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 Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
12-07-2019
Three UFOs Over The UK Just 15 Min Ago From My Tour Bus!
Three UFOs Over The UK Just 15 Min Ago From My Tour Bus!
Saw three grey triangle UFOs over Wittering, UK 🇬🇧 about five min ago from my bus. Could only get a single shot and the disappeared. Far left of photo. I only saw it for about 15 seconds and reached over my wife trying to take a photo but the bus was a bit bouncy and had trouble getting more shots. It’s really far away but huge! Sorry, writing this from my phone. 😬
A mysterious monolith has been discovered buried on the sea bed off the coast of Sicily.
Broken into two parts, the rock has three holes that experts say could not have formed naturally and it is thought the structure was crafted 10,000 years ago.
The Stonehenge-style monument could shed light on the earliest civilisations to call the Mediterranean basin home.
A mysterious underwater monolith has been discovered 37 miles (60km) off the coast of Sicily. Broken into two parts (top image), the rock has three holes (shown bottom right and left) that experts say could not have formed naturally and the structure is thought to have been crafted 10,000 years ago
The archaeological site has been surveyed using geophysical and geological methods.
One of the holes in the 15-tonne monolith travels through both parts, while the other two are on the sides of the 39ft-long (12 metre) rock.
Zvi Ben-Avraham, of Tel Aviv University, and Emanuele Lodolo of the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics in Trieste, Italy, wrote in the Journal of Archaeological Science: ‘There are no reasonable known natural processes that may produce these elements’.
The monolith was discovered 131ft (40 metres) below the waves on what was once an island called Pantelleria Vecchia Bank in the Sicilian Channel.
The archaeological site has been surveyed using geophysical and geological methods. This 3D map shows how the monolith is elevated in the Mediterranean Sea
The Stonehenge-style monument could shed light on the earliest civilisations to call the Mediterranean basin home. It is not known whether the Mediterranean monolith stood alone or as part of a group, as seen at Stonehenge, which is younger, constructed in around 2,600BC (pictured)
WHO WERE THE ISLANDERS THAT BUILT THE MONOLITH?
Little is known about the people who lived on Pantelleria Vecchia Bank in the Sicilian Channel some 10,000 years ago.
However, the construction of the stone shows they were skilled workers, able to extract, cut and transport a huge stone.
Experts believe the people traded fish they caught with other islands.
The stone may have served as a primitive kind of 'lighthouse' or local beacon, or even as a place to tie and anchor fishing boats.
The Stonehenge-style monument could shed light on the earliest civilisations to call the Mediterranean basin home.
The island was submerged during a flood 9,500 years ago, after the Last Glacial Maximum.
This was the last period in the Earth's climate history during the last glacial period when ice sheets were at their most prominent.
‘The Sicilian Channel is one of the shallow shelves of the central Mediterranean region where the consequences of changing sea-level were most dramatic and intense,' the experts explained.
'The ancient geography of the Mediterranean Basin was profoundly changed by the increase in sea level following the Last Glacial Maximum.
‘This global event has led to the retreat of the coastlines, especially in lowland areas and shallow shelves, such as the Sicilian Channel.’
Beforehand, the shallowest north-western part of the Sicilian Channel was connected to Sicily, forming a peninsula that was separated from North Africa by just 30 miles (48km).
But most of the peninsula was flooded with the exception of some high points that formed an archipelago of islands surrounded by shallow sea, including Pantelleria Vecchia Bank.
The discovery of the monolith suggests a prehistoric civilisation thrived on the island and ancient people may have colonised others nearby.
The study said: ‘This discovery provides evidence for a significant Mesolithic human activity in the Sicilian Channel region.’
The location of submerged Pantelleria Vecchia is shown in the top map. Map 'B' shows how the Sicilian and Tunisian shorelines changed. The brown contour shows what they would have looked like when the sea level was 393ft (120 metres) lower than present day, and in grey, 164ft (50 metres) lower when the island thrived
One of the holes in the monolith is seen through both parts, while the other two (pictured) are on the sides of the 39ft-long (12 metre) rock
Dr Lodolo told Discovery News: This discovery reveals the technological innovation and development achieved by the Mesolithic inhabitants in the Sicilian Channel region,’ before the island was submerged 9,500 years ago.
The monolith was hewn from a single block of stone, demonstrating the ancient culture were able to extract, transport, cut and install the monument.
‘Such an effort undoubtedly reveals important technical skills and great engineering,’ he said.
Dr Lodolo believes the stone could have served a purpose to the community, who were thought to have traded fish with neighbouring islands, leading him to suggest it may have acted as a 'lighthouse' or local beacon for seafarers, or even as a place to anchor boats.
The discovery of the monolith suggests a prehistoric civilisation thrived on the island and ancient people may have colonised others nearby. This map shows the sea floor near the monolith
It is not known whether the substantial stone stood alone or as part of a group, as seen at Stonehenge, which is younger, constructed in around 2,600BC.
The famous Neolithic monument in Wiltshire is aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the sunrise of the summer solstice and is thought to have been used by ancient people to survey the heavens.
It's thought the monument was also a meeting point for ancient people and may have been a religious site at which people worshiped their ancestors.
Some have suggested it was a place of the dead, while others say it was a place of healing, because the bluestones could be struck to make a noise thought to have mystic or healing powers.
Dr Lodolo believes submerged settlements in the Mediterranean Sea may help fill in gaps in understanding about ancient cultures in the region.
Israel's Beresheet Lunar Lander Is About To Arrive On The Surface of Moon
U.S. space agency NASA initially set its return to the Moon in 2028. However, in response to Vice President Mike Pence's challenge to uphold NASA's mandate to move the U.S. Space industry forward, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine moved up the target date to 2024.
Considering the mammoth effort of bringing men to the Moon back in the 1960s, one would wonder what's causing the rush this time. First of all, U.S. President Donald Trump might have something to do with it.
In a tweet made earlier this month, the U.S. President shared that he wanted America to return to space in a "BIG WAY."
"Under my Administration, we are restoring NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!" Pres. Trump said.
The upcoming Moon mission billed "Artemis" — named after the Greek Moon goddess and the twin sister of Apollo, god of the Sun — is set to be the first lunar mission that will deliver the first woman to the Moon. The first American Moon missions in the 1960s and the 1970s have all been realized with men.
This herculean project will definitely bode well for Trump's administration as it would speak big in terms of his administration's political will and how it acts on momentum. According to Vox, it would make a lot of sense to complete even one moonshot in this administration.
Water on the moon may be present as OH or hydroxyl, which is made up of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom and is a more reactive relative of H2O NASA/JPL/USGS
Before Trump, George W. Bush's admin vied for a Moon mission without success, while President Barrack Obama's term veered further into space by working on the start of missions to Mars. NASA has been clamoring for major space missions in recent years as counterparts from other international space agencies have been overshadowing their efforts. In fact, even astronauts headed to the International Space Station (ISS) often rely on hitching an expensive ride on Russian spacecraft just to get to space.
Despite Trump's enthusiasm to make it back to the lunar surface, however, one would wonder how this will be completed. The report described the ongoing preparation for 2024 as "Trumpian" in grandiosity, meaning the plans could be big in papers but also impractical.
Rockets and spacecraft to be used for the mission remain unfinished and even non-existent. And considering the major budget cuts of NASA, one would wonder who will pay for such an ambitious project.
Notwithstanding the challenges, a Moon mission would be a significant study not only in the U.S. but for the rest of the world as well, so pushing for it to happen is understandable.
The Moon would be able to help scientists understand more about the origin and development of the entire solar system. The Moon, dated at around 3.5 billion years old, could tell so much of our celestial history by studying its craters, surface make-up and other important geological aspects.
"The Moon has recorded impact processes that have gone on throughout the entire solar system," Georgiana Kramer, a planetary scientist who has done an extensive study of the Moon, said.
Even small rocks brought back by earlier Moon missions have already helped scientists understand not only how the Moon was formed but also how the Earth likely developed as well. Going back and collecting more samples, especially those from the far side of the Moon, could mean additional historical data that would give scientists like Kramer a more significant POV of how the solar system began and where it will most likely be headed.
An important breakthrough like this would certainly establish America's position as ahead of its pack in the space industry.
In the story of Snow White a young princess is tricked into eating a poisoned apple, which places her in a deep sleep until she is awoken by a prince.
Since the Brothers Grimm made the concept famous over two hundred years ago, the idea of using 'suspended animation' has appeared in countless science fiction films to help humans travel to the stars.
But now Nasa is funding an aerospace engineering company to develop technology for putting humans into a state of deep sleep for use in space transportation.
Scroll down for video
A space company in Atlanta is developing a space habitat (pictured) for putting humans into a state of deep sleep for use in space transportation. Nasa has just awarded the project $500,000 (£350,000) to take it to the next stage
The US space agency has awarded SpaceWorks $500,000 (£350,000) to develop the project.
Films like Interstellar and Alien have all used cryosleep as a way to allow humans to travel deep into space on journeys that can take years.
In real-life space missions, human crew and everything that goes along with it have a direct impact on mission mass, as well as number of launches required for the trip.
But putting astronauts into short-term hibernation could make space travel more efficient.
THE POINT OF 'CRYOSLEEP'
In space missions, human crew and everything that goes along with it have a direct impact on mission mass, as well as number of launches required for the trip.
But putting astronauts into short-term hibernation could make space travel more efficient.
The habitat design is capable of placing the crew in an inactive, 'torpor' state for the duration of the in-space mission segments.
A torpor state a state of short-term hibernation, when physiological activity is decreased, usually by a reduced body temperature and metabolic rate.
This substantially reduces the mass and size of the habitat, which ultimately leads to significant reductions in the amount of mass needed on board.
The habitat designed by Atlanta-based SpaceWorks is capable of placing the crew in an inactive 'torpor' state for the duration of the in-space mission segments.
This substantially reduces the mass and size of the habitat, which ultimately leads to significant reductions in the amount of mass needed on board.
'The idea of suspended animation for interstellar human spaceflight has often been posited as a promising far-term solution for long-duration spaceflight,' said Dr John Bradford, CEO of SpaceWorks.
'It was very exciting to receive notice of our selection, I know there is always a lot of competition for these awards,' Dr Bradford told MailOnline.
'We have a great project plan outlined and really appreciate NASA giving us the opportunity to further explore and develop this idea.'
The SpaceWorks habitat design a very small, pressurized module that is docked around a central node/airlock permitting direct access to the Mars ascent/descent vehicle and Earth entry capsule by the crew.
'We believe the crew habitat mass can be reduced to only 5-7 metric tonnes (mt) (11,000 - 15,000 lbs) for a crew of 4 to 6, compared to 20-50 mt (44,000 - 110,000 lbs) currently,' Dr Bradford said.
'The total habitat module volume would be on the order of 20 square metres (215 square feet), compared to 200 square metres (2150 square feet) for most current designs.'
The habitat designed by Atlanta-based SpaceWorks is capable of placing the crew in an inactive, 'torpor' state for the duration of the in-space mission segments. This substantially reduces the mass and size of the habitat, which ultimately leads to significant reductions in the overall architecture size
Since the Brothers Grimm made the concept of 'suspended animation' famous in 1812 with the story of Snow White, the concept has remained firmly in the realm of fiction, until now. An 1852 depiction of Snow White laid in a glass coffin during her period of magically induced suspended animation shown
The SpaceWorks habitat design a very small, pressurized module that is docked around a central node/airlock permitting direct access to the Mars ascent/descent vehicle and Earth entry capsule by the crew (pictured)
While the crew members are in a hypothermic state, various sensors would be hooked up to them so their conditions can be monitored.
They would receive nutrition intravenously through total parenteral nutrition (TPN) - where a liquid containing all the essential elements needed for a human body to function and catheter to drain urine.
The crew would be in this medically induced hypothermic state for 14 days at a time, with crew members taking turns being awake for two or three days at a time to ensure the needs of the crew and ship are met.
Medically induced hypothermia is already used to treat a variety of conditions, including after heart attacks or brain and spinal cord injuries.
While the crew members are in a hypothermic state, SpaceWorks has said various sensors would be hooked up to them so their conditions can be monitored. They would receive nutrition intravenously from a liquid that would contain all the essential elements for a human body to function
In the 2014 film 'Interslettar, hypersleep pods (pictured) are used to slow the aging process of the human body so that astronauts do not incur excessive senescence and not overly consume limited supplies while on their missions
The project is part of Nasa's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, with 8 projects in total selected to proceed to the next stage of development, each receiving as much as $500,000 (£350,000) for a two-year study.
THE FINAL EIGHT PROJECTS
Nasa has funded eight projects as part of its Innovative Advanced Concepts Program.
Here is the final list:
Spaceworks Engineering - Advancing sleep inducing habitats for humans on deep space missions
Robert Youngquist - Cryogenic selective surfaces
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Flight demonstration of novel atmospheric Satellite Concept
MSNW - Magnetoshell aerocapture for manned missions and planetary deep space orbiters
University of California, Santa Barbara -Directed Energy for interstellar study
University of Missouri -Experimental demonstration for plasmonic force propulsion
Texas Engineering Experiment - Approaches to creating a growable habitat
Northwestern University - Development of an aperture for an 'extremely large reflective telescope'
'The NIAC program is one of the ways Nasa engages the US scientific and engineering communities,' said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of Nasa's Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington.
'[This] including agency civil servants, by challenging them to come up with some of the most visionary aerospace concepts,' said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator at Nasa.
'This year's Phase II fellows have clearly met this challenge.'
SpaceWorks said it will use the funding to better understand the effects of prolonged hypothermia, and consider the technology's impact on other exploration missions.
'We will be working on both the engineering/aerospace aspects required for the system as well as the medical research,'Dr Bradford told MailOnline.
'On the engineering front, we will be refining our technology and the torpor habitat designs.
'We will also be looking at destinations beyond Mars,'We have expanded our team to include leading researchers and experts in the field.'
Another project involving cryogenic preservation is called 'Cryogenic Selective Surfaces', led by Dr Robert Youngquist, lead scientist at Nasa's Kennedy Space Flight Center.
The project is aimed at creating a material that can thinly coat the space ship, reflecting more than most of the light and allowing it to reach incredibly low temperatures, and it could also be used for cryogenic storage.
The coating, called 'Solar White' is predicted to reflect more than 99.9 per cent of the sun's energy when used in deep space.
'The ramifications of such a coating are broad and significant, ranging from enabling long-term cryogenic storage to allowing passive high temperature superconductor operation in space,' he said.
'As we venture into the solar system we would like to take oxygen with us,' Dr Youngquist told MailOnline.
'Right now we have to do this with heavy pressurized containers, but if we could make the oxygen cold enough it becomes a liquid and storing large amounts of it becomes much easier. The cryogenic coatings I've proposed appear to allow these very cold temperatures to be reached, potentially allowing us to bring liquid oxygen (LOX) out into the solar system.
This could cool fuel tanks in space down to 300°F below zero (-184°C), with no energy input needed.
'My cryogenic coatings should allow cryogenic temperatures to be reached in space, something that is difficult to do now,' he said.
'So any application of cryogenics we have on earth, be that operating superconductors or preserving people, will now be possible in space.'
The 'Cryogenic Selective Surfaces'project is aimed at creating a material (pictured) that can thinly coat the space ship, reflecting more than most of the light and allowing it to reach incredibly low temperatures, and it could also be used for cryogenic storage
The project is part of Nasa's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, with 8 projects in total selected to proceed to the next stage of development, each receiving as much as $500,000 (£350,000) for a two-year study
Nasa says it selected these projects for their 'innovativeness and technical viability.'
'Phase II decisions are always challenging, but we were especially challenged this year with so many successful Phase I studies applying to move forward with their cutting-edge technologies,' said Jason Derleth, the NIAC program executive at Nasa Headquarters in Washington.
Also included as part of the portfolio is a dual aircraft platform that may be able to stay aloft for weeks or even months at a time. The work is being led by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and consists of two glider-like unmanned aircraft which are connected via a thin, ultra-strong cable.
A separate group is working on parachute made of plasma that can be trapped in a magnetic field to help probes glide safely back to Earth. Aerospace firm MSNW of Redmond, Washington, won a Nasa grant to demonstrate the technique on a CubeSat.
Meanwhile, Texas Engineering Experiment is working on the design of a rotating habitat with a robotic system that constructs the structure allowing to 'grow' while in space.
Engineers are developing a dual aircraft platform that may be able to stay aloft for weeks or even months at a time. The work is being led by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and consists of two glider-like unmanned aircraft which are connected via a thin, ultra-strong cable
A separate group is working on parachute made of plasma that can be trapped in a magnetic field to help probes glide safely back to Earth. Aerospace firm MSNW of Redmond, Washington, won a Nasa grant to demonstrate the technique on a CubeSat
'Whether it's tensegrity habitats in space, new ways to get humans to Mars, delicate photonic propulsion, or any one of the other amazing Phase II studies NIAC is funding, I'm thrilled to welcome these innovations and their innovators back to the program.
'Hopefully, they will all go on to do what NIAC does best - change the possible.'
All projects are still in the early stages of development, most requiring 10 or more years of concept maturation and technology development before use on a Nasa mission.
Texas Engineering Experiment is working on the design of a rotating habitat with a robotic system that constructs the structure allowing to 'grow' while in space
NASA JUST RELEASED AN INCREDIBLE MAP OF ALL KNOWN EXOPLANETS
NASA JUST RELEASED AN INCREDIBLE MAP OF ALL KNOWN EXOPLANETS
NASA
VICTOR TANGERMANN
Exoplanet Map
NASA just dropped an astonishingly elaborate map of more than 4,000 exoplanets known to exist outside our Solar System, which takes the form of a video that shows how many exoplanets we’ve discovered each year since 1991.
Exoplanets are not only interesting to us because they orbit a different star, but also because they have the potential to harbor life.
It’s an impressive visualization of the exponential rate at which we’re discovering outside worlds many light-years away. That’s in part thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope, NASA’s now-retired orbital imaging craft that searched the far reaches of deep space for exoplanets since it launched in 2009.
Space Telescopes
While Kepler had to be retired last year, other satellites and space telescopes have picked up where it left off, including NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which recently spotted its smallest exoplanet ever.
And future space telescopes are also in the planning stages, such as the European Characterising Exoplanets Satellite, scheduled to launch later this year.
Unfortunately, NASA’s latest planned space telescope, the James Webb Telescope, has been facing a lot of delays, while getting heat from Congress about NASA drastically going over budget for the project.
Over the last month, ESA’s Mars Express has been watching dust storms brew at the planet’s north pole and disperse toward the equator.
In late May 2019, a spiral-shaped dust storm at the north polar ice cap of Mars was observed by several instruments onboard Mars Express. A Mars Express camera captured this image on May 26. The dust storm’s brown color contrasts with the white ice of the north polar ice cap below. The image covers an area of about 1,200 x 3,000 miles (2,000 x 5,000 km).
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft has been monitoring dust storms brewing at Mars’ north pole over the last month, and watching as the storms disperse toward the equator. The spacecraft observed at least eight different storms at the edge of the ice cap between May 22 and June 10, 2019, which formed and dissipated very quickly, between one and three days.
It’s currently spring in the northern hemisphere of Mars, and water-ice clouds and small dust-lifting events are frequently observed along the edge of the seasonally retreating ice cap. Local and regional storms lasting for a few days or weeks and confined to a small area are common on Mars, but at their most severe they can engulf the entire planet, as experienced last year in a global storm that circled the planet for many months.
Mars dust storm in motion. This animated sequence was compiled from images of a different storm captured by the VMC over a period of 70 minutes on May 29, 2019. This particular storm started on May 28 and continued to around June 1, moving toward the equator during that time.
This montage of images shows 3 different storms developing on May 22, 2019, on May 26, and between June 6 and 10. In the latter case, the cameras watched the storm evolve for several days as it moved in an equator-ward direction. At the same time, wispy patches of light-colored clouds can be seen at the outer margin of the polar cap and also several thousand kilometers away (several thousand miles), close to the volcanoes Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons.
Both Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed that when the dust storms reached the large volcanoes Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons, orographic clouds – water ice clouds driven by the influence of a volcano’s leeward slope on the air flow – that had been developing, started to evaporate as a result of the air mass being heated by the influx of dust.
These regional dust storms only last a few days. The planet’s circulation moves the elevated dust and spreads it out into a thin haze in the lower atmosphere. Some traces of dust and clouds remained in the volcanic province into mid-June.
A dust storm underway at the edge of the north polar ice cap of Mars. The image was taken by the Mars Express Visual Monitoring Camera on May 29, 2019.
THAT’S NO MOON Comets around distant stars, shown in this artist’s illustration, could be explained by “ploonets” — moons that were freed from their orbits around migrating gas giants.
LYNNETTE COOK/FUSE/NASA
Meet ploonets: planets of moonish origin.
In other star systems, some moons could escape their planets and start orbiting their stars instead, new simulations suggest. Scientists have dubbed such liberated worlds “ploonets,” and say that current telescopes may be able to find the wayward objects.
Astronomers think that exomoons — moons orbiting planets that orbit stars other than the sun — should be common, but efforts to find them have turned up empty so far (SN Online: 4/30/19). Astrophysicist Mario Sucerquia of the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia and colleagues simulated what would happen to those moons if they orbited hot Jupiters, gas giants that lie scorchingly close to their stars (SN: 7/8/17, p. 4). Many astronomers think that hot Jupiters weren’t born so close, but instead migrated toward their star from a more distant orbit.
“This process should happen in every planetary system composed of a giant planet in a very close-in orbit,” Sucerquia says. “So ploonets should be very frequent.”
Some ploonets may be indistinguishable from ordinary planets. Others, whose orbits keep them close to their planet, could reveal their presence by changing the timing of when their neighbor planet crosses, or transits, in front of the star. The ploonet should stay close enough to the planet that its gravity can speed or slow the planet’s transit times. Those deviations should be detectable by combining data from planet-hunting telescopes like NASA’s TESS or the now-defunct Kepler, Sucerquia says.
Ploonethood may be a relatively short-lived phenomenon, though, making the worlds more difficult to spot. About half of the ploonets in the researchers’ simulations crashed into either their planet or star within about half a million years. And half of the remaining survivors crashed within a million years.
Even with few visible survivors, ploonets could help explain some bizarre exoplanetary features. Moon debris from such crashes could lead to giant ring systems around planets, like the 37 rings that encircle exoplanet J1407b, the team says.
Or, if the ploonet had an icy surface or an atmosphere before moving close to its star, the star’s heat would evaporate it, giving the ploonet a tail like a comet’s. Evaporating ploonets zipping by with a long light-blocking tail could explain strangely flickering stars like Tabby’s star, Sucerquia says (SN: 12/22/18, p. 9).
“Those structures [rings and flickers] have been discovered, have been observed,” Sucerquia says. “We just propose a natural mechanism to explain [them].”
While the solar system doesn’t have any hot Jupiters, ploonethood may be possible here, too. Earth’s moon is moving slowly away from the Earth, at a rate of about 4 centimeters per year. When it eventually breaks free, “the moon is a potential ploonet,” Sucerquia says — although that won’t happen for about 5 billion years.
The study is a good first step for thinking about what would happen to exomoons in real planetary systems, says planetary astrophysicist Natalie Hinkel of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, who wasn’t involved in the new work. “Nobody’s looked at the problem quite like this,” she says. “It adds to the layers of how complex these systems are.”
Plus, ploonet is “a wonderful name,” Hinkel says. “Normally I sort of eye-roll at these made-up names, but this one is a keeper.”
An epic lunar laser experiment is still going strong, five decades after the Apollo astronauts set it up on the surface.
The moonwalking crew of Apollo 11, which landed on the moon 50 years ago this month, put special retroreflectors on the lunar surface, as did the later crews of Apollo 14 and 15, in 1971. (Another retroreflector, built by the French, sits on the Soviet Lunokhod 2 rover that landed without a crew in 1973.)
The NASA experiment, called the laser ranging retroreflector, is "a special type of mirror with the property of always reflecting an incoming light beam back in the direction it came from," explained the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in a statement. And the reflector is key for measuring the distance between the Earth and the moon, the institute added.
The way it works is an observatory — quite often the McDonald Observatory in Texas, although many others have participated — shoots a laser beam at the moon. "They remain tightly focused for large distances," the institute explained, although there is some dispersion. By the time the beam bounces off the mirror and returns to Earth, it has widened to about 12 miles (20 kilometers) in diameter. This beam dispersion makes it more difficult to view the reflection.
The reflector itself doesn't require any power, which is why it's still operating decades after other instruments on the moon fell silent. This instrument includes 100 "corner cubes" (or fused silica half-cubes), which are placed in an 18-inch-square (46 centimeters square) aluminum panel, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It's due to the shape of these corner cubes that any laser shot at them reflects light directly back. Over the years, measurements of the moon's distance have improved thanks to better laser and computing equipment.
"Once the laser beam hits a reflector, scientists at the observatories use sensitive filtering and amplification equipment to detect any return signal," JPL said. "The reflected light is too weak to be seen with the human eye, but under good conditions, one photon, the fundamental particle of light, will be received every few seconds."
Observations must be made over several hours to account for the weak signal. But by averaging out the signal, researchers can calculate the moon's distance down to a precision of less than 1 inch (2 cm), JPL said. That's not a bad margin of error given that the moon's distance averages 238,855 miles (384,400 km) from our planet, or about 30 Earth diameters away from us. It's a distance so vast that it took Apollo astronauts three days to get there.
While the experiment is most famous for its measurements of lunar distance, researchers have also used the data to show that the moon has a fluid core and that the natural satellite is moving slowly away from Earth, said James Williams, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory involved in the experiment, in a 2009 Space.com interview.
The timing of the laser round trip provided evidence supporting Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. That theory says, in part, that the speed of light in a vacuum is independent of any observer's motion. This experiment also showed that Isaac Newton's gravitational constant is extremely constant, changing by less than 1 part in 100 billion between 1969 and 2004, NASA stated.
As this sign outside of Nevada’s infamous Area 51 military base reminds would-be visitors, guards are authorized to respond to trespassers with deadly force.
Pack your shades, your sunscreen and your coziest tinfoil hat, because the late-summer event of the season is happening in Nevada's scenic Area 51, and you're invited.
According to a tongue-in-cheek Facebook event called "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," a ragtag army of alien hunters will meet up near the top-secret Air Force base in the predawn hours of Sept. 20, coordinate a plan of attack, then raid the grounds in search of captive aliens. Per the event's hosts (a page that posts memes and a guy who streams video games on Twitch), the delicate operation will involve running supernaturally fast — faster than the guards' bullets can fly — but will be worth it to "see them aliens."
So far, nearly 200,000 Facebook users have signed up to attend, with another 200,000 "interested" in the affair.
This event is, of course, a joke (please, do not raid this or any other military base). Area 51 — a massive plot of desert about 80 miles (129 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas — is a top-secret military installation that is infamously well-guarded by fences, radars and heavily armed "camo dudes" in white trucks. After more than 60 years of operations, the base's primary purpose remains classified and its grounds restricted to the public, fomenting an aura of spooky secrecy that has intrigued all manner of skeptics and conspiracy theorists for decades.
This much is known about the base: It's huge, covering a total of 2.9 million acres (1.2 million hectares) and 5,000 square miles (12,950 square km) of restricted airspace. Officially, the base is part of the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), which is affiliated with Nellis Air Force Base; according to the Air Force, it is the largest combined air and ground space for peacetime military operations in the free world.
Since the Air Force set up shop there in 1955, Area 51 has hosted hundreds of nuclear weapons tests and has served as a training-and-testing ground for all manner of top-secret stealth aircraft, Live Science previously reported. If you believe the most popular conspiracy theory about the base, one of those aircraft may be an alien saucer that crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in the late 1940s.
The U.S. military claimed that the mysterious object was a weather balloon (a 1994 Air Force report confirmed this to be true — albeit, a souped-up weather balloon designed to detect far-off nuclear fallout). However, conspiracy theorists insisted that the wreck was indeed an alien spacecraft, which had been subsequently transported to Area 51 to be broken apart, studied and put back together again. This theory gained traction in the 1980s, when a man claiming to have worked at Area 51 told the news media that he had actually seen scientists reverse engineer alien saucers there.
This man, it turns out, was a liar who never set foot on the base (he also lied about the colleges he went to and other past employment); but his stories gained enough attention that Area 51 had a new, permanent reputation as that eerie place in the desert where scientists might be tinkering with aliens. Subsequent tests of experimental, top-secret aircraft at the base have only strengthened this far-out legacy.
The allure of the mysterious desert base is undeniable. So, what happens if you do attempt to trespass into Area 51 and liberate the juicy alien secrets contained within? For starters, you'll probably be stopped at gunpoint by guards dressed in camo, as two intrepid adventurers experienced in 2016 after trying to sneak a camera through the base's back gate.
According to signs posted around the base, these infamous "camo dudes" are permitted to greet trespassers with deadly force — but, if past encounters are any indication, trespassers are more likely to be met with a hefty fine and a court date. When an SUV filled with tourists accidentally crossed into the base's restricted area a few years ago, the driver and four passengers were each cited with a $650 fine and a misdemeanor charge. The unwary passengers eventually got their charges dropped, but the driver had to pay up — and was banned from leading tours in the area for several years.
If you happen to join the joke raid proposed for this September, keep that man's story in mind. When it comes to unearthing the truth of Area 51, you may have only one shot. Choose your plan wisely.
It looks like Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft has snagged its second souvenir from asteroid Ryugu, marking one of the last major milestones of the probe's visit.
Today's (July 10) maneuver was a calculated risk, as mission staff sought to weigh the scientific value of a subsurface sample with the possibility that failure would jeopardize the sample that the team believes is on board the spacecraft. Now, Hayabusa2 has just one more rover to deploy on the space rock before it departs at the end of the year.
The maneuver stretched on for hours as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Hayabusa2 slowly lowered itself to the surface. At 100 feet (30 meters) above the surface, the spacecraft spotted the bright, white target marker it had dropped during a preparatory procedure.
That marker is 65 feet (20 m) north of the site where, in April, the spacecraft deployed a copper bomb to create an artificial crater in order to look below the asteroid's surface. (JAXA had decided that sampling sites within the crater itself were too rocky and would risk the spacecraft's safety.)
Finally, at about 9:15 p.m. EDT (0115 GMT on July 11), Hayabusa2 touched down, fired a tantalum bullet into the space rock and — if all went according to plan — collected a bit of the resulting debris. That debris should be extra-special — not just any space rock, but pristine material dug out from below the surface of the space rock by the formation of the crater.
Because Ryugu does not have an atmosphere or magnetic field, the asteroid's surface is exposed to all the hazards of space. Cosmic rays and charged particles of solar wind streaming off the sun pummel Ryugu and its companions, altering the rock at the exterior of these bodies.
But underneath these shells, asteroids contain the rubble left over from the birth of the planets. That's why scientists hope that today's procedure in particular will help them understand how the solar system formed: by allowing them to not just analyze the crater that Hayabusa2 created on the surface but also get that rock into labs here on Earth.
[PPTD] July 11 at 10:39 JST. The antenna has switched to the HGA (high-gain) and telemetry data has been received. We are now checking the state of the spacecraft.
HAYABUSA2@JAXA@haya2e_jaxa
[PPTD] July 11 at 10:51 JST: Gate 5 check. The state of the spacecraft is normal and the touchdown sequence was performed as scheduled. Project Manager Tsuda has declared that the 2nd touchdown was a success!
The Hayabusa2 spacecraft was designed with three compartments for sample storage. Mission staff believed two of those compartments were already holding pieces of Ryugu; now they hope the third one does as well.
But until the spacecraft makes its way back to Earth and scientists can get inside that sample storage system, they aren't sure what's in there. Once the samples arrive, the team will first weed out anything from the spacecraft's operations; the metals of the bomb and bullets used during the mission were chosen because they do not exist on asteroids and so will be easy to identify and discard.
Then, it's all about the asteroid science, whatever that turns out to be. JAXA ran into trouble during the sampling portion of Hayabusa2's predecessor mission and ended up with minuscule grains of an asteroid called Itokawa in 2010. Yet scientists have still made discoveries based on that dust. For example, they found that there is water on the space rock and that Itokawa seems to be built from rubble formed during a large collision. If Hayabusa2 has grabbed larger hunks of asteroid, that's more material for more science.
Of course, all that will have to wait until the spacecraft makes its journey back to Earth. It has one more task to accomplish first: deploying a small rover, called MINERVA-II2, later this summer. Then, in November or December, Hayabusa2 will head home, delivering its bounty toward the end of next year.
How moon landing conspiracy theories began and why they persist today
Bill Kaysing was a former US Navy officer who worked as a technical writer for one of the rocket manufacturers for NASA’s Apollo moon missions. He claimed that he had inside knowledge of a government conspiracy to fake the moon landings, and many conspiracy theories about the Apollo moon landings which persist to this day can be traced back to his 1976 book,We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle.
The basic template of the conspiracy theory is that NASA couldn’t manage to safely land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s as President John F Kennedy had promised, so it only sent astronauts into Earth orbit. Conspiracy theorists then argue that NASA staged the moon landings in a film studio and that there are tell-tale signs on the footage and the photos that give the game away. They claim that NASA has covered up the elaborate hoax ever since.
Moon landing sceptics point to supposed clues such as photos that appear to show the astronauts in front of cross hairs that were etched on the camera glass, or a mysterious letter C visible on a moon rock. These and many other seeming anomalies have been debunked, but moon landing conspiracy theories have persisted in the popular imagination.
In the US, opinion polls indicate that between 5-10% of Americans distrust the official version of events. In the UK, a YouGov poll in 2012 found that 12% of Britons believed in the conspiracy theory. A recent survey found that 20% of Italians believe that the moon landings were a hoax, while a 2018 poll in Russia put the figure there as high as 57%, unsurprising given the popularity of anti-Western conspiracy theories there.
To the moon and beyond is a new podcast series from The Conversation marking the 50th anniversary of the moon landings. Listen and subscribe here.
Ready to disbelieve
That Kaysing’s conspiracy theory took hold in mid-1970s America is in large part due to a wider crisis of trust in the country at the time. In 1971, citizens read the leaked Pentagon Papers, showing that the Johnson administration had been systematically lying about the Vietnam War. They tuned in nightly to the hearings about the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up.
A series of congressional reports detailed CIA malfeasance both at home and abroad, and in 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinationsconcluded – in contrast to the Warren Commission more than a decade earlier – that there was a high probability that there had been a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. These revelations had helped fuel a wider shift in conspiracy thinking since the late 1960s, from a belief in external enemies, such as Communists, to the suspicion that the American state was itself conspiring against its citizens.
Moon landing conspiracy theories have proved particularly sticky ever since. To understand their popularity we need to consider their cultural context, as much as the psychological dispositions of believers.
As with the Kennedy assassination, they formed a new kind of conspiracy theorising. These theories reinterpret the publicly available evidence, finding inconsistencies in the official record, rather than uncovering suppressed information. Visual evidence is crucial: for all their scepticism, their starting point is that seeing is believing. In the realm of photo evidence, the assumption is that everyone can be a detective. In the conspiracy theory communities that emerged at the tail-end of the 1960s, the self-taught buff became central.
The moon landing conspiracy theories also brought to the mainstream the notion that significant events are not what they seem: they have been staged, part of an official disinformation campaign. The idea that tragic events are created by “crisis actors” employed by the government has become the default explanation for many events today, from 9/11 to mass shootings. This type of conspiracy theory is particularly harmful – for example, parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting have been relentlessly hounded by internet trolls claiming they are merely paid stooges.
However, the story that the lunar landings were staged also resonates with the more plausible notion that the space race itself was as much a Cold War spectacle as a triumph of the human spirit.
The 1978 Hollywood film Capricorn One did much to popularise moon landing conspiracy theories. Based on Kaysing’s book, it imagined that a Mars landing was faked in a film studio, tapping into conspiracy rumours that the moon landings themselves had been directed by Stanley Kubrick. This suggestive myth is based in part on the idea that special effects had become much more sophisticated with Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001 A Space Odyssey, although still far from the capabilities that the conspiracy theories suppose.
Even if they are far-fetched in factual terms, moon landing conspiracy theories nevertheless call up the more plausible possibility that in our media-saturated age reality itself is constructed, if not actually faked.
We zijn nooit op de maan geweest. Hoe complottheorieën over de maanlandingen zijn ontstaan
We zijn nooit op de maan geweest. Hoe complottheorieën over de maanlandingen zijn ontstaan
Bill Kaysing was een voormalige Amerikaanse marineofficier die werkte voor één van de fabrikanten die de raketten leverden voor de Apollomissies van de NASA.
Hij claimde in zijn boek ‘We Never Went to the Moon’ (We zijn nooit op de maan geweest) dat de overheid de maanlandingen in scène had gezet.
Veel mensen geloven dat de maanlandingen nooit hebben plaatsgevonden. Uit een recente peiling blijkt bijvoorbeeld dat een vijfde van de Italianen gelooft dat de maanlandingen een hoax waren.
Complot
Een peiling uit 2018 laat zien dat bijna zes op de 10 Russen niet geloven dat de Amerikanen op de maan zijn geweest.
Het boek van Kaysing kwam uit in 1976. Enkele jaren daarvoor, in 1971, onthulden de gelekte Pentagon Papers dat de regering-Johnson lange tijd had gelogen over de Vietnamoorlog.
Daarnaast concludeerde de zogeheten House Select Committee on Assassinations van de Amerikaanse overheid in 1976 – in tegenstelling tot de Commissie-Waren – dat de vermoorde president Kennedy hoogstwaarschijnlijk het slachtoffer was geweest van een complot.
Filmstudio
Het gevolg hiervan was dat het vertrouwen van de Amerikaanse burger in de overheid steeds verder wegzakte.
In 1978 kwam de Hollywoodfilm Capricorn One uit, gebaseerd op het boek van Kaysing.
De film gaat over een landing op Mars die in werkelijkheid is opgenomen in een filmstudio, als verwijzing naar geruchten dat de maanlandingen waren geregisseerd door Stanley Kubrick.
India keert terug naar de maan met nieuwe missie ‘Chandrayaan-2’ - HLN.be
India keert terug naar de maan met nieuwe missie ‘Chandrayaan-2’ -HLN.be
EPADe Chandrayaan-2 wordt zondag 14 juli gelanceerd. Twee maanden later, op 6 of 7 september, zal het ruimtetuig landen op de maan.
De race naar de maan is er eentje waar tal van landen aan deelnemen. Daaronder ook India. Zij maken de Chandrayaan-2, een onbemande lander, klaar om de maan te veroveren. Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)plant de lancering op zondag 14 juli 2019.
Na het succes van de vorige Indiase missie naar de maan, Chandrayaan-1, gaat de nieuwe missie alweer een stapje verder. Dit keer moet het ruimtetuig ook landen op de maan. Dat zal onbemand gebeuren. Als India daarin slaagt, zal het land het vierde ter wereld zijn om een maanrover te laten rondrijden op de maan.
Op 14 juli wordt de maanrover reeds gelanceerd. En als alles zoals gepland gaat, zal de maanrover twee maanden later – op 6 of 7 september – eveneens landen op het maanoppervlak. Dat gebeurt zo’n 600 kilometer van de zuidpool van de maan, een plaats waar voorlopig geen enkele ruimtetuig landde. Daar zal de lander gedurende een jaar gesteenten en maanbevingen bestuderen.
Ook NASA heeft plannen met de maan. De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie wil een nieuw ruimtestation rond de maan bouwen.
EPADe Chandrayaan-2 wordt zondag 14 juli gelanceerd. Twee maanden later, op 6 of 7 september, zal het ruimtetuig landen op de maan.
WETENSCHAP In de nacht van 14 op 15 juli lanceert het Indiase ruimteagentschap ISRO de maansonde Chandrayaan-2, aan boord van de Indische draagraket GSLV Mk-III. Het Luikse bedrijf Amos produceerde de optische onderdelen van het hyperspectrale instrument (IIRS) aan boord van de orbiter, meldt het vandaag.
Deze infrarode afbeeldingsspectrometer zal de minerale en volatiele verbindingen in kaart brengen, en de overvloed aan water en hydroxylionen op het maanoppervlak karakteriseren, aldus het bedrijf.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETEr is leven ontdekt op een van de extreemste plekken op aarde en dat zou wel eens kunnen betekenen dat er op Pluto ook leven mogelijk is. Wetenschappers trokken naar hooggelegen ijspieken in een afgelegen gebied in de Andes, waarvan gedacht werd dat leven er onmogelijk was. Maar nu zijn er in die ijspieken, die ook op Pluto voorkomen, toch organismen ontdekt.
Hoog in de Andes bevinden zich metershoge ijspieken, of zogenaamde penitenten, die recent ook zijn ontdekt op Pluto. Ze zijn een zeldzaam verschijnsel op Aarde en komen enkel voor in de meest extreme situaties, waar de temperaturen hevig schommelen, de wind gevaarlijk hard waait en de UV-straling intens is. Het lijken onmogelijke levenssituaties, maar onderzoekers hebben nu ontdekt dat er toch een soort eencellige sneeuwalg leeft. Het is voor het eerst dat ze kunnen aantonen dat er op dergelijke ijzige pieken leven mogelijk is.
Rode verkleuringen
Tijdens een zware expeditie naar ’s werelds tweede grootste vulkaan in de Andes namen de biologen rode verkleuringen waar in de hoge penitenten, iets wat wijst op microbiologisch leven. De onderzoekers namen enkele stalen mee en nadat ze die hadden onderzocht, konden ze de aanwezigheid van twee algensoorten bevestigen.
Dat er leven gevonden is in dergelijke extreme omstandigheden, bewijst volgens de onderzoekers dat er op heel wat plaatsen leven mogelijk is, hoe uitdagend de omgeving ook is. De enige voorwaarde is dat er vloeibaar water aanwezig is, aldus Lara Vimercati, hoofdonderzoekster bij het project. Deze voedselarme en extreme locatie zou de uitgelezen situatie zijn om te testen wat de precieze limieten van leven zijn en wat naast de aanwezigheid van water nog vereisten zijn.
Leven op Pluto
De resultaten van het onderzoek zijn heel interessant. Niet alleen omdat ze bewijzen dat ook op extreme plaatsen leven mogelijk is, maar ook omdat op Pluto dergelijke ijspieken aanwezig zijn. Daar zijn ze tot wel 500 meter hoog. Als op ijspieken op aarde micro-organismen voorkomen, is dat misschien ook wel elders mogelijk.
WETENSCHAP De Japanse sonde Hayabusa-2 is er voor de tweede keer in geslaagd om kort neer te strijken op de asteroïde Ryugu. Dat heeft het Japanse ruimtevaartbureau Jaxa gemeld. De asteroïde met een diameter van 900 meter bevindt zich op ongeveer 280 tot 300 miljoen kilometer van ons.
Het vluchtleidingscentrum kreeg volgens een woordvoerder van Jaxa signalen binnen die de geslaagde landing zouden bevestigen. Er is echter nog een definitieve bevestiging nodig, maar die wordt pas later verwacht, luidde het.
De asteroïde met een diameter van 900 meter bevindt zich op ongeveer 280 tot 300 miljoen kilometer van ons. Doel van de huidige missie van de Hayabusa-2 is het verzamelen van monsters van onder het oppervlak van het hemellichaam.
lees verder onder de foto:
EPADe schaduw van de 'Hayabusa 2' toont hoe de ruimtesonde landt op de Ryugu-asteroïde.
Stalen
Het avontuur van de Hayabusa-2 begon op 3 december 2014. De sonde startte toen een lange reis van 3,2 miljard kilometer, een reis die nog lang niet voorbij is. In februari slaagde de Hayabusa-2 er al een eerste keer in om kort te landen op Ryugu.
Eind 2020 moet de ongeveer 600 kilo wegende sonde naar de aarde terugkeren met stalen van de asteroïde. Wetenschappers hopen aan de hand van de verzamelde gegevens meer kennis te verwerven over ons zonnestelsel met als ultieme doel het ontstaan van leven op aarde beter te begrijpen.
Kyodo/via REUTERSDe lancering van de raket die de Hayabusa-2 draagt in december 2014.
The long-buried structure, dating back at least 4,600 years, was constructed of marble transported from nearby Aegean islands on tiny wooden ships.
"It is by far the largest prehistoric marine transport operation that has ever come to light anywhere in the world," said Dr Julian Whitewright, a leading maritime archaeologist at the University of Southampton, told the Independent.
"It demonstrates quite clearly just how important, and integral to their culture, seafaring was to these early Bronze Age Aegean people.”
The huge quantity of white marble was shipped from Naxos, an island some six-and-a-half miles away.
Based on illustrations of early Greek sailing craft on Bronze Age pottery, archaeologists estimate that it would have required over 3,500 trips with 24 sailors rowing solidly for five hours in open water.
The Greeks built a huge structure, using up to 10,000 tonnes of marble, completely transforming the shape of the island of Keros – known today as Dhaskalio.
“These very early Greeks were organisationally, technically and politically much more advanced than previously thought”
Michael Boyd
CONCEALED: The white marble pyramid was hidden on the Greek island (Pic: Cambridge Keros Project)
Elsewhere on the island, archaeologists have found innumerable knives, tools, and small sculptures which may have been left as offerings by those visiting the island.
It was part of a worldwide explosion of monumental building – the ruined pyramid of Dhaskalio is roughly the same age as Stonehenge, the lost city of Eridu in Iraq, and the earliest pyramids in Egypt.
The pyramid structure seems to have occurred independently to the Greeks and Egyptians, and a little later the Aztecs, as the ideal shape for monumental building.
BEGINNINGS: Cycladic culture blossomed into the Greek civilisation inspired Western culture (Pic: National Archaeological Museum of Athens)
When Dhaskalio was newly-built the white marble structure would have been an amazing sight to seafarers in the region and was almost certainly a site of major religious significance across the region.
Creation myths of many early cultures revolve around a mountain emerging from the chaos of the sea and it’s possible that Dhaskalio was intended to represent that first land.
ENGINEERING: The pyramid shape of the island is man-made (Pic: Cambridge Keros Project)
"It is potentially a fundamental place of origin for the phenomenon of sacred mountains within the Greek world," said Dr Alan Peatfield of University College Dublin's School of Archaeology, who is a renowned expert on Greek mountaintop sanctuaries
Michael Boyd of Cambridge University's McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, who is a co-director of the investigation, told the Independent: ”Our investigation has been transforming our understanding of early Bronze Age Cycladic culture and suggests that these very early Greeks were organisationally, technically and politically much more advanced than previously thought.”
4,600-Year Old Pyramid As Old As Stonehenge Reveals Bginnings Of Ancient Greek Civilisation In What Today Is The Island Of Dhaskalio
4,600-Year Old Pyramid As Old As Stonehenge Reveals Beginnings Of Ancient Greek Civilisation In What Today Is The Island Of Dhaskalio
The long-buried pyramid of Dhaskalio, dating back at least 4,600 years, was constructed of marble transported from nearby Aegean islands on tiny wooden ships.
More than 4,600 years ago builders carved out the entire surface of a naturally pyramid-shaped promontory on the Greek island of Keros. They shaped it into terraces covered with 1,000 tonnes of specially imported gleaming white stone to give it the appearance of a giant stepped pyramid rising from the Aegean: the most imposing manmade structure in all the Cyclades archipelago.
But beneath the surface of the terraces lay undiscovered feats of engineering and craftsmanship to rival the structure’s impressive exterior. Archaeologists from three different countries involved in an ongoing excavation have found evidence of a complex of drainage tunnels – constructed 1,000 years before the famous indoor plumbing of the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete – and traces of sophisticated metalworking.
A Mysterious Pyramid As Old As Stonehenge Has Been Discovered On Tiny Greek Island.
FROM DAILY STAR UK: “It is by far the largest prehistoric marine transport operation that has ever come to light anywhere in the world,” said Dr Julian Whitewright, a leading maritime archaeologist at the University of Southampton, told the Independent. “It demonstrates quite clearly just how important, and integral to their culture, seafaring was to these early Bronze Age Aegean people.” The huge quantity of white marble was shipped from Naxos, an island some six-and-a-half miles away.
Based on illustrations of early Greek sailing craft on Bronze Age pottery, archaeologists estimate that it would have required over 3,500 trips with 24 sailors rowing solidly for five hours in open water. The Greeks built a huge structure, using up to 10,000 tonnes of marble, completely transforming the shape of the island of Keros – known today as Dhaskalio. Elsewhere on the island, archaeologists have found innumerable knives, tools, and small sculptures which may have been left as offerings by those visiting the island.
It was part of a worldwide explosion of monumental building – the ruined pyramid of Dhaskalio is roughly the same age as Stonehenge, the lost city of Eridu in Iraq, and the earliest pyramids in Egypt.
The pyramid structureseems to have occurred independently to the Greeks and Egyptians, and a little later the Aztecs, as the ideal shape for monumental building. When Dhaskalio was newly-built the white marble structure would have been an amazing sight to seafarers in the region and was almost certainly a site of major religious significance across the region.
Creation myths of many early cultures revolve around a mountain emerging from the chaos of the sea and it’s possible that Dhaskalio was intended to represent that first land. “It is potentially a fundamental place of origin for the phenomenon of sacred mountains within the Greek world,” said Dr Alan Peatfield of University College Dublin’s School of Archaeology, who is a renowned expert on Greek mountaintop sanctuaries
Michael Boydof Cambridge University’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, who is a co-director of the investigation, told the Independent: ”Our investigation has been transforming our understanding of early Bronze Age Cycladic culture and suggests that these very early Greeks were organisationally, technically and politically much more advanced than previously thought.” READ MORE
Here are some cool ancient alien artefacts found by Youtube Whatsupinthesky27. The objects are clear indications that intelligent beings once thrived on this planet. One of the objects has a jar shape, but is fallen over on its side. It not a jar of course, its clear that its more high tech than that with all its pipes and tubes moving down its side. It looks very similar to a lot of jars seen recored from old roman digs. The other object has a lot layers and was obviously some kind of mechanical device. Scott C. Waring
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
New Crop Circle Found In Farmers Field In Switzerland July 1, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
New Crop Circle Found In Farmers Field In Switzerland July 1, 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: July 1, 2019 Location of formation: Bern, Switzerland A farmer in Switzerland went out to his field and found a crop formation. He says he lost 100 Francs in corn from it being there and knows people are going to want to see it so he is expecting visitors. These crop formations didn't start recently.
Probably the most renowned is the "Mowing Devil" case in Hertfordshire in 1678, in which a farmer's field was said to have been visited by a devilish entity that trampled the crops down in a circle. The event was captured for posterity on a wood engraving. Also a book called "A Natural History of Staffordshire" in 1686, in which was reference to rings, circles and other shapes found in grassy fields. So you see, crop circles in the UK have been appearing for hundreds of years or more. I believe these circles re the locations where UFOs have entered and exited alien bases. The base would be deep under the ground probably around 5-6km and a tubular space would be formed in the ground lowering the UFO slowly like an elevator. Aliens have control of everything and controlling dirt and grass is much easier than you might think. Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
During the daily inspection on Monday, farmer Hans-Rudolf Wyder discovered holes in his cereal field in Büren an der Aare: "In the beginning, I thought these were caused by wind and rain - but somehow they were too regular." The farmer decided to take photos to shoot a drone. "When I saw in the pictures that it was a crop circle, that was a terrible mistake." How and when the crop circle came into its field, the farmer can not explain. It is not small: according to Wyder, the artwork has a diameter of around 50 meters.
So far, he has not recorded any visitors, but he expects that they will appear soon - on Facebook, the first images would be shared. Wyder says he has mixed feelings about the circle: "It is beautiful and anything but ordinary, but it also means a loss of income for me. That's why I lose a good 1000 francs in corn. "He does not know who made the circle:" Anyone should believe in what he wants anyway. "He himself had never believed that these circles were made by extraterrestrials or other powers "But when I look at how regular and perfect this circle is done, it astonishes me a lot."
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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.