Doing radio just recently, I was amazed how many people listening didn’t know much at all about the Betty and Barney Hill “alien abduction” of September 1961 – an event that, this year, will reach its 60th. Maybe, some people aren’t overly excited by older cases, but are far more enthused by what’s going on right now. Certainly, it’s good to keep in touch with what’s afoot now, but, as I see it, it’s always good to understand the earlier years of the UFO subject, too. So, for those who – just a few nights ago – admitted they didn’t know a great deal about the Hill affair, here’s how it goes. Old-timers might find some interesting things too! Now, let’s get to it. Although the 1950s-era abduction account of Antonio Villas Boas was reported quite widely in UFO-themed books, magazines, and newsletters in the 1950s and 1960s, it was the sexual nature of the claims that led many researchers of the UFO phenomenon to ignore, or completely write-off, the cases as fanciful tales born out of fantasy and not a lot else. In other words, those same researchers were repressed. That situation changed post-September 19, 1961.

That’s when a New Hampshire husband and wife, the aforementioned Barney and Betty Hill, were driving to their New Hampshire home (with their dog, Delsey), after taking a welcome vacation in Montreal, Canada. One might argue they needed another vacation after experiencing what was lurking and looming on the horizon. As the pair headed home, and at around 10.30 p.m., as they drove south of Lancaster, New Hampshire, they were puzzled by the sight of a strange light in the night sky above. Viewing the lighted object through binoculars convinced the Hills that what they were seeing was not an aircraft – of either a commercial or military kind. As they continued their drive through the mountains, Barney and Betty developed an uneasy sense that whoever was flying the craft was watching them; playing a game with them, toying with them, and practically goading them into following the maneuvers of the device.

Matters came to a sudden hair-raising head head when the object approached their car and dropped to a height of around ninety feet, causing Barney to bring the car to a sudden stop, in the middle of the road, on the darkened, mountain pass. Pancake-like was how Barney later described the unearthly-looking vehicle, after stepping out of the car and staring into the dark skies. As Barney focused on the craft with the binoculars, he couldn’t fail to see close to a dozen beings – wearing caps – milling around and peering down at the frightened pair. When the machine began to close in on the Hill’s car, Barney shouted to Betty that the things inside were going to kidnap them. They jumped back into the car at sped off at high speed. Craft and crew did not follow – or so it seemed at the time.

The traumatic encounter was far from over: it didn’t take long at all before Betty and Barney realized that there was something very wrong about their journey – around two hours of time was “missing” from it. Gone. Obliterated from their memories. Finally, after nightmares, restless nights of tossing and turning, and picking up on fragmented memories suggesting there was far more to the incident than they consciously remembered, the pair received help from a psychiatrist and neurologist in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Benjamin Simon – who began a series of hypnotic sessions with the Hills in January 1964.

What surfaced out of those sessions, while Barney and Betty were rendered into altered states by the doctor was, to put it bluntly, astounding: if the results of the hypnosis were not the product of fantasy or suggestion, both of the Hills had been taken on board what was nothing less than an alien spacecraft, and subjected to a number of medical procedures that clearly left Betty and Barney in states of lasting turmoil. The then-modern era of alien abductions was born.

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09-02-2021 om 23:10 geschreven door peter  

The United Arab Emirates' Mars probe just entered orbit around the red planet, the first in a Mars-mission bonanza

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

A rendering of the Hope orbiter, provided by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre.

• The United Arab Emirates' first interplanetary mission, a spacecraft called Hope, reached Mars on Tuesday.

• The orbiter is set to map Mars' climate across an entire Martian year.

• It's the first of three Mars missions expected to reach the planet in the next two weeks.
  

The United Arab Emirates has flown a spacecraft into orbit around Mars, marking a first for the Arab world and a major accomplishment for the country's young space program.

The Hope probe â€" "Al-Amal" in Arabic â€" launched from Tanegashima Island in Japan on July 20, then journeyed seven months to the next planet over.

With Mars in its sights, the SUV-sized spacecraft fired all six of its Delta V thrusters for about 27 minutes on Tuesday, burning through half of its fuel to slow its speed by more than 2,100 mph.

In the days leading up to this braking manoeuvre, Emirati officials estimated a 50-50 chance of success, according to Agence France-Presse. If the manoeuvre had failed, the probe could have crashed into Mars or careened past it into deep space.

Instead, the spacecraft fell into an oval-shaped orbit around Mars on Tuesday morning. A signal confirming its success reached mission controllers on Earth at 11:14 a.m. ET.

Hope is the UAE Space Agency's first major mission. It aims to orbit the red planet for a full Martian year (about two Earth years) and create a comprehensive map of the planet's climate.

"It's the very first holistic weather satellite of Mars," Sarah Al Amiri, the mission's science lead, told Space.com.

The probe's unique orbit will allow it to monitor any given region of Mars for hours at a time, watching in infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light as clouds drift by and enormous dust storms roil through the red desert.

The UAE aims for Hope to map weather across the entire planet, through all times of day, over the full Martian year. If successful, this will be humanity's first such picture of the Martian climate.

"It is the time factor that has largely been missing from our knowledge and understanding of the weather system of Mars," Al Amiri said. "During every single time slot of the day, we want to know what happens across an entire day, because weather as we know it is a very dynamic system. We also want to understand what happens in different seasons on Mars. And that requires us to collect data across an entire year."

That data could help scientists better understand Mars' changing seasons and learn how the planet lost the thick atmosphere that protected it 4 billion years ago. Back then, the Martian surface may have been warm enough for liquid water, and scientists think the planet could have supported microbial life.

The UAE is now the fifth country to reach Mars. China is set to follow as the sixth Mars-faring nation on Wednesday, when its Tianwen-1 spacecraft is slated to insert itself into orbit around the planet. (Stay tuned for the Tianwen-1 rover landing in May.)

NASA's new Mars rover, Perseverance, is set to touch down on the planet's surface next week. In terms of visitors from Earth, this is the busiest month in Martian history.

Hope can monitor Martian weather up close and from afar

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE, announced in 2014 that the country would be going to Mars. The decree came with a deadline â€" 2021 â€" to commemorate the nation's 50th anniversary.

The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre was tasked with developing and building the Mars-bound spacecraft. Engineers there equipped the orbiter with three scientific instruments to study Martian weather in infrared light, capture high-resolution photos, and measure atmosphere loss in ultraviolet.

The probe's irregular, or "elliptical," orbit will allow it to capture a unique picture of Martian weather and climate over time.

"When you're very close to Mars, you're moving as fast as Mars is turning on its axis, and therefore, you observe one side of Mars during multiple times of the day. And as you get farther away and you get slower, we observe several time zones on Mars in several locations," Al Amiri told Space.com. "We keep on doing this over the course of an entire 10-day window, and by 10 days, we've fully mapped everywhere on Mars during every time of the day."

As Hope circles Mars, completing an orbit once every 55 hours, the satellite will look for links between weather events in the lower atmosphere and the amount of hydrogen and oxygen bleeding into space from the planet's upper atmosphere. This could offer clues about the process that caused the planet to lose most of its atmosphere billions of years ago.

Hope will also monitor the Martian atmosphere's interactions with charged particles from the sun. Such interactions drive space weather around Earth and cause the aurora borealis.

The UAE might even be able to extend Hope's mission into a second Martian year, crafting new goals based on what the probe finds during its first year.

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09-02-2021 om 22:37 geschreven door peter  

Feest in de Emiraten: eerste Arabische sonde in baan rond Mars

Feest in de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten: hun Marssonde al-Amal (‘Hoop’) is in een preliminaire baan rond de rode planeet gekomen. Slechts drie landen en het Europese Ruimtevaartbureau ESA gingen hen daar in voor.

Bron: Belga

De sonde werd in juli vorig jaar met een Japanse draagraket gelanceerd en is de eerste van drie nieuwe expedities die Mars zal bereiken. Om 16.30 uur tijd floepten zes stuurraketten aan, waardoor de snelheid van het onbemande ruimtetuig daalde van 121.000 naar 18.000 kilometer per uur. Zo kreeg de zwaartekracht van onze buurplaneet greep op de sonde.

De ontbranding duurde 27 minuten. Daarna was het nog meer dan elf minuten nagelbijten vooraleer er bevestiging kwam dat het manoeuvre gelukt was.

© AFP

De Emiraten zijn nog maar de vijfde “natie” die in het huzarenstukje slaagt. De voorgangers waren de VS, de Sovjet-Unie, het Europese Ruimtevaartbureau ESA en India. Zowat de helft van alle Marsmissies is mislukt.

Al-Amal heeft ook een robotjeep bij, maar die zal pas in mei proberen te landen. De verkenner moet twee jaar lang het weer op Mars in kaart brengen. Bovendien moet hij helpen begrijpen waardoor waterstof en zuurstof verdwijnen uit de dunne dampkring van Mars. Die gassen vliegen de ruimte in, waardoor Mars geen kans meer heeft op leven zoals op aarde. Maar de missie is vooral bedoeld om de Emiraten op de kaart te zetten, in het jaar waarin het land zijn vijftigste verjaardag viert. Het land ziet wetenschap en technologie als een inkomstenbron voor de toekomst, wanneer olie opraakt. De Verenigde Arabische Emiraten hebben sinds 2014 een eigen ruimtevaartbureau en in 2019 ging voor het eerst een inwoner van het land naar de ruimte. 

© AP

Morgen moet ook de Chinese Marsverkener Tianwen-1 een soortgelijk manoeuvre uitvoeren. Het tuig zal nog twee tot drie maanden rondjes draaien vooraleer de riskante afdaling naar het Marsoppervlak in te zetten. China wil sporen van leven vinden en het oppervlak en de bodem van Mars in kaart brengen.

Op 18 februari moet de Amerikaanse Perseverance landen op Mars. Verborgen in het laadruim van de robotjeep zit de eerste buitenaardse helikopter, de Ingenuity. Als die technologie werkt, kunnen helikopters helpen om buitenaardse bestemmingen veel sneller te verkennen.

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09-02-2021 om 22:21 geschreven door peter  

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09-02-2021 om 20:41 geschreven door peter  

Topwetenschapper Harvard blijft geloven dat aliens vier jaar geleden op bezoek kwamen, maar hij krijgt stevige tegenkanting

“Aliens hebben ons in 2017 een bezoek gebracht, maar wetenschappers hebben die realiteit genegeerd.” De stelling doet misschien de wenkbrauwen fronsen, maar ze komt niet van de eerste de beste. Avi Loeb is een topastronoom aan de universiteit van Harvard die ook al samengewerkt heeft met Stephen Hawking. In het wereldje wordt hij nu echter vooral afgedaan als een collega “die met straffe beweringen het publiek wil bespelen”.

 Bron: Forbes , Daily Mail

De bekende Israëlisch-Amerikaanse kosmoloog verwijst naar de doortocht van ‘Oumuamua’, een mysterieus object dat vier jaar geleden in sneltreinvaart door ons zonnestelsel vloog. Het 400 meter lange gevaarte wisselde soms van tempo, hield geen rekening met de zwaartekracht en had de vorm van een sigaar. Een komeet kon het niet zijn omdat de nevelige wolk van gassen en stof ontbrak. Experts spraken van het eerste interstellaire object dat vanop Aarde waargenomen werd.

Een kunstenaar maakte deze schets van Oumuamua.

 © AFP

Sonde

De ‘ruimterots’ kwam dus uit een ander zonnestelsel, maar was het daarom ook buitenaards? In dit geval: hadden aliens werkelijk een sonde gecreëerd waarmee ze een verkenningstocht uitvoerden?

De controversiële these won aan belang sinds Loeb zich in 2018 in het kamp van de ‘believers’ aansloot. Zijn artikel in het wetenschappelijke blad ‘Astrophysical Journal Letters’ deed alvast het nodige stof opwaaien.

Computersimulaties

Uit een studie van vorig jaar bleek echter dat Oumuamua - Hawaïaans voor ‘scout’ - volledig natuurlijk ontstaan zou zijn. Rotsachtige objecten kunnen immers uit een zonnestelsel gekatapulteerd worden door getijdenkrachten.

Computersimulaties vonden na lange tijd een verklaring voor de ‘sigaarvorm’ en ook het mysterie van de plotse versnellingen leek opgehelderd. “Een combinatie van waterijs met de uitwaseming van gas”, meent hoofdauteur Yun Zhang. Elk planetensysteem zou volgens haar zelfs zo’n 100 biljoen objecten als Oumuamua uitstoten.

“We zijn niet speciaal”

De wetenschappelijke uitleg kan Loeb echter niet overtuigen. Hij bracht nu een boek uit om zijn theorie rond buitenaardse wezens te staven. Zij zouden een lichtzeil gefabriceerd hebben dat via zonlicht voortgestuwd wordt.

“Denken dat we uniek en speciaal zijn is gewoon arrogant. We zouden ons beter verzoenen met het feit dat er nog veel andere culturen bestaan. We moeten ze nu enkel nog vinden”, klinkt het in ‘Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth’.

“Hij praat publiek naar de mond”

Astrofysicus Ethan Siegel betreurt dat Loeb die weg ingeslagen is. “Ooit was hij zeer gerespecteerd. Nu het niet meer lukt om collega’s met argumenten te overtuigen, praat hij het grote publiek maar naar de mond”, schrijft hij in ‘Forbes’.

Ook de Nederlandse hoogleraar Sterrenkunde Gijs Nelemans denkt er zo over. “Loeb heeft al eerder spraakmakende zaken aangekaart. Hij gooit ze in de groep en kan ze goed uitmelken, daarna mogen anderen het zaakje uitzoeken. Als ik zou moeten kiezen tussen aliens of de wetenschappelijke uitleg, dan wordt het toch de tweede optie. Er zijn bij dit object ook radiometingen gedaan en er werd geen enkel signaal vastgesteld.”

“Pesterijen”

Loeb noemt dit soort reacties pestgedrag. “Galileo werd ook ooit verketterd omdat hij ontdekte dat de Aarde niet het centrum van het universum was. We zouden veel meer middelen moeten besteden aan de zoektocht naar buitenlands leven. Als we hun technologie zouden bestuderen, kunnen we misschien wel een miljoen jaar winst boeken.”

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09-02-2021 om 20:32 geschreven door peter  

Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids Offer Surprises Even Before NASA’s Lucy Mission has a Chance to Visit Them.

A new study out this month suggests that Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids may be more peculiar than previously thought. The Trojan asteroids are rocky objects which orbit the Sun just ahead of and just behind the gas giant, in gravitational sweet spots known as Lagrange points. The swarm ahead of Jupiter, known as the L4 (Greek) group, is slightly larger than the L5 (Trojan) swarm behind, but until now, astronomers believed that there was otherwise little differentiation between the two swarms. The paper released this month appears to change that.

The research team, using data from the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) based in Hawaii, has discovered unexpected variations in the shape of the Trojans. This new study suggests that objects in the L4 population are actually more elongated than those in the L5 population, on average.

Why does this matter? Well, the difference “may imply a different collisional evolution within each cloud,” the paper suggests. The L4 swarm’s larger population means objects within it have had had more opportunities to collide with one another. As one Trojan slams into another, larger objects are worn down or broken into smaller pieces. Over billions of years of impacts, the result is that more L4 objects have been battered into eccentric shapes than those in L5.

This discovery is a lesson learned regarding the evolutionary history of the Solar System, and the Jupiter Trojans may have plenty more to offer scientists in that respect in the near future. In order to get a closer look at these primordial remnants of the early Solar System, NASA is set to launch a robotic spacecraft to visit the Trojans later this year. The mission is named Lucy, after the fossilized remains of an early human ancestor found in Ethiopia in 1974. Lucy taught paleontologists about the evolution of humans, and in a similar way, the Lucy spacecraft will be able to teach astronomers about the early history of the Solar System.

One of Lucy’s key objectives is to understand the composition and diversity of Trojan objects. It is believed that these asteroids represent the leftovers of planet formation, so learning about their structure, age, and component materials will help us to understand the ingredients which went into making the planets we see today, including, possibly, the organic materials which found their way to Earth in its infancy.

Lucy will take advantage of lessons learned from previous missions, carrying instruments similar to those flown on NASA’s New Horizons, which flew past Pluto in 2015, and OSIRIS-Rex, which is currently bringing a sample back to Earth from Asteroid Bennu. Using a series of clever gravity assists, Lucy will be able to visit more targets in a single mission than any solar system probe before it, flying past at least eight different asteroids over twelve years, starting with one in the main asteroid belt, then bouncing back and forth between objects in the L4 and L5 swarms.

Careful planning, and a bit of astronomical luck, means that Lucy will even get the chance to visit two targets in the L5 swarm which travel in high inclination orbits, making them normally very difficult to reach. The binary pair, Patroclus and Menoetius, will pass within reach of Lucy in 2033, making for a spectacular finale to Lucy’s primary mission.

Lucy will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida on an Atlas V rocket in October. The complete mission timeline is as follows:

• October 16, 2021: The three-week long launch window opens.
• April 20, 2025: Main asteroid belt object (52246) Donaldjohanson.
• August 12, 2027: L4 object (3548) Eurybates and its satellite, Queta.
• September 15, 2027: L4 object (15094) Polymele.
• April 18, 2028: L4 object (11351) Leucus.
• November 11, 2028: L4 object (21900) Orus.
• March 2, 2033: L5 object (617) Patroclus and its partner, Menoetius.

Whatever else Lucy might discover, it is clear that a combination of ground based-astronomy and spacecraft flybys are opening up a new chapter in our understanding of planetary formation, and the Trojans probably have more surprises in store for us in the years to come.

Reference. 

• A. McNeill et al. “Comparison of the physical properties of the L4 and L5 Trojan asteroids from ATLAS data.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.04602 (2021)

The post Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids Offer Surprises Even Before NASA’s Lucy Mission has a Chance to Visit Them. appeared first on Universe Today.

Source: 

• https://www.universetoday.com/149812/jupiters-trojan-asteroids-offer-surprises-even-before-nasas-lucy-mission-has-a-chance-to-visit-them/

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09-02-2021 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

Dr. Steven Greer: The Cabal's Last Card Fake Alien Invasion - Deep State False Flags - The Classics

The work that medical doctor, researcher and author Steven Greer continues to do through the organization CSETI has made some tremendous breakthroughs in establishing contact with an intelligent phenomena, often perceived as UFOs, Light Phenomena and strange looking entities.

Steven demonstrates that there is a conscious connection being established with this phenomena and on many occasions they are being caught on camera.

Dr. Steven Greer: The Cabal’s Last Card Fake Alien Invasion – Deep State False Flags

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

09-02-2021 om 17:47 geschreven door peter  

Tiny UFO Near UFO Cloud, Calgary, Canada 2-7-2021, MUFON UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Feb 7, 2021

Location of sighting: Calgary, Canada

Source: MUFON #113591

 

Guys do you see the UFO lighting near the tree edge? Its a small UFO that came out the the huge UFO cloaked inside the cloud. Yes, two UFOs! The guy noticed the small one, and dismissed the cloud. But the cloud is the mother ship! Crazy cool that the eyewitness didnt even mention the UFO shaped cloud...its hiding a cloaked UFO in it. Wow, just wow! 

Scott C. Waring 

 

Eyewitness states: 

I was driving home and saw the brightest light I have ever seen during the day. It was hovering when I first spotted it then it proceeded to move and that’s where the video starts. It also disappears at the end. Thoughts on what this is?

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

09-02-2021 om 17:25 geschreven door peter  

Triangle UFO Seen In Night Vision Over Rochester, Michigan. 11-2-2014, MUFON UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Nov 2, 2014
Location of sighting: Rochester, Michigan, USA

Source: MUFON

 

This eyewitness was using a type 2 generation night vision scope. I know, because I own one. He also is holding a green pen laser, which I also have and use. He is using the green laser to get the attention of aliens so that they fly near him so he can catch it on night vision and record it. 

 

Here we see not a TR3B, but a cloaked triangle craft. Its just one craft! See the two screenshots above, both different but both show a solid triangle craft. It may be invisible, but its visible in night vision! This object was drawn to this location because of the green laser! It was curious about it since it could see the laser for many miles away. 

 

100% proof that triangle alien crafts do exist and do come to the UFO hunters when they try hard to get noticed with green pen lasers! Also nice he didn't hit the ship with the laser rather he politely followed it. Very thoughtful of the eyewitness. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

 

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09-02-2021 om 17:20 geschreven door peter  

Over the years, many eyewitnesses from the Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard have reported strange UFO activity off the California's southern coast, especially the area around the islands San Clemente and Catalina and now once again UFO activity has been recorded and this time over Clemente Island. 

2021/02/08. The video was recorded from a phone of a sailor on the H60 Romeo's FLIR. 

FLIR cameras are typically used on military and civilian aircraft, use a thermographic camera that senses infrared radiation. 

The helicopter was grounded off of San Clemente Island, California on a 2 week training event. They were doing routine maintenance after shutdown for all flights when they saw the lights. 

There seems to be 2 balls of light in the distance, and when the FLIR locks on it speeds away so fast the FLIR can't keep up with it. Mufon case 113954.

These high speed objects are man-made or are they of alien origin?

  

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{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

09-02-2021 om 16:53 geschreven door peter  

AMAZING UFO FOOTAGE: Fast cigar UFO over Virginia, USA, 31-01-21

This UFO was caught on tape with GoPro Hero 8 Black 4K Nightlapse on 31st January 2021 at 0:35 am over Virginia Beach.

What do you think it is?

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

09-02-2021 om 15:55 geschreven door peter  

Best UFO Sightings in United States

Let’s check the best recent UFO sightings that were filmed all across the USA this year!

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09-02-2021 om 15:47 geschreven door peter  

CIA Document Dump Reveals 70 Years Of US Government UFO Info

“What does the U.S. government really know about UFOs and for how long have they known it?” Ufologists and UFO experiencers have been asking these questions for decades, and it seems that answers are finally emerging. Based on the CIA’s recent release, on January 14, 2021, of nearly 3,000 pages of documents that detail  a wealth of fascinating data about UFO behavior and capabilities , it seems they know a lot and have known a lot about this topic for quite some time. These freshly declassified US government UFO info documents (published in their entirety on  The Black Vault ) reveal the truth about harrowing and awe-inspiring encounters between reliable witnesses and “unidentified aerial phenomena” of unknown origin that have been occurring since the 1950s. The recently-released US government UFO info includes multiple stories of up-close sightings of  mysterious disks , glowing spheres, wingless cigar-shaped cylinders, and other anomalous flying objects by military and commercial pilots, in the United States and  elsewhere around the world . 

In many instances these objects were observed visually and on radar performing aerodynamically impossible (for conventional aircraft) maneuvers. Other times they emitted odd beams of light and other forms of strange illumination. The CIA files even reported close encounters between shocked military personnel and  actual aliens , who were spotted emerging from landed UFOs. 

These types of stories have circulated for years, and have frequently been discussed on radio programs, podcasts, YouTube videos, at UFO conferences, and in online forums frequented by paranormal enthusiasts. But now, for the first time, the government is adding its official seal of approval to such reports, giving them a legitimacy that they lacked when they were coming exclusively from anonymous “whistleblowers,” lien disclosure gadflies, mysterious ex-military insiders, and other questionable sources sporting dubious or non-existent credentials.

The CIA has long withheld detailed information about UFOs from the public but that changed on January 14, 2021, when nearly 2 million documents were released and published online.

( Dusan / Adobe Stock) 

Government UFO Info: The US Senate Demands Answers 

The January 2021 release of these new documents was apparently prompted by  a special comment  added to the recent $2.3 trillion COVID relief and government funding bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump at the end of last December. In this comment, the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FLA), instructed the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense, and the heads of all other intelligence agencies to “submit a report within 180 days of the date of the enactment of the Act, to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees on  unidentified aerial phenomena .”

Under the terms of the Intelligence Committee directive, the government  UFO info  report would have to address “observed airborne objects that have not been identified” and should include a “detailed analysis of unidentified phenomena data collected by geospatial intelligence, signals intelligence,  human intelligence , and measurement and signals intelligence.”

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In an added paragraph that seems like a nod to X-Files fans, the Intelligence Committee further ordered “a detailed analysis of data of the FBI, which was derived from investigations of intrusions of unidentified aerial phenomena data over restricted United States airspace … and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries.”

It must be noted that this government UFO info directive says nothing about public disclosure. It only requests that reports be created and forwarded to the Senate Intelligence Committee for analysis. This makes the decision of the CIA to release this latest batch of documents to the public a matter of choice rather than law. No one required them to do it, but for reasons unknown they decided to do it anyway and several months before the June deadline that requires them to file a report with the Senate Intelligence Committee.

CIA UFO Data Dump: Honest Disclosure Or Hidden Agenda?

Curiously, this is the second occasion in the last year where an agency of the US government has deliberately chosen to release information that whets the public’s appetite for insider information about UFOs. In April 2020, the Department of Defense took the extraordinary step of declassifying  three U.S. Navy videos  that showed unidentified aerial objects performing their tricks for navy pilots. 

These videos, which were recorded in 2004 in one case and 2015 in the other two instances, had already been leaked to the media in 2007 and 2017. It appears the Defense Department’s primary objective in releasing them officially was to confirm their  anomalous nature . 

In their statement accompanying the release, the Defense Department said it wanted to “clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real.” They confirmed that “the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”

In other words, the United States Department of Defense wants its citizens to know that UFOs are real, that they aren’t secret military aircraft, and that investigations into their activities will continue if and when other encounters occur. 

After decades of denial and obfuscation, it seems the US government is no longer interested in debunking UFOs or covering up the truth (whatever it might be) about their origin and nature.

Dutifully, mainstream media sources in the United States and the United Kingdom are following the government’s lead, and are now reporting  UFO stories  disclosed by official sources in a relatively straightforward manner, without the usual snide remarks, snarky tones, or tired and dismissive “explanations” that invoke swamp gas, ball lightning, weather balloons, or next-generation stealth aircraft. 

Following this remarkable turn of events, it seems the old questions about “what do they know and for how long have they known it” have been rendered obsolete. In this current disclosure-oriented environment, what we should be asking instead is, “why are they doing this and why are they doing it now?”

• Top image: US government info on “everything” to do with UFO sightings, held by the CIA, was released and published online on January 14, 2021 .                     
• Source: IgorZh / Adobe Stock

By Nathan Falde

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

09-02-2021 om 01:58 geschreven door peter  

Here are 4 of the space missions to keep an eye out for in 2021.

The James Webb space telescope’s gold-coated mirror undergoing cryogenic testing. After many delays, the new space telescope – Hubble’s successor – is currently scheduled to launch on October 31.

Image via Ball Aerospace/ Flickr/ The Conversation.

By Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University and Gareth Dorrian, University of Birmingham

Space exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the Covid-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth.

This year is shaping up to be just as interesting. Here are some of the missions to keep an eye out for.

1. Artemis 1

Artemis 1 is to be the first flight of the NASA-led, international Artemis program, whose goal was (originally) to return astronauts to the moon by 2024. Artemis-1, which is still scheduled for launch late this year, will consist of an uncrewed Orion spacecraft which will be sent on a three-week flight around the moon. It will reach a maximum distance from Earth of 280,000 miles (450,000 km), the farthest into space that any spacecraft that can transport humans will have ever flown.

• EarthSky’s lunar calendar shows the moon phase for every day in 2021. Order yours before they’re gone!

Artemis 1 is designed to be launched into Earth orbit on the first NASA Space Launch System, which will be the most powerful rocket in operation. From Earth orbit, the Orion will be propelled onto a different path toward the moon by the rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage. The Orion capsule will then travel to the moon under the power provided by a service module supplied by the European Space Agency (ESA).

The mission will provide engineers back on Earth with a chance to evaluate how the spacecraft performs in deep space and serve as a prelude to later crewed lunar missions. The launch of Artemis 1 is currently scheduled for late in 2021.

• Read more: Joe Biden will likely keep NASA’s Artemis program, but on a different timeline.

2. Mars missions

In February, Mars will receive a flotilla of terrestrial robotic guests from several countries. The United Arab Emirates’ Al Amal (Hope) spacecraft is the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. It is scheduled to arrive in Mars orbit on February 9, where it will spend two years monitoring the Martian weather and disappearing atmosphere.

Arriving within a couple of weeks after Al Amal will be the China National Space Administration’s Tianwen-1, consisting of an orbiter and a surface rover. The spacecraft will enter Martian orbit for several months before deploying the rover to the surface. If it succeeds, China will become the third country to land anything on Mars. The mission has several objectives including mapping the mineral composition of the surface and searching for subsurface water deposits.

NASA’s Perseverance rover will land at Jezero Crater on February 18 and search for any signs of ancient life which may have been preserved in the clay deposits there. Critically, it will also store a cache of Martian surface samples on board as the first part in a highly ambitious international program to return samples of Mars to Earth.

3. Chandrayaan-3

In March 2021, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is planning to launch its third lunar mission: Chandrayaan-3. Chandrayaan-1 launched in 2008 and was one of the first major missions in the Indian space program. Comprising an orbiter and a surface penetrator probe, the mission was one of the first to confirm evidence of lunar water.

Unfortunately, contact with the satellite was lost less than a year later. Sadly, there was a similar mishap with its successor, Chandrayaan-2, which consisted of an orbiter, a lander (Vikram) and a lunar rover (Pragyan).

Artist’s concept of the the Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission from India.

Image via Raymond Cassel/ Shutterstock.

Chandrayaan-3 was announced a few months later. It will consist of only a lander and rover, as the previous mission’s orbiter is still functioning and providing data.

If all goes well the Chandrayaan-3 rover will touch down in the lunar south pole’s Aitken basin. It’s of particular interest as it is thought to host numerous deposits of subsurface water ice – a vital component for any future sustainable lunar habitation.

4. James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, but has had a rocky path to being launched. Initially planned for a 2007 launch, the Webb telescope is almost 14 years late and has cost roughly U.S. $10 billion (£7.4 billion) after apparent underestimates and overruns similar to those experienced by Hubble.

Whereas Hubble has provided some amazing views of the universe in visible and ultraviolet region of light, Webb is planning to focus observations in the infrared wavelength band. The reason for this is that when observing really distant objects there will probably be gas clouds in the way.

The galaxy NGC 2275 seen by Hubble.

Image via ESA/ Hubble/ NASA/ J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team.

These gas clouds block really small wavelengths of light, such as X-rays and ultraviolet light, while longer wavelengths like infrared, microwave and radio can get through more easily. So by observing in these longer wavelengths we should see more of the universe.

Webb also has a much bigger mirror of 21-foot (6.5-meter) diameter compared to Hubble’s 8-foot (2.4-meter) diameter mirror, essential for improving image resolution and seeing finer detail.

The primary mission of Webb is look at light from galaxies at the edge of the universe which can tell us about how the first stars, galaxies and planetary systems formed. Potentially this could include some information about the origin of life as well, as Webb is planning on imaging exoplanet atmospheres in high detail, searching for the building blocks of life. Do they exist on other planets, and if so, how did they get there?

We are also likely to be treated to some stunning images similar to those produced by Hubble. Webb is currently scheduled to launch on an Ariane 5 rocket on October 31.

• Ian Whittaker, Senior Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent University and Gareth Dorrian, Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Space Science, University of Birmingham
• This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
• Bottom line: 6 space missions set for 2021.
  

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{ https://earthsky.org/ }

09-02-2021 om 01:43 geschreven door peter  

Powerful cosmic eruptions traced to brilliant 'magnetar' in nearby galaxy

Astronomers may have captured the first good look at giant flares from the strongest magnets in the universe.

The likely cause of these giant flares? Starquakes trillions of trillions of times stronger than any earthquakes, scientists reported at the 237th American Astronomical Society meeting, held virtually last week.

The most powerful magnets in the cosmos are magnetars, which possess magnetic fields about 100 trillion times more powerful than Earth's, or 10 trillion times that of an ordinary fridge magnet, Kevin Hurley, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, said during a news conference held Jan. 13.

• Video: Spacecraft detected giant flare from magnetar
• Related: Astronomers spot the fastest spinning magnetar ever seen 

Magnetars are a rapidly spinning kind of neutron star, which is a corpse of a star that died in a catastrophic explosion known as a supernova. "Magnetars are up to a thousand times more magnetic than ordinary neutron stars," Soebur Razzaque, an astroparticle physicist at the University of Johannesburg and the senior author on one of the studies presented, said in a statement. 

"In the Milky Way there are tens of thousands of neutron stars," Razzaque added. "Of those, only 30 are currently known to be magnetars."

Once magnetars are born, they only stay magnetars for about 10,000 years before their magnetic fields weaken to render them relatively ordinary neutron stars, Eric Burns, an astrophysicist at Louisiana State University and co-author of the new study, said at the press conference. Magnetars are typically seen in star-forming regions, such as starburst galaxies, he noted.

• Related: Where do baby magnetars come from? Mysterious 'fast radio bursts' may provide clues.

Previous research discovered magnetars regularly explode with X-ray bursts about one-tenth of a second long that each pack up to about the same amount of energy the sun gives off in a year. In three instances over the past 40 years, astronomers have seen magnetars in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies explode with even brighter, more energetic outbursts of X-rays and gamma rays. However, such giant flares were so powerful, they blinded any sensors that glimpsed them, making them difficult to study in any great detail.

Now researchers may have the best look yet at a giant magnetar flare, one good enough to help them deduce its possible origins.

Scientists analyzed the extremely bright gamma-ray burst GRB 200415A, which five space observatories that form the so-called Interplanetary Network detected on April 15, 2020. Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful kinds of explosions known in the universe, each giving off as much energy in milliseconds to minutes as the sun is expected to emit during its entire 10-billion-year lifetime.

At its peak, this newfound explosion was about 360 trillion times more luminous than the sun. "That is about 100,000 years of solar energy released in only 140 milliseconds," Hurley said.

The Interplanetary Network triangulated the location of the gamma-ray burst to the center of the nearby Sculptor galaxy, formally known as NGC 253, which is located about 11.4 million light-years from Earth in the Sculptor constellation. Previously detected GRBs came from relatively far away from the Milky Way, but GRB 200415A originated much closer to home, in cosmic terms.

Gamma-ray bursts are typically divided into two groups — long and short — depending on whether they last more or less than two seconds. Short gamma-ray bursts are most likely caused by the mergers of neutron stars, while long gamma ray-bursts are linked with supernovas. 

GRB 200415A lasted just 140 milliseconds, about the blink of an eye. "It's as fast as snapping your fingers," Oliver Roberts, an astrophysicist at the Universities Space Research Association in Huntsville, Alabama who led another new study on GRB 200415A, said at the news conference.

This speed would ordinarily suggest it was a short gamma-ray burst. However, the pattern of light seen from this outburst was very different from that seen from short gamma-ray bursts that previous research found were caused by colliding neutron stars.

Instead, GRB 200415A's light pattern was a near copy of those previously seen from giant magnetar flashes. Those began with an intense flash about one-fifth of a second long, followed by a string of pulses lasting about two to 12 seconds.

The cause of this newfound giant magnetar flare was likely a "starquake" — a rupture of the magnetar's solid crust, Roberts said. This quake was huge — magnitude 27.8 in strength, or about one thousand trillion trillion (10^27, or a 1 with 27 zeroes behind it) times more powerful "than the largest known terrestrial earthquake, which was the magnitude 9.5 [earthquake] in Chile in 1960," Hurley said.

The researchers suggested this starquake not only released a bright flash of gamma rays, but also heated the magnetar's crust. As the magnetar whirls around, this super-hot crust looks like a series of bright flashes that dim as the surface cools, Hurley told Space.com.

The scientists added this starquake likely also spit out a blob of plasma traveling about 99% the speed of light, Nicola Omodei, an astrophysicist at Stanford University who participated in the study, said at the press conference. 

After four days, this blob encountered the shockwave created when the giant bubble of plasma around the magnetar, known as its magnetosphere, slammed into the interstellar medium of gas and dust between stars at a speed of about 2.2 million mph (3.6 million kph). When the blob collided with this shockwave, it generated another pulse of gamma rays seen 19 seconds after the initial flash. The gamma rays in this second outburst were even more energetic than those seen in the first one, he noted.

All in all, these new findings suggest that maybe a small percent of known short gamma-ray bursts are caused by giant magnetar flares, Burns said.

The scientists detailed their findings Jan. 13 at an online meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting. Hurley, Roberts and their colleagues detailed their findings in two studies in the Jan. 14 issue of the journal Nature. Omedei and his colleagues detailed their findings online Jan. 13 in the journal Nature Astronomy. 

• Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

09-02-2021 om 01:04 geschreven door peter  

Did water once flow through meteorites?

This Mars meteorite, which weighs 0.75 pounds (327 grams), landed in July 2011 as part of a shower in the vicinity of Tissint, Morocco, the location that gives the meteorite its name. A cross section of a small Aguas Zarcas fragment shows colorful clays that might include complex organic compounds. Water may have recently flowed within meteorites, suggesting the asteroids they broke off from may bear ice, a new study finds.

(Image: © Courtesy of Heritage Auctions)

In this study, researchers examined carbonaceous chondrites collected from around the world. They focused on variations of the elements uranium and thorium known as isotopes. (Isotopes of an element each have different numbers of neutrons in their atomic nuclei. For instance, uranium-234 atoms are uranium isotopes with 142 neutrons, while uranium-238 atoms each have 146 neutrons.)

The levels of different uranium and thorium isotopes within these meteorites should have depended on how long the isotopes usually last before they begin to radioactively decay. Instead, the scientists found unusually high levels of the relatively short-lived isotope uranium-234, compared with longer-lived uranium-238, in all the carbonaceous chondrites they looked at. Most of the samples also had unusually high levels of uranium-238 compared with thorium-230, an isotope that results from the radioactive decay of uranium-234.

The most likely explanation for these findings, they found, was that liquid water flowed within the parent bodies of these meteorites, likely when the collisions that broke the meteorites off those carbonaceous asteroids melted ice within those rocks, the researchers said. 

They think this because Uranium and thorium isotopes respond in different ways to liquid water — uranium is soluble in water, whereas thorium is not — which would explain the unusual isotope levels seen within these meteorites.

The anomalous isotope levels seen within the meteorites should disappear within a million years due to radioactive decay, the scientists noted. This suggests these meteorites possessed liquid water during that time.

All in all, this discovery suggests "these asteroids still contain ice, and that means that they could, at any time, have delivered both water and organics, which combined are critical for life," study lead author Simon Turner, an isotope geochemist at Macquarie University in Australia, told Space.com.

Previous research has detected water ice on asteroids such as Themis. "Carbonaceous asteroids might be frozen mud balls rather than rocky bodies as commonly thought," Turner said. "Our data provides strong evidence to support that."

• The scientists detailed their findings in the Jan. 8 issue of the journal Science.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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{ https://www.space.com/ }

09-02-2021 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

The Trappist-1 exoplanets could be worlds of water or rust

The Trappist-1 exoplanets are comprised of similar materials to Earth but their lower density could indicate radically different worlds.

by  Rob Lea

The star system of Trappist-1 is home to the largest group of Earth-like planets ever discovered elsewhere in the Universe by astronomers. This means that investigating these seven rocky worlds gives us a good idea of how common exoplanets with similar compositions to our own are in the Milky Way and the wider cosmos.

New research has revealed that these planets, which orbit the Trappist-1 star 40 light-years away from Earth, all have remarkably similar compositions and densities. Yet, all are less dense than Earth.

The results could indicate these are worlds with much more water than is found on earth, or possibly even that these planets are composed almost entirely of rust.

This similarity between the exoplanets makes the Trappist-1 system significantly different from our own solar system which consists of planets with radically compositions and densities. Trappist-1’s worlds are dense, meaning they are like the rocky planets in our solar system, Earth, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. The system seems to be lacking larger gas dominated planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The finding, documented in a paper published in the Planetary science Journal shows how the system, first discovered in 2016, offers insight into the wide variety of planetary systems that could fill the Universe.

“The new observations allowed us to use transit data from a much longer time span than was available to us for the 2018 calculations,” explains Simon Grimm of the University of Bern, who as well as being involved in the current study, was part of a 2018 team that provided the most accurate calculation of the masses of the seven planets thus far. “With the new data, we were able to refine the mass and density determinations of all seven planets.

“It turned out that the derived densities of the planets are even more similar than we had previously expected.”

Contents [hide]

• 1 Seven Exoplanets with Similar Densities
• 2 Rust Nevers Sleeps for the Trappist-1 Planets
• 3 There’s Still a Lot to Learn from Trappist-1
• 4 Original Research

Seven Exoplanets with Similar Densities

The similarity in densities observed in the Trappist-1 exoplanets seen by the astronomers hailing from the Universities of Bern, Geneva and Zurich, indicates that there is a good chance they are composed of the same materials at similar ratios.

These are the same materials that we believe form most terrestrial planets, iron, oxygen, magnesium, and silicon. But there is a significant difference between our terrestrial world and the Trappist-1 exoplanets.

The planets in the Trappist-1 system appear to be about 8% less dense than the Earth. This suggests that the materials that comprise them exist in different ratios than they do throughout our home planet.

This difference in density could be the result of several different factors.

One of the possibilities being investigated by the team is that the surfaces of the Trappist-1 exoplanets could be covered with water, reducing their overall density. Combining the planetary interior models with the planetary atmosphere models, the team was able to evaluate the water content of the seven TRAPPIST-1 planets with what Martin Turbet, an astrophysicist at the University of Geneva and co-author of the study describes as “a precision literally unprecedented for this category of planets.”

For the Trappist-1 system’s four outermost planets, should water account for the difference in density, the team has estimated that water would account for 5% of their overall masses. This is considerably more than the 0.1% of Earth’s total mass made up of water.

Rust Nevers Sleeps for the Trappist-1 Planets

Another possibility that could explain why the Trappist-1 exoplanets have lower densities than Earth is the fact that they could be composed of less iron than our planet is–21% rather than the 32% found in the Earth.

It’s also possible that the iron within the seven exoplanets could be bonded with oxygen forming iron oxides–commonly known as rust. This additional oxygen would reduce the planet’s densities.

Iron oxides give Mars its rust-red colour, but they are pretty much confined to its surface. Its core is comprised of non-oxidized iron like the solar system’s other terrestrial planets. If iron-oxide accounts for the seven exoplanet’s lower densities it implies that these worlds are rusty throughout and lacking solid non-oxidized iron cores.

“The lower density might be caused by a combination of the two scenarios – less iron overall than and some oxidized iron,” explains Eric Angol, an astrophysicist at the University of Washington and lead author of the new study. “They might contain less iron than Earth and some oxidized iron like Mars.”

Angol also points out that the Trappist-1 planets are likely to have a low-water content, an idea supported by previous research. “Our internal and atmospheric structure models show that the three inner planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system are likely to be waterless and that the four outer planets have no more than a few per cent water, possibly in liquid form, on their surfaces,” says Turbet.

This seems to favour the theory that the lower density of the Trappist-1 planets is a result of one or both of the iron scenarios suggested by the researchers.

There’s Still a Lot to Learn from Trappist-1

Since its discovery in 2o16, the Trappist system has been the subject of a wealth of observations made by both space and ground-based telescopes alike. Before it was decommissioned at the start of January 2020 the team used the Spitzer Space Telescope to collect their data. This telescope, operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, alone has clocked in more than 1,000 hours of targeted observations of the exoplanets.

This new study demonstrated the importance of studying systems such as Trappist-1 for extended periods of time.

Caroline Dorn, an astrophysicist at the University of Zurich also highlights the fact that studying systems like this could answer questions about the habitability of exoplanets and the possibility of life elsewhere in the Universe.

“The TRAPPIST-1 system is fascinating because around this one star we can learn about the diversity of rocky planets within a single system,” concludes Dorn. “And we can actually learn more about an individual planet by studying its neighbours as well, so this system is perfect for that.”

“The night sky is full of planets, and it’s only been within the last 30 years that we’ve been able to start unravelling their mysteries, also for determining the habitability of these planets.”

Original Research

• Agol. E., Dorn. C., Grimm. S. L., et al, ‘Refining the transit timing and photometric analysis of TRAPPIST-1: Masses, radii, densities, dynamics, and ephemerides,’ Planetary Science Journal, [https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.01074]

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

08-02-2021 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER THE REASON FOR UNEXPLAINED ACTIVITY ON MARS

The answer may lie just beneath the surface of the Red Planet.

FOR CENTURIES AFTER GALILEO made the first observations of Mars in 1610, the planet appeared to our Earth eyes as a quiet, dusty, and ultimately, dead planet.

But in the last 50 years, scientists have sent multiple spacecraft to observe the Red Planet up close, revealing Mars is very much an active planet, wracked by continuous geological activity and riven with subsurface canals.

One piece of evidence for this activity is the fact the Martian landscape regularly experiences a form of natural disaster which, here on Earth, has the potential to level cities and block roads: Landslides.

For as long as we have known they occur on Mars, so too have scientists not known their cause. But a new study may have uncovered the reason why this Earth-like feature also occurs on Mars lurking beneath the planet's surface. The findings have major implications for future human missions to explore Mars.

The study was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

HERE'S THE BACKGROUND

 In September, 2018 NASA's Mars Reconnoissance Orbiter caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a recent landslide in a crater near a region of the planet called Nili Fossae.

The landslides were formed by large amounts of rock and soil moving downslope at a speed of up to 360 kilometers per hour, and extending for over tens of kilometers.

However, scientists were not sure what caused the landslides to form.

WHAT'S NEW

Janice Bishop, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute and lead author behind the new study, was studying the unusual chemical processes which take place beneath Antarctica's ice when she noticed a strange similarity to Mars.

"Antartica is a cold and dry environment like Mars," Bishop tells Inverse.

"So we started looking at other analogs as well to try to understand this chemistry."

Bishop and her team studied both the Dead Sea in Israel and Salar de Pajonales in the Atacama Desert, in addition to conducting experiments in the lab, to glean further insights as to what may be occurring on Mars to cause changes in the planet's topography.

Through their observations, they found that specific chemical salts interact with gypsum, or water underground, and this causes disruptions on the surface, including ground collapse and landslides.

"The chlorine salts are very deliquescent, they absorb a lot of water like a sponge so they become a liquid," Bishop explains. This is similar to a more terrestrial, and familiar process you can see in your own kitchen, she says.

"If you leave your salt shaker out, it absorbs water, and becomes sticky."

Similarly, the chlorine salt and sulfate found in the icy underground water beneath Mars' surface creates an unstable, liquid-like slush which causes disturbances in the above ground surface.

This same process may have also caused landslides to take place on Earth millions of years ago. However, since then, our planet was covered by oceans and plants which covered its surface, preventing us from observing the markings leftover by early processes on the planet.

WHY DO WE STUDY MARS?

"I think Mars is really interesting because it's kind of a window to our origins on early Earth," Bishop says. "On our planet, life took off and we have plants and bacteria, we have highways and roads but on Mars you get to see the rocks, the planet isn’t contaminated by all the things we have here so you can see its history."

Mars may be a dry and desolate planet today, but scientists believe that it may have had a similar start to Earth, beginning as a warm and wet world. However, gradually over time, the planet lost its atmosphere.

"The evolution of the planet was kind of frozen in time, its not that it would’ve been the same as Earth but there could’ve been a lot of similarities," Bishop says.

WHAT'S NEXT

The new study suggests that the subsurface of Mars holds a lot more clues to the history and evolution of the planet than scientists previously believed.

Bishop suggests that more efforts need to be concentrated on drilling beneath the surface of Mars.

"So far, we've only seen the surface," Bishop says.

NASA's Mars rovers have poked at rocks, and the space agency's Insight mission, which has been attempting to drill on the Red Planet, recently called it quits. However, the upcoming European Space Agency's ExoMars mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2022, will dig two meters beneath the surface.

From there, Bishop hopes to get a better understanding of the processes that are taking place beneath the surface.

"Understanding the processes on Mars helps us understand what happened on Earth since our history was erased," she says.

Abstract: 

On Mars, seasonal martian flow features known as recurring slope lineae (RSL) are prevalent on sun-facing slopes and are associated with salts. On Earth, subsurface interactions of gypsum with chlorides and oxychlorine salts wreak havoc: instigating sinkholes, cave collapse, debris flows, and upheave. Here, we illustrate (i) the disruptive potential of sulfate-chloride reactions in laboratory soil crust experiments, (ii) the formation of thin films of mixed ice-liquid water “slush” at −40° to −20°C on salty Mars analog grains, (iii) how mixtures of sulfates and chlorine salts affect their solubilities in low-temperature environments, and (iv) how these salt brines could be contributing to RSL formation on Mars. Our results demonstrate that interactions of sulfates and chlorine salts in fine-grained soils on Mars could absorb water, expand, deliquesce, cause subsidence, form crusts, disrupt surfaces, and ultimately produce landslides after dust loading on these unstable surfaces.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

08-02-2021 om 23:37 geschreven door peter  

The “Lost” Soviet UFO Files Of The Cold War

Alien Encounters From Behind The Iron Curtain

The Far-Reach Of The Cold War

The Conspiracies Of The Lost Cosmonauts 

{https://www.metimeforthemind.com/ }

08-02-2021 om 23:08 geschreven door peter  

Warp Drives, Space Manipulation, And The Pentagon’s UFO Program

Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions

The Pentagon and UFOs

According to a report in the New York Times in December 2017 (which you can read in full here), the Defense Department spent $22 million on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. That is, however, all that is known. The records do not show how the money was spent, where it went, or why. Only that the figure of $22 million was allocated to this particular platform. In reality, this money would appear to have been earmarked for “black budget” projects – at least according to those who keep an intense eye on government spending.

Alien At The Pentagon?

{ https://www.metimeforthemind.com/ }

08-02-2021 om 22:42 geschreven door peter