Self-folding drone could speed up search and rescue missions

Chloe Taylor

University of Zurich

A drone that can change shape in flight has been developed by researchers at the University of Zurich to assist with search and rescue missions.

Able to contract and fold, the aircraft can enter small cracks and spaces to stream footage to rescue teams via its two integrated cameras. The drone is designed for use in areas in disaster zones that become inaccessible to rescuers due to safety concerns or physical restrictions.

Davide Falanga, one of its developers, told CNBC on the phone that the drone could make rescue missions more efficient and effective.

”(This drone could have) multiple impacts – it can go into areas that would otherwise be inaccessible,” he said. “In the aftermath of an earthquake it could let rescuers enter and explore a collapsed building. We used the most efficient and stable systems allow it to fly longer, and have held public demonstrations in realistic scenarios which showed that this is a feasible product.

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the project took six months to go from concept to prototype. However, as the drone is still in early development stages, its developers have no timescale for a wide rollout.

“We would be open to commercializing and discussing opportunities with investors, but at the moment there’s no commercial plan,” Falanga told CNBC. “We have sometimes had to tinker with the system when we’ve deployed it — we want it to be deployed and work immediately, so we need about six months to a year to improve the drone and make it more robust so it can work in more scenarios. But the idea itself is definitely feasible.”

University of Zurich

According to the research paper written by the drone’s developers, their aircraft “could lead to a shift in the research community towards morphing aerial vehicles.”

However, they noted that there were still several unsolved research questions, such as “automatic morphology selection,”which refers to the robot’s ability to autonomously take the best shape for the task at hand.

Unsolved problems

Mohan Sridharan, senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham’s School of Computer Science, told CNBC via email that foldable drones were being explored by the wider robotics research community, with several concepts currently in development.

“This would indeed help in disaster response, but the stable navigation of such a drone is not a solved problem,” he said. “Also, complex applications such as disaster response pose other challenges related to perception, reasoning, and communication.”

Maria Kamargianni, lecturer in transport and energy at University College London, told CNBC on the phone that privacy concerns would need to be addressed before the drone could be commercialized.

“This is a very promising technology for search and rescue projects, and it’s much more economically viable than existing options. In circumstances where a helicopter or a drone could be used, a drone would be much cheaper to deploy,” she said.

“The technology has lots of other applications as well — for example, it could be used to examine the quality of materials on a collapsed bridge. But technologies must be developed in line with public acceptance of them, so these drones should be designed in a way that notifies the public they are being used by the authorities — this could be done by using distinctive colors. In rolling them out companies would also have to make sure they are not violating personal data regulations.”

{ https://www.cnbc.com/ }

02-03-2019 om 23:49 geschreven door peter  

Pilots Report Valentine's Day Sighting of UFOs over Gloucester, England

TOBIAS WAYLAND

An image used by Air Midwest on social media to represent the sighting.

 (Image credit: Air Midwest / Facebook)

Air Midwest

15 februari om 22:54 · 

According to a statement made by Air Midwest, two of the company's aircraft were conducting nighttime navigation exercises to the south and southeast of their home airfield when the encounter occurred.

Around 8:15 p.m, one of the aircraft was tracking south towards Gloucester at 7,000 feet after leaving the Birmingham air traffic zone. Meanwhile, a second aircraft was also tracking south towards Gloucester at 4,000 feet.

Both aircraft observed two lights—one red and one orange—in the sky south of Gloucester. The aircraft approached the lights on an interception track, but were unable to gain on the objects as they appeared to move further south of Gloucester as the aircraft approached.

The pilots and air traffic control were unable to identify the lights.

One of the pilot’s reports was included with the statement.

I observed initially 2 large square orange lights. One on top of each but slightly off set however there was a gap in height between them.

The top object was constantly orange. The lower one occasionally flicked white but majority of time was orange. In addition to that on 2 occasions I observed 5 orange lights but that was momentary.

"This second recording is between two pilots of callsign ‘Golf-Sierra India’ and ‘Golf- Alpha Mike’. The response of ‘Alpha Mikes’ captain is humorous as at the time he believes the light must be a normal event," said a statement accompanying the second recording.

The company later clarified their previous statement by insisting they had never claimed to have "encountered an extraterrestrial situation."

"We encountered unexplained airborne lights that defied our normal expectation of standard aircraft or meteorological activity," said the second statement. "We considered it could be night glow hot air balloons, but we are not aware any any such activities taking place and the objects observed seemed to move from their original location to another with a rapidity not in line with balloon activity...but of course the apparent changes of location could have been an optical illusion due to night effect."

"In conclusion, our pilots, both senior flight instructors and highly experienced commercial airline pilots with over 25,000 flying hours between them, together with their crews observed airborne lights the nature of which they were unable to identify," continued the statement. "For this fact alone we obviously can only describe the observations as ‘Unidentified Flying or Airborne Objects’. Hence referring to them as UFO’s, as that is what they were."

"We have no idea as to the origin of the objects and as yet we have not yet come across any standard explanation for what the objects could have been," it concluded.

• If you enjoyed this article and would like to support the Singular Fortean Society, please consider becoming an official member by signing up through our Patreon page—membership includes a ton of extra content and behind-the-scenes access to the Society’s inner workings.

{ https://www.singularfortean.com/ }

02-03-2019 om 23:29 geschreven door peter  

U.S. IN UFO RACE WITH CHINA, RUSSIA, FORMER SENATE MAJORITY LEADER SUGGESTS

02-03-2019 om 23:06 geschreven door peter  

See the Evolution of SpaceX's Rockets in Pictures

SpaceX's Rockets

SpaceX began in 2002, when its founder, Elon Musk, took the first steps in his grand ambition to send a mission to Mars. More than 15 years later, the company is way beyond the space startup stage.

The Hawthorne, California-based company regularly reuses rockets, sends cargo missions to the International Space Station with the uncrewed Dragon spacecraft and will fly astronauts for NASA in the future. In 2018, SpaceX launched the massive Falcon Heavy and has plans for an even larger rocket to reach Mars: the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR). 

Read more about SpaceX's history of rockets and spacecraft development in the following slideshow.

Falcon 1

The Falcon 1 was the first rocket manufactured by SpaceX. It had a proposed capacity to carry 670 kilograms (1,480 lbs.) to low Earth orbit, and it flew between 2006 and 2009. After three launch failures, Falcon 1 sent a dummy payload to space on Sept. 29, 2008. Its fifth and final launch, on July 14, 2009, sent RazakSAT, a Malaysian Earth-observation satellite, into orbit. Falcon 1 rockets launched from Omelek Island, part of the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. And in case you're wondering, Musk named the Falcon rockets after the Millennium Falcon ship from "Star Wars." 

Developing Falcon 9

SpaceX quickly received interest from several companies looking for a heavier-lift rocket. The company had considered developing an intermediary rocket called the Falcon 5, but instead skipped ahead and began work on the Falcon 9. This rocket can send a payload to low Earth orbit weighing up to 28,991 lbs. (13,150 kg). It is a two-stage rocket. SpaceX first advertised plans for the Falcon 9 in 2005 and sent the debut Falcon 9 aloft on June 7, 2010, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Early customers of the rocket included Bigelow Aerospace; Avanti Communications; and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates.

Ground landings

SpaceX's first successful Falcon 9 landing in Landing Zone 1, on Dec. 21, 2015, was hailed as a milestone for rocket reusability. However, the company still tried to improve on that achievement. SpaceX experienced a mix of successful and failed ocean landings in 2014 and 2015. [SpaceX's Epic Falcon 9 Rocket Landing in Pictures]

In 2015, SpaceX was also trying to land on drone ships in the ocean. While these landings kept ending with failure, Musk would post the videos and pictures on his Twitter feed, acknowledging mistakes made, and the company would work on improving for the next flight. 

Dragon dreams

SpaceX kept the first 18 months of the Dragon cargo ship's development under wraps. Then, in March 2006, the company officially made Dragon public when the company submitted a proposal for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration program. The ultimate goal was to develop a private spacecraft to ferry cargo to the International Space Station. 

After Spacex hit several milestones, NASA selected SpaceX's Dragon in December 2008 to be one of the companies providing commercial resupply services to the space station. SpaceX's contract value at that time was a minimum of $1.6 billion, with options to extend to $3.1 billion; the company has since received a new contract for cargo launch services. Musk has confirmed that he named Dragon after "Puff the Magic Dragon."

Early Dragon flights

Dragon made a successful maiden flight on Dec. 8, 2010, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Then, on May 22, 2012, Dragon launched for an important test: an attempt to berth the spacecraft with the International Space Station. Dragon made it to the station safely on May 25 of that year, despite experiencing some problems with a laser system that was supposed to judge the craft's distance to the orbiting complex. The milestone prompted worldwide acclaim. It was the first time a private spacecraft docked with the space station. SpaceX has since upgraded its uncrewed Dragon cargo ships to be reusable for at least two flights. 

Grasshopper

Grasshopper was a rocket prototype flown at SpaceX's McGregor, Texas, proving grounds to give the company more experience in landing boosters vertically. While Grasshopper did not get as much media attention as SpaceX's other programs, it was key to furthering the development of Falcon 9's reusable first stage. The Grasshopper rocket made eight test flights between 2012 and 2013, with the final flight seeing Grasshopper soar to 2,440 feet (744 meters). The Grasshopper program was then retired so SpaceX could focus more resources on Falcon 9's development.

Falcon 9 Reusable Development Vehicle

SpaceX announced the Falcon 9 Reusable Development Vehicle in 2012, which was based on the first stage of the Falcon 9. The company made five flights of this system at the SpaceX McGregor site between April and August 2014, with the maximum altitude on some flights exceeding 3,280 feet (1,000 m). The last booster, which launched on Aug. 22, 2014, exploded due to a blocked sensor.

SpaceX's first rocket landing pad

This picture shows Landing Zone 1, a ground landing zone for the Falcon 9's first stage at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This is where SpaceX made the first of its controlled ground landings, on Dec. 21, 2015. The company built the pad on land leased from the U.S. Air Force on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. (Landing Zone 1 is on land that used to host Launch Complex 13.) This landing was extra-sweet because the previous Falcon 9 flight, in June 2015, ended catastrophically with an explosion. 

Reusing rockets

Right from the beginning of Falcon 9's history, SpaceX was interested in reusing the first stage of the rocket to save on launch costs. Early tests of the landing were unsuccessful, however. SpaceX made attempts on the first, second and sixth launches of the Falcon 9 to control the booster's landing, but in each case, the stage slammed down into the ocean. SpaceX finally achieved a controlled ocean landing on Falcon 9's ninth launch (the fourth controlled-landing attempt), on April 18, 2014. This was an important stepping stone in the path to eventual reusability.

Drone-ship landing

The persistence exhibited by Musk and his employees finally paid off on April 8, 2016, when a Falcon 9 first stage touched down softly on a drone ship called "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Atlantic Ocean. The Dragon spacecraft that this Falcon 9 carried aloft also had a milestone flight, delivering an inflatable module — the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module — to the International Space Station. 

SpaceX's success rate with drone landings improved drastically after the April 2016 flight, although some boosters still missed the mark from time to time. The company's Falcon 9 flight success rate is also strong; its last failure, in September 2016, saw a rocket explode on the launch pad before taking off. SpaceX has a second drone ship, "Just Read the Instructions," which is used for Pacific Ocean landings after launches from Vandenberg Air Force Station in California. Both ships are named for fictional starships in the science fiction books of Iain M. Banks.

Falcon Heavy's maiden flight

SpaceX

The Falcon Heavy rocket, a heavy-lift version of the Falcon series, had a successful debut flight on Feb. 6, 2018, launching from NASA's Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket successfully launched a Tesla car into space. (Musk is also the CEO of Tesla Motors.) The Falcon Heavy is 230 feet tall (70 m) and can lift nearly 141,000 lbs. (64 metric tons) of payload to low Earth orbit. This is twice what its closest competitor, the United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy, can hoist into orbit. 

Falcon Heavy's rocket landing ballet

This picture shows Falcon Heavy's twin side boosters landing successfully after the rocket's maiden flight, on Feb. 6, 2018. While the booster stages touched down safely at Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, near the Kennedy Space Center, the rocket's core stage hit the ocean at high speed. The rocket stage carrying the Tesla car underwent one last burn to send the car toward the orbit of Mars. However, as Space.com sister site Live Science reported, radiation could destroy the car within a year.

Riding inside the Dragon

While launching commercial missions, SpaceX also began developing a human-rated version of the Dragon spacecraft to bring astronauts to the International Space Station. The company received a contract in 2014 valued at a maximum of $2.6 billion for these launch services. In September 2015, SpaceX showed the world the inside of the crew quarters. The minimalist design has white walls, black bucket seats, several flat-panel displays and four windows for passengers to see outside.

Crew Dragon vs. cargo

SpaceX intended that the crew and cargo versions of Dragon be very similar, in order to speed up development of the crewed ship. "This commonality simplifies the human-rating process, allowing systems critical to crew and space station safety to be fully tested on unmanned cargo flights.," SpaceX stated.

Crew Dragon flight tests

SpaceX is hard at work on developing the crewed Dragon for two commercial crew test-flights, which will fly no earlier than late 2018. NASA is trying to wean itself off dependence on the Russian Soyuz vehicle that currently ferries all astronauts to the International Space Station. Each astronaut seat on the Soyuz costs NASA millions of dollars. Also, the agency tries to use U.S. launch services for launch when possible. The last crewed launch from U.S. soil took place in 2011, during the last flight of the space shuttle program.

More Falcon Heavy flights

Falcon Heavy launches are sold for about $90 million apiece, compared with $62 million for Falcon 9 launches. SpaceX plans to launch two more Falcon Heavy missions in 2018: one carrying the Arabsat 6A communications satellite and the other hoisting Space Test Program 2 for the U.S. Air Force (along with the Planetary Society's LightSail 2).

The Falcon 9 Block 5

In May 2018, SpaceX unveiled the fifth and final version of the company's Falcon 9 rocket: the Block 5 booster. Designed for maximum reusability (the target is at least 10 flights), this booster will launch astronauts into space on Dragon capsules for NASA. The first Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket was built to launch Bangabandhu-1, the first communications satellite for the country of Bangladesh. 

Starship and Super Heavy

Starship and Super Heavy make up a futuristic system intended for Mars exploration. In its Red Planet configurations, the BFR will be 348 feet (106 m) tall (including the spaceship) and capable of bringing 150 tons (136 metric tons) to low Earth orbit. Each rocket will carry about 100 people, and the rocket will be fully reusable. Musk said he plans to use this rocket in fleets, bringing hundreds or thousands of passengers at a time to Mars. In the 2020s, Musk plans to halt all Falcon lines except for BFR, which would perform all sorts of missions. Destinations would range from Mars to the International Space Station to orbits that would launch satellites near Earth.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

02-03-2019 om 22:44 geschreven door peter  

Meet Ripley, SpaceX's Dummy Astronaut Riding on Crew Dragon Test Flight

02-03-2019 om 22:16 geschreven door peter  

Crew Dragon van SpaceX met succes gelanceerd. Nu brengt hij dummy ruimte in, deze zomer volgen echte astronauten - HLN.be

Het zou voor het eerst zijn dat een commercieel bedrijf zoiets doet. Vandaag is alleen een dummy aan boord: Ripley, naar de heldin uit de bekende Alien-films.

De ruimtecapsule werd om 8.49 uur Belgische tijd gelanceerd, 2.49 uur plaatselijke tijd. Vannacht meldde SpaceX dat alle systemen paraat waren en ook het weer goed zat. De Crew Dragon en de Falcon 9-raket - waarop die bevestigd is - vertrokken vanop het historische Launch Complex 39A op Cape Canaveral, waar in de jaren 60 en 70 ook de legendarische Apollovluchten van ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA naar de maan vertrokken.

Lees ook

SpaceX lanceert ruimtecapsule die dummy naar ISS brengt, in juli volgen eerste echte astronauten

Testvlucht

De testvlucht zal in totaal zes dagen duren. Morgen komt de capsule met Ripley aan boord aan bij het ISS, waar ze volautomatisch zal aankoppelen. Als de drie bewoners van het ruimtestation de 200 kilogram materiaal en voorraden aan boord uitgeladen hebben en de spullen die ze niet meer nodig hebben ingeladen, zal de Crew Dragon op 8 maart terugkeren naar de aarde.
Tijdens de vlucht zullen de NASA en SpaceX gegevens verzamelen. Ripley – die het strakke witte ruimtepak van SpaceX draagt dat ook toekomstige astronauten aan zullen hebben – is uitgerust met sensoren, die de impact van de reis op de dummy moeten meten. Dat zullen immers ook krachten zijn die de astronauten zullen ondervinden. Indien nodig zullen na de vlucht nog aanpassingen aan het toestel of de stuwraketten gebeuren. Als alles goed gaat, gaan dan in juli de allereerste echte astronauten aan boord van een toestel van SpaceX.

Dat zal overigens een historisch moment zijn. Het is intussen acht jaar geleden dat er nog astronauten naar de ruimte vertrokken vanop Amerikaans bodem. Ze moeten nu nog ‘meeliften’ met Russische toestellen.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

02-03-2019 om 21:39 geschreven door peter  

Nog even geen buitenaards boorrecord voor Marslander Insight - HLN.be

Bron: AD.nl

De door Polen en Duitsland gefabriceerde boormachine van de Marslander is op keien gestuit die het vooralsnog lastig maken dieper te gaan. Bedoeling was tot vijf meter diep te gaan maar vooralsnog komt de boor niet verder dan een centimeter of vijftig, bevestigt het German Aerospace Center. Volgens de ingenieurs werkt de ‘hamerboor’ goed, maar zit het tegen wat betreft de boorplek door onvoorziene stenen. 

Als een diepte van vijf meter wordt gehaald is dat een buitenaards record, aldus NASA. Bedoeling van het boren is onder meer de ondergrondse temperatuur te meten. Volgens de ingenieurs kan de robotgestuurde arm met de boor de problemen oplossen, maar dat kost tijd.

Lees ook

NASA trekt na vijftien jaar definitief stekker uit Marsrobot Opportunity

Onderzoek

InSight (de naam staat voor: Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) is een missie van het zogeheten ‘NASA’s Discoveryprogramma’ om de inwendige structuur van Mars en andere planeten te onderzoeken. Insight landde afgelopen november op de rode planeet en heeft al prachtige foto’s gestuurd en ook opnames gemaakt van de wind op de rode planeet. Er is ook een seismometer geplaatst om eventuele aardbevingen te registreren.

Marslander InSight landde op 26 november 2018 geland in het gebied Elysium Planitia, een vlakte nabij de evenaar van Mars. Voor de liefhebber: op ongeveer 600 km afstand van de Gale krater waar in 2012 het Marswagentje Curiosity is geland.

Bekijk ook: Marslander InSight succesvol geland op rode planeet

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

02-03-2019 om 21:34 geschreven door peter  

Paniek op Paaseiland: beroemde standbeelden verliezen na 500 jaar langzaam hun vorm door ‘lepra’ - HLN.be

Bron: Reuters, ANP

De eeuwen geleden uitgehouwen beelden vertegenwoordigen de voorouders van de Polynesische bevolking van Paaseiland, de Rapa Nui, en behoren tot het UNESCO Werelderfgoed. De honderden grote hoofden staan langs de kustlijn van het kleine eiland, een van de meest geïsoleerde ter wereld. Nog altijd vragen archeologen zich af hoe de inwoners de duizenden kilo’s zware beelden ooit op hun plaats hebben kunnen zetten. Paaseiland ligt op 3.500 kilometer van het vasteland en meer dan 2.000 kilometer verwijderd van het dichtstbijzijnde eiland, Pitcairn.

Maar de beelden lijden volgens wetenschappers aan een soort ‘lepra’. Ze krijgen witte vlekken op hun gezichten. De korstmossen, een combinatie van fungus en algen, vreten de beelden aan, waardoor het steen zacht als klei wordt en van vorm verandert. De beelden lijden bovendien door erosie, de stijgende zeespiegel, harde wind en vee dat tussen ze door graast.

70 procent al aangetast

Zeventig procent van de hoofden zou al zijn aangetast. Volgens archeologen kunnen de beelden nog worden gered als ze worden schoongemaakt en een coating krijgen die de poreuze steen beschermt, maar dan moet dat wel snel gebeuren. “Ik vermoed dat de Moai-beelden over een eeuw niet meer dan rechthoekige blokken zullen zijn”, aldus Tahira Edmunds, expert bij de Chileense overheid. 

De kosten om alle beelden te beschermen zouden kunnen oplopen tot 500 miljoen dollar, reden waarom Paaseiland ook om internationale hulp vraagt. De inwoners en lokale wetenschappers halen het geld om de beelden te beschermen nu vooral uit het duurzame toerisme, maar dat volstaat niet. 

De burgemeester van het eiland stelt daarom ook voor om geld te vragen van de landen die in het verleden beelden hebben meegenomen om in hun musea tentoon te stellen. Zo staat er een meer dan twee meter hoog beeld tentoongesteld in het British Museum in Londen, nadat het meer dan 150 jaar geleden door Britse zeevaarders werd meegenomen. In november al bezocht een Chileense delegatie het museum, dat bereid is na te denken over een vergoeding voor de ‘uitleen’ van het beeld. “Het museum kijkt uit naar samenwerking met partners van over heel de wereld en verwelkomt de voorstellen rond toekomstige projecten met Rapa Nui”, zegt het British Museum in een mededeling.

REUTERS 

Verschillende beelden zijn er al slecht aan toe.

ThinkStock

AP

rv

Paaseiland  is maar 25 op 12 kilometer groot en is een van de meest afgelegen bewoonde eilanden ter wereld.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

02-03-2019 om 21:26 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious planet 9 orbits the sun 37 billion miles away from Earth and will be discovered in the next '10 to 15 years', scientists claim

• Planet 9 is believed to exist far beyond the known objects in the solar system 
• New research has been published in two different papers backing this up 
• It claims the planet will be identified before 2030 and is 37 billion miles away 
• Experts also say it is likely to be between five to ten times the mass of Earth  

By JOE PINKSTONE FOR MAILONLINE

The fabled Planet 9 orbiting beyond Pluto in the depths of the solar system will be discovered in the next ten to 15 years, scientists claim. 

Two studies have been released stating the mythical planet is not only real but will be found before 2030. 

One of the papers claims the planet will be 400 astronomical units (AU) away from Earth - approximately 37 billion miles - and be five to ten times the mass of our planet.  

It has never been directly seen but its presence has been inferred from various calculations of its gravity on other objects. 

These 'trans-Neptunian objects' lie beyond the furthest gas giant and in the Kuiper Belt. 

Scroll down for video  

Planet 9 is theorised but has never been seen before. It orbits beyond Pluto in the depths of the solar system and will be discovered in the next ten to 15 years, scientists claim. it is also said to be bigger than Earth but smaller than the existing gas giants (pictured)

Caltech researchers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin published data supporting the presence of 'Planet Nine' in 2016. 

They identified wobbles in the orbits of the solar system's most distant objects and put this down to the gravitational pull of a vast and unidentified planet. 

It was dubbed Planet 9 and the theory stating its existence is now widely accepted. 

The researchers published their data in the journal The Astronomical Journal and looked into the likelihood previous observations indicating Planet 9's existence were down to chance. 

They found the probability of this being down to bias was one in 500. 

'Though this analysis does not say anything directly about whether Planet Nine is there, it does indicate that the hypothesis rests upon a solid foundation,' says Dr Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg, a professor of planetary astronomy.  

Fred Adams, co-author of the study, said: 'With its proposed properties, Planet Nine is right on the edge of being observable.

'But this is a very dim object in a very big sky. Since we don't know exactly where it is, you have to survey the whole sky, or at least large portions of it, in order to find the planet.

'Over the course of the next 10 years we will have deeper and deeper—which means more sensitive—sky surveys.

'So I think by 2030 we will have seen it or will have a better idea of where it is. Of course, it's also possible that by then we could also have alternate explanations for the observed orbital anomalies.' 

The second paper, published in Physics Reports, estimated the size of the planet. 

 Caltech researchers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin published data supporting the presence of 'Planet Nine' in 2016. They identified wobbles in the orbits of the solar system's most distant objects and put this down to the gravitational pull of an unidentified planet (artist's impression)

It claims it will be closer to the Sun than previously thought and will be up to ten time the mass of Earth. 

Calculations from the researchers state it is likely to be 400 astronomical units (AU) away from Earth - approximately 37 billion miles. 

One AU is the distance between Earth and the sun.   

'At five Earth masses, Planet Nine is likely to be very reminiscent of a typical extrasolar super-Earth,' Dr Batygin said in a statement.

'It is the solar system's missing link of planet formation. Over the last decade, surveys of extrasolar planets have revealed that similar-sized planets are very common around other sun-like stars. Planet Nine is going to be the closest thing we will find to a window into the properties of a typical planet of our galaxy.'

Fred Adams, Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, added: 'The strongest argument in favour of Planet Nine is that independent lines of evidence can all be explained by a proposed new planet with the same properties. In other words, there are multiple reasons to believe that Planet Nine is real, not just one.' 

WHAT IS MYSTERIOUS 'PLANET X'?

Astronomers believe that the orbits of a number of bodies in the distant reaches of the solar system have been disrupted by the pull of an as yet unidentified planet.

First proposed by a group at CalTech in the US, this alien world was theorised to explain the distorted paths seen in distant icy bodies.

In order to fit in with the data they have, this alien world - popularly called Planet Nine - would need to be roughly four time the size of Earth and ten times the mass.

Researchers say a body of this size and mass would explain the clustered paths of a number of icy minor planets beyond Neptune.

First proposed by a group at CalTech in the US, this alien world was theorised to explain the distorted paths seen in distant icy bodies.

Its huge orbit would mean it takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make a single pass around the sun. 

The theoretical Planet Nine is based on the gravitational pull it exerts on these bodies, with astronomers confident it will be found in the coming years.

Those hoping for theoretical Earth-sized planets proposed by astrologers or science fiction writers - which are 'hiding behind the sun' and linked with Doomsday scenarios - may have to keep searching.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

02-03-2019 om 18:12 geschreven door peter  

02-03-2019 om 17:56 geschreven door peter  

There’s something about the Jorge Chavez International Airport located in Callao, just 11 km (7 mi) from Lima, Peru, that seems to attract UFOs. There have been a number of sightings there in recent years, including two different incidents in 2017 that reportedly forced the airport to close and turn away incoming flights. The latest occurred this week when two UFOs were spotted by airport staff, who submitted a report showing the objects hovered over one runway for just under an hour. Is Jorge Cavez the UFO equivalent of the perpetual holding patterns over the Atlanta airport?

Jorge Chavez International Airport

“At 01:30 am we see from the tower two UFOs just west of the station, at approximately 9,000 feet. (…) One of the objects appears at times on the radar screen. At 02:12 am the objects no longer appear in view of the control tower.”

That’s from an official report submitted on February 27th by airport control tower employees of CORPAC (Peruvian Airports and Commercial Aviation Corporation), the private company which provides air traffic control services to the airport. According to translations, the report states that a number of pilots saw the UFOs or UAPs (Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena) and they appeared on radar shortly before disappearing. (Multiple photos here and here. Photo of the report here.)

“Since yesterday, Wednesday 27, it has already been confirmed from CORPAC , with an official document, the presence of two Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (FAN), which have been positioned on runway 33 of Jorge Chávez International Airport , and has been seen – among others- by the ground crew of two planes that covered the route Lima-Córdoba and Lima-Quito.”

Peruvian ufologist Anthony Choy is conveniently based in Lima and, while he didn’t witness the UFOs themselves, confirmed the validity of the control tower report. He also pointed out in an interview that:

” … in these 19 years that I have been investigating these issues, it is the first time that there is an official report, it is a fact without comparison in our country.”

“Official” is the key word in that comment, since there was a sighting of 12 UFOs at the same airport on February 12th, 2017, that halted all flights for three hours. However, there was no official report on that one and the media didn’t cover it until internal CORPAC reports were obtained somehow by ufologist Mario Zegarra, who leaked them to the press. A second UFO incident at the airport on February 7th was also leaked to the media.

As expected, the number one speculation about the 2019 UFOs is drones. If that’s the case, they’re probably not civilian drones because of the altitude (9,000 ft., 1.7 miles, 2.75 km) and the amount of time they were able to hover motionless (at least 42 minutes with some reports saying it was more like an hour). Also, a large international airport like Jorge Chavez – which handles 22 million passengers per year – would have at least called in the military or local police if the facility was truly shut down by personal drones.

That leads to the question … were they military drones? There’s no doubt military drones could handle the altitude and time aloft. It might also explain why the military wasn’t called in to deal with them. Was it a training or emergency exercise? That might make sense, considering the sighting occurred during the low-activity middle-of-the-night time period. It could also explain why it was kept quiet – did the exercise show flaws in the airport’s response system?

If not drones, military or otherwise, could it be … aliens? Why would aliens hover over an airport in Peru when the nearby mountains are full of cattle to mutilate and mines to steal silver and copper from? The report and the photos do not show flashing lights or other spacecraft indicators. A closer look at the radar image might give some clues, but it doesn’t seem that anyone asked for those.

Or did they?

For now, the latest UFOs over Jorge Chavez International Airport remain unidentified and mysterious.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }Nieuwsbrief

02-03-2019 om 17:34 geschreven door peter  

Low-level clouds that cover the oceans could DISAPPEAR in the next century as a result of rising CO2 levels and cause climate change to spiral out of control, study warns

• Study found that marine stratocumulus clouds become unstable with high CO2
• Researchers say the effect was seen with carbon levels at 1200 parts per million 
• Atmospheric carbon dioxide is currently at about 410 ppm, and continues to rise 
• If marine stratus clouds disappear Earth's temperature would dramatically spike 

By CHEYENNE MACDONALD FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 

Rising greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere could eventually drive low-level clouds out of the skies.

And, this could make global warming much, much worse.

This is according to a new study, which found that high concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide cause marine stratus clouds to break up and, eventually, disappear.

Without these clouds, the surface would be exposed to more extreme levels of sunlight, risking global temperature increases upwards of 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

Rising greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere could eventually drive low-level clouds out of the skies. And, this could make global warming much, much worse. A file photo of marine stratocumulus clouds is pictured 

The shocking scenario could help to explain what happened during an extreme warming period roughly 56 million years ago, during what’s known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).

And, it provides worrying insight as to what could happen if global carbon emissions aren’t curbed, the researchers say.

During the PETM, Earth experienced a mysterious spike in carbon dioxide that caused the greenhouse gas to accumulate in the atmosphere at extreme amounts over thousands of years.

As a result, temperatures rose globally by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit), bringing the average as high as 23 degrees Celsius (73 degrees Fahrenheit).

According to the new study led by researchers at California Institute of Technology, CO2 concentrations higher than 1,200 parts per million (ppm) could push Earth to a tipping point in which marine stratus clouds become unstable.

When these clouds disappear, surface temperatures dramatically increase.

Stratus cloud decks cover about a fifth of subtropical oceans, and shade Earth’s surface from sunlight by reflecting it back to space.

Atmospheric carbon currently sits at around 410 ppm, and is still rising. If emissions continue at the current rates, the researchers say atmospheric CO2 could hit 1,200 in the next century.

‘I think and hope that technological changes will slow carbon emissions so that we do not actually reach such high CO2 concentrations,’ says Tapio Schneider, Theodore Y. Wu Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Caltech, and senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

According to the new study led by researchers at California Institute of Technology, CO2 concentrations higher than 1,200 parts per million (ppm) could push Earth to a tipping point in which marine stratus clouds become unstable

‘But our results show that there are dangerous climate change thresholds that we had been unaware of,' the researcher says.

The supercomputer models also suggest the cloud decks won’t return until CO2 levels drop back down below 1,200 ppm.

And, there’s no telling how long that could take.

According to the researchers, these clouds are difficult to resolve in global climate models due to the small scale of the air motions that sustain them.

But, they’re a crucial player in regulating Earth’s surface temperature.

This research points to a blind spot in climate modelling,’ Schneider says. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

02-03-2019 om 17:15 geschreven door peter  

If climate change continues at the rate it’s going now, one of the most important types of clouds could eventually disappear for good, causing the Earth to reach extreme temperatures. According to a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, if enough carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere, the stratocumulus clouds – which are those puffy clouds we often see in the sky – could become extinct. If that happens, the temperature here on Earth could climb to heights that are unimaginable.

Clouds are very important to our atmosphere, as they reflect sunlight away from the surface of Earth. If you look up at the sky and notice a white blanket of clouds, those are stratocumulus clouds and researchers think that sudden jumps in the Earth’s temperature in the past could have potentially been caused by changes to these types of clouds.

Stratocumulus clouds

In newly conducted research, scientists used a supercomputer to model a small part of the sky. They noticed that if the carbon dioxide (or CO2) levels in the atmosphere reach approximately 1,200 parts per million (or ppm), stratocumulus clouds end up breaking apart. As of right now, CO2 levels have already reached past 410 ppm which is quite high considering that it was at 280 ppm prior to the industrial revolution.

Unfortunately, there is more carbon dioxide going into our atmosphere each year. If we continue at the rate we’re going now, Earth’s atmosphere could reach 1,200 ppm in only 100 to 150 years. Now that’s scary. Earth’s temperature could reach an average of 14 degrees Fahrenheit higher in addition to the dangerous changes that are already being created from greenhouse gases. Not to mention the fact that Earth’s ice would melt causing devastating rises in the water levels.

To put this scenario into better perspective, the last time that Earth was that warm, crocodiles were swimming in the Arctic and the area around the equator was pretty much lifeless and scorching hot.

Stratocumulus clouds

If the stratocumulus clouds disappeared from our atmosphere, they probably wouldn’t come back until the carbon dioxide levels dropped below where they are now. There is, however, questions regarding this current data, as the 1,200 ppm number could end up being higher or lower as scientists conduct more research on this issue. Nevertheless, I think it’s pretty clear that something needs to be done to protect our atmosphere and the dangerous issues surrounding climate change.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

02-03-2019 om 17:05 geschreven door peter  

As the unexplained mystery boom phenomenon continues worldwide, more people are beginning to pay attention to these anomalous sounds. What’s behind the sudden and dramatic increase in unexplained noises around the world? Are they reflective of a singular phenomenon, or could there be many different explanations? While I’ve written and speculated extensively about these mysterious explosion sounds over the past few years and believe they’re related, a recent incident in Northamptonshire, England shows that these unexplained sounds may not be as connected as they may seem. 

The vast majority of the hundreds of mystery booms I’ve documented over the last three years are quite similar: a ground-shaking boom scares residents but leaves behind no further evidence. In Kingsport, however, residents have reported a strange smell the morning after the anomalous noises are heard. Could the two be related?

The Sywell Aerodrome in Northamptonshire.

“Everyone’s so baffled,” Northampton resident Kerri Griffin wrote on the Kingsthorpe Crime Page on Facebook. “Did anyone hear six loud bangs in the Acre Lane area at 3:29 am this morning (26th Feb)?” Dozens of residents chimed in to add that they, too, had heard the noises, although the times reported vary. The Northampton Chronicle & Echo writes that the booms have been occurring steadily since Sunday, February 24 and have been reported throughout a wide swath of the town.

Like in other cases of mystery booms, residents have reported that the unexplained noises have shook the ground and triggered car alarms. Some residents described the noises as sounding like fireworks or gunshots, while others say they’re more like a distant thunderclap. A few residents say they’ve heard loud voices at the same time as the booms, while others say they’ve smelled a mysterious burning odor the morning after the noises.

A Eurofighter Typhoon at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, England.

While I’d normally write this one off as teenagers having a bit of late-night fun, a similar string of booms in 2016 show that there may be more to these recent booms than meets the headline. In April 2016, dozens of people throughout Northampton reported a boom that was later confirmed by the Ministry of Defence to be caused by a pair of fighter jets scrambled from the RAF Coningsby base to intercept an “unresponsive aircraft” in UK airspace. Little other information was released.

RAF Coningsby is located just to the east of Northampton and is responsible for Britain’s Quick Action Alert missions which are tasked with responding to unidentified aircraft approaching UK airspace. Could the RAF have something to do with the recent booms heard throughout Northampton? After all, the Royal Air Force has been busy in recent months responding to unidentified aircraft in the UK’s airspace, and scores of pilots and other eyewitnesses have been reporting all sorts of strange lights, anomalous objects, and other aerial mysteriesabove England lately. Is the RAF testing new aircraft or conducting exercises, or might there be incursions into UK airspace that we’re not being told about?

Watch the skies.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

02-03-2019 om 16:41 geschreven door peter  

Shocking Video Footage Shows Black UFO Over Britain Skies

A video allegedly showing a bizarre rectangular alien spaceship moving over East Sussex has gained a lot of attention this week.

For many UFO enthusiasts, seeing is believing, and they think the latest evidence of an extraterrestrial spaceship visiting Earth has landed recently.

The footage seemingly shows a rectangular-shaped UFO moving at high speeds over English skies.

UFO researchers pointed out that the mysterious flying object is seen in three frames of the video. They added that it was mind-blowing to see a UFO flying that fast.

Many are convinced that it is an alien UFO because strange tunnel clouds appear in the background. They think that the UFO may be responsible for making that cloud tunnel, which is believed to be used for moving from one base to another on Earth.

A sector of conspiracy theorists says that cloud tunnels allow UFOs to travel from the locations they want while keeping them hidden in the human eyes.

However, the video shows that the cloud maker is caught.

The alleged UFO sighting is dated July 27, 2018, but it only surfaced online for the first time this week.

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

02-03-2019 om 16:21 geschreven door peter  

Best-Ever View of Distant Object Ultima Thule Reveals Weird Circles, Pits

By Mike Wall 

This is the most detailed view of the distant object Ultima Thule. The photo is a processed composite combining nine individual images taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft just 6.5 minutes before the spacecraft's closest approach to Ultima Thule on Jan. 1, 2019.

(Image: © NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute, National Optical Astronomy Observatory)

The best-ever photos of Ultima Thule have made it down to Earth, and they heighten the intrigue about the frigid and faraway world.

On New Year's Day, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past the 21-mile-long (34 kilometers) Ultima Thule, setting a record for the most distant planetary encounter in history. (Ultima lies about 1 billion miles, or 1.6 billion km, beyond Pluto, which New Horizons flew by in July 2015.)

New Horizons has been beaming flyby data and imagery home to its handlers ever since, and will continue to do so for another 18 months. The early returns have been spectacular, revealing Ultima Thule to be a weird snowman-pancake hybrid with mysterious features, such as a bright "collar' where the body's two lobes meet. [New Horizons at Ultima Thule: Full Coverage]

And now we have our best look yet. New flyby photos released today (Feb. 22) show Ultima in even more stunning detail, capturing bright circular features and dark pits, whose origins remain mysterious.

"Whether these features [the pits] are craters produced by impactors, sublimation pits, collapse pits or something entirely different is being debated in our science team," New Horizons Deputy Project Scientist John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. 

The newly released images boast a resolution of about 110 feet (33 meters) per pixel. They're the highest-resolution pictures New Horizons has ever taken, and may ever take during its operational life, mission team members said.

The photos were captured just 6.5 minutes before the craft's closest approach on Jan. 1. At the time, New Horizons was 4,109 miles (6,628 km) from Ultima Thule and 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion km) from Earth, mission team members said. (Closest approach brought the probe within a mere 2,200 miles, or 3,500 km, of Ultima.)

There was no guarantee we'd ever get to see Ultima Thule — whose official name is 2014 MU69 —  in this dazzling light. Capturing the newly released images was a "stretch goal" that demanded a precise square-up of Ultima in the narrow field of view of New Horizons' telescopic camera.

"Getting these images required us to know precisely where both tiny Ultima and New Horizons were — moment by moment — as they passed one another at over 32,000 mph [51,500 km/h] in the dim light of the Kuiper Belt, a billion miles beyond Pluto. This was a much tougher observation than anything we had attempted in our 2015 Pluto flyby," New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, also of SwRI, said in the same statement.

"These 'stretch goal' observations were risky, because there was a real chance we'd only get part or even none of Ultima in the camera's narrow field of view," Stern added. "But the science, operations and navigation teams nailed it, and the result is a field day for our science team! Some of the details we now see on Ultima Thule's surface are unlike any object ever explored before."

New Horizons launched in January 2006 to lift the veil on Pluto, which had remained largely mysterious since its 1930 discovery. The Ultima Thule flyby is the centerpiece of an extended mission that runs through 2021.

New Horizons is in good health and has enough fuel to fly by yet another distant object, if NASA grants another mission extension, Stern and other mission team members have 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.
• Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

02-03-2019 om 01:03 geschreven door peter  

01-03-2019 om 23:42 geschreven door peter  

By: Nidhi Goyal 

The new Orbex Prime engine burns liquid oxygen and propane

(Credit: Orbex)

View image on Twitter

Orbex Space@orbexspace

Orbex reveals its new #Prime rocket which includes the world’s largest 3D printed rocket engine, made in a single piece without joins, giving it the edge over other engines, which can suffer from weaknesses associated with joining & welding. #OrbexReveals https://buff.ly/2SjmZtS 

• 107

6:51 PM - Feb 7, 2019

• 58 people are talking about this

British spaceflight company Orbex, plans to open their headquarters and rocket design facility in Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands. The 2,000 square metre HQ in Forres, in the north east of Scotland. The new base will bring more than 130 jobs to the region

Prime has been designed to take satellites into Earth's orbit to altitudes of up to 776 miles (1,250 km). The new headquarters in Forres will combine a rocket design and integration facility. Here, the rocket launches proposed Sutherland site

{ https://www.industrytap.com/ }

01-03-2019 om 23:25 geschreven door peter  

What The Heck Are These Weird Tracks At The Bottom Of The Great Blue Hole? (Video)

What The Heck Are These Weird Tracks At The Bottom Of The Great Blue Hole? (Video)

Some Mysterious tracks are found at the bottom of the Great Blue Hole-the world’s largest ocean sinkhole, which is located about 60 miles from the coast of Belize.

In December this past year, a crew of explorers, which include billionaire Richard Branson and Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of French explorer Jacques Cousteau, took part in a quest to dive to the bottom of the hole to determine what was down there. At over 1,000 feet wide and 410 feet deep, it is a largely unexplored natural wonder.

It formed as a limestone cave hundreds of thousands of years ago when the sea level was far lower. At the end of the last ice age, ice caps melted and sea levels rose, submerging the cavern to become what is currently the Great Blue Hole.

In November and December this past year, teams carried out over 20 dives into the void in an effort to generate a 3D map of it. One of these dives was broadcast live on the Discovery Channel. In it, Branson and Cousteau, led by submarine pilot Erika Bergman, entered into the hole’s depths.

In an interview, Bergman has talked about what she observed within the Great Blue Hole. She stated they discovered never-before-seen stalactites at the base of the hole: “That was pretty exciting, because they haven’t been mapped there before. They haven’t been discovered there before.”

Even though the water was completely dark, high-resolution sonar equipment on board helped them to view concealed features of the formation. “You can be 20 or 30 meters away from a stalactite or a hunk of the wall and see it in every perfect detail, better than eyesight could even provide,” she explained.

They also discovered some unidentifiable tracks right at the base of the hole-the source of which are “open to interpretation,” Bergman stated.

Researchers are now near finishing the 3D sonar map of the hole. “It looks really cool-it’s this mesh-layered, sonar scan of the entire thousand-foot diameter hole,” Bergman said.

In addition to the mysterious tracks, Branson stated, they discovered plastic bottles sitting at the bottom of the Great Blue Hole. In a blog posting about the dive, he published: “As for the mythical monsters of the deep? Well, the real monsters facing the ocean are climate change-and plastic. Sadly, we saw plastic bottles at the bottom of the hole, which is a real scourge of the ocean. We’ve all got to get rid of single-use plastic.”

Not to long ago some comparable tracks were discovered on Google Earth which could be evidence of alien activity and that extraterrestrial beings mining the ocean floor for valuable resources.

The weird markings go on for miles and look almost as if someone has been driving a huge tank on the seafloor, and when I say huge, I mean HUGE. In fact, judging from the size of the tracks, the giant sea-tank would have to have treads around several city blocks wide.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

01-03-2019 om 22:11 geschreven door peter  

Planet X: "You Have No Scientific Evidence", Define Scientific Evidence! Observational Evidence!

Let me know what you think of this channel if this does well. First time sharing from it. Welcome to March! Roar.

Following the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, there was considerable speculation that another planet might exist beyond its orbit. Wikipedia

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

01-03-2019 om 21:47 geschreven door peter