The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
04-07-2020
War on Mars: Alien hunters make shock claim after discovering 'BULLET' on Mars
War on Mars: Alien hunters make shock claim after discovering 'BULLET' on Mars
ALIEN hunters believe they have discovered evidence of an ancient WAR on Mars after finding what they believe to be a discarded bullet.
Extraterrestrials once resided on Mars but went extinct after a planet-wide war - according to a bizarre new claim. Conspiracy theorists are shockingly claiming that a thin rock discovered inNASA images is actually an ancient bullet. The claimants argue not only is this evidence of past life on the Red Planet but also that the beings there were involved in war.
The shock claim was made by prominent UFO enthusiast Scott C Waring, who said Martians destroyed themselves.
Taking to his ET Database blog, Mr Waring said: "What I found was something I didn't want to find - a bullet.
"This tiny projectile is longer than most bullets but does appear to still be unused. I see the head of the bullet which looks like is make [sic] from a copper alloy.
"The lower part of the projectile is the the case which is quite long. The longer case means it could hold more gunpowder to propel the bullet further.
War on Mars: Alien hunters make shock claim after discovering 'BULLET' on Mars
(Image: ET DATABASE)
"What I found was something I didn't want to find - a bullet."
(Image: ET DATABASE)
"The back part of the bullet has a square area which may have made each bullet manually loaded into the gun one at time, meaning the gun held only one shot at a time.
"It may be a sign of a great battle taking place long ago. A battle that very well may have destroyed Mars itself."
However, sceptics and NASA would say the bullet as other similar findings are just the effects of pareidolia – a psychological phenomenon when the brain tricks the eyes into seeing familiar objects or shapes in patterns or textures such as a rock surface.
But this is not the first time someone has said there was a huge war on Mars.
A user on Reddit posted his theory on the social media site, which claims Martians were forced to flee their planet when disaster struck.
"It may be a sign of a great battle taking place long ago. A battle that very well may have destroyed Mars itself."
As a result, the aliens created our Moon as a new base as to rescue as many of the population as possible.
The Redditer, Brarticus, wrote: “I think the Moon is not only an artificial structure.
“I think Mars was home to intelligent life and they faced a catastrophic planetary event and our Moon was created to rescue as much of their population as possible.
"It was manufactured as an Ark by 'Martians' in the very, very distant past.
"Look at the surface of Mars - it's obvious something catastrophic occurred.”
After it jumped between millions of humans, SARS-CoV-2 has suffered many mutations along the way. A particular strain, known as ‘D614G’, is more adapted to infecting human cells than earlier mutation variants of the coronavirus. As such, it didn’t take long for D614G to become the dominant coronavirus strain seen in new cases across the globe.
Prior to March, D614G was present in just a few locations across the globe, mostly spreading in Europe. However, small changes in the virus’ ‘spike’ protein — a protrusion on the surface of the virus that latches on to cell receptors in order to commence infection — has made D614G much more suited to infecting humans.
By the end of March, D614G was already present across the world, becoming the dominant strain, replacing D614.
Map showing how the new strain (blue) spread rapidly across the world. Credit: University of Sheffield.
These findings were revealed by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Duke University in North Carolina, and the University of Sheffield in the UK, who analyzed genome samples from GISID — a huge database of genome sequences shared among researchers worldwide. Tens of thousands of sequences are currently available, enabling researchers to quickly identify virus variants that show signs of rising to the top.
Dr. Thushan de Silva, Senior Clinical Lecturer in Infectious Diseases at the University of Sheffield, has been studying the new D614G genome mutation variant in the lab since the pandemic first started. It was clear since then that the strain was more potent. However, de Silva found that strain is even more infectious in the real world than in the lab.
“Data provided by our team in Sheffield suggested that the new strain was associated with higher viral loads in the upper respiratory tract of patients with COVID-19, meaning the virus’s ability to infect people could be increased,” de Silva said in a statement for the press.
“Fortunately at this stage, it does not seem that viruses with D614G cause more severe disease.”
Next, de Silva and colleagues will focus on conducting laboratory analyses of live cells infected with D614G in order to fully understand what this new mutation is capable of doing in the future.
“It’s remarkable to me,” commented Dr Will Fischer, from Los Alamos National Laboratory and an author on the study. “That this increase in infectivity was detected by careful observation of sequence data alone, and that our experimental colleagues could confirm it with live virus in such a short time.”
This cave pool, found in the Lechuguilla Cave of New Mexico, appears to be completely pristine. It was discovered in October at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
MAX WISSHAK PHOTO/CARLSBAD CAVERNS NATIONAL PARK
An expedition into “virgin” cave passages found at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico has discovered an isolated pool of liquid believed to have never before been seen by humans.
A photo shows the pool surrounded by white frosted rock, and filled with an odd-looking liquid that resembles thick lime yogurt.
“This pool has been isolated for hundreds of thousands of years and had never seen light before that day,” said Rodney Horrocks, Chief of Natural and Cultural Resources at Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
It was found 700 feet below the entrance of Lechuguilla Cave, a “sister cave” in the back country of Carlsbad Caverns National Park. (The park covers 46,766 acres.) It was discovered in 1993, but not entered until October, he said. Lechuguilla is one of the 10 longest caves in the world., the National Park Service says.
Geoscientist Max Wisshak, who led the expedition, told McClatchy News the color of the water is an optical illusion: It’s actually “crystal clear,” he said in an email.
The discovery — made in a cavern 328 feet in length — is important because the pool has been isolated from human contact for hundreds of thousands of years, experts say.
“Such untouched pools are scientifically important because water samples are relatively free of contaminants and the microbial organisms that may live in those pools are only those that belong there,” Wisshak said.
“Contamination can occur from the surface above the cave, but in case of Lechuguilla Cave, that’s not a big issue, since it is situated in a well-protected wilderness area. Contamination can also occur via aerosols in the air. However, a newly discovered pool in Lechuguilla Cave is about as pristine as it gets.”
Horrocks says microbiologists have found new species of microbes when sampling pools in Lechuguilla Cave and the latest discovery could bring more surprises.
The pool is about a foot wide, 2 feet long and “several inches deep,” he said. As for the source of the water, it likely started as rain that seeped through the overlying limestone, then dripped or slid down the cave walls into the pool.
An exact age for the formation has not been determined, but it’s still growing, Horrocks said. “So, the top layer dates to this year and the ones below are older. These formations typically grow and stop growing for varying periods of time, so the layers on the bottom can be very old,” he said.
There are several more such pools in the passage, the largest of which has been named “Lake of Liquid Sky,” Horrocks said.
Wisshak is publishing research on the unique barite crystals in Lechuguilla Cave. He has also applied for grant funding to return to the site for a broader study of the crystals. Both the pool and the cave passage contain barite, which is rarely found in caves, and that needs to be scientifically investigated, he says.
The cave exploration, which included “numerous rope drops,” mapped 1.3 miles of passages during the October expedition, about 4,344 feet of which were new discoveries. No signs of life “visible to the naked eye” were found in the new passages.
However, “we found bat skeletons, thousands of years old, in some places in the cave,” Wisshak said.
Remember the STS-75 incident where its satellite tether snapped in 1992 where a 12 mile wide satellite cable snapped and these UFOs appeared out of no-where? This looks Identical to these shaped craft. This video was posted “LIVE” and quickly avoided my media TV as they switched over quickly. What do you think?
It seems like every year, there’s more new UFO footage online. With photo and video editing programs being easy to obtain and learn, it’s hard to take any proof seriously. However, some footage is just too outlandish to ignore. So today I’m going to countdown the most bizarre UFO sightings. I’m not saying these clips are authentic proof of alien life, and I’m not trying to convince you. But this interests me, so I’m making a video about it. This is The Top 20 Most Bizarre UFO Sightings.
An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts).
Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term “UFO” (or “UFOB”) was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a “UFOB” was “any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object.” Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to those fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or “technical aspects.” (See Air Force Regulation 200-2.) During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as “flying saucers” or “flying discs”. The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).
Sunken Aboriginal Sites Discovery Dated Back To Time When Seabed Was Dry Land
Sunken Aboriginal Sites Discovery Dated Back To Time When Seabed Was Dry Land
The first underwater Aboriginal archaeological sites have been discovered off northwest Australia dating back thousands of years ago when the current seabed was dry land.
Aboriginal artefacts discovered off the Pilbara coast in Western Australia represent Australia’s oldest known underwater archaeology. The discoveries were made through a series of archaeological and geophysical surveys in the Dampier Archipelago, as part of the Deep History of Sea Country Project, funded through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project Scheme.
An international team of archaeologists from Flinders University, The University of Western Australia, James Cook University, ARA – Airborne Research Australia and the University of York (United Kingdom) partnered with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation to locate and investigate ancient artefacts at two underwater sites which have yielded hundreds of stone tools made by Aboriginal peoples, including grinding stones.
In a study published today in PLOS ONE, the ancient underwater sites, at Cape Bruguieres and Flying Foam Passage, provide new evidence of Aboriginal ways of life from when the seabed was dry land, due to lower sea levels, thousands of years ago.
The submerged cultural landscapes represent what is known today as Sea Country to many Indigenous Australians, who have a deep cultural, spiritual and historical connection to these underwater environments.
“Today we announce the discovery of two underwater archaeological sites that were once on dry land. This is an exciting step for Australian archaeology as we integrate maritime and Indigenous archaeology and draw connections between land and sea,” says Associate Professor Jonathan Benjamin who is the Maritime Archaeology Program Coordinator at Flinders University’s College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
“Australia is a massive continent but few people realise that more than 30% of its land mass was drowned by sea-level rise after the last ice age. This means that a huge amount of the archaeological evidence documenting the lives of Aboriginal people is now underwater.
“Now we finally have the first proof that at least some of this archaeological evidence survived the process of sea level rise. The ancient coastal archaeology is not lost for good; we just haven’t found it yet. These new discoveries are a first step toward exploring the last real frontier of Australian archaeology.”
The dive team mapped 269 artefacts at Cape Bruguieres in shallow water at depths down to 2.4 metres below modern sea level. Radiocarbon dating and analysis of sea-level changes show the site is at least 7000 years old.A diver on the Deep History of Sea Country Project led by Flinders University,
Credit: Hiro Yoshida
The second site at Flying Foam Passage includes an underwater freshwater spring 14 metres below sea level. This site is estimated to be at least 8500 years old. Both sites may be much older as the dates represent minimum ages only; they may be even more ancient.
The team of archaeologists and geoscientists employed predictive modelling and various underwater and remote sensing techniques, including scientific diving methods, to confirm the location of sites and presence of artefacts.
“At one point there would have been dry land stretching out 160 km from the current shoreline. That land would have been owned and lived on by generations of Aboriginal people. Our discovery demonstrates that underwater archaeological material has survived sea-level rise, and although these sites are located in relatively shallow water, there will likely be more in deeper water offshore” says Chelsea Wiseman from Flinders University who has been working on the DHSC project as part of PhD research.
“These territories that are now underwater harboured favourable environments for Indigenous settlements including freshwater, ecological diversity and opportunities to exploit marine resources which would have supported relatively high population densities” says Dr Michael O’Leary, a marine geomorphologist at The University of Western Australia.”
The discovery of these sites emphasises the need for stronger federal legislation to protect and manage underwater heritage across 2 million square kilometres of landscapes that were once above sea level in Australia, and hold major insights into human history.
“Managing, investigating and understanding the archaelogy of the Australian continental shelf in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional owners and custodians is one of the last frontiers in Australian archaeology” said Associate Professor Benjamin.
“Our results represent the first step in a journey of discovery to explore the potential of archaeology on the continental shelves which can fill a major gap in the human history of the continent” he said.
In Murujuga, this adds substantial additional evidence to support the deep time history of human activities accompanying rock art production in this important National Heritage Listed Place.
Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation CEO Peter Jeffries says the discoveries will help the community add to the story of Aboriginal people in the Pilbara.
“Further exploration could unearth similar cultural relics and help us better understand the life of the people who were so connected to these areas of land which are now underwater.
“With this comes a new requirement for the careful management of Aboriginal sea country as it’s not automatically protected by current Heritage legislation, however plans are progressing to lead this change and protect our sea country land and heritage.”
Orange Disk Recorded Over La Paz, Argentina Raw Footage, June 22, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Orange Disk Recorded Over La Paz, Argentina Raw Footage, June 22, 2020, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: June 22, 2020 Location of sighting: La Paz, Argentina Dozens of residents of La Paz witnessed an unusual event at 8 o'clock in the evening on Monday...when a gigantic, well-defined circle appeared in the sky to the south of the city. Social media was flooded with reports suggesting the presence of a "mothership" over La Paz. The object remained motionless for at least half an hour. This is an extraordinary event, since some believed that it had to do with a fire at the city landfill, which gives off a column of smoke that can be seen from various points of Baja California's capital. However, this cannot be ascertained at the time. I have seen such reports and videos of similar orange disks going all the way back to the 1970s. This...is one of those alien craft. Such UFOs are only seen once every few years and always in central and south America. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
White UFO With Dome In Middle Over Grand Canyon, Arizona June 27, 2020.
White UFO With Dome In Middle Over Grand Canyon, Arizona June 27, 2020.
Date of sighting: June 27, 2020
Location of sighting: Grand Canyon, Arizona
Source: MUFON
Watch this video below and I guarantee it will surprise you. This UFO is in high detail, but its not an orb, its a disk. The clear transparent dome is seen in it and the alien who is piloting the craft is watching the person below. Arizona is famous for its UFO sightings and in such a low populated area, UFOs will be more frequently buzzing around. This raw footage is just amazing and it tells us so much in it. It allows us to know how it moves, how it hides in the clouds, how it appears closer and how it appears further away, how they appear to people. So much information in one video. I love it! Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
On June 27, 2020 at approximately 1921 hours, over a dozen tourists observed a stationary circular object with a hole in the middle hovering in one location to the right of the moon near some clouds, for over 30 minutes. Video and pictures were taken with a Samsung phone, which will be uploaded later.
This occurred looking westward towards the moon while standing at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon by the Bright Angel Trails next to the Gift Shop. One of the videos taken with the phone was initially used in telescope mode thinking it would show the object clearer, but was then changed to normal camera view during the recording. This was taken by my daughter on her vacation to the Grand Canyon and you can hear her and her friend talking about the object they were observing. The object disappeared behind some clouds and it was first noticed by another tourist who made mention of a strange object in the sky.
I was looking through some old photos of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission when I came across this tall white tower at the center of the crater. Aristarchus crater is 40km in diameter according to NASA. The tower at the center stands about 1/10th or 10% of the craters diameter. That means although the crater floor is deeper than the surface of the moon, this tower stands a whopping 4km tall. How is that possible? Well a mix of alien alloys and technology mixed with a lower gravity of just 16.6% that of earth and you easily find your answers. The impossible quickly becomes possible.
Ancient Aliens – Aliens and the Presidents History Channel, Season 15 Episode 12 18th April 2020
Researchers link connection of UFO sightings and space alien with presidents like Trump, Abraham Lincoln, Eisenhower and other alleged extraterrestrial cases with founding fathers.
A UFO Baffles Several People and Organizations in Japan
A UFO Baffles Several People and Organizations in Japan
A balloon-like unidentified flying object (UFO) in the sky over Sendai City has left Japanese skywatchers baffled. The strange object didn’t resemble a plane or a bird. It was seen on June 17 at around 7 a.m. local time. The origin of the mysterious object, which looked like a giant, white unmanned balloon, has not been confirmed yet. The Japan Meteorological Agency has denied it was theirs.
The object appeared to be attached to two crossed propellers and continued to hover in the air motionless for a few hours. It drifted later over to the Pacific Ocean.
The strange object looked like a weather balloon, but the Japan Meteorological Agency said they didn’t know anything about it. Yoshihide Suga, the country’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, denied having any knowledge about the origin of the UFO sighted in the nation. Sendai bureau confirmed the object looked like a balloon for monitoring weather.
The aeronautics department of Kyushu University also denied the object was from them. The police consulted several organizations and authorities and all of which refused their association with the bizarre object.
The UFO in Japan has received nationwide attention and has set off a debate involving the government. Yoshihide Suga confirmed that the government is looking into it.
The object flew past the Pacific Ocean after hovering in the sky for several hours.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the latest UFO videos & photos.
This is an artist's illustration of a supermassive black hole and its surrounding disk of gas. Inside this disk are two smaller black holes orbiting one another. Researchers identified a flare of light suspected to have come from one such binary pair soon after they merged into a larger black hole.
(CNN)The center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, can be a strange place. It's notoriously hard to see, obscured from our viewpoint by clouds of gas and dust in one of the galaxy's spiral arms.
But 13 years worth of near-infrared wavelengthdata from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii has captured the bizarre reality behind the haze.
The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is behaving strangely and eating voraciously. And now, astronomers have spotted a weird new class of objects not far from the black hole, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
"These objects look like gas and behave like stars," said Andrea Ghez, study author, director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group and the university's Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics.
Normally, these objects appear compact. But they stretch out when they near the black hole during their orbits, which can last from 100 to 1,000 years.
This is the latest detection in a mystery that's been unfolding since 2005, when Ghez's research team spotted an object in the center of our galaxy they dubbed G1. In 2012, a second object called G2 was found, and it came close to the black hole in 2014.
The astronomers believe G2 was once really two stars that orbited the black hole together, but merged into one massive star and became obscured by a thick gas and dust cloud.
"At the time of closest approach, G2 had a really strange signature," Ghez said. "We had seen it before, but it didn't look too peculiar until it got close to the black hole and became elongated, and much of its gas was torn apart. It went from being a pretty innocuous object when it was far from the black hole to one that was really stretched out and distorted at its closest approach and lost its outer shell, and now it's getting more compact again."
Now, Ghez's research group has discovered four more objects and determined their orbits: G3, G4. G5 and G6. They're incredibly different orbits from G1 and G2, which were similar to one another.
"One of the things that has gotten everyone excited about the G objects is that the stuff that gets pulled off of them by tidal forces as they sweep by the central black hole must inevitably fall into the black hole," said Mark Morris, study co-author and UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. "When that happens, it might be able to produce an impressive fireworks show since the material eaten by the black hole will heat up and emit copious radiation before it disappears across the event horizon."
The researchers think that all six objects are the result of binary stars -- or pairs of stars that orbit one another -- that were forced together due to the strong gravity of Sagittarius A*.
Ghez said that mergers of stars may be happening in the universe more often than we thought and likely are quite common.
"Black holes may be driving binary stars to merge. It's possible that many of the stars we've been watching and not understanding may be the end product of mergers that are calm now, " Ghez said. "We are learning how galaxies and black holes evolve. The way binary stars interact with each other and with the black hole is very different from how single stars interact with other single stars and with the black hole."
G2 differs from the rest of the objects because it didn't undergo as much stretching as the others.
"Something must have kept it compact and enabled it to survive its encounter with the black hole," said Anna Ciurlo, study author and postdoctoral researcher at UCLA. "This is evidence for a stellar object inside G2."
Now, the astronomers have enough evidence to show a small group of G objects -- rather than a couple of instances -- meaning they can continue analyzing them while searching for others.
The fact that these objects have been found near Sagittarius A*, which likely swallowed up the gas it ripped off the stars, means they could actually be feeding the constantly voracious black hole.
It's further proof that chaos is constantly unfolding at the center of not just the Milky Way but many galaxies in the universe.
"The Earth is in the suburbs compared to the center of the galaxy, which is some 26,000 light-years away," Ghez said. "The center of our galaxy has a density of stars 1 billion times higher than our part of the galaxy. The gravitational pull is so much stronger. The magnetic fields are more extreme. The center of the galaxy is where extreme astrophysics occurs -- the X-sports of astrophysics."
Chicxulub collision put Earth’s crust in hot water for over a million years
Chicxulub collision put Earth’s crust in hot water for over a million years
Asteroid crater on the Yucatán Peninsula reveals surprising new geologic details
About 66 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into Earth at what is now Chicxulub, on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula (illustrated). In addition to triggering a mass extinction, the impact sent superheated water cycling deep into the crust.
The asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago left behind more than a legacy of mass destruction. That impact also sent superheated seawater swirling through the crust below for more than a million years, chemically overhauling the rocks. Similar transformative hydrothermal systems, left in the wake of powerful impacts much earlier in Earth’s history, may have been a crucible for early microbial life on Earth, researchers report May 29 in Science Advances.
The massive Chicxulub crater on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula is the fingerprint of a killer, probably responsible for the destruction of more than 75 percent of life on Earth, including all nonbird dinosaurs (SN: 1/25/17). In 2016, a team of scientists made a historic trek to the partially submerged crater, drilling deep into the rock to study the crime scene from numerous angles.
One of those researchers was planetary scientist David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. A dozen years earlier, Kring had found evidence at Chicxulub that the layers of rock bearing the signs of impact — telltale features such as shocked quartz and melted spherules — were subsequently cut through by veins of newer minerals such as quartz and anhydrite. Such veins, Kring thought, suggest that hot hydrothermal fluids had been circulating beneath Chicxulub some time after the impact.
Hydrothermal systems can occur where Earth is tectonically active, such as where tectonic plates pull the seafloor apart, or where mantle plumes like the one beneath Yellowstone rise up into the crust. The molten rock rising through the crust in these regions superheats water already circulating within the crust.
But the Yucatán Peninsula is tectonically quiescent, and has been for 66 million years, Kring says. So, as part of the International Ocean Discovery Program’s Expedition 364 to Chicxulub, he and colleagues drilled 1,335 meters below the the crater’s peak ring, a circular, mountainous region within the vast crater bowl, and retrieved long cores of sediment and rock.
The team then analyzed the minerals found in the cores. “It was immediately obvious that they had been hydrothermally altered. It was pervasive and apparent,” Kring says. The intense heat of the circulating seawater caused chemical reactions within the rock, transforming some minerals into others. By identifying the different types of minerals, the team determined that the initial temperature of the fluids was more than 300° Celsius, later cooling to about 90° C.
The entire length of the cores showed chemically altered rocks, but computer simulations suggest the hydrothermal alteration beneath the crater likely goes much deeper into the crust, down to perhaps four or five kilometers. The hydrothermally altered zone covers a volume more than nine times that of the Yellowstone Caldera system, Kring says. Paleomagnetic data suggest that the hydrothermal system lasted for more than a million years.
A core of rock and sediment extracted from within the Chicxulub impact crater revealed centimeter-sized cavities within the rocks containing hydrothermally altered minerals. Here, tiny cavities within impact breccia — a type of rock formed of broken fragments cemented together by fine-grained sediment — contain analcime (transparent crystals), which forms at temperatures around 200° Celsius and dachiardite (red crystals), which forms at temperatures around 250° C.D. KRING
Those conditions, the researchers say, may have also been capable of fostering life akin to the extremophiles that thrive in Yellowstone’s boiling pools. In addition to the metal-rich fluids that could provide an energy source for microbes, the Chicxulub cores revealed that the rocks were both porous and permeable — in other words, filled with interconnected nooks and crannies that could have been cozy shelters for microbes.
“It looks like a perfect habitat,” Kring says.
Kring has previously suggested that the very same destructive impacts that annihilate life may also create appealing habitats — not just on Earth, but potentially on other planetary bodies such as Mars. Even more tantalizing is the possibility that hydrothermal systems, engendered beneath ancient impacts, may have been where life on Earth began (SN: 3/1/13).
Evidence from lunar craters suggests that Earth was heavily bombarded by asteroids about 3.9 billion years ago (SN: 10/18/04). Most of those more ancient craters on Earth have long since vanished or been altered by the constant tectonic recycling of Earth’s surface (SN: 12/18/18). So the hydrothermal system beneath Chicxulub offers a window into what such systems might have actually looked like much deeper in the past, says geophysicist Norman Sleep of Stanford University, who was not involved in the study. “It shows the reality of the process,” Sleep says.
The new study may set the stage for the possibility of life thriving beneath an impact. But whether a microbial cast of characters was actually present beneath Chicxulub is a question for future studies, Kring says.
“Let me be clear: This paper has no evidence of microbial life,” Kring says. “We just have all the properties of hydrothermal systems that do support life elsewhere on Earth.”
Ancient environments that provided water, chemical building blocks and energy “are very promising candidates for hosting [life’s] origins and early evolution,” says NASA astrobiologist David Des Marais, who was not involved in the study. Impact-generated hydrothermal systems aren’t the only such environments; researchers have also made a compelling case for hot springs, Des Marais says.
That’s an ongoing debate, he notes, adding “I consider hydrothermal systems to be highly promising exploration targets for astrobiology.”
A series of viral articles claimed that NASA had discovered particles from another parallel universe in which time runs backward. These claims were incorrect. The true story is far more exciting and strange, involving a journey into the Big Bangand out the other side.
The sensational headlines had muddled the findings of an obscure 2018 paper, never published in a peer-reviewed journal, which argued that our universe might have a mirror reflection across time, a partner universe that stretches beyond the Big Bang. If that's the case, and a series of other extremely unlikely and outlandish hypotheses turn out to be true, the paper argued, then that in turn could explain a mysterious signal hinting that a completely new particle is flying out of the ice in Antarctica.
The claim that NASA discovered a parallel universe seemed to have been first dreamed up by British tabloid The Daily Star, and the story was then picked up by British and American outlets, including The New York Post.
Screenshots show false "parallel universe" claims in several publications. (Image credit: Illustration by Live Science)
Our universe's "mirror"
In order to understand how The Daily Star arrived at its bizarre, viral claim, it's necessary to understand the claims of two separate papers from 2018.
The first paper, by Latham Boyle, a physicist at The Perimeter Institute in Alberta, Canada, and his colleagues, proposed a mirror universe — a reflection of our universe across time. It was published December 2018 in the journal Physical Review Letters (after an appearance on the arXiv server in March that year).
"I think nobody else understands the full sweep of what they have composed," said John Learned, a University of Hawaii astrophysicist and the co-author of a second paper, which builds on Boyle's theory.
Boyle's work is a kind of expansion pack meant to plug holes in the theory that tells the dominant origin story of the universe: Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM).
ΛCDM explains the cosmos using two key ideas: An unknown dark energy causes the universe to expand. Rewind that expansion far enough backward in time and the whole universe occupies a single point in space. Second, an unseen dark matter gravitationally tugs on stuff in the universe, yet emits no light. This dark matter, the idea goes, accounts for the vast majority of the universe's mass.
"ΛCDM is basically the only game in town," Learned said. "It works in many cases, but there are some somewhat disturbing lapses in the modeling."
For instance, measurements of expansion don't line up across time, so that measurements made of this expansion based on data from the early universe don’t jive with measurements using data from the modern universe. In addition, ΛCDM can't explain why matter exists at all, since it predicts that matter and antimatter would have formed at equal rates after the Big Bang, and annihilated each other, leaving nothing behind.
Boyle and his colleagues' new universe unwinds the ΛCDM story further back in time, diving into the singularity at the beginning of time and coming out the other side.
Here’s how Boyle’s team sees their theory: Imagine today's universe as a wide, flat circle, sitting on top of yesterday's slightly smaller circle, which sits on top of the yet-smaller circle of the day before that, Boyle said.
(Image credit: Meghan McCarter)
Stack up all the circles from today back to the Big Bang, and you'd end up with a cone standing on its point end.
(Image credit: Meghan McCarter)
When astronomers look deep into space, they're effectively looking back in time. The most distant galaxy we can see, GN-z11, appears to us as it existed 13.4 billion years ago, or 400 million years after the Big Bang.
Before that, the universe had a "dark age" lasting millions of years, where nothing bright enough for us to see formed. Before that, the universe produced the oldest thing we can see: the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which formed 370,000 years after the Big Bang, as the universe cooled out of a hot, opaque plasma.
Telescopes can't see anything from before the CMB.
Looking back in time like this, Boyle said, is like looking down through the cosmological cone.
Image credit: Meghan McCarter)
Viewed in this way, the ΛCDM story ends with the universe coming together into a single point hidden behind the CMB. Boyle's theory looks at the opaque wall the CMB forms across time and draws a different conclusion about what the CMB hides.
The standard view, he said, is that the hot, dense era below the CMB (from our vantage point on the cone) was more or less a "big mess." In ΛCDM cosmology, this is the accelerated period of expansion known as "the epoch of inflation." Back then everything was chaos, the theory states.
But the CMB isn't that chaotic. Its simple structure, according to ΛCDM, emerged after an intense flattening process that wiped away the old mess.
"We were interested in exploring a simpler picture where you take the evidence more at face value," he said. "You say 'Okay, we can't see all the way down to the Bang, but we can look darned close, and as close as we look things look super simple. What if we take those observations at face value?'"
This vision of space-time still has a Big Bang hiding behind the CMB, he said.
But "it's much simpler than most of the singularities that arise in Einstein's theory of gravity," he said. "It's a very special type of ultra-simple singularity, where you can follow the solution [to the equations governing space-time] through the singularity."
Whereas observations go no further back than the CMB, normal cosmological models go a bit further back but still tend to come to a hard stop at the Big Bang. Not in Boyle's scheme.
"You find that it extrapolates, it extends — it analytically continues, physicists would say, to this double cone," he said, referring to the second universe extending away from the Big Bang in time
(Image credit: Meghan McCarter)
"It just seems to be the natural, simplest extension of the equations that seem to describe the universe as we see it," he said.
This universe that’s inside the “second cone” is too far down space-time for us to see. Time might seem to run backward there from our reference frame, Learned said. But beings in that universe would still see cause coming before effect, just like we do in ours. Time runs away from the Big Bang in that universe, just like it does in ours. "Away from the Big Bang" in that universe is the opposite direction from the direction of time in our universe. but it doesn't run "backward" in the way we might imagine.
Our universe exists on the other side of that universe's ancient history, and that universe exists on the other side of ours.
The "zero particle state"
We have no evidence that this reflected universe exists, Boyle said.
However, he said, "once you have it, it turns out this universe has an extra symmetry, which you didn't see when you were just looking at the top half of the cone."
Symmetries "ring a loud bell" for physicists, Boyle said. They suggest deeper truth.
And this double-cone universe could, in turn, help restore a crack in a symmetry that has bothered physicists for years.
The symmetry in question, known as Charge, Parity, Time (CPT) symmetry states that if you flip a particle to its antimatter twin — an electron into a positron, say — or make it right-handed instead of left-handed, or move it backward through time instead of forward, that particle should still behave in the same way and obey the same laws as it did before getting flipped. (Right-handed or left-handed refers to a particle's spin and direction of movement.)
"Everybody thought these were fundamental symmetries that could not be escaped," Learned said.
Eventually, in 1956, the Columbia University physicist Chien-Shiun Wu led an experiment that established CPT symmetry wasn't absolute. (The two male colleagues who proposed the underlying idea to Wu won the 1957 Nobel Prize for her discovery, but she was left out.)
Wu's experiment showed that the "C" in CPT symmetry is imperfect. And further experiments showed that some particles break both "C" and "P." But though cracked, most physicists think CPT symmetry still holds in general, and no particle has been found that breaks all three elements of this symmetry. At the particle level, the universe appears CPT symmetric.
But the ΛCDM model of the universe itself lacks clear CPT symmetry — a consequence of the curvature of space-time and the strange quantum vacuum. A feature of the universe that Boyle called its "zero particle state," the nature of space-time when emptied of particles, is uncertain. That means that at the scale of all space, CPT symmetry is violated.
Boyle says that his model preserves the universe's CPT symmetry in a way the ΛCDM cosmology does not. Add a second cone to space-time, and the zero particle state is no longer uncertain. The universe's CPT asymmetry is repaired.
"We thought, 'Wait a minute. It seemed like the universe violated CPT symmetry, but actually we just weren't looking at the whole picture," he said. If the universe really is CPT-symmetric, if it really comprises two space-time cones rather than one, what would that mean for the rest of physics?
The truth behind what those "NASA scientists" really detected
The most practical consequence of the CPT-symmetric universe is a simple explanation for dark matter.
One popular set of theories about the unseen stuff relies on the existence of some undetected, fourth type of neutrino — often termed a sterile neutrino. Boyle's CPT symmetry seems to point in this direction. The three known flavors of neutrino, the electron, muon and tau neutrinos, are all left-handed. That means that they fly around without a matching right-handed partner. The Standard Model assumes that, unlike other particles, neutrinos don't have such partners. But the CPT-symmetric universe disagrees, indicating they should have those partners.
Boyle and his colleagues found that their cosmology implies the existence of a right-handed partner in our universe for every left-handed neutrino in the Standard Model. But, unlike left- and right-handed quarks, these left- and right-handed mirror particles wouldn't stick together.Instead, two of the right-handed partner neutrinos would have long since been lost to space-time, decaying out of our view in the very early universe. A third right-handed partner would have stuck around, however — a consequence of the equations governing the beginning of time.
It's not clear which of the three known neutrinos it would have partnered with, Boyle said. But it would have had a particular energy signature: 480 picoelectronvolts (PeV), a measure of a particle's mass. And that 480PeV neutrino might account for all of that missing dark matter in the universe.
The details of how the CPT-symmetric universe leads to a 480 PeV neutrino are tricky — so tricky, Learned said, that few physicists beyond Boyle and his team understand them at all.
"But these guys are not nutcases," he said. "They're respected members of the field and they know what they're doing. Whether all of that complicated field theory is correct or not, I can't say."
Still, the prediction of a 480 PeV particle jumped out at Learned.
Four years ago, a particle detector hanging from a balloon over Antarctica detected something physics could not explain: Twice, as Live Science previously reported, the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) instrument picked up signals of high-energy particles that seemed to shoot straight up out of the Antarctic ice. (Most researchers involved in ANITA aren't "NASA scientists," but the project does receive NASA funding.)
Researchers prepare to launch the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, which picked up signals of impossible-seeming particles as it dangled from its balloon over Antarctica. (Image credit: NASA)
Particles like this shouldn't exist. None of the known Standard Model particles should have been able to fly all the way through the Earth and burst out the other side at such high energies, but that's what ANITA seemed to be detecting.
As of June 2020, the most popular explanation is that ANITA has detected sterile neutrinos. Learned, who was involved in the early days of the ANITA project, realized the 480 PeV figure lined up nicely with the ANITA findings.
If particles really came from space, then plunged through the Earth to produce the anomaly, they must have decayed just under the Antarctic surface, producing a shower of lighter particles that ANITA detected popping up from the ice. Boyle's 480 PeV dark matter neutrino fit squarely in the mass range that could explain ANITA's decaying mystery particle.
Learned and a team of four other researchers cooked up a scheme where this 480 PeV dark matter neutrino might have pulled off this trick, which they wrote up in a 2018 paper titled "Upgoing ANITA events as evidence of the CPT symmetric universe" and published to the arXiv database. This is the paper The Daily Star turned into a confused headline.
If the ANITA particle really did fit Boyle's scheme, that would be a strong weight on the scale in favor of the two-cone cosmos, Learned said. But it's a long shot. The most important problem they had to solve: getting the particle close enough to Antarctica. Models show that dark matter candidate particles like this 480 PeV neutrino would fall to the center of the Earth soon after running into our planet, leaving none close enough to produce the ANITA anomaly.
These researchers argued that perhaps a recent encounter with a huge, unseen disk of dark matter has stirred up the Earth's 480 PeV neutrinos, leaving some wandering around close to our planet’s surface.
It was an exciting idea to play with, Learned said, but even he is not convinced by his own paper.
"That was our feeble excuse, not thinking of any other good way to do the job [of getting Boyle's neutrinos close enough to Antarctica to trip ANITA's sensors]," Learned said.Though Learned and his colleagues worked hard on the paper, he thinks its conclusions are surely wrong, he said.
"Amongst cosmology folks there's … an idea that you get to use a 'tooth fairy' once in your cosmology model but twice is simply not credible," he said. "And I think we needed the tooth fairy two or three times to make this one work, so, oh well."
Boyle agreed. While the idea of using his team's ideas to explain ANITA was appealing, he said the numbers don't quite add up. But he's still confident the underlying idea of a CPT-symmetric universe is sound.
"My personal hunch is that whether or not it's exactly correct, it's on the right track," he said. "I'm very excited about that."
This artist's visualization shows an Ankylosaurus magniventris, a large armored dinosaur, witnessing an asteroid impact 66 million years ago. (Image credit: Fabio Manucci)
An asteroid impact, not volcanic activity, killed the dinosaurs, a new study finds.
For decades, scientists have gone back and forth over exactly what caused a mass extinction event 66 million years ago, which destroyed about 75% of all life on Earth, including all of the large dinosaurs. Some have thought that volcanic activity could be to blame, but one new study shows that a giant asteroid impact was the prime culprit.
Scientists have known that the impact, which created the massive Chicxulub impact crater (located in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in southeast Mexico), was a major contributing factor to this extinction event. But volcanic activity happening at around the same time has raised questions over which could have been the main factor which changed conditions on our planet that led to the demise of Earth's creatures.
In a new study, researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Bristol and University College London have shown that the asteroid impact, not volcanic activity, was the main reason that about 75% of life on Earth perished at that time, and it did so by significantly interfering with Earth's climate and ecosystems.
"We show that the asteroid caused an impact winter for decades, and that these environmental effects decimated suitable environments for dinosaurs. In contrast, the effects of the intense volcanic eruptions were not strong enough to substantially disrupt global ecosystems," lead researcher Alessandro Chiarenza, who conducted this work whilst studying for his PhD in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial, said in a statement. "Impact winter" signifies a semi-permanent "winter" created when sunlight-blocking particles are kicked up into the atmosphere after an impact. "Our study confirms, for the first time quantitatively, that the only plausible explanation for the extinction is the impact winter that eradicated dinosaur habitats worldwide."
To come to this conclusion, the researchers modeled how Earth's climate would be expected to respond to two separate possible extinction causes: volcanism and asteroid impact. In these mathematical models, they included environmental factors including rainfall and temperature, which would have been critical to the survival of these species. They also included the presence of sunlight-blocking gases and particles and carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
"Instead of only using the geologic record to model the effect on climate that the asteroid or volcanism might have caused worldwide, we pushed this approach a step forward, adding an ecological dimension to the study to reveal how these climatic fluctuations severely affected ecosystems," co-lead author Alex Farnsworth, a climatologist at the University of Bristol, added in the same statement.
With these models, the team found that the giant asteroid hitting our planet would have released tremendous amounts of gas and particles into Earth's atmosphere, blocking out the sun for years on end. This effect would have created a sort of semi-permanent winter on Earth, making the planet unlivable for most of its inhabitants.
Now, while the team found the asteroid impact to be the major factor in making Earth unlivable for most animals, they also found that volcanic activity could have actually helped life to recover over time, a conclusion that scientists have drawn before.
They found that, while volcanoes do release sunlight-blocking gases and particles, which would have helped to block the sun in the short term, they also release large amounts of carbon dioxide which, because it's a greenhouse gas, would have built up in the atmosphere and warmed the planet.
So, as the researchers suggest in this work, while the devastating winter caused by the asteroid killed off most life on Earth, over time, the warming effect created from the volcanic greenhouse gases could have helped to restore life to habitats.
"We provide new evidence to suggest that the volcanic eruptions happening around the same time might have reduced the effects on the environment caused by the impact, particularly in quickening the rise of temperatures after the impact winter. This volcanic-induced warming helped boost the survival and recovery of the animals and plants that made through the extinction, with many groups expanding in its immediate aftermath, including birds and mammals," Chiarenza added.
This work was published June 29 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd.
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The Largest Underwater Cave Was Just Discovered And It’s Full Of Mayan Artifacts
The Largest Underwater Cave Was Just Discovered And It’s Full Of Mayan Artifacts
One of the most impressive discoveries was made recently in the Mexican city of Tulum in the Yucatan Peninsula. Inside of what appeared to be a random submerged cave they uncovered a set of subterranean caverns that became the largest underwater cave system ever discovered by humanity.
Guillermo de Anda from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History stated that there are well over a hundred archeological findings in this cave system, and they all relate back to the ancient Mayan civilization.
The team that made the discovery is a part of the Great Maya Aquifer Project or GAM for short. They’ve been working towards discovering more about the ancient Mayan civilization for decades now.
They uncovered 358 cave systems, all submerged underwater, spread across 1,400 kilometers (870 miles). One of the systems was named the Sac Actun System, and thanks to its immense size they believed there to be two cave systems interjecting at first, but after further research, they uncovered that it was all part of the original cave system.
The secondary system was called Dos Ojos System and it was believed to be 93km long (57.8 miles) when it was, later on, uncovered that it was all a part of the Sac Actun System after all.
Astronomers from the University of Göttingen in Germany have discovered two, and possibly three, super-Earth exoplanets orbiting the nearby red dwarf star Gliese-887.
Artist’s concept of Gliese 887b and Gliese 887c orbiting their red dwarf star.
Among the various types of exoplanets discovered so far, those larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune are among the most common. Astronomers call these worlds super-Earths. The nearby TRAPPIST-1 planetary system actually has seven known super-Earths orbiting its star! Now, RedDots researchers at the University of Göttingen in Germany have announced the discovery of another nearby planetary system with at least two super-Earths and possibly a third.
Details of the peer-reviewed findings have been published in the June 26, 2020, issue of the journal Science.
The two planets are orbiting the nearby red dwarf star called Gliese 887 (also known as GJ 887 or Lacaille 9352), which is only 11 light-years away. While not quite within the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface of rocky worlds, the planets are close to the inner edge of the zone. According to the abstract of the new paper:
The closest exoplanets to the sun provide opportunities for detailed characterization of planets outside the solar system. We report the discovery, using radial velocity measurements, of a compact multiplanet system of super-Earth exoplanets orbiting the nearby red dwarf star GJ 887. The two planets have orbital periods of 9.3 and 21.8 days. Assuming an Earth-like albedo, the equilibrium temperature of the 21.8-day planet is ~350 kelvin [-623 Celsius or -1,090 Fahrenheit]. The planets are interior to, but close to the inner edge of, the liquid-water habitable zone. We also detect an unconfirmed signal with a period of ~50 days, which could correspond to a third super-Earth in a more temperate orbit. Our observations show that GJ 887 has photometric variability below 500 parts per million, which is unusually quiet for a red dwarf.
Illustration depicting the size of a super-Earth called CoRoT-7b. Super-Earths are larger and more massive than Earth, but smaller and less massive than Neptune.
Super-Earths are one of the most common types of planets in our galaxy. Some of them may be habitable for some kind of life to exist.
Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)/ Earth Magazine.
The temperature of Gliese 887c has been estimated at 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 degrees Celsius). A bit hot, but perhaps not enough to render the planet uninhabitable. If the third planet does exist, it could have cooler temperatures since it is in a more temperate orbit within the habitable zone.
The planets were discovered using the “Doppler Wobble” technique, which enables the researchers to measure the tiny back and forth wobbles of the star caused by the gravitational pull of the planets. The researchers used the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile.
Red dwarf stars, although smaller and dimmer than our sun, are known for typically being very active, emitting strong bursts of radiation that could strip close-in planets of their atmospheres and make conditions difficult or impossible for life to exist. But Gliese 887 has only a very few star spots and appears to be less active than most red dwarfs. That’s good news for the possibility of any of the planets retaining their atmospheres and perhaps being habitable.
In a related Perspective article, Melvyn Davies wrote:
If someone had to live around a red dwarf, they would want to choose a quieter star like GJ 887. If further observations confirm the presence of the third planet in the habitable zone, then GJ 887 could become one of the most studied planetary systems in the solar neighborhood.
Red dwarf stars are known for being very active, emitting powerful blasts of solar radiation, which can strip atmospheres off planets that are too close, as in this artist’s concept. But Gliese 887 is less active than most red dwarfs, increasing the chance that some of its planets might be potentially habitable.
The Gliese 887 worlds will also be ideal candidates for follow-up studies by the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), not only because they are close by, but also because the brightness of the star is almost constant, making it easier to detect any atmospheres. As Sandra Jeffers, from the University of Göttingen and lead author of the study, said in a statement:
These planets will provide the best possibilities for more detailed studies, including the search for life outside our solar system.
The discovery reinforces two previous findings about exoplanets: one, super-Earth worlds are common (as well as Earth-sized planets), even though there isn’t one in our solar system (unless the elusive Planet Nine turns out to be one, as some scientists think), and two, exoplanets are abundant around red dwarf stars, which are the most common stars in our galaxy. This is exciting, since many, if not most, super-Earths are thought to be rocky like our own planet. But we still don’t know how habitable these kinds of worlds could be. Scientists think that some super-Earths could have extensive or even global oceans. Others might be dry and barren.
Sandra Jeffers at the University of Göttingen in Germany, lead author of the new study.
New upcoming telescopes like JWST will be able to take a closer look at some of these worlds, and provide a much better idea of what the actual conditions are like. If there are millions or billions of them in our galaxy, as seems likely – and scientists now say there are more exoplanets in total than stars, including an estimated six billion ‘Earth-like’ planets – then it seems reasonable that some of them should be potentially habitable.
Bottom line: Astronomers have discovered two, and possibly three, super-Earth exoplanets orbiting a nearby red dwarf star.
Astronomers from Western University in Canada have discovered six more possible exomoons orbiting distant exoplanets, in data from the Kepler Space Telescope.
Artist’s concept of a habitable exomoon orbiting a distant exoplanet similar to Saturn. Astronomers have now discovered what may be 6 more exomoons orbiting exoplanets ranging from 200 to 3,000 light-years away. There are hundreds of moons in our own solar system, and some of them have subsurface water oceans. How many similar ocean moons may be out there?
Our solar system is filled with hundreds of moons, many more moons than planets. But what about distant solar systems? We now know of well over 4,000 confirmed exoplanets – or planets orbiting distant stars – 4,171 right now, to be exact. Yet there’ve been, so far, still only a few possible detections of exomoons. It makes sense, given that moons of planets tend to be smaller and thus more difficult to find than planets themselves. But now scientists at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada, haveannounced that they might have spotted six more exomoons!
The potentially exciting findings have been submitted in a new paper to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, with a preprint version posted on arXiv on June 23, 2020.
The possible moons are not confirmed yet, but the results seem promising. As Paul Wiegert, co-author of the study, noted in a statement:
We know of thousands of exoplanets throughout our Milky Way galaxy, but we know of only a handful of exomoon candidates.
From the paper:
Here we explore eight systems from the Kepler data set to examine the exomoon hypothesis as an explanation for their transit timing variations, which we compare with the alternate hypothesis that the TTVs are caused by an non-transiting planet in the system. We find that the TTVs of six of these systems could be plausibly explained by an exomoon, the size of which would not be nominally detectable by Kepler. Though we also find that the TTVs could be equally well reproduced by the presence of a non-transiting planet in the system, the observations are nevertheless completely consistent with a existence of a dynamically stable moon small enough to fall below Kepler’s photometric threshold for transit detection, and these systems warrant further observation and analysis.
So where are these moons and how were they potentially found?
The moons are in data from theKepler Space Telescopemission, which ended in 2018. The host planets range from about 200 to 3,000light-yearsaway, and were discovered by thetransitsthat the planets made in front of their stars, which caused the star’s brightness to dim slightly and briefly. Most exoplanets are found using thetransit method. But the moons are much smaller and dimmer, so they are very difficult to detect by any method. Wiegert said:
These exomoon candidates are so small that they can’t be seen from their own transits. Rather, their presence is given away by their gravitational influence on their parent planet.
The six moon candidates are (KOI) 268.01, Kepler 517b (KOI-303.01), Kepler 1000b (KOI-1888.01), Kepler 409b (KOI-1925.01), Kepler 1326b (KOI-2728.01) and Kepler 1442b (KOI-3220.01). KOI refers to Kepler Object of Interest.
So how might these moons reveal themselves?
Usually, the transit of a planet occurs precisely at regular timed intervals, the same as how planets orbit our own sun. But sometimes, that precise timing is actually variable. This means that the gravity of some other body, another planet or a moon, must be affecting it. These variations are called transit timing variations (TTVs). The results fit with what would be expected of exomoons, but could still possibly be explained by other planets in these systems instead. As Fox explained:
Because exoplanets are more massive than exomoons, most TTVs observed to date have been linked to the influence of other exoplanets. But now we’ve uncovered six Kepler exoplanet systems whose TTVs are equally well explained by exomoons as by exoplanets. That’s why we’re calling them exomoon ‘candidates’ at this point as they still need follow-up confirmation.
TTVs were also found for two other exoplanets, KOI-1503.01 and KOI-1980.01, but those are thought to be caused by other planets in the systems instead of moons and were ruled out.
Artist’s concept of the possible huge exomoon orbiting the exoplanet Kepler-1625b, found by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2018.
That confirmation may have to wait a while, however, since current telescopes can’t do it; it will require telescopes that are being planned and designed, but not built yet. Fox said:
We can say these six new systems are completely consistent with exomoons: their masses and orbits are such that they would be stable; they would be small enough that their own transits wouldn’t be seen; and they reproduce the pattern of TTVs seen throughout the entire Kepler data set. But we don’t have the technology to confirm them by imaging them directly. That will have to wait for further advancements.
It is exciting to contemplate what kinds of alien exomoons are out there. Just in our own solar system, there is a huge variety of these smaller worlds, from gray, cratered and moon-like, to Io, which kind of looks like a pizza and has the most active volcanoes of any object in the solar system, to ocean worlds like Europa, Enceladus and others. The icy moons with subsurface oceans are especially appealing, since they could be habitable by earthly standards. There are several of them in our solar system alone, so how many more might be out there? What kind of life might exist on such worlds? Chris Fox, who made the discoveries, said:
Our own solar system contains hundreds of moons. If moons are prolific around other stars, too, it greatly increases the potential places where life might be supported, and where humankind might one day venture.
Chris Fox at Western University, who discovered the possible new exomoons.
Fox makes a very good point. Since our own solar system has hundreds of moons orbiting six out of the eight planets, is it not reasonable that many of the planets in other solar systems would also have their own moons? And as we are now discovering, a good number of the moons in our solar system are indeed potentially habitable, with their subsurface water oceans.
In 2018, Fox also discoveredKepler-159d, an exoplanet about the size of Saturn, which orbits its star in only 88 days.
In 2014, another possible exomoon, dubbed MOA-2011-BLG-262 exoplanet-exomoon system, was discovered, where the moon would be less massive than Earth and the planet would be more massive than Jupiter. In 2018, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) found what may be a huge exomoon orbiting the gas giant planet Kepler-1625b. It’s also still not confirmed yet, but if real, is about the size of Neptune! If the new findings from Western University are any indication – and confirmed – then there may many more exomoon discoveries to look forward to.
Bottom line: Astronomers examining data from the Kepler Space Telescope appear to have discovered six more exomoons. Although the result awaits confirmation, it has the potential to be a big step forward in understanding distant solar systems.
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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.
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