating an answer to that eternal question: Are we alone in the universe?
The Drake Equation
When Frank Drake first came up with the idea for the Drake equation, he was actually trying to generate a conversation among a “meeting of the minds” regarding the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI). However, the simple and inclusive design of his equation has become the stuff of legend. Before we go into the details of the equation, let’s look at it in simple terms.
The Drake Equation (Photo Credit: meletver / Fotolia)
So, the Drake Equation is:
However, it would be a bit more insightful to know what each of those variables meant. So, without further ado…
N = the number of possible civilizations in the galaxy that could communicate with us
R* = average rate of star formation in the Milky Way
fp = the fraction of those stars that possess planets
ne = the number of planets that could support life around each of those stars with planets
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually do develop life
fi = the fraction of planets with life that develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of intelligent civilizations that attempt to send communication out into space to be detected
L = the length of time that signal would be sent out into the universe (duration of civilization)
The Drake Equation
( Photo Credit: noeticscience.co.uk)
An Answer to the Drake Equation?
While it seems like a simple enough equation, the problem doesn’t like with generating a final answer (N), but rather in determining what other variables should be included. The first three variables (average star formation rate, planet-possessing stars, and potential to support life on those planet) are relatively easy to determine.
R* – By looking at our own nearby galactic neighborhood and the residual gas clouds from star formation, we can safely calculate that the present rate of star formation is currently about 7 stars per year. This number was far greater in the past, but in the 21st century, that’s a safe bet.
The Orion Nebula, one of our nearest star nurseries (Photo Credit: peresanz / Fotolia)
fp – The fraction of those stars with planets is often assumed to be 1, given that many modern astronomers believe that every star has the capacity to retain orbiting planets, making stars without planets an exception, rather than a rule. However, some other figures place that number at only .4 (4 out of 10 stars will possess planets). This is where the significant differences in variables begin, but it gets even more intense.
ne – The number of planets that could support life around each of those stars is largely derived from our own solar system, where Earth is definitely habitable, but we have yet to determine the habitability of various other moons and planets. Therefore, the number ranges from .5 to 2 in most calculations of the Drake Equation.
Those are the easy ones… and there is far more debate on the last 4 variables, as much of it is conjecture, based on belief, rather than scientific fact or direct observable experience.
fl – The fraction of planets that do develop life is hotly debated and cannot be directly tested, as we haven’t traveled to other exoplanets where the “stuff of life” has been detected. We know that life could develop, but not whether it will. Some say life is inevitable, making this variable equal to 1, while others say it is 1/100, or even smaller!
fi – The fraction of planets with life that develop intelligent life is similarly up for grabs. Many argue that intelligent life is inevitable, using Earth as an example (humans evolved from every other form of life, and eventually became intelligent), while critics say that it was a 1 in a billion chance, as there have been hundreds of millions of non-intelligent species in the history of the planet.
fc – The fraction of those intelligent civilizations that send communication signals suggests a highly technologically evolved culture with the desire to reach out to the stars. This could also be largely conjectural, but a 1/100 estimate was made by Drake, although others say it is a 100% chance, if given enough time.
L – Finally, we come to length of time the signal would be generated. For example, perhaps a civilization rose to prominence 10 million years ago, broadcast the signal, but then destroyed itself before it could connect with us. This is the variable with the most flexibility, from a few hundreds years up to billions (some suggest that eventually, a civilization will discover how to survive in perpetuity, meaning the signal transmission time would be massive.
Maybe they’re just getting a busy signal (Photo Credit: Alexander Pokusay / Fotolia)
NOW….in 1961, Drake estimated with a rather simple range of values, and came up with two values, a minimum and maximum.
The minimum estimation of possible communicative civilizations in our galaxy is 20, while the maximum is roughly 50,000,000. Frank Drake himself believes that the number lies somewhere between 1,000 and 100,000,000.
The Modern Take on Drake
While the debate over extraterrestrial life will never be resolved until we actually find some, we have improved our ability to calculate the variables in the equation. Unfortunately, this hasn’t done much in terms of shrinking the possible range. In fact, our precision has only expanded the range, and current estimates range from 2 to 280,000,000.
The original purpose of the Drake equation, we must remember, was not to determine an accurate number of communicating, intelligent civilizations in our galaxy; it was to stimulate thought in this area, and hopefully guide people to look into the variables and expand the scope of their research. To that end, Frank Drake has been extremely successful. With every successive venture into the cosmos, we get closer to finding life (or not), but with hundreds of billions of stars out there, we’ll likely never know the exact number. However, in terms of extraterrestrial life, I’ll leave it to Fox Mulder….
(VIDEO)‘Human Sacrifice Ceremony’ at CERN investigated by chiefs at world-famous Science Center
(VIDEO)‘Human Sacrifice Ceremony’ at CERN investigated by chiefs at world-famous Science Center
The organization of the world’s leading nuclear research has opened an internal investigation into a chilling incident that occurred on campus.
A video surfaced on the internet shows the moment a woman is allegedly sacrificed near the statue of Shiva at CERN where the Large Hadron Collider is located. The statue of Lord Shiva was installed at the campus in 2004, symbolizing Shiva’s cosmic dance of creation and destruction, was given to CERN by the Indian government to celebrate the research center’s long association with India.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has opened up an internal investigation in response to a video released last week in which a parody is performed allegedly showing a woman bein stabbed as part of a human sacrifice in the ground of the Geneva headquarters reports the Swiss website Swissinfo.
The strange video which popped up on the internet a couple of days ag depicts several individuals in black cloth gather at the main square at one of Europe’s top physics labs ni the appears to be a re-enactment of an occult ceremony.
The chilling video illustrates human sacrifice as a woman is filmed bein stabbed.
‘These scenes were filmed on our premises, but without official permission or knowledge,’ a CERN spokeswoman told AFP in an email. CERN does not condone this type of spoof, which can give rise to misunderstandings about the scientific nature of our work,’ she added.
The image shows a woman being sacrificed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). CERN Chiefs have already started an investigation into the online video which allegedly shows a woman being sacrificed in a gruesome ritual on their grounds.
She added that the investigation taking place is an internal matter.
The strange video has raised numerous questions involving the security present on CERN’s campus.
The image shows several people preparing for the ritual. A joke that has gone too far.
When asked to detail the security procedure regarding access to CERN’s campus, the CERN spokeswoman responded saying that: ‘CERN IDs are checked systematically at each entry to the CERN site whether it is night or day.’
The spokeswoman further indicated that the individual’s responsible for the occult ‘prank’ had access badges.
‘CERN welcomes every year thousands of scientific users from all over the world and sometimes some of them let their humor go too far. This is what happened on this occasion,’ the email said.
The video, which has already registered over 240,000 views, has caused stupor in the management of CERN where the famous Large Hadron Collider is located.
(VIDEO)‘Human Sacrifice Ceremony’ at CERN investigated by chiefs at world-famous Science Center
(VIDEO)‘Human Sacrifice Ceremony’ at CERN investigated by chiefs at world-famous Science Center
The organization of the world’s leading nuclear research has opened an internal investigation into a chilling incident that occurred on campus.
A video surfaced on the internet shows the moment a woman is allegedly sacrificed near the statue of Shiva at CERN where the Large Hadron Collider is located. The statue of Lord Shiva was installed at the campus in 2004, symbolizing Shiva’s cosmic dance of creation and destruction, was given to CERN by the Indian government to celebrate the research center’s long association with India.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has opened up an internal investigation in response to a video released last week in which a parody is performed allegedly showing a woman bein stabbed as part of a human sacrifice in the ground of the Geneva headquarters reports the Swiss website Swissinfo.
The strange video which popped up on the internet a couple of days ag depicts several individuals in black cloth gather at the main square at one of Europe’s top physics labs ni the appears to be a re-enactment of an occult ceremony.
The chilling video illustrates human sacrifice as a woman is filmed bein stabbed.
‘These scenes were filmed on our premises, but without official permission or knowledge,’ a CERN spokeswoman told AFP in an email. CERN does not condone this type of spoof, which can give rise to misunderstandings about the scientific nature of our work,’ she added.
The image shows a woman being sacrificed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). CERN Chiefs have already started an investigation into the online video which allegedly shows a woman being sacrificed in a gruesome ritual on their grounds.
She added that the investigation taking place is an internal matter.
The strange video has raised numerous questions involving the security present on CERN’s campus.
The image shows several people preparing for the ritual. A joke that has gone too far.
When asked to detail the security procedure regarding access to CERN’s campus, the CERN spokeswoman responded saying that: ‘CERN IDs are checked systematically at each entry to the CERN site whether it is night or day.’
The spokeswoman further indicated that the individual’s responsible for the occult ‘prank’ had access badges.
‘CERN welcomes every year thousands of scientific users from all over the world and sometimes some of them let their humor go too far. This is what happened on this occasion,’ the email said.
The video, which has already registered over 240,000 views, has caused stupor in the management of CERN where the famous Large Hadron Collider is located.
THE ABOVE TOP SECRET SPACE PROGRAM BUILT WITH REVERSE-ENGINEERED ALIEN TECHNOLOGY
THE ABOVE TOP SECRET SPACE PROGRAM BUILT WITH REVERSE-ENGINEERED ALIEN TECHNOLOGY
In 1993, during a lecture at the UCLA Alumini Center, Ben Rich, former CEO of Lockheed Martin held a very interesting speech about technological advancements in space engineering in a period of forty years. He concluded his speech with the following quote: We now have the technology to take ET home.” – Ben Rich, CEO of Lockheed Skunk Works, 1993
While talking about ET the last image of the slide showed a mysterious black disk-shaped object flying into outer space.
What was Mr Richj telling us with the quote? With the image?
Lockheed has designed and built a series of incredible aircraft including the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-22 Raptor and the F-117 Nighthawk, all of them with state of the art technology that no one else had in their possession. Their aircrafts were unique, fast, and lethal.
Many people believe that Lockheed Martin definitely came into possession of advanced alien technology that they managed to reengineer creating the next generation fighters. Is it possible that Lockheed is responsible for the manned flying saucers? Is it possible that Lockheed combined Tesla’s inventions with re-engineered alien technology which allowed them to create unprecedented aerial vehicles and even spacecraft? Vehicles that have been kept far away from the prying eyes of the public.
As of 2000, if not a bit earlier, people started to think differently, interest in alien life and extraterrestrial technology, governments could keep up with the high interest of the public in those subjects which has probably led to the numerous declassified UFO files made available to the public in recent years.
In an interview with BBC British system administrator Gary McKinnon, the person who hacked his way into 97 U.S. military and NASA computers, said that he had been motivated by the Disclosure Project since “there are some very credible, relied-upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there’s anti-gravity, there’s free energy, and it’s extraterrestrial in origin and they’ve captured spacecraft and reverse engineered them.”
According to McKinnon, he uncovered numerous files, among them a spreadsheet containing names and details about extraterrestrial officers and fleet logs. McKinnon searched for the ‘extraterrestrial officers’ in the database of the U.S Military and Navy and concluded that those officers were nowhere to be found. He concluded that these mysterious ‘officers’ had to be Space Marines.
McKinnon saw countless UFO images stored in NASA’s computers at the Johnson Space Center’s Building 8 among other highly classified documents. McKinnon was caught in 2002 facing over 50 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. Luckily, McKinnon who fled to the U.K. was never extradited to the US and managed to avoid prison. McKinnon firmly believes that extraterrestrial vehicles have been captured by governments around the world, and he also believes that mankind was able to reverse engineer that technology creating highly advanced spacecraft which are today fully functional.
According to Jack A. Shulman, president of American Computer; the invention of the transistor may have been inspired by the study of the remains of a crashed alien spacecraft, basically reverse engineered technology.
Alien Technology and humans reverse engineering it was first mentioned in 1997 when, American Computer Company (ACC) suggested the possibility that the study of the remains of a crashed alien spaceship in Roswell in 1947, or another crashed Alien spaceship might have been definitive for the development of the transistor, made in 1948 by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain doctors in the Research Center of Electronic Circuits at Bell Laboratories.
The basis for such claims are a series of documents and testimonies that supposedly were in possession of ACC. This theory matches the stories of many others, among them, former Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Corso, who in his book; The Day After Roswell, claims being part of the team that handed the remains of the crashed object and delivered parts to different departments of Bell Laboratories .
What Kind of Technology Brought the Ancient Egyptians Into the Grand Canyon?
What Kind of Technology Brought the Ancient Egyptians Into the Grand Canyon?
One of the most intriguing archaeological discoveries in North America comes from the rocky cliffs of the Grand Canyon. What makes it even more interesting is the fact that The Smithsonian covered it up and hid this intriguing discovery of an ancient civilization living below the canyon, a find that has the potential to change bits of our written history.
The World Explorers Club decided to conduct an investigation regarding the authenticity of this discovery and phoned the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. for more details. Their thirst to find out more was due to an intricate article on the front page of the Phoenix Gazette from April 5, 1909. The story offered an accurate description of an expedition led by Professor S.A. Jordan of the Smithsonian that surfaced with great archaeological finds from a remote cave located in the Grand Canyon.
Maybe the most interesting is the attitude of The Smithsonian Museum, claiming to have zero knowledge of this discovery and those involved in finding it. When asked about the newspaper article regarding the Smithsonian excavation in the Grand Canyon where Egyptian artifacts had been found, and whether they could offer more information on this, a staff archaeologist representing the institution said the following: “The first thing I can tell you before we go any further, is that no Egyptian artifact of any kind have ever been found in North or South America. Therefore, I can tell you that the Smithsonian Institute has never been involved in any such excavations.”
No one from the Smithsonian could offer any information of either the discovery, or of G.E. Kinkaid and Professor S.A. Jordan, the presumed discoverers. It was like the entire article from the 1909 Phoenix newspaper was a shameless hoax, but considering the fact that it appeared on the front page, and that it mentioned the famous Smithsonian Institution and some of its archaeologists, coupled with the fact that it contained a very detailed story written on numerous pages, many believe the newspaper was a legitimate source.
So, why would a reputed, official institution cover this up? After all, we are talking about a monumental discovery that would completely change the current belief that there was no form of communication or travel over the oceans in pre-Colombian times. Also, the belief that all American Indians were the followers of Ice Age adventurers who came across the Bering Strait would become questionable.
The idea of ancient Egyptians coming to Arizona in an ancient past is denied even though the Smithsonian Institution seems to have proof of it. Is there a reason for their denial? Is it because this astounding discovery would overwrite current academic teachings? Or maybe because of the interest to preserve their current status as keepers of forbidden knowledge?
The Tower of Ra
Following these events, in the pursuit of finding the truth, historian Carl Hart, editor of World Explorer, acquired a map of the Grand Canyon from a bookstore in Chicago. Looking over the map, he was surprised to find that a considerable portion on the north side of the canyon has Egyptian names. The field around Ninety-four Mile Creek and Trinity Creek had areas named after Egyptian gods like Tower of Ra, Tower of Set, Osiris Temple, Horus Temple or Isis Temple.
Also, the Haunted Canyon area had some unfamiliar places on the map, such as the Cheops Pyramid, the Buddha Cloister, Buddha Temple, Shiva Temple and Manu Temple. Were any of these places related to the other Egyptian findings in the Grand Canyon?
The Isis Temple
The World Explorers Club then called a state archaeologist at the Grand Canyon. He affirmed that those names were just a coincidence and that the early adventurers enjoyed Egyptian and Hindu names. But one thing remains certain – the area was restricted to hikers or other foreigners, because of dangerous caves and unsafe environment.
Could these hidden caverns contain the actual truth and, if so, for how long will it be concealed? If we take a look at the bigger picture, there is a lot of leaked information which points us into a different direction than what we were taught by the public school system and television. We have a different notion of “truth” and we are also aware of all the odd jobs going on that continue to finance the elites and the lies they feed us as reality.
Whatever the case, history has a lot of gaps, and the existing evidence might be a paved road over an otherwise dusty foundation, representing the true history of humankind.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
