11-01-2019 om 19:58 geschreven door peter  

Niels Lesniewski

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is continuing to advocate for UFO research.

(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is lobbying his former colleagues to do more to study unidentified flying objects.

“I personally don’t know if there exists little green men other places, I kind of doubt that, but I do believe that the information we have indicates we should do a lot more study,” the Nevada Democrat said. “We have hundreds and hundreds of people that have seen the same thing — something in the sky, it moves a certain way.”

Reid said that also included sightings of vessels at sea.

The topic of UFOs was on Reid’s mind Thursday because his interview with KNPR came just before he said he was scheduled to talk with an important senator about setting up a way for members of the military to support exploring suspicious sightings without facing retribution.

“I’m going to have a call with a member of the Senate in an hour or two where we have people in the military who want to come and tell somebody what they’ve seen,” Reid said in the interview, declining to identify who that senator is. (Food for thought: Reid’s former deputy, Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., is the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.)

“What we found in the past is that these pilots, when they see something strange like this, they’re prone not to report it for fear that the bosses will think something’s wrong with them, and they don’t get the promotion,” he said. “So, many, many times they don’t say a word to anybody about these strange things.”

“The facts are, they need a place to be able to report this, and that’s what I’m going to work on in a couple of hours, to make sure that somebody I think’s a powerful member in Congress, I want him to be able to sit down and talk to some of these pilots who have seen these things,” Reid said. “I can arrange this because of the contacts I have with members of the Congress.”

Back in December 2017, the New York Times reported on a Pentagon program to study UFO sightings that came about because of Reid’s advocacy back when he was serving in the Senate.

“We spent a lot of money, and it was an extremely important study,” Reid said Thursday, calling setting up the program,“one of the easiest sells I ever had to make.”

He recalled again how he lobbied the leaders of the Senate Appropriation’s Defense Subcommittee to get money for the project, and how the late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, was entirely on board because of a suspicious aircraft he cited during his own time as military pilot.  But Reid said that the Pentagon has not done enough since then.

“Frankly, I think the federal government has done almost nothing to help us with this,” Reid said.

During the interview, Reid also said he knew a lot more about classified operations undertaken at Area 51 in his home state of Nevada.

“Oh sure, I’ve been to Area 51. I know Area 51. I don’t know if I should say many times, but lots and lots of times. I know Area 51 quite well, I know what they’ve done there,” said Reid. “I don’t know in recent years, of course, but I know what went on there.”

{ https://www.rollcall.com/ }

11-01-2019 om 19:48 geschreven door peter  

11-01-2019 om 19:36 geschreven door peter  

11-01-2019 om 19:25 geschreven door peter  

With the recent release of articles by James Iandoli and Twitter user @Jay09784691, and hosted by Danny Silva and myself, we see an interesting connection between materialist biology and science, and the mystical non-physical world of esoteric metaphysics. The work being done by Dr. Garry Nolan of Stanford University and Dr. Christopher ‘Kit’ Green, a medical doctor, create a symbiosis between the real and the ‘unreal,’ between the natural and the super-natural.

Being a product of a good Jesuit education, I am reminded of St. Paul. Around 54 CE, Paul wrote his famous letters to the Corinthian churches. Known to most Bible readers as 1 Corinthians, Paul expresses in those letters the basic notions of what the Church ought to be. Moreover, his ideas lay the foundation for the dogma of most Catholics. His ideas, though two millennia old, continue to resonate. In 1 Corinthians 15:49 (NIV), he wrote,

“And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.”

Being a student of various esoteric philosophies, I am also reminded of Hermeticism, and the infamous, though dubiously sourced phrase,

“As above, so below.”

It seems Paul and early Hermeticists were on similar paths. What is physical reflects the mystical, and vice versa. To paraphrase what Jesus said to Peter, what is bound on Earth is also bound in Heaven. I’m going to guess that Christ was being both literal and metaphorical here. The material and the immaterial are shadows of the other, mirrors, which reflect the other in themselves.

The realm Nolan and Green seem to be dabbling lies in the gap between the material and the immaterial. The biological evolution of the human brain hardwired to sense the natural world around it, yet simultaneously wired to ‘sense’ the super-natural. While we can only speculate, since this study is in its infancy, we seem to be going through a shift in general perception regarding science, but more importantly, what we deem to be real.

While empiricism and materialism may still reign supreme, the turn towards a more holistic and idealist approach to the world around us has been slowly taking shape over the last several decades. What has been occurring is not a revolution in thinking, but rather an evolution. With the incredibly broad implications and complications of a strange and spooky quantum universe, and with the development of better and more rigorous testing for anomalous science, such as various psi phenomena, everything we used to take for granted is beginning to slowly evolve into something different.

I am not suggesting some “end of days” scenario for mainstream science, nor some dramatic shift towards a world full of New Age hipster academics who believe in The Great Spirit (though, the times they certainly are a’ changing). This shift will be slow and cautious. Perhaps it will be a quiet return to some bygone age where the physical measurable work of scientists was also the mystical work of shamans seeking to understand some version of a Neoplatonist anima mundi. It may sound silly. Perhaps it is. It is a strange world we live in, and while empiricism’s goal is to make it less strange, perhaps it is time to embrace the strange.    

Nolan and Green’s hypothesis concerning the connectivity between the brain’s caudate and the putamen structures as being a potential indicator of high cognitive functioning is incredibly fascinating. Moreover, the theories presented by Nolan and Green suggest that this brain system also leads to the potential of ‘sensing’ data and information beyond the five normal senses. Their presentation at Harvard did mention certain candidates in their study who often see and hear things beyond the five senses and possess a sort of “sixth sense” that allows the individual to interact with shades of the universe beyond our current understanding.

Putamen and Caudate Brain Structure

(artist rendering, not to scale)

Putamen and Caudate Brain Structure

(image from Nolan & Green)

I’ve asked this before in previous posts, and I address this idea more in my book, but are we a simultaneous blend of immaterial systems and material structures? Am I made of dreams and bones?

Returning to ancient religious traditions, such as the writings of St. Paul and the texts of the Hermeticists, Nolan and Green are walking down a well-trodden path, and in good company. This new and unique look at these physical brain structures may be a key to understanding these esoteric ideas which have been around for thousands of years. Our ancient predecessors would not have had the ability to understand the complex physical system of the brain, but they did have the awareness and the insight to understand that the mind was reflexive and reflective of a symbiotic, if not divine, system of the Other.

In my book, I refer to the UFO community as a collection of ghosts who haunt the broader mainstream culture by constantly challenging popular interpretations of reality. Much like ghosts, the community exists, for better and for worse, in the anarchic gap between what is understood and what isn’t. Like so many other religious and spiritual movements, perhaps Nolan and Green are scratching at the surface of what causes communities like the UFO community to form. Jacques Vallee referred to this intelligent Other as a ‘control system,’ and indeed it very well may be, but our various cultures and societies also seem to give it shape (and at times, breadth and depth). In other words, we are influenced by this Other as much as we influence it.

It stands that if there is some Other, well above us in awareness, or ‘intelligence,’ and agency, then indeed, our only tool, our immaterial mind and material brain, which allows for creativity, intellect and imagination must be housed below. Our thoughts and ideas are not totally our own, but part of a larger system. To steal from Jung, we seem to be shadows of something larger, yet in our own right, also seem to cast shadows upon that broader body. Nolan and Green may be at the gateway to this realm of the Other; perhaps they have found the door, and all that is missing now is the key.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

11-01-2019 om 19:13 geschreven door peter  

Something weird is going on in the skies over the United Kingdom. Of course, I would argue that something weird is happening in the skies all over the world. From unexplained booms to mysterious fireballs, something just doesn’t seem right overhead. Of course, it could merely be that between cameras and the citizen reporting made possible by social media, we’re just more aware of minor meteor impacts and atmospheric events than we used to be. Still, it seems like there is a pattern of aerial strangeness lately that suggests something weird or new is happening. I’m not crazy, right?

If meteor impacts were becoming more common, would government agencies want to incite panic by making it public?

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, in particular, there has been a recent string of strange UFO reports and aircraft activity suggesting military exercises or perhaps something stranger. In November 2018, multiple commercial pilots witnessed mysterious fast-moving lights off the coast of Ireland, and a month later the Royal Air Force was scrambled to intercept an unidentified flying object above East Yorkshire. Then there was the whole strange saga of the “drone” sightings at England’s Gatwick airport, an incident which has yet to be fully explained. What’s going on in the skies over the British Isles?

Whatever is going on, it’s still going on. Today, news broke of a mysterious green flash seen in the skies above Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in central England, not too far from where the December UFO incidents were reported. Rather than an unidentified aircraft, this time eyewitnesses reported a bright green light or streak in the sky on the evening of January 8.  Some witnesses described the light as “neon green” or “white and a bit green” while some say the light was blue. All reports describe the object as incredibly fast – too fast for conventional aircraft.

Green fireballs are some of the most commonly reported unidentified aerial phenomena.

One witness, Debbie Pickard of Ilkeston, thought the object was flying at a low altitude over nearby homes and says this isn’t the first time she’s seen such an object:

It was as if something shot through the houses. It did not look very high and it looked like it was travelling horizontally. It’s a UFO by definition. It was like someone had thrown a frisbee. Me and my dad spotted a similar thing in 1988, it was in the papers then and confirmed on Gatwick radar. You do wonder what these things are.

UK Meteor Watch and the American Meteor society reported dozens of reports of a fireball that night. Meanwhile, speculation on social media about what the light could have been ranges from the International Space Station, fighter aircraft cockpit display panels, or spotlights. With the RAF Donna Nook bombing range and RAF Waddington and RAF Coningsby bases nearby just to name a few, it’s also possible that the light was caused by military activity. Until more details emerge, if they ever do, we’ll just have to keep our eyes upward and wonder what’s going on up there.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

11-01-2019 om 18:49 geschreven door peter  

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: the Rotating Black Holes would be a great name for a band.

That being said, with the nasty reputation black holes have for destroying everything that gets close to their namesake characteristic, it seems strange that scientists might consider them to be a safe and efficient means of hypersonic travel. And yet, that’s exactly what a new study proposes … providing you use the right kind of black hole. And that, if you’ve been paying attention instead of registering that new band name, is the rotating black hole.

“If the black hole like agittarius A*, located at the center of our own galaxy, is large and rotating, then Interstellar” have to contend with is very gentle and could allow for a very peaceful passage.”

Singularity of massive black hole or wormhole. Researchers previously thought that any spacecraft attempting to use a black hole as a portal of this type would have to reckon with nature at its worst.

Gaurav Khanna, a National Science Foundation-funded physicist and co-author of “Physical objects approaching the Cauchy horizon of a rapidly rotating Kerr black hole” (published in Physical Review D) was kind enough to explain his theory in somewhat layperson’s terms in his recent essay in The Conversation. The study was inspired by the movie “Interstellar” in which Matthew McConaughey’s character falls into a fictional rapidly rotating black hole. Ph.D. student and study co-author Caroline Mallary wrote a computer model to simulate the same experience using Sagittarius A*. Spoiler alert (for the study, not the movie): it could work!

“What she discovered is that under all conditions an object falling into a rotating black hole would not experience infinitely large effects upon passage through the hole’s so-called inner horizon singularity. This is the singularity that an object entering a rotating black hole cannot maneuver around or avoid. Not only that, under the right circumstances, these effects may be negligibly small, allowing for a rather comfortable passage through the singularity. In fact, there may no noticeable effects on the falling object at all. This increases the feasibility of using large, rotating black holes as portals for hyperspace travel.”

Khanna explains that the singularity in a rotating black hole is technically “weak” and won’t damage ships or other objects entering it. Also, Sagittarius A* is much smaller than the massive black hole in the movie (Gargantua), so the singularity would be easier for a ship to detect and be prepared for. The model also showed that the effects of the singularity — cycles of stretching and squeezing on the spacecraft – are constant rather than rapidly increasing, so the effects can be planned for without any surprises.

Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas in the centre of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times that of the sun. They cause dips in space-time (artist's impression) and even light cannot escape their gravitational pull

However (there’s always a ‘however’), the potential hyperspace travelers have to pick the ‘right’ rotating black hole – that is, one that is so far away from any other stars or their radiation that there are no outside disturbances which can affect the singularity. Unfortunately, Khanna points out that the known black holes all have dust, gas, radiation and other cosmic material rotating around them.

Of course, all of this is theoretical since the Catch-22 (another great movie and pertinent paradox) of rotating black holes is that we need to try one to see if it works … but the only way to get close enough to one is to successfully travel through one.

This graph depicts the physical strain on the spacecraft’s steel frame as it plummets into a rotating black hole. The inset shows a detailed zoom-in for very late times. The important thing to note is that the strain increases dramatically close to the black hole, but does not grow indefinitely. Therefore, the spacecraft and its inhabitants may survive the journey.

If only real space travel was as simple as band names and movies.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

11-01-2019 om 17:52 geschreven door peter  

Residents of Ontario, Canada had a rare and spectacular view of a very odd-looking upside down rainbow. Technically called a circumzenithal arc, it is caused by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere that act as a prism which refracts light and creates an upside down rainbow.

Although they look identical to a rainbow (with the exception of being upside down), they’re not technically rainbows. Rainbows are formed when light reflects off of water drops such as rain or fog, while a circumzenithal arc is the result of light refracting off ice crystals in the upper atmosphere and are related to the very commonly seen halos that appear around the sun and moon. In addition, the weather has to be calm and cold, which is definitely not a problem with it being winter in Canada. Circumzenithal arcs normally appear when little to no clouds are in the sky.

The center of the bow is always towards the sun with the red color on the outside closest to the ground and purple at the top. They only happen when the sun is at a height of less than 32 degrees in the sky.

Canadian residents witnessed another beautiful phenomenon recently called “sundogs” which is when mini-suns appear hovering close on each side of our actual sun. The technical name is parhelion and the spots on each side of the sun are usually white but can sometimes appear as a reddish color located on the inside and blue on the outside.

Sundogs are created when the sun shines through a cirrus cloud that’s made up of hexagonal ice crystals that are falling with their axes located vertically. When the axes are arranged perpendicularly to the sun’s rays, they instead create the halo phenomenon. Sundogs appear at 22 degrees on either side of the sun and are also at the exact same height as our sun.

These sundogs can even be seen in tropical countries because the cloud layer is “cold no matter where you are,” according to British physicist Les Cowley.

• Click here to see pictures of the upside down rainbow and the sundogs.

An upside-down rainbow is called a circumzenithal arc.

(Submitted by Christy Litster)

The weather phenomena of a sun dog is caused by ice crystals in the sky.

(Submitted by Andy Breschuk)

The spots on either side of the sun can be reddish but are most often white.

(Submitted by Bonnie Stefishen)

So next time you’re outside on a bright sunny day, you may want to look up at the sky and you may catch a glimpse of a rare, but spectacular weather phenomenon.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

11-01-2019 om 11:41 geschreven door peter  

Bob Lazar Area 51 UFO Debate: Stanton Friedman and Jeremy Corbell

This video is a clip from a UFO whistleblowers panel at the 2015 International UFO Congress. In this clip Stanton Friedman and Jeremy Corbell debate Bob Lazar’s claims of having back-engineered alien spacecraft at an underground lab near Area 51. The emcee is Alejandro Rojas and the other panelists are Ruben Uriarte and Mark Pilkington.

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

11-01-2019 om 11:23 geschreven door peter  

Triangle Flying Low Over Kansas

Kansas witness saw a TR3B a-like triangle UFO. MUFON closed the case as an Unknown Aerial Vehicle.

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

11-01-2019 om 11:20 geschreven door peter  

11-01-2019 om 01:48 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.disclose.tv/  }

11-01-2019 om 01:40 geschreven door peter  

These 7 Expeditions Could Reveal Some of Earth's Biggest Secrets in 2019

11-01-2019 om 00:48 geschreven door peter  

4 Things Most UFO Sightings Have in Common

Theorists who believe we've been contacted by aliens tend to lean on these details.

By Emily Gaudette

You’re driving alone down a dirt road, and you’re falling asleep at the wheel. Suddenly, a burst of light streaks across the sky — there’s a floating, flat shape in the air right in front of your truck, and though it soared quickly into view, it seems to have stopped completely. A beam of light shoots out from underneath the craft, and a little man with huge eyes, an enormous head, and a tiny body appears in the middle of the road. He doesn’t want to hurt you; he just wants to stick a probe in your nasal cavity.

Why does this alien encounter story feel predictable and familiar? If humans have never encountered extraterrestrial life, then how did we decide across cultures that aliens have an instantly recognizable shape? If you visit the UFO Festival in Roswell, New Mexico, it becomes immediately clear that humans have decided on a visual shorthand for alien life: the flying saucers, the little green men with huge black eyes, three fingers, and medical probes. But where did these cliches come from?

In the “believer” community, common threads that connect the stories of “close encounters” include certain types of aliens, spacecraft, and the phenomenon of lost or frozen time. Inverse reviewed first-hand accounts of encounters with alien life to find commonalities, and these were the four most popular descriptors we came across.

4. The Gray Aliens

Non-believers often call extraterrestrials “little green men,” which is a reference to the commercialized, cartoon version of aliens. Truthfully, most people who profess to having had close encounters of the “third kind,” meaning contact with another living organism not from Earth, say the alien they met was gray.

Gray aliens — who are otherwise exactly as you’re imagining them, with big foreheads, tiny chins, bodies, and large black eyes — are understood among believers to be the most common. Or, at least, they’re the ones most likely to visit us here on Earth.

In fact, according to research compiled by author C.D.B. Bryan in his 1995 book Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Reporter’s Notebook on Alien Abduction, UFOs, and the Conference at M.I.T., 43 percent of reported encounters with aliens describe the figure the same way. People have described the grays as having a host of different personalities, temperaments, and objectives, but among this subsection of encounters, a few things hold true. The grays are always silent, they are always intelligent, and they almost always appear in groups.

Of course, there’s the enduring question of who beat whom to the “grays” archetype: believers or pop culture. If we consider science fiction literature as the origin point of these “grays,” then H.G. Wells is the inventor. In 1893, Wells described alien beings in a short story as “gray-skinned beings who were perhaps one meter tall, with big heads and large, oval-shaped pitch-black eyes.” In a serialized novel he wrote in 1901, Wells used this same description for his invented inhabitants on the moon.

The next time this specific type of alien appeared in pop culture, it was in the collected accounts of witnesses to what’s now called the 1947 Roswell Incident. Despite not being acquainted with each other before the incident, most of the people who reported seeing aliens in Roswell after the crash described them almost exactly the way Wells had.

Despite having originated in a science fiction story, the grays are collectively considered a definitive part of the conversation about alien life. At the UFO Festival in 2016, speakers on panels repeatedly referred to “the grays” as the most agreeable and least aggressive “type” of extraterrestrial that appears in witness reports.

3. The Study of Humans by Aliens

It’s very rare for a witness who professes they’ve made contact with alien life to say they were outright attacked. Perhaps because violent encounters would yield physical evidence — bruises, broken bones, signs of forced entry into one’s home — most people who say they were abducted or contacted by extraterrestrials describe aliens carrying out a calm, medicinal, and sometimes invasive form of study.

That means humans tend to agree on the narrative that aliens might have visited the Earth simply to study our bodies and culture. Of course, several times throughout his life, Stephen Hawking expressed his worry that extraterrestrial contact would cast the inhabitants of the Earth as vulnerable. After all, if an alien civilization were able to find Earth and travel to us, that means their technology would already outpace ours. “One day, we might receive a signal from a planet like this,” Hawking said in 2016, referring to a potentially habitable planet known as Gliese 832c. “But we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well.”

2. The Government Knows About These Aliens

Ever since the local government blamed the Roswell incident on a weather balloon, believers had maintained that the United States is fully aware of past run-ins with extraterrestrials. Most imagine a situation much like the one that plays out in 1996’s Independence Day, in which the president (Bill Pullman) is only told about the nation’s history of third-kind encounters when tensions between humans and aliens become untenable.

In 2014, Foreign Policy reported the US government had a contingency plan in place just in case a zombie apocalypse were to erupt, and paranormal theorists took that opportunity to investigate the government’s policy for alien life.

While the governments of the world have reportedly played around with loose post-detection policies for extraterrestrial life — tell the United Nations, share all available data, and maintain full transparency with the rest of the world — none have gone public with their plans.

When it comes to the theory that the American government knows about extraterrestrial life, hasn’t told its citizens, and is currently hiding proof, the nucleus of the conspiracy is Area 51 in Nevada. Many have claimed to have spotted evidence of alien life on the desert government property, but as far as we know, it’s only been used for experimental weapons development. That’s a creepy enough fact on its own.

1. A Flat Saucer Making Hair-Pin Turns Is Something That Happens

According to the world’s largest network of alien “believers,” the Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network (MUFON), reports of alien encounters have made it clear that any visitors to Earth possess technology far more advanced than our own. Admittedly, if one were to search through MUFON members’ uploaded, original drawings, which they commission from those who say they’ve met aliens, there are noticeable similarities.

For whatever reason, believers don’t tend to say that alien spacecraft look like the rockets humans habitually send into the atmosphere. They’re never sitting in cars, either.

According to most eyewitness accounts, they look more like stealth drones, ranging in size from an entire football field to a single kayak. If they’re not completely smooth and saucer-shaped, they’re usually triangular in shape, and they almost always bear flashing lights.

Find out how The CW imagines alien life in the series premiere of Roswell, New Mexico on January 15th – Tuesday at 9/8c.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

11-01-2019 om 00:28 geschreven door peter  

11-01-2019 om 00:05 geschreven door peter  

When a U.S. Fighter Pilot Got into a Dogfight with a UFO

10-01-2019 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

Did Interstellar get it right? Researchers say rotating black holes COULD be used as portals for hyperspace travel

• Researchers found all black holes are not created equal
• If the black hole  is large and rotating, 'gentle' travel could be possible

By GAURAV KHANNA FOR THE CONVERSATION

One of the most cherished science fiction scenarios is using a black hole as a portal to another dimension or time or universe. 

That fantasy may be closer to reality than previously imagined.

Black holes are perhaps the most mysterious objects in the universe. 

A University of Massachusetts study found that black holes that are large and rotating enough could allow 'gentle' hyperspace travel.

They are the consequence of gravity crushing a dying star without limit, leading to the formation of a true singularity – which happens when an entire star gets compressed down to a single point yielding an object with infinite density. 

This dense and hot singularity punches a hole in the fabric of spacetime itself, possibly opening up an opportunity for hyperspace travel. 

That is, a short cut through spacetime allowing for travel over cosmic scale distances in a short period.

Researchers previously thought that any spacecraft attempting to use a black hole as a portal of this type would have to reckon with nature at its worst. 

The hot and dense singularity would cause the spacecraft to endure a sequence of increasingly uncomfortable tidal stretching and squeezing before being completely vaporized.

My team at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a colleague at Georgia Gwinnett College have shown that all black holes are not created equal. 

If the black hole like Sagittarius A*, located at the center of our own galaxy, is large and rotating, then the outlook for a spacecraft changes dramatically. 

That's because the singularity that a spacecraft would have to contend with is very gentle and could allow for a very peaceful passage.

'Interstellar' was based on a book written by Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Kip Thorne and Gargantua's physical properties are central to the plot of this Hollywood movie.

The reason that this is possible is that the relevant singularity inside a rotating black hole is technically 'weak,' and thus does not damage objects that interact with it. 

At first, this fact may seem counter intuitive. 

But one can think of it as analogous to the common experience of quickly passing one's finger through a candle's near 2,000-degree flame, without getting burned.

My colleague Lior Burko and I have been investigating the physics of black holes for over two decades. 

This graph depicts the physical strain on the spacecraft’s steel frame as it plummets into a rotating black hole. The inset shows a detailed zoom-in for very late times. The important thing to note is that the strain increases dramatically close to the black hole, but does not grow indefinitely. Therefore, the spacecraft and its inhabitants may survive the journey.

In 2016, my Ph.D. student, Caroline Mallary, inspired by Christopher Nolan's blockbuster film 'Interstellar,' set out to test if Cooper (Matthew McConaughey's character), could survive his fall deep into Gargantua – a fictional, supermassive, rapidly rotating black hole some 100 million times the mass of our sun. 

'Interstellar' was based on a book written by Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Kip Thorne and Gargantua's physical properties are central to the plot of this Hollywood movie.

Building on work done by physicist Amos Ori two decades prior, and armed with her strong computational skills, Mallary built a computer model that would capture most of the essential physical effects on a spacecraft, or any large object, falling into a large, rotating black hole like Sagittarius A*.

What she discovered is that under all conditions an object falling into a rotating black hole would not experience infinitely large effects upon passage through the hole's so-called inner horizon singularity. 

This is the singularity that an object entering a rotating black hole cannot maneuver around or avoid. 

Singularity of massive black hole or wormhole. Researchers previously thought that any spacecraft attempting to use a black hole as a portal of this type would have to reckon with nature at its worst.

Not only that, under the right circumstances, these effects may be negligibly small, allowing for a rather comfortable passage through the singularity. 

In fact, there may no noticeable effects on the falling object at all. This increases the feasibility of using large, rotating black holes as portals for hyperspace travel.

Mallary also discovered a feature that was not fully appreciated before: the fact that the effects of the singularity in the context of a rotating black hole would result in rapidly increasing cycles of stretching and squeezing on the spacecraft. 

But for very large black holes like Gargantua, the strength of this effect would be very small. So, the spacecraft and any individuals on board would not detect it.

The crucial point is that these effects do not increase without bound; in fact, they stay finite, even though the stresses on the spacecraft tend to grow indefinitely as it approaches the black hole.

WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?

Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them - not even light.

They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them.

Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around.

How they are formed is still poorly understood.

Supermassive black holes are incredibly dense areas in the centre of galaxies with masses that can be billions of times that of the sun. They cause dips in space-time (artist's impression) and even light cannot escape their gravitational pull

Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole.

Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy.

Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun's mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses.

When these giant stars die, they also go 'supernova', a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space. 

There are a few important simplifying assumptions and resulting caveats in the context of Mallary's model. 

The main assumption is that the black hole under consideration is completely isolated and thus not subject to constant disturbances by a source such as another star in its vicinity or even any falling radiation. 

While this assumption allows important simplifications, it is worth noting that most black holes are surrounded by cosmic material – dust, gas, radiation.

Therefore, a natural extension of Mallary's work would be to perform a similar study in the context of a more realistic astrophysical black hole.

Mallary's approach of using a computer simulation to examine the effects of a black hole on an object is very common in the field of black hole physics. 

Needless to say, we do not have the capability of performing real experiments in or near black holes yet, so scientists resort to theory and simulations to develop an understanding, by making predictions and new discoveries.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

10-01-2019 om 23:07 geschreven door peter  

Feel like traveling to another dimension? Better choose your black hole wisely. 

Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock.com

Rotating black holes may serve as gentle portals for hyperspace travel

One of the most cherished science fiction scenarios is using a black hole as a portal to another dimension or time or universe. That fantasy may be closer to reality than previously imagined.

Black holes are perhaps the most mysterious objects in the universe. They are the consequence of gravity crushing a dying star without limit, leading to the formation of a true singularity – which happens when an entire star gets compressed down to a single point yielding an object with infinite density. This dense and hot singularity punches a hole in the fabric of spacetime itself, possibly opening up an opportunity for hyperspace travel. That is, a short cut through spacetime allowing for travel over cosmic scale distances in a short period.

Researchers previously thought that any spacecraft attempting to use a black hole as a portal of this type would have to reckon with nature at its worst. The hot and dense singularity would cause the spacecraft to endure a sequence of increasingly uncomfortable tidal stretching and squeezing before being completely vaporized.

Flying through a black hole

My team at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a colleague at Georgia Gwinnett College have shown that all black holes are not created equal. If the black hole like Sagittarius A*, located at the center of our own galaxy, is large and rotating, then the outlook for a spacecraft changes dramatically. That’s because the singularity that a spacecraft would have to contend with is very gentle and could allow for a very peaceful passage.

The reason that this is possible is that the relevant singularity inside a rotating black hole is technically “weak,” and thus does not damage objects that interact with it. At first, this fact may seem counter intuitive. But one can think of it as analogous to the common experience of quickly passing one’s finger through a candle’s near 2,000-degree flame, without getting burned.

My colleague Lior Burko and I have been investigating the physics of black holes for over two decades. In 2016, my Ph.D. student, Caroline Mallary, inspired by Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film “Interstellar,” set out to test if Cooper (Matthew McConaughey’s character), could survive his fall deep into Gargantua – a fictional, supermassive, rapidly rotating black hole some 100 million times the mass of our sun. “Interstellar” was based on a book written by Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Kip Thorne and Gargantua’s physical properties are central to the plot of this Hollywood movie.

Building on work done by physicist Amos Ori two decades prior, and armed with her strong computational skills, Mallary built a computer model that would capture most of the essential physical effects on a spacecraft, or any large object, falling into a large, rotating black hole like Sagittarius A*.

Not even a bumpy ride?

What she discovered is that under all conditions an object falling into a rotating black hole would not experience infinitely large effects upon passage through the hole’s so-called inner horizon singularity. This is the singularity that an object entering a rotating black hole cannot maneuver around or avoid. Not only that, under the right circumstances, these effects may be negligibly small, allowing for a rather comfortable passage through the singularity. In fact, there may no noticeable effects on the falling object at all. This increases the feasibility of using large, rotating black holes as portals for hyperspace travel.

Mallary also discovered a feature that was not fully appreciated before: the fact that the effects of the singularity in the context of a rotating black hole would result in rapidly increasing cycles of stretching and squeezing on the spacecraft. But for very large black holes like Gargantua, the strength of this effect would be very small. So, the spacecraft and any individuals on board would not detect it.

The crucial point is that these effects do not increase without bound; in fact, they stay finite, even though the stresses on the spacecraft tend to grow indefinitely as it approaches the black hole.

There are a few important simplifying assumptions and resulting caveats in the context of Mallary’s model. The main assumption is that the black hole under consideration is completely isolated and thus not subject to constant disturbances by a source such as another star in its vicinity or even any falling radiation. While this assumption allows important simplifications, it is worth noting that most black holes are surrounded by cosmic material – dust, gas, radiation.

Therefore, a natural extension of Mallary’s work would be to perform a similar study in the context of a more realistic astrophysical black hole.

Mallary’s approach of using a computer simulation to examine the effects of a black hole on an object is very common in the field of black hole physics. Needless to say, we do not have the capability of performing real experiments in or near black holes yet, so scientists resort to theory and simulations to develop an understanding, by making predictions and new discoveries.

{ https://theconversation.com/uk }

10-01-2019 om 22:51 geschreven door peter  

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The sun will turn to ROCK in 10 billion years’ time: Star will burn the last of its nuclear energy and become a 'crystal ball' 200,000 times denser than Earth when it dies

• The sun is destined to become a crystal white dwarf in around 10 billion years
• Experts found white dwarf stars form metallic oxygen and carbon crystal cores 
• Crystallisation delays cooling, stars could be billions of years older than thought 
• The oldest white dwarfs are likely to be almost fully crystal, researchers claim

By COLIN FERNANDEZ SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT FOR THE DAILY MAIL

The sun will turn into a ‘crystal ball’ - in 10 billion years’ time when it dies, scientists have found.

Astronomers identified the first direct evidence that old stars turn to rock when they run out of nuclear fuel and begin to cool down.

Scientists trained the Gaia space telescope on 15,000 white dwarf candidates within around 300 light years of Earth.

They found large numbers of the stars showing signs that indicated that they have cooled down - and showed signs they were turning to rock.

Scroll down for video 

The sun will turn into a ‘crystal ball’ (artist's impression) - in 10 billion years’ time, scientists have found. Astronomers identified the first direct evidence that old stars turn to rock when they cool down

Dr Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, from the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics, said the observations proved a 50-year-old theory.

Dr Tremblay said: ‘This is the first direct evidence that white dwarfs crystallise, or transition from liquid to solid.

‘It was predicted fifty years ago that we should observe a pile-up in the number of white dwarfs at certain luminosities and colours due to crystallisation and only now this has been observed.

‘All white dwarfs will crystallise at some point in their evolution, although more massive white dwarfs go through the process sooner.

‘This means that billions of white dwarfs in our galaxy have already completed the process and are essentially crystal spheres in the sky.

'The sun itself will become a crystal white dwarf in about 10 billion years.’

Scientists trained the Gaia space telescope on 15,000 white dwarf candidates within around 300 light years of Earth. They found large numbers of the stars showing signs that indicated that they have cooled down - and showed signs they were turning to rock (file photo)

The crystal spheres are made of carbon and oxygen under such high density their crystal structure will make them appear to be like a metal - although it is possible that diamonds may also form as the star cools.

Our sun is currently a yellow dwarf star.

Over the next five billion years it will cool down - in the process first expanding into a ‘red giant’ - then shrinking down to a white dwarf and gradually harden and solidify.

Eventually white dwarfs cool down into black dwarfs when they give off no more heat.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Nature.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

10-01-2019 om 22:00 geschreven door peter