Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
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.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
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!!!
Een interessant adres?
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 In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
01-11-2018
NASA astronauts will get to use this extraterrestrial supercomputer
NASA astronauts will get to use this extraterrestrial supercomputer
Remember the old cautions to keep magnets away from your computer and use a surge protector? What about exposing it to cosmic rays for a year? That’s what NASA finished testing earlier this year, after running a standard Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) business computer aboard the International Space Station. Instead of bulky shielding, the system used software tricks to monitor dangerous conditions and power down or make other adjustments to survive hazards like radiation spikes and unexpected power outages.
With three or four months before the system gets a ride back to Earth for more testing, NASA decided to put the system, an HPE Apollo 4000-series enterprise server, to work doing real science experiments on the ISS.
“We’ve been scheduled to return to Earth on SpaceX 17, which is in late February or early March,” says Mark Fernandez, lead developer for HPE’s Spaceborne Computer program. “Therefore we can open up the supercomputer on the ISS for advancing other types of space exploration.”
HPE’s computer as equipped for its ISS mission. [Photo: courtesy of HPE]The Apollo 4000 is technically a “supercomputer,” because it can perform one trillion floating-point operations per second–a teraflop. That’s now a routine piece of equipment for corporations on Earth, but it’s more processing power than all the other computers on the ISS combined, says Fernandez. “We’ve got 32 [computing] cores onboard,” says Fernandez. “We could run [at least] 32 virtual machines and address the computational needs of 32 experiments.”
NASA has a lot more computing power on the ground, but it has limited bandwidth between the ground and the ISS. The main benefit of having a powerful computer on the station is to do the initial processing of data from cameras or other sensors, then select, compress, and beam down just the relevant information. Fernandez gives image analysis of the Earth as an example.
“If you’re collecting 4K images and looking for something specific, which you already have the image processing software to find…we could do that on board,” he says.
What he doesn’t say is what those “specific” things might be. “I can’t discuss specifics right now,” he says, other than to say they might involve “climate.” Fernandez doesn’t answer whether those tasks might also include jobs for the military.
IT SERVICE FOR ET
Only so much can happen in a few months, though. Fernandez says that it is “still under consideration” whether the ISS might permanently house its own supercomputer in the future.
That depends in part on further tests of the system once it returns to Earth. Some components–such as the Intel “Broadwell” processors, and RAM, solid state hard drives, and other components from various vendors–will get thorough evaluation by the manufacturers, who will know where they’ve been.
The Apollo 4000 system installed on the ISS [Photo: courtesy of NASA]Others will go into a kind of blind study, submitted as if they were defective components from a regular Earth-based computer. “We’re gonna send them some [components] that didn’t fail and say that they failed,” says Fernandez. “And we’ll see if they come back and say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with this product.'”
Powerful computers become ever more valuable the farther astronauts are from Earth, as the bandwidth decreases and the delay increases–such as up to 24 minutes between Earth and Mars.
“If you head out to Mars with humans,” says Fernandez, “you’re going to want a pretty redundant, self-reliant, self-healing system that’s quite capable of doing some calculations. And you may not know what those are [ahead of time].”
The radiation doses get higher the farther a computer (or astronaut) gets from the Earth’s sheltering magnetic field (which Mars lacks). So next steps will include testing computers farther out, says Fernandez. Future tests might include putting smaller versions of the computer on higher-flying satellites or even piggybacking on possible tourist trips around the Moon. “This is all just blue sky discussions at the moment,” he says. Or rather, black sky.
Ancient Sanskrit Writings Suggest UFO’s Visited Us 6,000 Years Ago
Ancient Sanskrit Writings Suggest UFO’s Visited Us 6,000 Years Ago
Did you know that Ancient India has one of the most extensive histories in the world? Their greatest ancient texts are called the “Vedas” and these writings talk about “flying ships” that visited their continent over 6000 years ago. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.
So, why has mainstream history ignored these ancient texts? Better yet, does this mean that we are not the only intelligent species inhabiting the Universe? It seems that the ancient “Vedas” will raise more questions in time.
The canonical division of the Vedas is fourfold (turīya) viz.,
According to experts, the Vedas speak about two categories of flying objects that visited ancient India in the distant past. These mysterious objects are described in Sanskrit writing, where you can find incredible devices and technologies that were not supposed to be present on our planet for thousands of years. In the Mahabharata, the Puranas, and the Ramayana, we find more descriptions of mysterious devices that surpass technological understanding of ancient man.
The descriptions of highly advanced vehicles found in ancient texts are both incredible and confusing. In the ancient book of the Vaimanika Shastraor the Science of Aeronautics, there are texts which speak about crafts that are controlled by our minds, made possible because of extremely advanced technology which has been kept away from society in modern times.
Not only do these ancient texts speak of mind-controlled crafts, but these sacred books talk about levitation and anti-gravity, 6000 years ago. Many experts believe that the Vaimanika Shastra is a sacred book that talks about “ships” that could travel to different places on our planet, but could also travel into space.
A manuscript illustration of the Sky Battle of Kurukshetra fought between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, recorded in the Mahabharata Epic
According to Dr. V. Raghavam, a well known a Sanskrit scholar, and musicologist, who authored over 120 books and 1200 articles, ancient Indian texts speak about humans that lived on other planets and alien beings that visited our ancestor’s thousands of years ago. Dr. V. Raghavam won the Sahitya Akademi Award for Sanskrit in 1966.
We quote Dr. Raghavan:
“Fifty years of researching this ancient work convinces me that there are living beings on other planets, and that they were visiting the earth as far back as 4000 B.C..”
He further explains:
“There is a just a mass of fascinating information about flying machines, even fantastic science fiction weapons, that can be found in translations of the Vedas (scriptures), Indian epics, and other ancient Sanskrit text”.
According to Dr. Raghavan, there are mentions of numerous technologies in the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana: you can find all sort of advanced tech there, some of these ancient technologies were re-developed by the great Nikola Tesla; Ray weapons, Lasers, etc…
But Dr. Raghavan isn’t the only one who believed this theory. Another scientist who firmly agrees with Dr. Raghavan is Dr. A.V. Krishna Murty, professor of aeronautics at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
“It is true,” Dr. Krishna Murty says, “that the ancient Indian Vedas and other text refer to aeronautics, spaceships, flying machines, ancient astronauts.”
“A study of the Sanskrit texts has convinced me that ancient India did know the secret of building flying machines-and that those machines were patterned after spaceships coming from other planets.”
One of the most interesting passages in the Ramayana reads:
“The Puspaka car that resembles the Sun and belongs to my brother was brought by the powerful Ravan; that aerial and excellent car going everywhere at will…. that car resembling a bright cloud in the sky.”.. and the King [Rama] got in, and the excellent car at the command of the Raghira, rose up into the higher atmosphere.”
Furthermore, in the Mahabharata we find texts that read the following:
“Gurkha flying in his swift and powerful Vimana hurled against the three cities of the Vrishis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and fire, as brilliant as ten thousands suns, rose in all its splendor. It was the unknown weapon, the Iron Thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and Andhakas.”
In the Sanskrit Samaraanganasutraadhaara it is written:
Strong and durable must the body of the Vimana be made, like a great flying bird of light material. Inside one must put the mercury engine with its iron heating apparatus underneath. By means of the power latent in the mercury which sets the driving whirlwind in motion, a man sitting inside may travel a great distance in the sky. The movements of the Vimana are such that it can vertically ascend, vertically descend, move slanting forwards and backwards. With the help of the machines human beings can fly in the air and heavenly beings can come down to earth.
As you can see, there are numerous texts that speak of technologies that were considered as divine in the distant past. These technologies have not been present only in Ancient India.
Record of similar “phenomena” are recorded in ancient cultures around the globe, from the Ancient American natives to people living in Ancient Egypt and even in Asia.
Everywhere you go and look at ancient texts, you will find pieces of a “forgotten history,” of texts that have been tagged as mythological, and avoided by mainstream archaeologists and researchers.
Astronomers caught a glimpse of Phaethon – the bizarre blue asteroid responsible for the Geminid meteor shower – and found it even more enigmatic than they’d thought.
Artist’s concept of what Phaethon might look like up close.
Blue asteroids are rare, and blue comets are almost unheard of. An international team of astronomers investigated 3200 Phaethon, a bizarre blue asteroid that sometimes behaves like a comet, and found it even more enigmatic than they’d previously thought.
On December 16, 2017, the asteroid made its closest approach to Earth since 1974, passing within 6.4 million miles (10.3 million km). The team analyzed data from the flyby from several telescopes around the world to learn more about the mysterious object which has puzzled astronomers since its discovery in 1983. The researchers presented the results of their study on October 23, 2018, at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Science in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Blue asteroids, which reflect more light in the blue part of the spectrum, make up only a fraction of all known asteroids. A majority of asteroids are dull grey to red, depending on the type of material on their surface.
Phaethon sets itself apart for two reasons: it appears to be one of the bluest of similarly-colored asteroids or comets in the solar system; and its orbit takes it so close to the sun that its surface heats up to about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees C), hot enough to melt aluminum.
Radar images of 3200 Phaethon generated December 17, 2017, by astronomers at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on. At time of closest approach on December 16 the asteroid was about 6.4 million miles (10.3 million km) away, or about 27 times the distance from Earth to the moon. The encounter is the closest the asteroid will come to Earth until 2093.
Astronomers have been intrigued by Phaethon for other reasons, too. It has the qualities of both an asteroid and a comet based on its appearance and behavior.
Phaethon always appears as a dot in the sky, like thousands of other asteroids, and not as a fuzzy blob with a tail, like a comet. But Phaethon is the source of the annual Geminid meteor shower, easily seen in early-to-mid December.
Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through the trail of dust left behind on a comet’s orbit. When they occur and where they appear to originate from depends on how the comet’s orbit is oriented with respect to the Earth. Phaethon is thought to be the “parent body” of the Geminid meteor shower because its orbit is very similar to the orbit of the Geminid meteors.
The elliptical orbit of 3200 Phaethon crosses the orbits of Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury.
Until Phaethon was discovered in 1983, scientists linked all known meteor showers to active comets and not asteroids.
Teddy Kareta, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, led the study. Karate said in a statement:
At the time, the assumption was that Phaethon probably was a dead, burnt-out comet, but comets are typically red in color, and not blue. So, even though Phaethon’s highly eccentric orbit should scream ‘dead comet,’ it’s hard to say whether Phaethon is more like an asteroid or more like a dead comet.
Phaethon also releases a tiny dust tail when it gets closest to the sun in a process that is thought to be similar to a dry riverbed cracking in the afternoon heat. This kind of activity has only been seen on two objects in the entire solar system – Phaethon and one other, similar object that appears to blur the line traditionally thought to set comets and asteroids apart.
The team obtained several new insights about Phaethon after analyzing data obtained from NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii and the Tillinghast telescope in Arizona. They think Phaethon might be related or have broken off from 2 Pallas, a large blue asteroid farther out in the solar system. Karate said:
Interestingly, we found Phaethon to be even darker than had been previously observed, about half as reflective as Pallas. This makes it more difficult to say how Phaethon and Pallas are related.
The team also observed that Phaethon’s blue color is the same on all parts of its surface, which they say indicates it has been cooked evenly by the sun in the recent past.
Planetary scientists have discovered some very unusual long straight lines on the surface of Saturn’s moon Dione. What created them?
Distribution of linear virgae on Dione (top) and Rhea (bottom). Image via A) Basemap from Roatsch et al, 2008. B) Image No. N1649318802. C) Basemap from Roatsch et al, 2012. D)
Image No. N1673420688.
There are many dozens of moons in the solar system, and all of them are unique, ranging from tiny asteroid-like bodies to worlds with subsurface oceans and methane seas. The more that we explore these moons, the more surprises that are discovered; another such unexpected discovery was just announced by planetary scientists that has them scratching their heads – long, straight lines on Saturn’s moon Dione which look like they were “painted” on the surface. They are similar to ones on another moon of Saturn – Rhea – but much more numerous.
After the arrival of the Cassini spacecraft to the Saturnian system, unusual linear features were observed across Dione. We also noticed similar features on Saturn’s moon Rhea. We name these features linear virgae(virgae meaning a stripe or streak of color) and report on their distribution and characteristics as they are observed on the surfaces of Dione and Rhea. Our understanding of the distribution of linear virgae across Rhea is incomplete, likely because of data coverage; however, on Dione, we find that linear virgae are parallel to the equator and are confined to the region between 45 degrees north and 45 degrees south. We explored different ways of forming linear features on planetary surfaces and favor the draping of exogenic material across a planetary surface by encounters with either Saturn’s rings, co-orbital moons, or close flyby of comets. This debris may introduce materials into the Dione system that could contribute to creating a more habitable Dione.
Saturn’s moon Dione as seen by the Cassini spacecraft. The bright wispy streaks seen here are not the same as the long, straight linear features elsewhere on the moon.
The lines – known as linear virgae – are 10 to 100s of kilometers long, less than 5 kilometers wide, run parallel to each other and the equator, and are brighter than the underlying terrain. Their “painted look” comes from the fact that they overlie surface features and seem to ignore topography. As PSI research scientist Alex Patthoffexplained:
The evidence preserved in the linear virgae has implications for the orbital evolution and impact processes within the Saturnian system. Plus, the interaction of Dione’s surface and exogenic material has implications for its habitability and provides evidence for the delivery of ingredients that may contribute to the habitability of ocean worlds in general.
The lines were discovered by Patthoff and Emily S. Martin of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum while examining images of Dione sent back by the Cassini spacecraft, which ended its long 13-year mission in September of last year. The features have been difficult to explain, as Patthoff noted:
Their orientation, parallel to the equator, and linearity are unlike anything else we’ve seen in the solar system. If they are caused by an exogenic source, that could be another means to bring new material to Dione. That material could have implications for the biological potential of Dione’s subsurface ocean.
A view of some of the long linear features on Dione.
Image via NASA/Emily Martin/Alex Patthoff.
It is tempting to consider that maybe they are not even natural features at all, although Occam’s Razor would suggest that they are most likely natural in origin. As Patthoff also commented in GeoSpace:
I’ve never seen anything this linear anywhere in the solar system. You can take a ruler to these images and you can trace them along this perfectly straight line for tens of kilometers or more sometimes. You just don’t see these kinds of things in nature.
But since the lines seem to be so unique, what could have made them? The researchers first looked at known mechanisms for creating long linear patterns, such as tectonic faults, rolling boulders, pit/crater chains or comet impacts, but none of those explanations were adequate. According to Martin:
None of those mechanisms fit. If they fit the morphology, they didn’t fit the distribution. If they fit the distribution, they didn’t fit the morphology.
A linear groove on Earth’s moon, created by a rolling boulder.
They’re just really bizarre. It’s really exciting when you see something really strange, and you’re just trying to figure out what the heck it could possibly be.
Since the lines overlie other topography, this also suggests that they are younger than the underlying terrain – they are different from any kind of linear crater/pit chains or grooves, since they lie on top of the terrain, not carved into it.
So what is the most likely explanation? The researchers think that they are most probably due to impacts from dust-sized material with low enough mass and velocity to form long, linear streaks while being deposited onto Dione’s surface, rather than forming craters. That debris may have come from Saturn’s rings, from the two other moons also within Dione’s orbit or from somewhere outside the Saturnian system. This is still just a hypothesis, however, at this point.
Dione is thought to have a subsurface ocean, like the ones on Europa, Enceladus, Titan and Ganymede. It is possible that the material could make its way into Dione’s ocean, perhaps affecting its habitability. According to Martin:
If we as geologists can do a better job of saying where material is coming from and how it is being introduced into these different environments then we can be a little bit more confident about whether or not Dione has an environment that is either habitable or whether or not that environment might be suitable for generating its own life.
Linear rows of pits or craters on Jupiter’s moons Ganymede (left) and Callisto (right).
Bottom line: These weird long straight lines on Dione – like those on Rhea – are unusual and seemingly out of place on their moons’ otherwise desolate surfaces. Scientists have some ideas how they may have formed, but a more definitive solution to the mystery will require further study.
Thousands of Octopuses Are Gathering On The Deep-Sea Ground
Thousands of Octopuses Are Gathering On The Deep-Sea Ground
Actually, the scientists were looking for deep-sea corals and sponges. What they found, however, was the single largest cluster of octopus found by anyone.
Chad King, chiefscientist on the Exploration Vessel Nautilus, said:
"What’s really amazing is we never saw an end to them. And we still don’t know the full extent of how many octopuses are down there. We know there are at least a thousand, there could be a lot more."
It seems they want to take over Earth because humankind has failed.
New UFO documentary "Above Majestic" makes No. #1 on Amazon & Itunes on 1st day
New UFO documentary "Above Majestic" makes No. #1 on Amazon & Itunes on 1st day
The documentary film "Above Majestic" went to number one on Amazon and iTunes documentary section on its release day.
Side note Facebook has banned ads for "Above Majestic" due to “Issues of National Importance”.
For this film to make number 1 while also being banned is a testament to those that believed that we are not alone.
SphereBeingAlliance@blueavians
HISTORIC EVENT FOR UFOLOGY AND THE TRUTH COMMUNITY ABOVE MAJESTIC DEBUT MAKES #1 ON AMAZON & #1 ON ITUNES ALL THE WHILE BEING BANNED BY FACEBOOK ADS!!! YOU CANT STOP THE INFORMATION!! SHARE EVERYWHERE!!!
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Confirmed: The Eye of The Sahara IS the Location of Atlantis
Confirmed: The Eye of The Sahara IS the Location of Atlantis
The evidence is simply overwhelming...the Richat Structure needs to be excavated. The birth of Rome, Egypt, Carthage could all have been former colonies of the Atlantis, even the Mesopotamia people’s. Not only that, but many Mesopotamia civilizations (around 30) write of a massive flood that caused massive damage.
Ontvoeringen door buitenaardsen, een zwarte driehoek en een enorme voetafdruk. Dit maken politieagenten zoal mee
Ontvoeringen door buitenaardsen, een zwarte driehoek en een enorme voetafdruk. Dit maken politieagenten zoal mee
Politieagenten maken geregeld vreemde dingen mee, zo blijkt uit een verslag van de website Officer.com.
Verschillende politieagenten hebben hun paranormale ervaringen gedeeld met de site. Die variëren van een UFO-waarneming of geesten tot spookachtige geluiden in een kelder.
Een agent uit Maine vertelt dat hij een vrouw had gevonden die al drie dagen vermist was. Toen hij haar vroeg waar ze was geweest, zei de vrouw dat ‘ruimtewezens haar hadden meegenomen’.
Medisch onderzoek
Ze zei dat ze aan boord van het ruimteschip was onderworpen aan een medisch onderzoek en vroeg de agent om haar naar het ziekenhuis te brengen, omdat ze heel erg pijn in haar buik had.
Dit klinkt misschien nogal vergezocht, maar kennelijk heeft de vrouw bewijs laten zien aan de agent en de artsen in het ziekenhuis.
Ze haalde een gladde, ovaalvormige steen tevoorschijn, die de agent omschreef als regenboogkleurig en die ze meegenomen zou hebben uit het schip.
Nooit meer
“Toen ik de steen heen en weer bewoog, kreeg hij de kleuren van benzine in een modderpoel,” zei de politieagent.
De agent, die later een juwelierszaak begon, zei: “Ik heb stenen van over de hele wereld gezien, maar ik heb sindsdien nooit meer zoiets gezien.”
Een politieagent uit South Carolina zag naar eigen zeggen een UFO. Het ging om een zwarte driehoek.
Enorme voetafdruk
Een agent uit Georgia ging langs bij een bejaard stel dat op een afgelegen boerderij woonde.
De bewoners hoorden geregeld mysterieus getik op de ramen. De agent ging op het erf op onderzoek uit en stuitte tot zijn verbazing op een enorme voetafdruk.
Vanaf begin oktober neemt de bladval toe in ons land om eind oktober op zijn hoogtepunt te zijn. Daarna houden we de eerste weken van november last van veel bladval. Pas na half november is de grootste intensiteit er uit. Met de bladvalindicator kunnen schommelingen in de bladvalintensiteit van dag tot dag worden weergegeven.
Er is op dit moment echter geen sprake van een hoogtepunt in bladval. De laatste jaren lijkt het alsof de seizoenen met ongeveer een maand naar achter zijn opgeschoven. De zomer en de nazomer duren langer dan normaal en in het voorjaar duurt het ook langer voordat de lente begint.
Zoals wij al heel vaak schreven, gaan we naar een periode van zonneminima, wat weinig activiteit op de zon betekent, met als gevolg aanzienlijk koudere temperaturen op aarde.
En zo kan dat het van een mooie nazomer, zomaar ineens winter wordt. In Engeland spreekt men van de koudste Halloween in 100 jaar en in de volgende korte video zie je de eerste sneeuwval in County Durham.
Ook een normaal vrij gematigd land voor wat temperatuur betreft, Ierland, had te maken met sneeuw. De volgende foto is genomen in Lugnaquilla in County Wicklow waar ook sprake was van temperaturen tot 5 graden onder nul.
In Zwitserland hield de natuur zich keurig aan de wintertijd, want in de nacht dat de klokken een uur achteruit gingen, kwam de sneeuw met bakken uit de lucht. Op sommige plekken, zoals in Arosa, viel wel 70 centimeter sneeuw en de koeien wisten even niet wat hen overkwam. Zo loop je nog in een nazomerzonnetje en zo sta je in de sneeuw.
Ook in het Turkse skigebied Uludag was het raak en is de winter begonnen per eind oktober:
Zelfs Marokko ontkwam niet aan de sneeuw. Afgelopen zondag daalde de temperatuur plotseling en viel in Ifrane, het "Zwitserland" van Marokko, 30 centimeter sneeuw. Dit is ongewoon vroeg, want hoewel daar sneeuw voor komt, is dat meestal pas in januari.
Ook in centraal Frankrijk zorgde zware sneeuwval voor heftige toestanden, waarbij talloze automobilisten gedwongen werden om de nacht in de auto door te brengen en waar meer dan 200.000 gezinnen zonder elektriciteit zaten.
En dat alles terwijl volgens klimaatoplichters zoals Al Gore, sneeuw iets zou zijn uit het verleden.
Naast de sneeuw is er natuurlijk ook nog het noodweer en de overstromingen in Italië en terwijl wij steeds meer moeten betalen om de niet bestaande wereldwijde opwarming tegen te gaan, worden de tekenen van de komende mini ijstijd steeds duidelijker.
On October 20, 2018 a family went to Lake Tahoe for vacation. They got a tour on a boat on the lake.
A family member filmed the lake before the tour begins. After they got home he checked the video and noticed that an object flew with tremendous speed over the lake.
He said that he did not see the object while filming the lake. The video has submitted to Mufon for further investigation.
Earth Size Cube UFO Returns To Sun In SOHO @NASA Photos! Oct 31, 2018, UFO Sighting News.
Earth Size Cube UFO Returns To Sun In SOHO @NASA Photos! Oct 31, 2018, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Oct 31, 2018 Location of sighting: Earths Sun Source: NASA SOHO images I found the same cube UFO near our sun last night. The UFO is very similar in shape and has a yellowish plume as if its been using the suns material as a propulsion of some sort. The UFO is the same cube shape and about the size of Earth itself. It strange that NASA has not made some kind of announcement about this UFO since every sun camera in the world of astronomy probably caught it. However, SOHO may be one of the few countries with cameras recording the sun, since special filters are needed or the camera would be destroyed instantly. Scott C. Waring
The filmmaker has opened up about how the gruesome scene was made possible
(Image: Spyros Melaris)
Mr Melaris was in charge of the team behind the film claiming to show an alien from the 1947 Roswell UFO crash being dissected by doctors.
The film left UFO hunters convinced it was evidence for the Roswell incident, which was a claim aliens crashed a flying saucer in the New Mexico desert near Roswell in 1947.
Op-shop props, friends and family as the cast and a leg of lamb. All came together as a hoax ‘alien autopsy’.
Source:Supplied
The “dead alien” had grey-white skin and was the size of a ten year old boy.
Source:AFP
Footage from the documentary The Roswell Incident: Aliens Revealed purported to show a dead alien| with six toes.
Source:News Corp Australia
The ‘Roswell alien” was supposed to have had six toes.
Source:News Corp Australia
Conspiracy theorists believe the US Government covered up the evidence by storying the flying saucer and dead bodies in a secret military base.
However, the 1995 footage was later exposed as a hoax.
The filmmaker filmed the footage in his former girlfriend’s home in Camden, North London.
The creative artists used a foam alien sculpture filled with animal flesh to mislead viewers.
The famous footage was sold to TV stations in 33 countries.
The 56-year-old said to The Sun: “It was not an easy task and, apart from the look and feel, the film had to be correct in every aspect
The film achieved worldwide acclaim
(Image: Spyros Melaris)
— the props, the costumes, every little detail.
"I was fortunate to have access to professional filming and editing equipment. More importantly, I also had access to a handful of very talented people.
"For me, ‘The alien autopsy’ film was a challenge. Could it be done?
“As a magician, I wanted to create the biggest illusion ever performed on a global stage.
The footage was filmed in Camden, London
(Image: Spyros Melaris)
"It was never meant to be anything else for me. Once it was created, and it achieved worldwide acclaim, experts saying it was real, others said it was not, no one proved it either way.
“The film had a life of its own and Santilli did a very good job of keeping it alive. I am very proud of the film and my team who helped me create it.
"I regret the film created some negativity as well as bewilderment. I am in show business. I only ever wanted to entertain."
The team used animal organs for the alien’s internal organs, which were made using a scalpel and coated with latex.
The film used surgeons’ outfits from the 1940s and medical instruments from prop providers in both the UK and the USA.
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Alien life could thrive on Jupiter's moon Europa: Saltwater and volcanic rock under the distant world's surface 'are all that's needed to form life's key building blocks'
Alien life could thrive on Jupiter's moon Europa: Saltwater and volcanic rock under the distant world's surface 'are all that's needed to form life's key building blocks'
Scientists have shed new light on how the ingredients for life formed Mars
Organic carbon appeared when Martian rock was broken down by a salty brine
This same process could have spawned the chemical on Jupiter's moon Europa
Scientists have shed new light on how the ingredients for life formed on Mars, and it could guide our search for aliens on other distant worlds.
A study of Martian meteorites shows that salt water and volcanic rock were all that was needed to form organic carbon on Mars - one of the key buildings blocks of life.
A similar process could have spawned the chemical at any spot in the solar system where igneous rocks are surrounded by salty brines, researchers said.
This includes the mysterious subsurface oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus - icy worlds that some scientists believe host alien life.
Scroll down for video
Pictured is a high-resolution microscopic image of a grain from a Martian meteorite. Organic carbon - one of the key building blocks for life - was found between the intact 'prongs'
Scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, studied a trio of Martian meteorites that fell to Earth: Nakhla, Tissint and NWA 1950.
Nakhla crashed into Egypt in 1911, while both Tissint and NWA 1950 were found in Morocco in 2011 and 2001 respectively.
Experts showed the rocks contained organic carbon that is consistent with organic carbon compounds detected by the Mars Science Laboratory's rover missions.
This proved the chemicals came from Martian soil, rather than from Earth after they landed.
State-of-the-art microscope imaging revealed the compounds likely formed when Martian rocks were broken down by a surrounding salty liquid brine.
Minerals within the rocks likely corroded when they came into contact with the brine, forming organic carbon.
Researchers say the process that formed organic carbon on Mars could have spawned the chemical anywhere in the solar system where igneous rocks are surrounded by salty brines. This includes the mysterious subsurface oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa (pictured)
Organic carbon is a key building block of life as we know it alongside water and an oxygen and nitrogen-rich atmosphere.
The chemical needs to be present for life to grow, and the new study opens up several spots across the solar system to the possibility of alien life.
These include Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, which are both believed to house igneous rock surrounded by a salty subsurface ocean.
'Revealing the processes by which organic carbon compounds form on Mars has been a matter of tremendous interest for understanding its potential for habitability,' study coauthor Dr Andrew Steele said.
'The discovery that natural systems can essentially form a small corrosion-powered battery that drives electrochemical reactions between minerals and surrounding liquid has major implications for the astrobiology field.'
State-of-the-art microscope imaging revealed organic carbon likely formed on Mars when minerals in Martian rocks were broken down by a surrounding salty liquid brine
WHAT EVIDENCE DO SCIENTISTS HAVE FOR LIFE ON MARS?
The search for life on other planets has captivated mankind for decades.
But the reality could be a little less like the Hollywood blockbusters, scientists have revealed.
They say if there was life on the red planet, it probably will present itself as fossilized bacteria - and have proposed a new way to look for it.
Here are the most promising signs of life so far -
Water
When looking for life on Mars, experts agree that water is key.
Although the planet is now rocky and barren with water locked up in polar ice caps there could have been water in the past.
In 2000, scientists first spotted evidence for the existence of water on Mars.
The Nasa Mars Global Surveyor found gullies that could have been created by flowing water.
The debate is ongoing as to whether these recurring slope lineae (RSL) could have been formed from water flow.
Meteorites
Earth has been hit by 34 meteorites from Mars, three of which are believed to have the potential to carry evidence of past life on the planet, writes Space.com.
In 1996, experts found a meteorite in Antarctica known as ALH 84001 that contained fossilised bacteria-like formations.
However, in 2012, experts concluded that this organic material had been formed by volcanic activity without the involvement of life.
Signs of Life
The first close-ups of the planet were taken by the 1964 Mariner 4 mission.
These initial images showed that Mars has landforms that could have been formed when the climate was much wetter and therefore home to life.
In 1975, the first Viking orbiter was launched and although inconclusive it paved the way for other landers.
Many rovers, orbiters and landers have now revealed evidence of water beneath the crust and even occasional precipitation.
Earlier this year, Nasa's Curiosity rover found potential building blocks of life in an ancient Martian lakebed.
The organic molecules preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock in Gale Crater — believed to have once contained a shallow lake the size of Florida's Lake Okeechobee — suggest conditions back then may have been conducive to life.
Future missions to Mars plan on bringing samples back to Earth to test them more thoroughly.
Methane
In 2018, Curiosity also confirmed sharp seasonal increases of methane in the Martian atmosphere.
Experts said the methane observations provide 'one of the most compelling' cases for present-day life.
Curiosity's methane measurements occurred over four-and-a-half Earth years, covering parts of three Martian years.
Seasonal peaks were detected in late summer in the northern hemisphere and late winter in the southern hemisphere.
The magnitude of these seasonal peaks – by a factor of three – was far more than scientists expected.
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Aliens may lurk on Europa! Saltwater and volcanic rock 'are all that's needed to form life'
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31-10-2018
Inferno planets & the Goldilocks zone: Here are Kepler’s most awesome discoveries (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Inferno planets & the Goldilocks zone: Here are Kepler’s most awesome discoveries (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Undoubtedly, the sheer number of exoplanets and alien worlds uncovered by the space telescope is the statistic that immediately deserves plaudits. But delve deeper and the detail of Kepler’s work is jaw dropping. NASA astrophysics director Paul Hertz says the craft has brought humans one step closer to finding life outside Earth. High praise indeed.
NASA Kepler and K2✔@NASAKepler
With today’s announcement of the retirement of the @NASAKepler space telescope, we’re officially passing the planet-hunting torch to @NASA_TESS, which will search 200,000 of the brightest near the for new worlds! Learn more about the mission: http://nasa.gov/tess
Launched in 2009, Kepler’s mission was actually born in the early 80s as scientists began to turn their attention to finding planets with similar characteristics to home. Here are just some of the cool discoveries made possible due to the intergalactic telescope.
Kepler hot jupiters
Months after launch, Kepler found five extrasolar planets known as hot jupiters. The giant gas infernos became known as Kepler-4b, -5b, -6b, -7b and -8. Temperatures on these celestial objects were found to reach above 2,000 degrees fahrenheit.
The Kepler space observatory gave scientists testing the concept of the Circumstellar Habitable Zone (CHZ) an eye in the sky and more ways to analyse their theory. Sometimes known as the ‘Goldilocks zone’, the habitable zone is the distance between a planet and its nearest star. It’s basically the threshold of temperature that would give water the best possible chance to pool.
NASA Kepler and K2✔@NASAKepler
Memorial Day weekend is almost here ... and the chance to take a virtual trip 492 light years away to Kepler-186f, and Earth-size planet orbiting a small, red star. https://go.nasa.gov/2J3jrqn
Among the planets thought to provide the best possible chances of life are Kepler-62f – which NASA’s telescope found in 2014. The exoplanet orbits a cool red dwarf star about 580 light years away.
Alien megastructure debunk
As well as hunting down places for humans to possibly move to, Kepler also kept an eye on the intricacies of light travelling through space. One of its most intriguing observations was the dimming of a mysterious entity known as Tabby’s Star. Curiously speculated to be an ‘alien megastructure’, Kepler helped uncover the truth: the dimming was caused by clouds of dust.
Earth-sized inferno planet
Kepler’s vast catalogue of findings make it almost impossible to list every one. However, a major milestone for the NASA mission came in 2013 when Kepler found its first earth-sized rocky planet. The exoplanet, named Kepler-78b, is close to 20 percent larger than Earth, with a molten rock surface. With an orbit pattern of just 8.5 hours, the fiery planet speeds around its nearest star.
‘Twin’ solar system
In one of its final acts, the Kepler telescope was able to confirm the location of a planetary system similar to our own. Dubbed the Kepler 90 solar system, NASA’s craft successfully tracked down eight planets in the zone situated approximately 2,544 light years from Earth.
On Sept. 11, NASA began a 45-day "active listening" campaign in an attempt to rouse the solar-powered Opportunity, which went silent on June 10 after a raging dust storm plunged its environs into darkness.
The 45-day deadline passed late last week. But NASA will continue active listening — a strategy that involves both sending commands to Opportunity and listening for any peeps the six-wheeled robot may make — for several more months at least, agency officials announced yesterday (Oct. 29). [Mars Dust Storm 2018: What It Means for Opportunity Rover]
"After a review of the progress of the listening campaign, NASA will continue its current strategy for attempting to make contact with the Opportunity rover for the foreseeable future," NASA officials wrote in a mission update yesterday (Oct. 29).
"Winds could increase in the next few months at Opportunity's location on Mars, resulting in dust being blown off the rover's solar panels," they added. "The agency will reassess the situation in the January 2019 time frame."
The change in strategy comes in the commitment to keep pinging Opportunity. Mission team members and NASA officials had previously said they would continue to listen for any signal from the rover at least through January.
Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004, a few weeks after its twin, Spirit. Both robots roamed around different parts of the Red Planet, looking for signs of past water activity — and finding lots of such evidence.
Spirit and Opportunity's prime missions were pegged to last just three months, but the duo continued exploring Mars for years. Spirit last communicated with its handlers in 2010 and was declared dead a year later. Opportunity had been going strong, roving along the rim of the 14-mile-wide (22 kilometers) Endeavour Crater, until the dust storm hit this summer.
That storm grew to encircle the entire planet by June 20. But it began dying down about a month later, and the dust had cleared so much by Sept. 11 that mission managers thought Opportunity might be getting enough sunlight to recharge its batteries. So the active listening campaign began.
Opportunity has been through quite an ordeal, enduring bitterly cold Martian nights without a working heater to keep its electronic innards warm. So it's possible that the venerable rover, which has covered more ground on the surface of another world than any other vehicle, has frozen to death or fallen victim to some "fault mode" from which it cannot recover.
But perhaps Opportunity lives still, and is just waiting for a strong, dust-dislodging November wind followed by a wakeup call from home. We shall see.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There," will be published on Nov. 13 by Grand Central Publishing.
NASA is preparing technology for use on its Mars 2020 rover mission, due to land on the Red Planet in February 2021 — and it's breaking world records along the way.
Landing on Mars is notoriously challenging because of the planet's thin atmosphere, which makes it difficult to slow down a spacecraft enough to land gently on its surface. In order to land their heaviest yet rover on Mars, NASA had to redesign an existing landing-parachute design — the same one that protected the Curiosity rover — with even stronger materials, including the Kevlar traditionally found in bulletproof vests. [NASA's Mars Rover 2020 Mission in Pictures]
This high-definition NASA image shows the final supersonic parachute test for NASA's 2020 Mars rover. NASA tested the parachute during a Sept. 7, 2018 suborbital rocket launch to mimic Mars landing conditions.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The agency conducted its final test of its new parachute in September as part of its Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment (ASPIRE) project. The results are in and the parachute has been approved for the 2020 launch.
"Like all our prior Mars missions, we only have one parachute and it has to work," John McNamee, project manager of Mars 2020 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in a statement. "The ASPIRE tests have shown in remarkable detail how our parachute will react when it is first deployed into a supersonic flow high above Mars. And let me tell you, it looks beautiful."
Last month, the 180-pound parachute, plus a camera designed to watch it deploy, was launched on a sounding rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The rocket carried it to about 23 miles (37 kilometers) above Earth's surface, where the atmosphere's density is about as dense as 6 miles (10 km) above Mars' surface, the height at which the Mars 2020 parachute is due to deploy.
During the test, the parachute deployed completely in just four-tenths of a second, the fastest inflation of such a large parachute, according to NASA. That will mark the end of the parachute tests, but not the end of Mars 2020 preparations.
The second stage of the sounding rocket that launched the ASPIRE parachute test separates from the payload on Sept. 7, 2018.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
"We are all about helping 2020 stick its landing 28 months from now," Ian Clark, the test's technical lead from JPL, said in the statement. "I may not get to shoot rockets to the edge of space for a while, but when it comes to Mars — and when it comes to getting there and getting down there safely — there are always exciting challenges to work on around here."
The biggest airplane ever built, which will tote a variety of satellite-launching rockets into the sky, just got a step closer to flight.
Stratolaunch Systems, which was established in 2011 by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, got the giant plane up to 90 mph (145 km/h) during "medium-speed taxi testing" at California's Mojave Air and Space Port earlier this month.
Stratolaunch's dual-fuselage plane features a wingspan of 385 feet (117 meters) — greater than the length of a football field, including the two end zones. The vehicle is designed to haul satellite-carrying rockets up to an altitude of about 35,000 feet (10,700 m), at which point the launchers will drop away and power their payloads up to orbit.
Stratolaunch Systems' airplane, the biggest aircraft ever built, performed a "medium-speed taxi test" at California's Mojave Air and Space Port in October 2018.
Credit: Stratolaunch Systems via Twitter
This air-launch strategy will enable satellites to be lofted relatively cheaply and frequently, and with a great deal of flexibility, company representatives have said.
A variety of different rockets will eventually fly between the two fuselages, if all goes according to plan. For example, Stratolaunch plans to begin using the Pegasus rocket, which debuted in 1990 and has more than 40 flights under its belt, for the company's first operational missions in 2020.
Pegasus can haul about 815 lbs. (370 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit. Stratolaunch is also developing two more powerful rockets, known as the Medium Launch Vehicle (MLV) and the MLV-Heavy, which will be able to loft about 7,500 lbs. (3,400 kg) and 13,200 lbs. (6,000 kg), respectively. The MLV's first flight is targeted for 2022, whereas the MLV-Heavy is still in early development, company representatives said.
Stratolaunch is also working on a fully reusable space plane that could carry satellites or people. This vehicle is in the design-study phase.
Stratolaunch isn't the only company working to launch space missions from the air. Virgin Orbit recently mated its LauncherOne rocket and Cosmic Girl mothership for the first time (on the ground), and Virgin Galactic is performing rocket-fired test flights of its six-passenger SpaceShipTwo suborbital space liner.
SpaceShipTwo launches from the belly of a plane called WhiteKnightTwo.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There," will be published on Nov. 13 by Grand Central Publishing.
The description on the video reads: “The object was dropping a lot of glowing material while flying. She did know what this object was, but she was sure this was not something man made.
“It did not produce any sound at all. When I analysed the footage I noticed the object ejected a lot of material.”
Many of UFO Today’s followers were convinced the footage was of genuine UFO activity.
YouTuber David Leach wrote: “Excellent viewing. Leaking a lot of material. Near the end it looks like a smaller UFO breaks off and goes upward.”
UFO sighting: ‘Alien spaceship’ shot down over Scotland
(Image: GETTY • YOUTUBE)
Starman 2710 added: “Came through the portal to fast and lost control?”
AKIJPN continued: “Definitely looks like some flying object is flying loosing its control. Amazing.”
However, there does seem to be a more logical explanation for the strange phenomenon.
According to locals who have taken to the social news aggregator site Reddit, the strange sightings are actually caused by people attaching sparklers to kites.
The UFO was actually a kite
(Image: YOUTUBE)
There have apparently been several instances over the last month with residents not too concerned of an alien invasion.
Reddit user Space Pecs said it is “the third time this month” that a kite with sparklers has been launched.
Bory Truro replied: “Didn't have much of a clue at first, but now that you mention it, it does look a lot like someone stuck a sparkler on a kite.”
For nearly 20 years, NASA has been planning and constructing a telescope unlike any ever built before: the James Webb Space Telescope. It will change the way scientists see the most distant galaxies and intensify the hunt for extraterrestrial life; it will answer outstanding questions about the birth and death of stars and planets. It is the future of astronomy—but it’s causing trouble. JWST’s high price and decade of delays could stymie the development of future telescopes, impacting the course of astronomy for the next 30 years.
Billed as a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the JWST is a tennis court-sized, general-purpose space telescope with a 6.5-meter (21-foot) mirror that will be sent to a gravitationally stable point nearly a million miles from Earth. It will create incredibly detailed images from the infrared light of objects in space, including nebulae, exoplanets, galaxies, and stars. Looking even further ahead, NASA’s planned successor to JWST, called the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), will observe the sky with resolution similar to Hubble’s but with a far wider field of view. That would allow astronomers to answer some of the fundamental questions about dark energy, a mysterious force that seems to be driving the universe’s accelerating expansion. It would also provide a platform to test state-of-the-art components for its own successor. Four teams of scientists are already working on different concepts for the flagship mission to follow WFIRST, which would launch in the 2030s or 2040s. Three of those concepts would follow up on potentially life-harboring exoplanets spotted by JWST, while the fourth would aim to understand the origins of galaxies and the universe itself. These missions would all be expensive, similar in cost to JWST.
“[Today’s astronomers] are the first humans in history that have a chance to answer the compelling questions about whether there is life beyond Earth,” MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager recently told the Senate.
Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST)
Photo: NASA
But as the JWST’s price tag has increased incrementally, from hundreds of millions of dollars to $9.6 billion, some scientists working on its successors are uneasy. Where does the extra money come from to pay for JWST’s budget overruns, and how have these delays affected public perception of these large missions? And if NASA scraps or removes certain parts from WFIRST, that might handicap future space-based efforts to detect signs of life outside the Solar System. While Congress views astronomy research more favorably, President Trump’s 2019 budget request has already suggested scrapping WFIRST.
As of now, the future of these missions and how JWST will impact them is uncertain, Scott Gaudi, Ohio State University professor and member of the WFIRST team, told Gizmodo.
As early as 1989, astronomers had an early concept of JWST as a “Next Generation Space Telescope,” the successor to Hubble. While originally envisioned as having a mirror eight or more meters (26+ feet) in diameter, budget constraints caused scientists to de-scope various goals, resulting in the 6.5-meter (21-foot) telescope concept that would become the James Webb Space Telescope. As plans developed, NASA in 2002 selected an aerospace company called TRW to build the spaceship and mirror with an $825 million budget and a scheduled launch in 2010. Northrop Grumman acquired TRW, and soon took over the telescope’s construction.
NASA’s JWST Clean Room ‘Transporter’ in 2016.Photo: NASA/Chris Gunn
Delays have marred JWST’s entire developmental history. Most recently, an independent review revealed that increase in project scope, the complexity of the telescope, overoptimism, and human errors have plagued its construction. Those human errors include the time when someone at Northrop Grumman used the wrong solvent to clean valves, and the time when loose nuts fell into the telescope during a test, according to the review. But as early as 2005, the launch had been pushed to 2013 and the cost to $4.5 billion due to “funding shortfalls,” “requirement changes,” and other issues. Fabrication began in 2011, but by then the launch was pushed to 2018 and the budget to an estimated $8 billion. Today, the JWST’s estimated cost is up to $9.66 billion, and its projected launch date is some time in 2021.
Then there’s the mere fact that huge advances in astronomy have occurred during the telescope’s development. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine explained in a Congressional hearing this past July that the study of today’s most ubiquitous astronomy topics, like dark energy and exoplanets, was only beginning when the JWST project began. “This isn’t simply mismanagement or cost overruns or delay,” Congressman Don Beyer (D-Virginia) said during the hearing. “The world of science itself is changing in ways that have impacted the project.”Essentially, the price and scope of the project have expanded as scientists have learned more about the universe and encountered more cosmic mysteries.
By 2010, it was already time to plan a successor for JWST. Every decade, committees of scientists survey the state of astrophysics and decide what kind of experiments the entire community would like to see next, including small- and medium-sized missions as well as the flagship missions. For the largest missions, teams of scientists work on multiple concepts, and the Decadal Survey committee uses these concepts to set the field’s priority for NASA.
Even back then, astronomers worried about how JWST’s cost would affect the future of observation. But then NASA received a 2.4-meter (7.8-foot) mirror from National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The mirror was initially designed for use in espionage, but would work nicely in a space telescope. The Decadal Survey moved forward with a telescope called WFIRST—a telescope with Hubble’s resolution but 100 times the viewing area. A telescope like this would help scientists determine the true nature of dark energy, a mysterious force that seems to be speeding up the universe’s expansion and that could determine the universe’s ultimate fate. NASA scrapped other concepts, like the exoplanet-hunting Space Interferometry Mission, in response.
WFIRST “was a Frankenstein creation,” Jessie Christiansen, astrophysicist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech, told Gizmodo. “It was something no one really asked for until they got the mirror donated by the NRO.” But, according to the Decadal Survey, such a telescope would “settle essential questions in both exoplanet and dark energy research, which will advance topics ranging from galaxy evolution to the study of objects within our own galaxy.” WFIRST has expanded in both scope and cost since the 2010 decadal survey.
Primary Mirror Assembly WFIRST
Photo: Harris Corporation / TJT Photography
The telescope’s wide-field surveying instrument would be relatively simple compared to some instruments flown on previous NASA missions, Gaudi told Gizmodo. But WFIRST would also be the first to fly a technology in space that is important for two proposals for the next flagship space telescope: a “coronagraph.” A coronagraph is a device that blocks stars’ bright light, making the dimmer planets orbiting the star visible. If scientists hope to find life around other stars, they’ll need to image the light produced by and reflected by the planet directly. The issue is that the planet may be billions of times dimmer than the star it orbits. Scientists hope to one day spot Earth-like planets using this technology.
And here’s the most important part: Observing the light directly from planets, rather than just observing the periodic dimming produced when the planet passes in front of its star, could tell scientists whether the presence of life has altered the planet’s atmosphere the way it has on Earth. Climate change aside, life fills Earth’s atmosphere with carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane, and other biological building blocks. Therefore, determining whether life exists on other planets requires observing these planet’s atmospheres to see what molecules they contain.
Image: Origins Space Telescope
Preparations for the 2020 Decadal Survey are already underway. Four teams of astronomers are preparing concept studies for WFIRST’s successor, a flagship telescope mission that would launch some time in the late 2030s or early 2040s. As happened in 2010, the survey will determine what astronomy’s most important scientific questions are, and how best to answer them using ambitious, potentially yet-to-be-developed technology. The decadal committee will move forward with a recommendation based on the goals and design of one or multiple concepts. It’s clear that hunting for signs of extraterrestrial life will play an enormous role in the discussion. Two of the concepts incorporate a coronagraphlike WFIRSTs, and three list analyzing exoplanets among their primary goals. All of them would cost billions of dollars.
The Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor (LUVOIR) is the most ambitious of these four missions—and it would be truly enormous, with either an 8- or 15-meter (26- or 49-foot) mirror. It would be a sequel to JWST. Another, the Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx), is built from the bottom up with observing exoplanets in mind. Both would rely on a coronagraph and a starshade, an external component that blocks the light of other stars.
HabEx coronagraphImage: NASA
Two other proposed telescopes wouldn’t rely on a coronagraph or a starshade. The Origins Space Telescope (OST) would look for exoplanets around cooler stars in the infrared wavelengths, where the difference in brightness between the star and planet isn’t as great. Its goals also include observing the formation of planets and the growing complexity of stars and galaxies. Finally, there’s Lynx, which is instead focused on high-energy astrophysical mysteries, such as the dawn of black holes and the birth and death of stars. It would be an x-ray telescope using sensitive instruments, and serve as the sequel to the wildly successful Chandra X-ray Telescope.
The National Academy of Sciences has already hinted that it favors a telescope equipped with a coronagraph or some sort of starlight-shading device, like LUVOIR or HabEx, when it comes to hunting for extraterrestrial life. From the recent Exoplanet Science Strategy report:
A coronagraphic or starshade-based direct imaging mission is the only path currently identified to characterize Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of a large sample of nearby Sun-like stars in reflected light... NASA should lead a large strategic direct imaging mission capable of measuring the reflected-light spectra of temperate terrestrial planets orbiting Sun-like stars.
Another more recent report from the National Academies outlining a strategy for the future of astrobiology calls starshades and coronagraphs “essential.”
It’s important to note that there a host of other Earth-based telescopes under development, like the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope. These ground-based telescopes are better for observing planets around cooler, small M-dwarf stars, Aki Roberge, scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center working on LUVOIR, recently told Gizmodo. Space telescopes equipped with starlight-blocking coronagraphs could better observe planets around Sun-like stars. Extraterrestrial life might exist on either, and both are part of a healthy astrobiology strategy.
Image: HabEx starshade (NASA)
The decadal space telescope proposals are already beginning to feel the heat from JWST. On June 1, NASA astrophysics director Paul Hertz emailed the concept teams, imposing a $3 billion to $5 billion cost goal for the studies. According to a press release, “With recent delays and budget constraints surrounding the two major flagship missions, the new direction will better ensure that the next flagship mission be executed on time and within budget.” However, he revised that memo two weeks later, and instead reminded teams that the second phase of their design process was beginning in which they should design a less costly architecture than their first designs. The National Academies has also recommended that these concepts think about cost and schedules. These concept studies are due to NASA by June 2019.
Some, like LUVOIR physicist John O’Meara, worry that the difficulties with JWST will cause members of the astronomy community to give up on large missions such as these in general. It’s a sentiment that some, like former NASA administrator Charles Bolden, have expressed before. “I hope they don’t do that,” said O’Meara.
JWST’s mirrors being tested at the Marshall Space Flight Center’s X-ray and Cryogenic Facility.Photo: NASA/MSFC/Emmett Given
“I’m really concerned about the state of funding,” Laura Lopez, assistant professor at Ohio State University working on the Lynx team, told Gizmodo. “It feels like a precarious situation where we don’t know what will happen next year, let alone in the next 15 years.” Any large missions like these would require sustained funding for more than a decade.
And there are plenty of smaller missions whose futures might be in jeopardy due to the cost and scope of these larger projects, missions of a similar scope as Kepler and TESS.
JWST could impact these future missions directly or based on how it affects WFIRST. This past summer, Congress has held hearings grilling NASA and Northrup Grumman about the JWST’s cost overruns and delays. Northrup Grumman CEO Wes Bush told Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) that the company would not pick up the most recent $800 million cost increase. It’s unclear what will happen next.
Image: Lynx
WFIRST faces clear threats. This past year, President Trump’s proposed budget included scrapping the telescope entirely. Scientists are confident that the more space-friendly Congress won’t let that happen, but Gaudi has heard talk threatening the existence of the coronagraph as well. Should WFIRST lose its coronagraph, scientists will miss an important opportunity to try the light-blocking technology out in space before flying it on the ultimate exoplanet-hunting telescope.
Gizmodo heard several times that flying a coronagraph without testing it on some previous mission could be a very bad idea with far-reaching implications on cost and schedule. “We may save roughly $300 million by de-scoping a coronagraph,” David Spergel, Princeton astrophysicist working on WFIRST’s development, told Gizmodo, “but I suspect in the long run, it could cost a billion in development cost of LUVOIR or HabEx when the time comes to upgrade to a coronagraph capable of detecting Earth-like planets.” Gaudi said that flying a coronagraph on WFIRST would make LUVOIR or HabEx “much more palatable to pretty much everyone.”
Scientists have reminded Congress as to the coronagraph’s importance. “WFIRST’s coronagraph instrument is a technology demonstration,” Seager said recently at a Senate hearing. “It’s critical to do this to buy down more ambitious missions in the future already under study.”
Webb at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Dec. 1, 2017.Photo: NASA/Chris Gunn
For what it’s worth, the astronomers Gizmodo spoke with generally agree that JWST will be well worth the wait. But flagship telescopes are meant to advance significantly upon existing instruments—and improvement requires money. Scrapping or de-scoping WFIRST could further delay humanity’s dream to spot life on other planets, should the Decadal Survey ultimately decide to recommend a coronagraph-based mission. So, too, could fear or budgetary consequences stemming from the JWST delay.
Of course, what happens next with WFIRST is up in the air. Scientists are waiting to see what happens with the reconciliation of upcoming budgets, “and how Congress will respond to the additional delays of JWST,” said Gaudi. Given the country’s chaotic political climate, no one knows what will and won’t get funding in the future. But long-term investments require money—and representatives who are willing to allocate that money to support them.
“I’m just doing my best to provide Congress with as much information as I can so they make the best possible decision,” said Gaudi. “I hope they are ambitious and optimistic about the science.”
Open Minds UFO Radio: Chris is one of the hosts of the Mad Scientist Podcast. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering focusing on the study of nanomaterials for use as catalysts and adsorbents from Northeastern University. He has a bachelors degree in chemical engineering and philosophy from the University of New Hampshire. The Mad Scientist podcast covers the history and philosophy of science and fringe science claims and examines how societies accept technologies and sciences.
In this episode, we discuss the science necessary to prove whether an extraterrestrial civilization made a particular object. We also discuss scenarios related to the discoverers might handle such a discovery, and how mainstream science may react.
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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