The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
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...
02-02-2019
Navy Seal Military reveals secret mission in an Ancient Structure buried in Antarctica (2019)
Navy Seal Military reveals secret mission in an Ancient Structure buried in Antarctica (2019)
On January 23, 2019, Emmy Award-winning journalist, Linda Moulton Howe, released video testimony of a new informant discussing her highly classified mission in a large ancient alien structure, buried under the ice of Antarctica.
The informant states that on a classified mission conducted in 2003, he entered a very large octagonal-shaped structure located near the Beardmore glacier that extended deep into the icy interior of the glacier.
The informant is a retired US Navy Seal who was interviewed for the first time by Howe on July 19, 2018. He used the pseudonym Spartan 1 in the YouTube video recorded by Howe, where his face is shaded and his voice she is altered to protect her identity. Howe says he personally controlled Spartan 1, which provided extensive documentation to support his military career.
Earlier, Howe released the testimony of another military informant, Brian, who was a Navy flight engineer who had flown numerous support missions with the Antarctic Development Squadron from 1983 to 1997. He witnessed a number of anomalies that they indicate hidden structures or bases located deep beneath the Antarctic ice.
He says he witnessed the discovery of silver flying saucers in the Transantarctic Mountains, not so far away, as Howe pointed out, from where the Navy Seal had carried out his mission. The Navy Seal says that the ground-penetrating radar had discovered the structure that was an eight-sided octagon, as Howe elaborated.
In 2003, a group of special operations of the US Navy went to Antarctica to investigate a perfectly geometrical eight-sided octagonal structure discovered by a penetrating radar inside the Beardmore glacier, about 93 miles from the American station of McMurdo .
Another previous team of engineers and scientists had carved the top layer of an octagon made of a pure black substance that had been built over two other black octagonal structures that descended deep into the 2-mile-thick ice.
In the video, the Navy Seal (aka Spartan 1) described the launch of his mission from an aircraft carrier that traveled near the Ross Sea west of the Antarctic. He was taken by helicopter to McMurdo station, the largest American base in Antarctica.
Spartan 1 described entering a door about 50 feet below the ice. He estimated the walls of the structure about 18 to 30 feet thick (6-10 meters) and the height of the ceiling about 22-28 feet (7-9 meters). He said that the walls, the ceiling and the floor were made of a black basalt material that looked like polished black marble.
The interior was heated to about 68-72 degrees Fahrenheit (20-22 degrees Celsius), and was also lit by a lime green source projected from the ceiling and floor. He did not see any heating or lighting system, which was added to the mystery of the buried structure.
Only one part of the structure, the witness said, was discovered by the archaeological teams, with the remainder buried under the ice and which extended far below. The ground penetrating radar showed that the structure was octagonal in shape and covered an area of 62 acres (about 0.5 square kilometers).
Spartan 1 described the walls and doors covered with hieroglyphs about 20 cm high and about 5 cm deep. The hieroglyphics were neither Egyptian nor maya, but they appeared similar to both in terms of depiction of animals and other strange symbols.
Significantly, one of the symbols was very similar to the image of the Black Sun used by the Nazi SS, who had a large version built on the floor of their headquarters at Wewelsburg Castle. The image of the Black Sun continues to be banned in Germany with their Nazi propaganda law. Spartan 1 explained that part of his mission was to transport scientists who would document the buried structure and the hieroglyphic symbols, taking pictures and making drawings.
He said his team had to leave one of the scientists who insisted that more time was needed to make an adequate inventory of what had been discovered. Spartan 1 stated that the structure was built by a group of human-looking extraterrestrials who were involved in the genetic engineering of humanity.
The testimony of Spartan 1 is very significant because it provides a rare eyewitness account of what was actually found inside one of the buried structures, whose age extends into antiquity. The former eyewitness of the Antarctic, Brian, actually could not see or enter one of the artifacts. What Brian tells, was when he saw a large hole penetrate the South Pole, as it flew over his head through a restricted and controlled airspace.
To date, only two other informers / insiders have come forward to share their reports of being brought in or to witness the ancient artifacts buried under the ice caps of Antarctica. These are Corey Goode and Pete Peterson, who claim to have witnessed some of the artifacts buried during their respective visits.
Goode claims to have been taken to Antarctica in early 2016 and 2017, where he saw secret bases and remains of an ancient civilization buried deep beneath the ice caps. He claims to have witnessed some bodies of human alien hybrids, which were part of the genetic experiments conducted thousands of years ago, from an extraterrestrial race with a humanoid appearance.
Peterson claims to have been taken to Antarctica during classified missions, where he was given the task of understanding the advanced technologies found near three mother ships, one or more of which he witnessed during his missions. Peterson’s testimony confirms Goode’s account of an ancient extraterrestrial base that has been used as a center for a global civilization. This raises some intriguing questions.
Was the symbol of the Black Sun a pictorial representation of an ancient global civilization in which the South Pole was the fulcrum with the spirals heading towards its distant colonies? In the book, the Hidden History of Antarctica, I present evidence that German nationalists who use the symbol of the black sun have established a colony in Antarctica,
According to Howe’s analysis, the structure witnessed by Spartan 1 dates back to 33 million years ago, which is the general date given by conventional geologists when Antarctica was ice-free. The independent testimony of Spartan 1 corroborates important elements of what Goode and Peterson described, and what others claim lies hidden under the frozen continent.
As Spartan 1’s testimony is released through Howe’s video series, we can get important answers to questions about what lies deep beneath the Antarctic polar ice caps.
Despite the impression one gets from textbooks, our current knowledge of the universe represents a small island in a vast ocean of ignorance. The scientific enterprise is all about expanding the landmass of this island. And it is fun to engage in the activity of gaining knowledge; knowing everything in advance would have been much more boring. Still, it would be shocking to learn all at once of the discoveries of an alien civilization that been doing scientific and technological exploration for billions of years, in contrast to our mere few centuries. The eminent science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke codified this idea in the third of histhree laws : “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Put another way, members of such a civilization would appear to us as a pretty good approximation to God.
Meeting a piece of advanced technological equipment developed by an extraterrestrial intelligence might resemble an imaginary encounter of ancient cave people with a modern cell phone. At first, they would interpret it as a shiny rock, not recognizing it as a communication device. The same thing might have happened in reaction to the first detection of an interstellar visitor to the solar system, ‘Oumuamua, which showed six peculiar properties but was nevertheless interpreted as a rock by mainstream astronomers.
Because it would likely be relatively small, most advanced equipment could only be recognized in the darkness of space when it comes close enough to our nearest lamppost, the sun. We can search for technological “keys” under this lamppost, but most of them will stay unnoticed if they pass far away. More fundamentally, one may wonder whether we are able to recognize technologies that were not already developed by us. After all, these technologies might feature subtle purposes—like the cell phone communication signals that a cave person would miss.
Is there something we might be missing already here and now? When looking around us, the most mysterious phenomenon we encounter routinely is the sophistication of complex life. Some scientists wondered whether life itself was seeded on Earth by an alien civilization in a process called “directed panspermia.” One can imagine a probe that brought the seeds of life in the form of microbes or instead a 3-D printer that produced these seeds out of the raw materials on Earth based on a prescribed blueprint. The universal left-handedness (chirality) of all life-forms on Earth without exception can be interpreted as stemming from a single panspermia event, be it natural (through a rock arriving from space) or artificial in origin . Even in this context, our imagination of what aliens might do will improve once we are able to produce synthetic life in the laboratory.
The number of targeted probes that are needed to seed life artificially in the habitable zone of a planetary systems is far smaller than the number of natural rocks that serve the same purpose on random trajectories. The advantage of 3-D printing of life from raw materials on a target planet is that natural DNA samples live a finite lifetime and may eventually disintegrate in a few million years, whereas artificial machinery can be constructed to last much longer.
At this time, our civilization is highly vulnerable to annihilation by self-inflicted wounds, such as nuclear wars or climate change, as well as external threats such as asteroid impacts or evolution of the sun. As much as the Earth appears to be a comfortable home for us right now, it would be prudent not to keep all our eggs in one basket. We should venture into space and seed objects beyond the Earth with life as we know it, thus reducing the risk of complete destruction and securing the longevity of things we care about.
If we ever find evidence for life on other objects and it all looks the same, or if extraterrestrial life would appear to be unusually clustered in space, we might realize that it has a common ancestry and panspermia is at play. The situation would be just like recognizing that too many kids in the neighborhood resemble the milkman.
If life was seeded artificially on Earth, one may wonder whether the seeders are checking on the outcome. And if so, the fact that we have not heard from them may indicate that they are disappointed. The experiment may have failed, or we are simply too slow to mature. Well, this may not come as a surprise given the irresponsible way we behave sometimes. Perhaps if we only knew that someone is looking over our shoulders, we would do better. It is not too late for us to find out, by using the best telescopes at our disposal.
WASHINGTON — Boeing is on track to launch its new astronaut taxi to the International Space Station (ISS) next month.
Along with SpaceX, the private spaceflight company was contracted by NASA to begin launching astronauts from U.S. soil again for the first time since the space shuttle program ended in 2011. Boeing's CST-100 Starliner won't be taking any astronauts along for its first flight to the ISS, however. After docking robotically with the orbiting lab, it will return to Earth for a parachute landing in Texas.
If this test flight goes according to plan, Boeing will be ready to launch its first crew of astronauts to the space station in August, Boeing spokesperson Maribeth Davis told Space.com during a presentation of Boeing's future vision for space travel here. [How Boeing's Commercial CST-100 Starliner Spacecraft Works]
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner will launch on its first test flight to the International Space Station in March 2019.
Credit: Boeing
The mission, named Orbital Flight Test, will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on an Atlas V rocket provided by the United Launch Alliance. It was originally scheduled to launch Aug. 27, 2018, but an anomaly during a test of the launch abort engines led Boeing to delay the mission while they worked out the issue. Although the Starliner has not yet flown in space, it has completed successful parachute drop tests within the confines of Earth's atmosphere.
The Starliner will be the second of two new astronaut taxis to debut for its maiden voyage in the coming months. SpaceX's Crew Dragon is currently scheduled to lift off on its first uncrewed test flight on Feb. 28, with a crewed flight to follow sometime in June.
Not only will the Starliner and Dragon become the first spacecraft to launch astronauts from U.S. soil in about eight years, but Boeing and SpaceX will also become the first private companies to launch people to the space station. Since the shuttle retired, NASA has been relying on Russia to launch astronauts to the space station using its Soyuz rocket-capsule combo.
Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience.
An artist's rendition shows Boeing's CST-100 Starliner heading for a rendezvous with the International Space Station.
Credit: Boeing
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner is a spacecraft under development for NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The space agency plans to use Starliner, as well as SpaceX's Dragon, to take astronauts to the International Space Station by 2019 or 2020. Uncrewed test flights are scheduled for March 2019, with crewed test flights tentatively set for August 2019.
The Starliner is similar in shape to the Apollo spacecraft, but its electronics are half a century more advanced. The spacecraft is designed to carry up to seven astronauts, with additional cargo also possible if fewer astronauts fly in a particular mission. Measuring 14.8 feet (4.5 meters) across at its widest point, the gumdrop-shaped spacecraft will first fly into space aboard Atlas V rockets.
Money from NASA
Money for the development of the spacecraft largely came through NASA's commercial crew program, which aims to replace the Russian Soyuz spacecraft flights required to take astronauts to the International Space Station.
In one phase of the program, called Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap), Boeing received $4.2 billion in September 2014. Competitor SpaceX received $2.6 billion for its Dragon spacecraft.
NASA is hoping to relaunch astronauts from American soil, which has not been possible since the space shuttle retired in 2011. The program has been pushed back several years, NASA has said, due to Congress not allocating as much money as what the agency requested.
Preparing for first flight
In 2011, the company put a 12-by-14 inch model of the CST-100 in a wind tunnel to determine the spacecraft's aerodynamic characteristics. The model was placed in several different positions to simulate different phases of an abort-mode landing.
In 2012, Boeing did parachute drop tests of the CST-100 to determine how well the spacecraft's parachutes and air bags worked. Unlike the Apollo missions, the CST-100 will touch down on land, making the air bags especially important for the job. Later in the year, the company and NASA determined what would be the basic layout of the spacecraft, which NASA considered an important milestone under the third round of CCDev.
In 2014, Boeing unveiled a full-scale mockup of the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, showing the inside of it for the first time publicly. Airbag testing of the spacecraft proceeded successfully in February 2016, and in March 2017 it underwent a successful parachute test in the New Mexico desert.
Also in 2017, Boeing unveiled the spacesuit astronauts will wear aboard the Starliner. The spacesuit features several advancements over previous spacesuit designs. It is smaller and lighter, and includes special gloves designed to allow use with touchpad screens.
Due to a problem during an abort engine test in June 2018, Boeing announced in August that test flights would be pushed back to 2019.
A loud explosion was heard as a meteorite fell in western Cuba, shattering windows but causing no injuries, residents and U.S. officials say. Debris was found at multiple locations.
The incident happened at 1:20 p.m. local time on Friday when a loud boom was heard in parts of Pinar del Rio, a province at the western end of the island. A trail of smoke was visible in the sky.
“We’re receiving reports that a meteor was seen in the sky across the Florida Keys,” the U.S. National Weather Service said. “It appears that a meteorite impact occurred in western Cuba, near the town of Viñales.”
Multiple residents near Viñales, near the Mural of Prehistory, reported finding black rocks near their homes. A photo from the state-run Prensa news agency showed that one of the fragments went through a roof, and a reporter said a number of windows had been shattered.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Meteors occasionally survive the fiery passage through Earth’s atmosphere, but they usually go unnoticed because many fall in the ocean. A meteor fell in Russia in 2013, causing damage and injuring nearly 1,500 people.
Vooraanstaand sterrenkundige denkt een buitenaards ruimteschip te hebben gezien. Kreeg de mensheid in 2017 bezoek van aliens?
Vooraanstaand sterrenkundige denkt een buitenaards ruimteschip te hebben gezien. Kreeg de mensheid in 2017 bezoek van aliens?
De vreemde ruimtesigaar die in 2017 werd ontdekt en de naam Oumuamua kreeg, is gemaakt door een buitenaardse beschaving. Dat denkt Avi Loeb, hoofd van de afdeling sterrenkunde aan Harvard en directeur van twee instituten.
Het object is zo’n 100 tot 1000 meter lang en langgerekt.
“Ik heb meerdere onderzoeken over Oumuamua gepubliceerd,” zegt Loeb. “Daaruit bleken allerlei vreemde feiten.”
Platte vliegende schotel
Zo zag hij hoe de helderheid van het object gedurende acht uur geregeld met een factor 10 tot 30 veranderde.
“Onze analyse laat zien dat het meer op een pannenkoek lijkt die om z’n lengteas draait,” aldus Loeb. Een soort platte vliegende schotel dus.
De topastronoom zegt dat hij niet in UFO’s gelooft, maar wel denkt dat Oumuamua een restant is van een buitenaardse beschaving.
Holbewoner
Volgens hem kreeg het object in ons zonnestelsel een zetje door de stralingsdruk van de zon.
Daar maakt Loeb uit op dat het een lichtzeil kan zijn, dat vaart krijgt wanneer lichtdeeltjes ermee in aanraking komen.
De meeste wetenschappers denken dat Oumuamua een ruimterots is, maar volgens Loeb is dat veel te kort door de bocht.
“Stel dat je een mobiele telefoon meeneemt naar een holbewoner. Die zal denken dat de telefoon een soort gekke steen is,” klinkt het.
Oogkleppen op
“Op dezelfde manier zijn wij vanuit het verleden gewend om te denken in termen van kometen, asteroïden – stenen uit de ruimte dus. We zijn vooringenomen,” zegt Loeb.
Hij vindt het compleet belachelijk dat je het in serieus gezelschap niet over buitenaardse beschavingen mag hebben.
“Ik denk dat dat vooral te maken heeft met een sociologisch effect, niet met iets dat gebaseerd is op feiten,” zegt hij. “Men heeft oogkleppen op.”
In comments that will likely fuel ardent Ufologists worldwide, a senior NASA official has conceded that the existence of alien life is “much more likely to be out there than we thought before.”
Thomas Zurbuchen, an astrophysicist and associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, told Boston University he believes there is life beyond Earth for the simple reason that we once “doubted whether water or complex molecules would exist beyond Earth,” but in actuality “each one of those is much easier to achieve than we thought possible.”
“We find it right in front of our doorsteps, everywhere, including the polar craters of the planet Mercury,” he explained. “As for how that relates to the chain of life… well, life is much more likely to be out there than we thought before.”
Speaking about space tourism, Zurbuchen described it as a “really important experience to have” and claims it’s now “as easy to go to space as it is to go to Paris.”
However, he did go on to add that, for now, he is himself unwilling to spend the months of intense training required to undergo a journey into space.
While the race to colonize Mars and locate an Earth-like planet that can sustain human life is heating up, Zurbuchen is keeping his focus closer to home.
The NASA admin said he spends much more time thinking about our planet, and argues that any quest for exploration further afield will be completely futile unless we secure Earth’s future and address the ongoing damage caused by climate change.
What was the mysterious object that hit the ‘Super Blood Wolf Moon’? Now we have the answer
What was the mysterious object that hit the ‘Super Blood Wolf Moon’? Now we have the answer
Scientists have solved a mystery that has bothered stargazers in the wake of a total lunar eclipse on January 21, when a tiny object struck the moon as it captivated millions with its copper-red makeover.
A team of scientists from Colombia and the Dominican Republic have authored a paperoffering a detailed account of the object thatslammedinto the Moon during a recent lunar eclipse. The moment the suspected meteor hit the lunar surface was captured only by a few, but triggered a vivid guessing game regarding the object’s origin and size. The impact itself was very brief, with only a bright flash discernible in the top left quadrant of the Earth’s satellite at the time.
Drawing on images and videos by amateur astronomers from Colombia, the Dominican Republican and Morocco, the researchers sought to determine the size, orbit, energy and impact left by the meteor that caught eye of many sky-watchers.
Yes, it was indeed a small meteoroid, and they estimate that could have weighed anything from 20 to 100 kg (44 to 220 pounds). It was a bit bigger than a basketball and measured somewhere between 30 and 50 cm (11 and 19 inches).
Being relatively heavy for its size, the space rock left quite a trail of destruction when it smashed into the Moon at a speed of some 47,000 km/h. According to the researchers, the collision left a crater 7 to 14 meters wide that could be detected in the future by a lunar probe.
Researches note that such encounters are relatively common, but this one stands out because it was observed by numerous people around the world, providing a rare insight into the phenomenon. The surface of the moon is hit by an estimated 2,800kg worth of meteor material, predominantly rock and ice, each day.
Social networks and easy access to technology lent a big helping hand in the increased awareness of celestial events, argued Karls Peña, member of the Dominican Astronomical Society and coauthor of the work, stating that they “have brought humanity closer than ever to science (especially to non-experts).”
The ‘Super Blood Wolf Moon’ is a rare concurrence of three cosmic phenomena. “Wolf moon” is a name given by Native American tribes to a full moon that happens in January, whereas a total lunar eclipse is called a “blood moon.” It is also called a ‘supermoon’ due to the moon reaching its closest orbital point to Earth.
Most Russians believe NASA’s lunar missions were fake
Most Russians believe NASA’s lunar missions were fake
Over a half of all Russians believe that US astronauts have never been on the Moon and that the US authorities and NASA covered up this fact by forging proof of moon landings, a new poll shows.
In the recent survey titled “Science and society: authority and trust” experts of the Russian state-run public opinion research center VTSIOM wrote that 57 percent of Russians currently think that the US claims of successful manned Moon missions are lies and that the documented proof of these missions was forged. Only 24 percent of respondents said that they believed that the manned Moon missions were real.
Researchers also specified that 65 percent of those who think that the US authorities are lying about the moon landings have secondary education.
However, Russians are not only suspicious about the NASA moon missions. 59 percent of the poll participants share the opinion that “scientists conceal the truth from common people.” Even among Russians with higher education the proportion was extremely high – at 45 percent.
When facing the question if the scientists possessed some “objective knowledge” about the reality the Russian public again split into almost equal parts: 42 percent agreed that this was true while 41 percent said that in their opinion the scientists who claimed this weren’t telling the truth, albeit in good faith.
In the same poll, three percent of Russians said that they personally supported the flat Earth theory. 93 percent said that they shared the traditional opinion of Earth being a ball-shaped planet and four percent found it too difficult to answer the question.
As far as space aliens are concerned, 45 percent of the poll participants said that they believed in the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and 42 percent think that aliens either don’t exist or for some reason prefer not to visit Earth and contact humans. 18 percent of respondents said that in their opinion the authorities were hiding proof of alien visits from the general public.
Russen geloven niet dat we op de maan zijn geweest. Bekijk de verrassende uitkomsten van deze peiling
Russen geloven niet dat we op de maan zijn geweest. Bekijk de verrassende uitkomsten van deze peiling
Meer dan de helft van de Russen is van mening dat Amerikaanse astronauten nooit op de maan zijn geweest en dat de Amerikaanse overheid en de NASA de maanlandingen in scène hebben gezet. Dat blijkt uit een nieuwe peiling.
Uit onderzoek van de Russische opiniepeiler VTsIOM blijkt dat 57 procent van de Russen denkt dat de succesvolle Amerikaanse maanmissies berusten op leugens en dat het bewijs voor deze missies is vervalst.
Minder dan een kwart (24 procent) gelooft dat we echt op de maan zijn geland.
Waarheid verborgen houden
De Russische bevolking is niet alleen sceptisch over de maanmissies. Bijna twee derde (59 procent) stelt dat ‘wetenschappers de waarheid verborgen houden voor het volk’.
Opvallend is dat ook bijna de helft (45 procent) van de hoogopgeleiden deze mening is toegedaan.
Op de vraag of wetenschappers objectieve kennis hebben over de realiteit, antwoordde 41 procent ontkennend. Dit deel zei dat de wetenschappers niet de waarheid vertellen.
Buitenaardse beschavingen
Drie procent van de Russen gelooft in de platte aarde-theorie, terwijl 93 procent zei dat aarde bolvormig is.
Er werden ook vragen gesteld over ruimtewezens. Bijna de helft van de ondervraagden (45 procent) zei te geloven in het bestaan van buitenaardse beschavingen.
Bewijs voor buitenaards bezoek
42 procent zei te denken dat aliens niet bestaan of om de één of andere reden geen contact willen maken met mensen of de aarde niet willen bezoeken.
Bijna een vijfde (18 procent) zei dat de overheid bewijs voor buitenaards bezoek achterhoudt voor de bevolking.
It is unfortunate that the world of the paranormal manages to attract all manner of those who would hoax or fake evidence. Sometimes it is to fool everyone, at other times it is to prove a point, and still on other occasions it is to gain some bit of fame or simply just to see what will happen. Whatever the reasons may be, it sometimes seems that for every person who manages to capture what they truly believe to potentially be an authentic photo or video of unexplained phenomena, there is another trying to fake it all, making it sometimes very hard to figure out where the possibly real ends and the hoaxes and fakery begin. It muddies the waters, and requires a vigilance from those who would try and delve into the answers behind these phenomena. The area of UFOs, like many others, has seen its fair share of such hoaxes, and some of them have been not only rather particularly spectacular, but also surprising in just how thoroughly they were able to fool just about everyone. Here are a few of these cases, very much in the vein of Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast, that are not only quite intricate and even funny in retrospect, but also show that a skeptical eye is not a bad thing to have.
One of the most notable and in retrospect quite hilarious such hoaxes was fittingly orchestrated for April Fool’s Day in 1989 by none other than the billionaire, Virgin Group founder, and incorrigible, unrepentant prankster Richard Branson. Branson was already well known for his elaborate April Fool’s pranks and tomfoolery, but on this day in 1989 he really outdid himself. Called “Project Wedgewood,” Branson commissioned Don Cameron, of hot air balloon manufacturer Cameron Balloons Limited, to create an immense, very realistic looking UFO complete with flashing strobe lights and a sliding door. Branson then boarded the balloon and took off on March 31 along with a dwarf dressed in an alien costume and a whole bunch of dry ice.
Richard Branson
The idea was to fly the balloon over to London’s Hyde Park and have it land there on April Fool’s Day, April 1st, after which the costumed dwarf would descend through a special sliding door amidst a cloud of dry ice smoke for the “Gotcha!” moment. It was all meant to be good fun, but it would quickly spiral out of control past Branson’s wildest expectations. As they floated over the English landscape along London’s M25 highway towards the destination, it became obvious that there were people stopping their cars and plenty of frightened bystanders gawking and pointing up at the sky at them, with Branson later saying, “We could see every single vehicle grinding to a halt and hundreds of people looking up at the UFO flying over them. It was great fun watching their reactions.” Good fun for them, perhaps, but for the people who were seeing this all it was a different story.
Indeed, everyone who saw the balloon took it to be a genuine UFO, and in no time at all there was footage being shown on the news, police and TV and radio stations inundated with calls from concerned witnesses, and residents working themselves up into a mass panic over an alien invasion. It was rapidly launching itself into a media sensation, everyone seriously took this to be an actual alien spaceship, and since Branson had only told a very small cabal of people what he had been up to on the top secret prank there was no one to tell anyone otherwise. It was all so realistic and people were so panicked that the police and military began mobilizing to intercept and deal with what they truly believed to be the real deal. What had started off as an innocent prank was quickly escalating into a perceived national emergency, but Branson and his dwarf friend were oblivious to all of this, not at all aware of the true gravity of the situation. They were up there gleefully giggling at the reactions like some schoolkids when a serious situation was brewing beneath them.
Adding to the escalating situation was that the unfavorable wind conditions at the time were blowing them off course, forcing them to make an emergency landing in a remote field in Surrey a day early. Police tracked the balloon, still believing it to be an actual UFO and planning intercept it at the field. As the balloon came down, it did so surrounded by police cars and with military one the way. Despite this, Branson, who still did not really realize just how seriously everyone believed this was a real UFO or how dire it had become, and went ahead with the rest of the prank, having the door open to disgorge a cloud of mist and the silver-clad dwarf, much to the horror of police, who took it to be a real alien and made to retreat. One of the police at the scene would say say “I have never been so scared in 20 years of being a policeman,” and Branson himself would later say of the whole, surreal scene:
The police surrounded us and then sent one lone policeman with his truncheon across the field to greet the alien. The UFO’s door opened very slowly, with tonnes of dry ice billowing from it. A dwarf that we had carried on board, dressed in an ET outfit, walked down the platform towards the bobby. He promptly turned and ran in the opposite direction! The police initially didn’t see the funny side of it and threatened to arrest us for wasting their time. But they soon joined in the general merriment of it.
Richard Branson’s fake UFO in action
It’s interesting to note that other than perhaps some police purchases of new underwear there were no real repercussions to any of this, and one can imagine that such a hoax in this day and age would at least have led to some arrests and charges. While Branson’s stunt was very well-funded and one of the more elaborate such hoaxes, this sort of large-scale prank had already been done before. In 1967, engineer Chris Southall and some colleagues at Britain’s Farnborough’s Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) decided to pull off a hoax that would take the nation by storm. They meticulously crafted six metal-coated, fibreglass saucers composed of two molded halves filled with electronic sound equipment, and Southall said, “We wanted to make something that looked really alien.” The discs were equipped with switches on them, that would flick on when the objects were turned over and start up the sound equipment inside and engage a battery to creating beeping and hissing noises, as well as with a flour and water mix that created a foaming, foul smelling slime when discharged for added effect.
When the six “UFOs” were completed, the team secretly went out in the middle of the night to deposit them at Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey, Bromley in south London, Ascot, the village of Welford, near Newbury, in Berkshire, Chippenham in Wiltshire and Clevedon in Somerset. They were then turned on and the team sat back to watch the fireworks commence. It did not take long before they were discovered, and they were thought to be very real, provoking an immediate police and military response to them. As shocked civilians looked on, the areas were locked down and the discs whisked away by military personnel and in some cases lifted away by helicopters, and it must have looked like some top secret government UFO extraction right out of a movie. Interestingly, the official response was rather bungled, and more like something out of the Keystone Cops than any sort of crack, Roswell style cover-up, as there were apparently no real guidelines in effect for this sort of thing and the authorities simply did not know how to handle it. One of the investigators would say in retrospect:
We thought the government should have some sort of plan if aliens did land. So we gave them a chance to try out whatever plan they had – but they didn’t have one. One of the saucers when they actually drilled into it, because it was full of this compacted, sort of papier-maché mess, actually exploded and showered the police officers with this stuff. If it had been some kind of radiation hazard, how would they have dealt with that? It would have been a disaster area. And what did they do? Just washed it down the drains.
Military personnel moving one of the discs
In the meantime, the “UFO landings” were all over the news along with numerous photographs of the discs being carted off by military personnel, and it was a sensation at the time. This was taken very seriously at the time, with bomb squads mobilized and a state of emergency in effect. People believed that these were real UFOs so wholeheartedly, that when authorities inevitably realized that they had been had and tried to tell the frightened public what had happened there were immediate rumors of a government cover-up. It all eventually died down, and amazingly the group who had perpetuated the whole fiasco were let off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Again, it’s amazing to think that this incident, which lasted a total of 12 hours, went virtually unpunished, and somewhat tellingly the bumbling response and inability to fully close the area down does not suggest a shadowy government conspiracy that knows of UFOs and has dealt with these things before.
Perhaps one of the most famous hoaxes ever was not one involving spaceships, but rather an alleged alien body. The stunt took the form of a video supposedly obtained from a retired military officer stationed at none other than Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico, by a British music and video producer named Ray Santilli. Released in 1990, the footage is black and white and very grainy, purportedly showing a skinny alien body with large eyes and an oversized head being dissected by a team in biohazard suits at the top secret facility. Santilli was very precise in the details he gave about the video, explaining how many rolls of film it had been on and even how much it cost him to procure them, and the video was widely taken to be the real deal. The “documentary” spread to over 30 countries, capturing the imaginations of the countless people who thought that this was finally the real evidence of what was going on at Roswell, and the “Alien Autopsy Film” became an absolute sensation at the time.
A still from the “Alien Autopsy” video
Although there were obviously skeptics, there were also enough testimonies by supposed photographic experts and special effects wizzes proclaiming how real it all looked and how difficult it would be to fake it that a lot of people believed. It would alas be proved to be a hoax once and for all when Santilli himself admitted to the fraud. In 2006 he came forward to explain that the “Alien Autopsy” was all faked and even how he had done it, but even then there was some mystery remaining, as he claimed that although the “documentary” he had released was bogus, it had been a re-creation based frame by frame on real footage that had simply been too deteriorated to release. Hmmm. Whether there was ever another “real” video or not, this hoaxed footage has not aged particularly well, and looking back on it seems almost absurd that so many people were taken in by it, believing this now admittedly very fake looking alien dummy to be real, but believe it they did.
There are countless other UFO hoaxes such as this out there, and these are merely among some of the more far reaching, sophisticated, and indeed amusing of these. Although it is unfortunate that so many people fell for these, in the end they do serve a purpose in showing us that we need to keep our eyes peeled for trickery, and approach the paranormal with an open mind but also a skeptical eye. In order to be taken seriously and to not give into panic or false hopes, to not be fooled and duped by such fakes, there must be a calm, measured and analytical approach to these things. In the end it seems very important to remember one thing- keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.
In 1987, Whitley Strieber’sbook Communionwas published. Five years later, in the latter part of 1992, the Strieber family started to receive disturbing, late-night phone calls. Sometimes, they were way after midnight. Of course, whenever any of us get a phone call in the early hours of the morning, we immediately think the worst: it’s someone calling with bad news. Thankfully, they weren’t those kinds of calls, but they were certainly traumatic in the extreme. Typically, the voice at the other end of the line did nothing but deliver a blast of what Strieber called “scary, sneering laughter.” The most obvious explanation would be that this was all the work of pranksters, or some deranged nut who had gotten hold of Strieber’s withheld number and thought it would be fun to shake him up a bit. Maybe a lot. Except, that wasn’t the case, as Strieber was able to prove.
Quickly tired by the calls, Strieber arranged to have Caller ID attached to the family’s phone-line. It was a very wise decision, as it revealed something remarkable. The calls were not coming from someone in Ufology, after all. Rather, they were coming from a particular facility owned by a company called E.G. & G. Understandably angered, and puzzled too, Strieber called them up to see what was going on. He came straight to the point and told the receptionist on the line that not only had he received intimidating calls, but that he had proof – via Caller ID – that the calls were coming from E.G. & G. In other words: take that.
What sounded like the voice of a very old man suddenly came onto the phone and assured Strieber that he would “look into it.” No further calls were made to Strieber’s home, which is extremely telling. Strieber didn’t stop there, though. He took on the role of detective and dug deeply into the world of E.G. & G. In the process, he discovered that the company had ties to NASA, to the Department of Energy, and even to the world’s most well-known secret base (which is surely the ultimate oxymoron), Area 51. Was someone at E.G. & G. trying to destabilize Strieber with all of those late-night calls? Maybe so. That Strieber hit back – and hit back hard, too – quickly put paid to the psychological-warfare techniques of those who were not happy with Strieber’s work and the tremendous amount of exposure he had been getting since 1987. There was, however, more to come.
One year later, in 1993, said Strieber, and after having been given apparently classified information on where the U.S. Government’s top secret UFO data could be found, “Spooks started prowling around my neighborhood upstate. A business associate was accosted on an airplane by a group of young men who flashed badges, claimed to be with the National Security Agency, and questioned him about our activities for a couple of hours.” Those same agents were reportedly looking at attempted penetrations of Department of Defense computers. Then, on one occasion in the following year, 1994, someone managed to stealthily get into Strieber’s cabin, skillfully disabling his security system in the process, and checking out the contents of his computer. Clearly, Strieber was a person of deep interest to more than a few people in the shadowy world of government espionage and clandestine operations. And, it wasn’t just Strieber, his family, and that friend accosted by the NSA who felt the brunt of all this. There was also a man named Ed Conroy.
In 1989, Ed Conroy, a San Antonio, Texas-based journalist, wrote a book titled Report on Communion. It was an independent study of Whitley Strieber and his incredible experiences. In taking on the project, Conroy didn’t realize what he had got himself into. At least, not at first he didn’t. What began as an impartial investigation into Strieber’s claims, soon mutated into something very different: Conroy found himself under similar intimidation to that which would eventually hit the Strieber family. Weird phone calls, secret surveillance and – even – visits from those mysterious black helicopters, whose crews keep more than a careful watch on alien abductees, abounded…
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Disc-shaped UFO captured on video over the Netherlands
Disc-shaped UFO captured on video over the Netherlands
A man from the Netherlands uploaded this video to Mufon. The footage was captured on January 19, this year. Hardly any details were given except that he saw the unknown object flying and caught it on camera.
You will see in the short clip the disc-like object enter the scene from the right and move toward the left and away.
At first glance it looks like a typical lens flare but lens flares and reflections normally do not move through the aperture faster than the camera is moving.
UFO casebook has put a slow-mo section in to get a better view.
OMG: Clear pictures of the BLACK KNIGHT UFO satellite!
OMG: Clear pictures of the BLACK KNIGHT UFO satellite!
The Black Knight is an artificial satellite of extraterrestrial origin which has orbited Earth for approximately 13,000 years; the “satellite” story is most likely a conflation of several disconnected stories about various objects and their interpretations, all of them well documented independently and none using the term “Black Knight” upon their first publication. According to senior education support officer Martina Redpath of Armagh Planetarium in Northern Ireland.
The origin of the Black Knight legend is often “retrospectively dated” back to natural extraterrestrial repeating sources supposedly heard during the 1899 radio experiments of Nikola Tesla and long-delayed echoes first heard by amateur radio operator Jorgen Hals in Oslo, Norway, in 1928. Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast attributes Tesla’s 1899 radio signals to pulsars, which were not identified until 1968.
In 1954, UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe told newspapers that the U.S. Air Force had reported that two satellites orbiting Earth had been detected. At that time, no country had the technology to launch a satellite. Skeptics have noted that Keyhoe had been promoting a UFO book at the time, and the news stories were likely written “tongue-in-cheek” and not intended to be taken seriously.
A British rocket called the Black Knight rocket was used in conjunction with the Blue Streak missile program between 1958 and 1965, to test re-entry vehicles. A “Black Knight satellite launcher” project announced in 1964 was considered a priority by the Ministry of Aviation. The program never put anything into orbit, and it is unrelated to the Black Knight satellite legend.
In February 1960, TIME reported that the U.S. Navy had detected a dark object thought to be a Soviet spy satellite in orbit. A follow-up article confirmed that the object was “the remains of an Air Force Discoverer VIII satellite that had gone astray.”
In 1963, astronaut Gordon Cooper supposedly reported a UFO sighting during his 15th orbit in Mercury 9 that was confirmed by tracking stations, but there is no evidence that this happened. Neither NASA’s mission transcripts nor Cooper’s personal copies show any such report being made during the orbit.
In 1973, Scottish author Duncan Lunan analyzed the long-delayed radio echoes received by Hals and others and speculated that they could possibly originate from a 13,000-year-old alien probe located in an orbit around the Earth’s Moon. He suggested that the probe may have originated from a planet located in the solar system of star Epsilon Boötis. Lunan later retracted his conclusions, saying that he had made “outright errors” and that his methods had been “unscientific”.
An artist's image of the violent collision that formed Earth's moon. Such collisions could explain the surprising differences in more massive super-Earths and super-Neptunes.
Credit: NASA
Catastrophic collisions may explain differences in giant rocky planets around other stars.
A new study suggests that the heat generated by material smashing into a planet plays an important role in removing some or all of a planet's atmosphere. A wide variety of sizes for these deadly asteroids would explain differences seen in the more massive rocky worlds.
NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope revealed a surprising number of worlds with sizes that fall between Earth and Neptune in relatively short orbits. By calculating the densities of the planets, astronomers learned that many of them seem to boast massive hydrogen-helium atmospheres. However, these atmospheres seem to come in many different flavors, suggesting something was happening to the worlds after planetary formation. [Tales from the Exoplanet Archive: How NASA Keeps Track of Alien Worlds]
"Giant impacts are very effective at reducing or removing the hydrogen or helium envelope," John Biersteker told his colleagues last month at the 233rd semiannual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. Biersteker, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied how impacts by rocky debris affected the atmosphere of young planets. He found that impacts could create many different types of worlds.
"This process can also produce a wide range of outcomes," Biersteker said. "This makes giant impacts a nice explanation for some of the observed distributions for the compositions of super-Earths."
Planetary beatdown
After a star is born, the dust- and gas-filled ring left behind begins the planetary formation process. Once gravity pulls together enough pieces to create a core, the newborn planetesimal begins to collect hydrogen and helium from the leftover gas, building its primal atmosphere. Planets that are very close to their stars can be affected by stellar radiation, which heats the top layers of the gas so that it escapes into space, leaving a thinner atmosphere.
Eventually, the gas in the disk is either piled onto planets or swept away by the star, leaving behind only dust and rock. Mixed among the small and medium-size debris are the failed cores that weren't able to grow large enough to attract an atmosphere. When these massive objects slam into planets, the collision can blow the planet's atmosphere off into space. One such collision helped to form Earth's moon.
A young world still boasts a molten mantle that can make it easier for a collision to strip off its atmosphere.
Credit: M. Kornmesser/Hubble/ESO
"Giant impacts are an expected part of the formation of these systems," Biersteker said.
It turns out that you don't need a massive core to completely remove a planet's atmosphere. By simulating a variety of impacts, Biersteker found that an object only a tenth the mass of the planet can blow off anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of the hydrogen and helium surrounding the planet.
A planet's youth may also work against it when it comes to holding onto an atmosphere. When a planet is young — only a few tens of millions of years old — its core is still fully molten, with no crust to insulate it from the atmosphere. Since a hotter atmosphere is harder to hold onto, it doesn't take much of an impact to strip off some of the atmosphere. An object crashing into a planet raises the energy, in the form of heat, allowing more of the atmosphere to be blown away.
Biersteker also found that the energy created by the impact was more important than the mass of what crashed into it. That means a small, fast-moving asteroid could potentially strip off more hydrogen and helium than a slower, medium-size object. The angle the impactor hits the world can also affect the energy of the impact — a head-on collision is more dangerous than a sideswipe.
"We can expect a wide range of impacts," Biersteker said.
With each impact stripping off a different percentage of the atmosphere, collisions can create a wide variety of exoplanet densities. Incoming material with only a tenth of a planet's mass can strip off anywhere from half to all of the hydrogen and helium.
Five hundred and sixty-five million years ago, Earth's magnetic field almost disappeared.
But a geological phenomenon might have saved it, a new study suggests. Earth's then-liquid core likely began to solidify around that time, which strengthened the field, the group reported yesterday (Jan. 28) in the journalNature Geoscience. This is important because the magnetic field protects our planet and its inhabitants from harmful radiation and solar winds —streams of plasma particles thrown our wayby the sun.
Scientists figured out what our planet's core was like back then by looking at crystals the size of grains of sand.
They picked up samples of plagioclase and clinopyroxene — minerals that were formed 565 million years ago — in what is now eastern Quebec, Canada. These samples contain tiny magnetic needles about 50 to 100 nanometers in size, which, in molten rock, orient themselves in the direction of the magnetic field at the time. [Shine On: Photos of Dazzling Mineral Specimens]
"Those tiny magnetic particles are ideal magnetic recorders," said co-author John Tarduno, the chair of the Earth and Environmental Sciences department and a professor at the University of Rochester in New York. "When they cool, they lock in a record of Earth's magnetic field that's maintained for billions of years."
So, by sticking the crystals in a magnetometer, the researchers were able to figure out that the particles' charge was very low. In fact, 565 million years ago, Earth's magnetic field was over 10 times weaker than what it is today — the weakest ever documented.
Further, the measurements showed that the frequency of north and south pole reversals was very high. All of this suggests that "the field was extremely unusual," Tarduno told Live Science. "We were at this critical point where the dynamo almost collapsed completely." (The geodynamo is the process that maintains and grows the magnetic field.)
But then the geodynamo got a kick start once more — from the very core of our planet.
In Earth's early years, the core was all liquid. But at some point — guesses range from between 2.5 billion years to 500 million years ago — iron began to cool and freeze into a solid layer in the middle of the planet. As the inner core solidified, lighter elements like silicon, magnesium and oxygen were kicked out into the outer, liquid layer of the core, creating a movement of fluid and heat called convection. This movement of fluid in the outer core kept charged particles moving, creating an electrical current, which in turn created a magnetic field.
This convection drives and maintains the magnetic field even today. Earth's inner core is continuing to solidify and will do so for billions of years to come.
The researchers "present intriguing paleomagnetic measurements" that suggest a weak geodynamo existed 565 million years ago, which meant that the core was fully liquid, wrote Peter Driscoll, an earth and planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., who was not a part of the research, in a commentary that accompanied the study. If their theory holds true, "the inner core may have occurred right in the nick of time to recharge the geodynamo and save Earth's magnetic shield."
Shortly after this time, the Cambrian explosion occurred and complex animals emerged across the planet. "One can speculate — and there have been some speculations — that a weaker magnetic field may have some relationship to these evolutionary events," Tarduno said. That is because a weaker field might allow more radiation to get through, which could cause DNA damage and higher mutation rates, which in turn, might have lead to more species evolving.
But this is mere speculation, Tarduno said. When Earth's magnetic field weakens a bit during events such as magnetic reversals (where the north and south poles flip), for instance, there's no evidence that species are affected, he added.
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity captured this composite image, which looks toward the higher regions of Mount Sharp, on Sept. 9, 2015.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA'sMars rover Curiosityhas flexed some new scientific muscles, likely solving a Red Planet puzzle in the process.
Mission team members repurposed the rover's navigation gear to measure tiny variations in gravitational fields, a new study reports. This novel strategy allowed the researchers to figure out how the huge Martian mountain whose baseCuriosity is exploringformed — namely, that it was probably built up as a free-standing mound by the deposition of windblown sand and sediment.
"Going forward, I think this study shows the promise of making gravity measurements on the surfaces of other planets," said lead author Kevin Lewis, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. [Amazing Mars Photos by NASA's Curiosity Rover]
"It really gives you data about the subsurface, which is hard to get from any other instruments," Lewis told Space.com.
The car-size Curiosity rover landed on the floor of the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012, tasked with investigating the area's past potential to host life. This work has been incredibly fruitful; Curiosity's observations show that Gale harbored a lake-and-stream system for long stretches — perhaps hundreds of millions of years at a time — in the ancient past.
Gale Crater is intriguing for other reasons as well. For example, a mountain rises 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Martian sky from its center — a dramatic geological oddity that has no close parallel here on Earth.
Scientists have long debated just how this odd massif, known as Mount Sharp, took shape. Is it the remnant of a sedimentary structure that once filled Gale Crater but was worn away by erosion? Or did Mount Sharp coalesce in its current form, growing as Martian winds dropped dirt and sand into Gale Crater?
That's where the new study, which was published online today (Jan. 31) in the journal Science, comes in. Lewis and his colleagues mapped out the gravitational-field strength at more than 700 points along Curiosity's traverse, which has taken the rover from Gale's floor up into Mount Sharp's foothills. (Gravitational fields weaken as altitude, and therefore distance from a planet's core, increases.)
Measurements using the Curiosity Mars rover's engineering accelerometers (gray) show a decrease in the strength of gravity as the rover climbs Mount Sharp. The rate of decrease of the modeled gravity signal (black) allowed researchers to measure the density of the rocks that make up Mount Sharp.
Credit: Kevin Lewis
"It's probably more like a compacted soil than what you might think of as a nice, really well-cemented rock," Lewis said.
If these deposits had once been buried under 3 miles (5 km) of other sediments, they would almost certainly be much denser, he added. So, the new results argue that Mount Sharp was primarily built up by wind-blown deposits, not pared down from a crater-filling feature.
This isn't to suggest that a potentially habitable lake didn't once occupy Gale Crater's floor; Curiosity's observations of lakebed sediments have established this water body's past existence with high confidence, Lewis stressed. But those sediments apparently didn't go all the way to the crater rim. It remains unclear how high they got — where the transition between lake sediments and windblown deposits lies on Mount Sharp's slopes.
Orbital observations have identified an intriguing "unconformity" — a break in the previously continuous sedimentary-rock record — about 2,600 feet (800 m) above Curiosity's current location, Lewis said. So, that region is a candidate.
"We'll see if Curiosity makes it up there, or if we get pieces of that upper unit that roll down the mountain," Lewis said. "But we may have to do a bit more exploring to find such a transition."
But let's get back to the gravity data. Curiosity doesn't carry any dedicated gravimetry instruments, so how did Lewis and his team make their measurements?
By thinking outside the box. Curiosity has two "rover inertial measurement units" (RIMUs), a primary and a backup. Both RIMUs consist of three accelerometers and three gyroscopes, which the rover's handlers normally use for navigation and to determine Curiosity's orientation in space. But Lewis wondered if these engineering data could be recalibrated to capture information about gravitational fields.
"It's something that I had thought about it for a long time," he said. "I didn't expect to have precision that was high enough to be able to use for science purposes. But I started looking into the data and calibrating out some of the complicating factors, like temperature and some other variables. And, lo and behold, it got to the point where the precision was actually scientifically meaningful."
The team was therefore able to build up the first-ever "gravity traverse" on the surface of another planet. The only other such work done off Earth was performed on the moon, by the Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, Lewis said.
Future rover missions to Mars and other planets could make similar measurements, Lewis said. But the strategy his team used isn't universally applicable. For example, researchers probably cannot dredge gravimetry measurements out of the engineering data gathered over the years by NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. Those two golf-cart-size robots collected their engineering data in a slightly different way, Lewis said.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate) is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.
WATCH A SUPER-FAST 3D PRINTER SCIENTISTS CALL THE “REPLICATOR”
WATCH A SUPER-FAST 3D PRINTER SCIENTISTS CALL THE “REPLICATOR”
NATURE/UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
VICTOR TANGERMANN
Fabrication Station
3D printers work by laboriously printing objects layer by layer. For larger objects, that process can take hours or even days.
But now scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have found a shortcut: a printer that can fabricate objects in one shot using light — and which could, potentially, revolutionize rapid manufacturing technology.
The Replicator
The research, published in the journal Science yesterday, describes a printer the researchers nicknamed “the replicator” in a nod to “Star Trek.”
It works more like a computed tomography (CT) scan than a conventional 3D printer. It builds a 3D image by scanning an object from multiple angles, then projects it into a tube of synthetic resin that solidifies when exposed to certain intensities of light. In two minutes, for instance, the team was able to fabricate a tiny figurine of Auguste Rodin’s famous “The Thinker” statue.
3D Printing 2.0
The replicator might have groundbreaking implications, but it does have some inherent limitations as well: the objects it produces are small, and require special synthetic resin to produce.
But it’s an exciting new technology — and one that could lead to a “Star Trek” future.
Let’s face it: Antarctica may as well be another planet. While there are theories that the continent may have once been home to long-lost civilizations, we only know for a fact that humans have been exploring Antarctica since the late 19th century. We’ve barely even scratched the surface of an entire continent. Who knows what may lie frozen in the icy wastes of Earth’s most mysterious landmass?
NASA scientists may soon unlock those mysteries – although we probably won’t like what we find. Unless it’s Atlantis. Or the ancient wreck of an alien spacecraft containing a shapeshifting parasitic creature that may or may not take up residence inside Kurt Russell. Whatever is down there, scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory want to find it. JPL nerds have been studying the frozen southernmost continent with specially designed radar satellites since 2010 and have now announced the discovery of a mysterious, giant cavity opening up beneath the continent. Just the thing the world needs!
In a press release, JPL scientists say the cavity was discovered under Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. The mysterious void is two-thirds the size of Manhattan and is over 1,000 feet (300 meters tall) – much larger than any other known cavities. If the void continues to grow, it could allow more heat and water to accumulate under the Thwaites Glacier, accelerating ice melt to the point where sea levels could rise by 2 feet or 65 centimeters. The Thwaites Glacier plays an important role in holding other neighboring ice masses in place, so if it melts or falls into the sea, there could be devastating consequences for everyone on Earth. Yikes.
While JPL is focused more on how the cavity is related to ice melts and other effects of global warming, I’m more interested in the less inevitably apocalyptic side of this story: what might we find inside this cavity if we could somehow explore it? After all, Antarctica has recently been the site of all manner of unexpected and mysterious developments lately including the recent surprising discovery of unknown organisms lying at the bottom of an ancient unexplored underground lake. What secrets could this void be hiding?
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
