The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
12-01-2022
China's Chang'E-5 lander finds first onsite evidence of water on the Moon
China's Chang'E-5 lander finds first onsite evidence of water on the Moon
Data from China's Chang'E-5 lunar lander analyzed by an international team led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows that the robotic spacecraft has, for the first time, detected traces of water in the rocks and regolith on the Moon's surface.
The fifth lunar mission launched by China and its third lander mission, Chang'E-5 made history on December 17, 2020 when it's ascent stage and the mission's orbiter returned the first lunar samples to Earth since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission in 1976.
Though the mission was a success, the lander lacked a radio-thermonuclear unit to keep it warm through the -310 °F (-190 °C) 14-day lunar night during which its electronics froze and failed. However, the information gathered by the mission during the brief surface mission is still returning surprising dividends.
One of these involves something that is more valuable than gold when it comes to future lunar missions and the establishment of permanent human outposts: water. If a large supply of the wet stuff can be secured on the Moon, it will provide future missions with not only a source of drinking water, but also oxygen and hydrogen that can be used to produce air for breathing, rocket fuel, and the raw material for a staggering array of industrial processes.
Context images and water content at the Chang'E-5 landing site
LIN Honglei
So far, all of the water detected on the Moon has been from orbiting spacecraft using remote sensing to uncover water ice hiding in the permanent shadows of the lunar south polar region, but the new study that included scientists from the National Space Science Center of CAS, the University of Hawai′i at Mānoa, the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of CAS, and Nanjing University has found the presence of water in the form of H₂O or OH hydroxyl molecules in the Northern Oceanus Procellarum basin much closer to the lunar equator.
The area where Chang'E-5 touched down is a lava plain that is made of some of the youngest mare basalts on the Moon. Using the lunar mineralogical spectrometer (LMS) onboard the lander, mission control carried out spectral analysis of light reflecting off the regolith on the surface and a rock in the vicinity of the lander.
According to the team, the heat coming off the lunar surface during the daytime would have overwhelmed the spectral records, but using a thermal correction model to correct the LMS spectra allowed the scientists to see the spectrographic signature of water, showing that the regolith holds less than 120 ppm of water, which is similar to the amount found in the samples returned to Earth by the mission. This isn't surprising, and what little water there is is probably the result of molecules brought to the Moon by the solar winds.
But on examining a light and vesicular rock, the instrument showed that it contained about 180 ppm of water. That might not seem like much, but because the rock may have come from an older layer of basalt beneath the lunar surface that was thrown out by a meteor impact, it may mean that there was an outgassing of water from the interior of the Moon sometime in the past that was trapped in the basalt. This means that there may be sources of water away from the poles, locked in rocks that could one day be tapped.
NAPLES, Fl. (WBBH) – We see all kinds of things in the sky, but one Naples man is perplexed by what he saw on Wednesday.
“They were kind of glowing and flickering a little bit,” said Matt Krauss.
It was Wednesday evening when he and his wife looked up. They didn’t see the moon, but instead a single bright light.
“New lights appeared near it and they got very, very bright at that point,” he said. “There were four of them and they kind of moved in different directions.”
According to Krauss, the lights didn’t make any sound and seemed to be hovering in place.
“What I can’t explain is why they were so bright, why they were stationary for, one of them was stationary for 15 minutes,” he said.
Southwest Florida International Airport shared if anything abnormal was going on. They deferred us to the FAA. The FAA says we’d have to ask the military.
However, the Naples Airport Authority says there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary on the radar that night, but noted it could be Chinese lanterns. Those are illegal within City of Naples limits.
Krauss doesn’t think so.
“The random movement is kind of what convinced me they weren’t something like Chinese lanterns that were being blown by the wind.”
Back on Naples beach, suspicion was in the air.
“I feel there’s something out there,” said Fran Williams.
“Looks a little suspicious,” added Bryce Renkiewicz.
But not everyone believes E.T. is taking a trip to Naples.
“People sighting UFOs, it’s usually some sort of military aircraft or something like that,” said Peter Agri. “I’d have to see it to believe it. Physically be there to see it.”
Could it really be something from outer space? One aviation expert says only 1% of sightings go unexplained, but he couldn’t rule out the fact that what Krauss saw could be from out of this world.
“It could be a number of different things, but I’m not ruling out that UFOs don’t exist,” said Pete Trabucco, a veteran pilot. “How arrogant do we think we are that we’re all by ourselves in this entire universe.”
Atmospheric anomalies, drones, or covert military ops are other possibilities.
“They probably are from outer space or from another location or from a place we are not aware of,” said Trabucco.
What we do know is that these lights are still unidentified flying objects.
And we’re back to asking the same question: what actually flew above Naples that night?
Very large space rocks that fly within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) of Earth's solar orbit are known as potentially hazardous asteroids.
(Image credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)
An enormous asteroid more massive than two Empire State Buildings is heading our way, but unlike the so-called planet-killer comet in the recent movie "Don't Look Up," this space rock will zoom harmlessly past Earth.
The stony asteroid, known as (7482) 1994 PC1, will pass at its closest on Jan. 18 at 4:51 p.m. EST (2151 GMT), traveling at 43,754 mph (70,415 km/h) and hurtling past Earth at a distance of 0.01324 astronomical units — 1.2 million miles ( nearly 2 million kilometers), according to NASA JPL-Caltech's Solar System Dynamics (SSD).
That may sound like a safe distance — and it is! But by cosmic standards, it's close for such a large object. Asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 measures about 3,609 feet (1,100 meters) long, and even though there's no danger of a collision with Earth, NASA classifies the asteroid as a potentially hazardous object. This term describes asteroids that measure over 460 feet (140 m) long and have orbits that carry them within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of Earth's orbit around the sun, according to NASA's Asteroid Watch.
In the Netflix movie "Don't Look Up" (2021), astrophysicist Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and graduate student Kate DiBiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) confront the data about an approaching comet. (Image credit: Niko Tavernise/Netflix)
The approaching asteroid is also part of a larger category of space rocks known as near-Earth objects (NEOs), which pass within about 30 million miles (50 million km) of Earth's orbital path. NASA's NEO Observations Program finds, identifies and characterizes these objects; survey telescopes have found approximately 28,000 NEOs that measure at least 460 feet in diameter, and about 3,000 new sightings are added each year, according to the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS)
"But as larger and more advanced survey telescopes turbocharge the search over the next few years, a rapid uptick in discoveries is expected," according to the CNEOS.
Once observers detect a near-Earth asteroid or comet, scientists analyze the object's orbit to assess how close it might come to Earth. Though many thousands of asteroids and comets are currently zipping around the solar system, the objects in the CNEOS' database pose no serious impact threats for the next 100 years or more, NASA says.
Astronomer Robert H. McNaught was the first to spot asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1, on Aug. 9, 1994. Other scientists then tracked its previous trips through our cosmic neighborhood by using McNaught's observations to calculate the asteroid's orbital path, speed and trajectory. They found that the asteroid orbits the sun once every 572 days, and they detected the visitor in telescope images going all the way back to 1974, according to EarthSky. And on Jan. 18, if visibility is good, the asteroid will be bright enough to be seen in a dark-sky location at night with a backyard telescope, EarthSky reported.
Close as the asteroid may be on Jan. 18, it came much closer on Jan. 17, 1933. That year, the space rock sailed past Earth at a distance of about 699,000 miles (1.1 million km), and it won't come that close to us again until 2105, according to SSD.
Astronomers refer to these worlds as "super-habitable" planets.
Scientists have identified as many as 24 super habitable planets in the galaxy that are much more suitable for life as we know it than Earth.
Our solar system is a very special place. The number one reason is that, as far as we are concerned, and pending validation of the discovery of potential alien microbes on Venus, only Earth is habitable. Life developed here and nowhere else in the solar system, or at least that’s the information we have to date.
Nonetheless, alien life could be far more widespread than we’ve initially thought, and the best places where it may exist could be Venus, Mars, and some of the moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn.
However, confirming or rejecting that hypothesis is not so easy.
It is even more difficult to find out whether other star systems in the galaxy and the universe are home to life as we know it.
Although it is not possible for our current technology to take us within a lifetime to another star system, we can use space telescopes and ground-based telescopes to study the galaxy, the stars, and exoplanets within it.
These observations, studies, and measurements have recently revealed fascinating information; dozens of planets outside our solar system have been found to host more suitable conditions for life as we know it than Earth itself. A study has also found that there are stars in the universe that are much more suitable for allowing life to develop on planets orbiting them, compared to our sun.
All of this raises the hopes that alien life is common in the universe.
A study led by Washington State University (WSU) scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, recently published in the journal Astrobiology, details the characteristics of possible ‘super-habitable’ planets, including those that are older, slightly larger, slightly warmer, and possibly more humid compared to the Earth. It has been found that life as we know it could also thrive more easily on planets that revolve around slower-changing stars with a longer lifespan than our sun.
Astronomers have even found those types of planets. The top 24 contenders for super-habitable planets are located more than 100 light-years apart, but Schulze-Makuch said the study could help focus future observational campaigns, such as that of NASA’s James Webb space telescope, LUVIOR space observatory, and the PLATO space telescope of the European Space Agency towards their stars, in an effort to better understand what these worlds are like.
“We can distill a shortlist of 24 top contenders among the >4000 exoplanets known today that could be candidates for a super habitable planet. In fact, we argue that, with regard to the search for extrasolar life, potentially super habitable planets may deserve higher priority for follow-up observations than most Earth-like planets,” writesSchulze-Makuch,René Heller, and Edward Guinan in their paper published in Astrobiology.
The next generation of telescopes will help astronomers in identifying what the potential super habitable planets are like, and whether they really are such cosmic goldmines after all. However, Schulze-Makuch warns that although “we have to focus on certain planets that have the most promising conditions for complex life, we have to be careful to not get stuck looking for a second Earth because there could be planets that might be more suitable for life than ours.”
An image comparison of Earth and Kepler-1649c, an exoplanet only 1.06 times Earth’s radius. Image Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter.
The new study saw Schulze-Makuch team up with fellow scientists René Heller, and Edward Guinan of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, respectively.
They worked on identifying potential super-habitability criteria which led them on a journey to analyze around 4,500 known exoplanets and look for potential candidates. The scientists combed through many star systems (from the Kepler Object of Interest Exoplanet Archive) and selected those that have the most probability of hosting terrestrial planets that orbit the star within the so-called habitable zone, where water can exist in a liquid state.
After going through many important characteristics, like the age of the stars, the type of star, and their energy output, they discovered a group of 24 planets that fit their criteria, although among the top 24 candidates none of them met all the criteria for super habitable planets.
The critical characteristics taken into consideration by the researchers include worlds that are between 5 billion and 8 billion years old, planets that are around 10% larger than Earth, and 1.5 times the Earth’s mass. Water is key, and the more of it the better as it will certainly help the exoplanet, especially if it comes in the form of moisture. A slightly greater overall temperature would also be nice, the researchers say. A mean surface temperature of approximately 2 degrees Celsius greater than Earth would be more suitable for life.
“It’s sometimes difficult to convey this principle of super habitable planets because we think we have the best planet,” explained Schulze-Makuch.
“We have a great number of complex and diverse life forms and many that can survive in extreme environments. It is good to have adaptable life, but that doesn’t mean that we have the best of everything.”
According to the researcher, only one exoplanet has all four of the “critical” characteristics which makes it far more comfortable for the development of life than our home planet.
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All sources and references are linked throughout the article.
Saucer Shaped UFO Sighting over Orangeburg, South Carolina on January 6, 2022
witness states:
Went out for a smoke and took pictures of the front yard, as I see frequent UFO activity and like to record proof. I have seen many UFOs that were far off but this was the first time anything has come so close. The craft came from the tree line pulsing multicolored lights. After a few seconds, two orbs came out of it and began to pulse/blink red. It was like they were trying to memos a large aircraft; however, I worked on C-17s in the Air Force and know that this no aircraft.
These crafts were moving slow towards the neighbors and disappeared in the trees. I went to the backyard and observed them descend down into the back woods behind the house (swamp land). You can see the red orbs change from vertical to horizontal close to the end of the video.
Source: MUFON/ UFO Stalker: Case Number 120202. Sighting over Orangeburg, South Carolina. on January 6, 202
Huge UFO Recorded From Space Station In Earths Orbit, VIDEO, UFO Sighting News.
Huge UFO Recorded From Space Station In Earths Orbit, VIDEO, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: January 12, 2022
Location of sighting: Earths orbit
Source: ISS live cam
Watch this live space station footage taken today and you will see a close up of a huge sphere UFO rising up in earths orbit. It's not the moon. The moon is 5X bigger and bright. This object is much smaller, oval in shape and has some unique red/green colors to it. I and others have seen such UFOs orbiting Earths moon, but this event is a very rare one to see orbiting Earth. This UFO is several times bigger than the space station. Absolutely amazing catch and 100% proof that aliens are watching over Earth.
Silver Object Over Haltom, Texas On Jan 10, 2022, UFO Sighting News.
Silver Object Over Haltom, Texas On Jan 10, 2022, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: January 10, 2022
Location of sighting: Haltom, Texas, USA Source: MUFON
Here is a UFO that came very low and close to the eyewitnesses in Texas this week. The UFO was seen flying from some clouds and passed above them. The eyewitness describes it as flashy white and blue lights unlike any aircraft they have ever seen. They also said a plane was seen passing nearby, which I believed was sent to investigate the UFO. The craft rotates slowly as it moves over them, revealing a odd lumpy diamond shape to it. At times it even turns the color of the white clouds as if it were trying to camouflage itself. There is no doubt in my mind about this one...it is a UFO.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
We were driving when I saw some bright lights that were just so bright, I thought maybe a drone but after watching it clearly was not! We pulled over and watched as it just hovered then moved not like any aircraft there were lights that flashed white and blue so very bright and there was a plane with a trail at one point nothing like what we saw pictures do no justice to in person.
Extraterrestrial Fleet arrives to watch humanity's liberation - Interview with James Gilliland
Extraterrestrial Fleet arrives to watch humanity's liberation - Interview with James Gilliland
Alarge fleet of spacecraft belonging to more highly evolved extraterrestrials have recently entered our solar system according to James Gilliland who runs the ECETI retreat in Mt Adams, Washington and has over 35 years of contact experiences.
He claims these positive extraterrestrials along with higher dimensional beings are here to oversee a fundamental change in how our solar system and planet are run. Furthermore, James discusses the collapse of the Deep State and regressive ETs in this Exopolitics Today Interview.
Bijzonder: verre planeet heeft de vorm van een rugbybal
In een ver stelsel blijkt een opvallende planeet te bestaan die niet rond is, zoals de aarde, maar die de vorm van een rugbybal heeft. De planeet heeft die ongebruikelijke vorm hoogstwaarschijnlijk door de kracht van de ster waar hij omheen draait. Dat melden de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA en de universiteit van Bern in Zwitserland.
De planeet heeft de wetenschappelijke naam ‘WASP-103b’. Hij is groter dan Jupiter, de grootste planeet in ons zonnestelsel, en heeft waarschijnlijk ongeveer dezelfde samenstelling.
WASP-103b draait om een ster die bijna twee keer zo groot is als onze zon en een slordige 200 graden warmer. De planeet staat zo dicht bij die ster, dat hij er in een minder dag omheen draait. De aarde doet iets meer dan 365 dagen en 6 uur over een baan rond de zon.
De planeet werd in 2014 al ontdekt met de ruimtetelescopen Hubble en Spitzer. Zijn vreemde vorm is nu vastgesteld met een andere ruimtetelescoop, de Europese Cheops, die eind 2019 werd gelanceerd. Die satelliet is gebouwd om te zoeken naar planeten die rond andere sterren draaien, zogeheten exoplaneten.
Thousands of rare and prehistoric fossils have been found in the now-dry “dead heart” of Australia. These fossils, which include spiders, small fish, and plants, date back between 16 and 11 million years ago during the Miocene Epoch when the region was full of rainforests.
The discoveries were made at a new fossil site called McGraths Flat in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales (close to the town of Gulgong). The field belonged to a farmer who reported that he found fossilized leaves and that’s how the discoveries began. This location is one of very few fossil sites in Australia that are referred to as a Lagerstätte which means that the fossils are of incredible quality.
(Not the fossils mentioned in this article.)
The rock layer that contains the fossils measures between 11,000 and 22,000 square feet (1,000 to 2,000 square meters). Paleontologists have excavated a little more than 500 square feet (50 square meters) so far, so there is a lot left to uncover. The reason why the fossils are so well preserved is because they are surrounded by goethite (iron-rich rock) on top of a sandstone layer. The fossils were in a now-dry pool and surrounded by iron and additional minerals that would have fallen into the pool from basalt cliffs (this is called a billabong).
Previous fossil findings in Australia from the Miocene Epoch were mostly teeth and bones belonging to larger animals, but the new discoveries were very significant as they were much smaller creatures like insects and tiny fish, as well as rainforest plants. In an email to Live Science, Matthew McCurry, who is the curator of paleontology at the Australian Museum, stated, “This site gives us unprecedented insight into what these ecosystems were like.” “We now know how diverse these ecosystems were, which species lived in them and how these species interacted.”
The fossils were analyzed with scanning electron microscopes (SEM) which allowed the experts to see them in incredible detail, such as the subcellular structures and single cells. What’s even more amazing is that the SEM revealed what the creatures ate prior to dying (these meals included larvae, fish, and a dragonfly wing that was partly digested). The SEM revealed other interesting features like pollen grains that were attached to the bodies of insects, and a freshwater mussel that was holding onto the fin of a fish.
(Not any of the fossils mentioned in this article.)
Additional fossils include fungal spores, pollen, flowering plants, a feather belonging to a sparrow-sized bird, and over a dozen fish specimens, as well as “a wide diversity of fossilized insects and arachnids”. There had only been four fossilized spiders found in Australia and thirteen have been discovered so far at this new fossil site. Pictures of the spider and feather fossils can be viewed here.
Exceptional fossils of a spider and a feather from the Australian site are between 16 million and 11 million years old.
(Image credit: Michael Frese)
Millions of years ago, this site was a lush rainforest ecosystem that washome to diverse plant and animal species.
(Image credit: Alex Boermsa)
Cingulasporites ornatus spores were among the traces of ancient life preserved at McGraths Flat.(Image credit: Michael Frese)
Based on analysis of the fossilized leaves, the experts were able to calculate that the average temperature during that time period was approximately 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius). Their study was published in the journal Science Advances.
This is a structure on an astroid called Eros. Eros is famous for having been the first asteroid to have been orbited by a spacecraft. And looking at these photos, you can see why. You see, NASA always makes moves for a reason. They don't guess...they have data that they rely on and now we know why they went to visit Eros. They wanted to get some intel on the the structures there. I am wondering if they had found a signal coming from this asteroid, something unnatural that pushed them to do this mission. How did they know these structures were on it? I guess they will never say. Scott C. Waring
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Four Unknown Craft Over Phoenix, Arizona Dec 20, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Four Unknown Craft Over Phoenix, Arizona Dec 20, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Dec 20, 2021
Location of sighting: Phoenix, Arizona, USA Source: MUFON
Four white round objects were spotted over Arizona last week. The person came out to have a smoke during a break at work and noticed four objects flying together. He believed them to be UFOs, his friend seemed to think that they had similarities to birds. However, I see no wings sticking out from the objects and hear no sounds of geese or ducks flying overhead. I feel that these UFOs are headed to the alien base behind Nellis Air Force Base where a Tall White base was established at a dry lake bed. The USAF gave an area behind Nellis AFB at the old firing range to the Tall Whites to have a technology exchange program. The base is underground, but glowing white ships are seen during day and night moving in and out from the area. 100% proof of Tall White ships in the Phoenix area.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
I viewed on Dec 20 at my work. It looked like birds, but beg to differ.
James Webb Telescope Will Make TERRIFYING Discoveries!
James Webb Telescope Will Make TERRIFYING Discoveries!
Decades after the idea, the James Webb Space Telescope has finally made it to space. Launched on this Christmas, the telescope started its deployment after it was sent to the space. Scientists are depending on the telescope to know the truth about our existence and also if there is any other life in this universe other than ours. The telescope fans are curious to know about its deployment and what’s next for this masterpiece, they are asking if the telescope is really going to find the answer to our creation? Welcome to Cosmos lab, your one station for all the news from space. Join us in today’s video to find out about the deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope, its goals, and what’s next for this massive beast. The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s most powerful and largest space telescope. It is an infrared space observatory that launched on Dec 25, 2021, from ESA’s launch site at Kourou in French Guiana, onboard an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket. The telescope will let scientists to peek back 200 million years after the Big Bang to see how our cosmos looked. Images of some of the first galaxies ever formed will be captured by the telescope. It will also be able to peek inside dust clouds to see where new stars and planets are developing, as well as investigate the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. It will be able to observe objects in our solar system from Mars outward. The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope will explore the cosmos to learn more about the universe’s history, from the Big Bang to the birth of alien planets and beyond. It’s one of NASA’s Great Observatories, huge space instruments that include the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the cosmos. After being launched on Christmas Day, the James Webb Space Telescope will journey over a million miles or 1.5 million kilometers to its permanent home, a Lagrange point — a gravitationally stable place in space. At the second Lagrange point, the James Webb Space Telescope will orbit the sun (L2). L2 is a location in space near Earth that is opposite the sun; this orbit will keep the telescope in alignment with Earth as it orbits the sun. Several other space telescopes have used it, notably the Herschel Space Telescope and the Planck Space Observatory. If Webb gets to the right zone, it can use a minimum of fuel to stay in place thanks to a near-perfect alignment with the sun, Earth and moon. The new observatory, the world’s largest space telescope, successfully unfolded its final primary mirror piece on January. 8, capping one of NASA’s most challenging space deployments ever. After the deployment, Engineering teams cheered back at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced on Twitter that the final wing was deployed. ‘Final wing is now deployed! Short celebration, but we’ve still got work to do. Engineers are working to latch the wing into place, a multi-hour process. When the final latch is secure, NASA Webb will be fully unfolded in space.’ Webb’s five-layered sunshield — a 70-foot-long, kite-shaped structure that acts as a parasol — was deployed to keep the telescope’s equipment cool so they could detect tiny infrared signals from the remote reaches of the Universe. The sun shield will be permanently installed between the telescope and the Sun, Earth, and Moon, with the Sun-facing side designed to resist temperatures of up to 230 degrees Fahrenheit (110 degrees Celsius). The telescope was folded up because it was too large to fit into the nose cone of a rocket in its working condition. According to Nasa, unfurling has been a sophisticated and difficult process – the most difficult of its kind ever attempted. However, it has now been successfully deployed and according to NASA officials, we have still got work to do. So, what is this work, and what is next for this gigantic space telescope? Webb is expected to arrive at its “insertion location” by Jan. 23. John Durning, Webb’s deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, after the deployment in a press conference from Webb’s control center at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, said to the reporters that, ‘As Webb prepares for the engine fire, team members will spend the next 15 days aligning the 18 mirror segments to “essentially perform as one mirror.’ I should say also, that Webb will start turning on the instruments in the next week or so,” Durning added. “And then after we get into L2, as the instruments get cold enough, they [engineers] are going to be starting to turn on all the various instruments.’ L2 is an excellent area for Webb to carry out its mission.
Memes Flood Internet After Report Claims NASA Hired 24 Theologians to Study Human Reaction to Aliens
Viral News: Needless to say, search for alien life has been a matter of fascination for humankind for centuries. There’s something really alluring and interesting about the unknown which teases our imagination. In a bid to find about the same, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has reportedly hired priests and religious experts (theologians) to assess how humans will react if alien life is discovered on another planet. NASA also wants to assess how such discoveries could impact our ideas of gods and creation, New York Post reported.Also Read - From New Virus, Tsunami to Alien Attack: Here Are Blind Mystic Baba Vanga's Predictions For 2022
According to reports, the agency is hiring 24 theologians to take part in its program at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton University in New Jersey, which NASA gave a $1.1 million grant to in 2014. The programme aims to assess how the world’s major religions would react to the news that life exists in worlds beyond our own. It also aims to answer questions that have been puzzling us for a long time, such as, What is life? What does it mean to live? Where do we draw the line between humans and aliens? Is it possible that life exists elsewhere?
Meanwhile, the news has sparked a lot of curiosity, humour and memes (of course) on Twitter. Many were excited at the possibility of human contact with aliens, while others didn’t support the idea of hiring priests and bringing religion in the picture.
In October, the Australian Space Agency and NASA signed a deal to send an Australian-made rover to the moon under the Artemis program, with a goal to collect lunar rocks that could ultimately provide breathable oxygen on the moon.
Although the moon does have an atmosphere, it’s very thin and composed mostly of hydrogen, neon, and argon. It’s not the sort of gaseous mixture that could sustain oxygen-dependent mammals such as humans.
That said, there is actually plenty of oxygen on the moon. It just isn’t in a gaseous form. Instead it’s trapped inside regolith—the layer of rock and fine dust that covers the moon’s surface. If we could extract oxygen from regolith, would it be enough to support human life on the moon?
The Breadth of Oxygen
Oxygen can be found in many of the minerals in the ground around us. And the moon is mostly made of the same rocks you’ll find on Earth (although with a slightly greater amount of material that came from meteors).
Minerals such as silica, aluminum, and iron and magnesium oxides dominate the moon’s landscape. All of these minerals contain oxygen, but not in a form our lungs can access.
On the moon these minerals exist in a few different forms including hard rock, dust, gravel, and stones covering the surface. This material is the result of impacts of meteorites crashing into the lunar surface over countless millennia.
Some people call the moon’s surface layer lunar “soil,” but as a soil scientist I’m hesitant to use this term. Soil as we know it is pretty magical stuff that only occurs on Earth. It has been created by a vast array of organisms working on the soil’s parent material—regolith, derived from hard rock—over millions of years.
The result is a matrix of minerals which were not present in the original rocks. Earth’s soil is imbued with remarkable physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. Meanwhile, the materials on the moon’s surface are basically regolith in its original, untouched form.
One Substance Goes In, Two Come Out
The moon’s regolith is made up of approximately 45 percent oxygen. But that oxygen is tightly bound into the minerals mentioned above. In order to break apart those strong bonds, we need to put in energy.
You might be familiar with this if you know about electrolysis. On Earth this process is commonly used in manufacturing, such as to produce aluminum. An electrical current is passed through a liquid form of aluminum oxide (commonly called alumina) via electrodes, to separate the aluminum from the oxygen.
In this case, the oxygen is produced as a byproduct. On the moon, the oxygen would be the main product, and the aluminum (or other metal) extracted would be a potentially useful byproduct.
It’s a pretty straightforward process, but there is a catch: it’s very energy hungry. To be sustainable, it would need to be supported by solar energy or other energy sources available on the Moon.
Extracting oxygen from regolith would also require substantial industrial equipment. We’d need to first convert solid metal oxide into liquid form, either by applying heat, or heat combined with solvents or electrolytes. We have the technology to do this on Earth, but moving this apparatus to the Moon—and generating enough energy to run it—will be a mighty challenge.
Earlier this year, Belgium-based startup Space Applications Services announced it was building three experimental reactors to improve the process of making oxygen via electrolysis. They expect to send the technology to the Moon by 2025 as part of the European Space Agency’s in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) mission.
How Much Oxygen Could the Moon Provide?
That said, when we do manage to pull it off, how much oxygen might the Moon actually deliver? Well, quite a lot as it turns out.
If we ignore oxygen tied up in the Moon’s deeper hard rock material—and just consider regolith which is easily accessible on the surface—we can come up with some estimates.
Each cubic meter of lunar regolith contains 1.4 tons of minerals on average, including about 630 kilograms of oxygen. NASA says humans need to breathe about 800 grams of oxygen a day to survive. So 630 kilograms of oxygen would keep a person alive for about two years (or just over).
Now let’s assume the average depth of regolith on the Moon is about ten meters, and that we can extract all of the oxygen from this. That means the top ten meters of the Moon’s surface would provide enough oxygen to support all eight billion people on Earth for somewhere around 100,000 years.
This would also depend on how effectively we managed to extract and use the oxygen. Regardless, this figure is pretty amazing!
Having said that, we do have it pretty good here on Earth. And we should do everything we can to protect the blue planet—and its soil in particular—which continues to support all terrestrial life without us even trying.
The James Webb Space Telescope, shown in this artist's illustration, successfully unfolded its mirrors and sunshield after launch.
Credit: Adriana Manrique Gutierrez/NASA GSFC/CIL
After several tense days of unfurling and clicking its various parts into place, the biggest and most sophisticated space telescope ever launched is now complete.
On 8 January, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope slowly swung the last 3 of its 18 hexagonal mirror segments into position, locking them together into one 6.5-metre-wide, gold-coated cosmic eye. The move capped an essentially flawless two weeks of engineering manoeuvres — the most complex astronomical deployments ever attempted in space — since the telescope’s Christmas Day launch.
“The Webb deployments have been perfect,” says Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division in Washington DC.
“I am feeling absolutely elated," says Antonella Nota, the European Space Agency's project scientist for Webb. "We are now all part of history as we watch this magnificent machine getting ready to explore the Universe.”
The US$10-billion observatory still faces many significant tasks, such as aligning its mirror segments and calibrating its 4 scientific instruments. But it has finished the riskiest engineering moves, without which it would have been inoperable. Those include deploying a kite-shaped, tennis-court-sized sunshield to shade the telescope from the Sun’s heat, and positioning its primary and secondary mirrors to capture light from stars, galaxies and other cosmic objects.
Photons are now bouncing between Webb’s mirrors, making it an operational observatory. “This is unbelievable,” said Bill Ochs, NASA’s project manager for Webb, in a 5 January webcast from mission control at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “We actually have a telescope.”
Smooth moves
Webb, which launched from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, is now more than one million kilometres from Earth. It should reach its final destination, a gravitationally stable point in space known as L2, on 23 January. From there, it will study astronomical phenomena such as the most distant galaxies in the Universe, newborn stars enshrouded in dust and the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.
Unlike its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb detects infrared wavelengths of light. That allows it to peer into previously unexplored realms, but also requires it to work at extremely cold temperatures, so that it can spot faint heat signals coming from the distant Universe. Webb’s sunshield is crucial to achieving that frigidity.
Engineers on Earth test the sunshield opening up in this high-speed footage.
Credit: NASA
That’s why many scientists were most nervous about opening it and stretching it into place. After launch, Webb had to unfold two rectangular pallets containing the sunshield, unroll its protective covers, pull it into a kite shape and finally tug its five gossamer layers to be taut. The process had been tested multiple times in a laboratory on Earth, but never in zero gravity in space, which could have introduced unexpected problems.
“I think I was just nervous about deploying something big and floppy,” Hertz says. No other space observatory has had such a shield, so it is “new and unfamiliar”, he adds.
Any step could have failed dramatically, but none did. Webb pulled the last of its sunshield layers into the correct tension on 4 January. “There was a lot of joy — a lot of relief,” said Hillary Stock, an engineer with Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California, which designed and built the sunshield. After that, Hertz says, he wasn’t nervous anymore.
But other scientists were anxious until the next day, when Webb deployed its secondary mirror. This process involved extending a giant hinged tripod out in front of the telescope’s primary mirror to lock its 74-centimetre-wide secondary mirror into place. Light bounces off the concave primary mirror and hits the convex secondary mirror, which focuses the light and sends it back through a small hole in the primary mirror and into the scientific instruments for analysis. Once the secondary mirror was deployed, Webb became an operational telescope by definition.
Cool it now
The last major step came at 10:29 a.m. US Eastern time on 8 January, when the final segment of the primary mirror swung into place. That mirror is so large that, like the sunshield, it had to be folded up for launch to fit atop the Ariane 5 rocket that carried it to space.
Other successful deployments during the past two weeks include swinging out a radiator that will funnel excess heat away from the telescope’s scientific instruments and dump it into space.
Next up, Webb will begin tweaking the positions of the primary mirror’s 18 segments to align them to properly focus light that they collect. The telescope also continues to cool down towards its operating temperature of around 40 °C above absolute zero, or –233 °C. It is currently nearly –200 °C on its cold side, behind the sunshield.
After Webb reaches L2 in about two weeks, it will have around five more months of set-up before it can start returning science results. "I cannot wait to see the first data," Nota says.
Webb took three decades to develop and repeatedly ate into NASA’s budget. The European and Canadian space agencies are also partners in the project.
NASA SAYS SPACE DEBRIS WILL DEFINITELY SLAM INTO THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
NASA SAYS SPACE DEBRIS WILL DEFINITELY SLAM INTO THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
IT'S ALL PART OF THE PLAN.
ADRIANA MANRIQUE GUTIERREZ/NASA
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is “fully deployed,” according to the agency’s science administrator Thomas Zurbuchen — and that’s certainly a reason to celebrate after decades of hard work and tens of billions of dollars spent.
But the massive space observatory isn’t out of the woods just yet. As it spins around the Sun in a chaotic orbit, it will likely encounter plenty of space debris along the way — and an impact, its team says, is likely inevitable.
“Some small impacts from micrometeorites will happen,” NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist Michelle Thaller said during a livestream over the weekend. “You know, over the lifetime of the mission there will be some damage to the mirrors of the telescope.”
The telescope itself is indeed vulnerable, but the team says it’s likely it’ll be able to survive some damage.
“Let’s say a piece of debris hits it,” said Julie Van Campen, a NASA engineer, during the stream. “And then we had a problem like that broke a mirror.”
In terms of protection, there’s “not much,” she explained. “What you see is what you get.”
However, Van Campen said, if a micrometeor were to rip a tear into the telescope’s protective sunshield there would be at least four more layers to keep the shield together.
“It was part of our lifetime calculations,” she added.
Things could get pretty hairy for the JWST team back on the ground, though, as there is no way to actually service the observatory in person. That’s unlike NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which the agency’s Space Shuttle visited five times between 1993 and 2009 for repairs and upgrades.
But there’s one crucial difference: Hubble was operating in a much more cluttered orbit in low-Earth orbit. The JWST will be orbiting the Sun at L2 (Lagrange Point 2), a far more distant location that allows it to form a straight line with the Earth and Sun.
“It’s actually a very nice place to be,” Thaller explained during the stream, adding that it is a “cleaner place when it comes to space junk.”
Fortunately, engineers have thought ahead and also built in some additional redundancies. The telescope’s mirrors, for instance, are designed to take some damage without forcing its scientific endeavors to grind to halt.
NASA has set the ambitious goal of having the JWST last for at least ten years, a number that’s primarily limited by the amount of fuel the telescope needs to keep itself in orbit and running its instruments.
For now, the pressure is off. Engineers pulled off a huge feat with the telescope’s unfolding, a harrowing process that involves hundreds of steps.
But space debris and meteorites will always be a threat — even when extra precautions are being taken.
The “most eccentric” exoplanet ever found has been detected by a team of international researchers led by the University of Bern. This exoplanet, which has been named TOI-2257 b, is a “sub-Neptune” which means that it is smaller than the furthest planet in our Solar System.
Thanks to data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a small red dwarf star was found and studied for four months. Experts were able to gather important additional data by using the SAINT-EX telescope in Mexico. TOI-2257 b was detected by the transit method which means that it was seen passing in front of its host star by causing a dip in the red dwarf’s brightness.
(Not TOI-2257 b)
The researchers found that the exoplanet has a short orbital period and may possibly have water as explained by the University of Bern, “With its 35-day orbital period, TOI-2257 b orbits the host star at a distance where liquid water is possible on the planet, and therefore conditions favorable for the emergence of life could exist.” But don’t get excited yet, as there probably isn’t any life since its radius is approximately 2.2 times bigger than Earth’s which “suggests that the planet is rather gaseous, with high atmospheric pressure not conducive to life.”
Nicole Schanche from Bern University noted, “In terms of potential habitability, this is bad news,” adding, “While the planet’s average temperature is comfortable, it varies from -80°C to about 100°C depending on where in its orbit the planet is, far from or close to the star.”
Another discovery they made was that the planet has a very odd orbit around its star. “We found that TOI-2257 b does not have a circular, concentric orbit,” Schanche said. It has even been described as being the “most eccentric planet” that has ever been found orbiting a cool star.
(Not TOI-2257 b)
As for why it has such an unusual orbit, one possibility is that there could be a massive planet located further away from the star which is affecting the orbit of TOI-2257 b. However, that is just a theory for now as further analysis needs to be conducted in order to know for sure.
For the first time ever, researchers from Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) watched as a red supergiant star died out and went supernova. In fact, they were able to observe the star during the last 130 days of its life prior to exploding. The massive star, which was about ten times larger than our sun, was located in the NGC 5731 Galaxy which is approximately 120 million light-years away from us.
Based on previous observations, it was thought that red supergiant stars were pretty much dormant prior to going supernova; however, this latest observation has completely changed that theory. Throughout the last months before the star exploded, observations detected bright radiation from it. This means that the internal part of the star would have went through a lot of changes just before emitting gas and collapsing.
The star was first spotted during the summer of 2020 by the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for AstronomyPan-STARRS on Haleakalā, Maui. Then just a short time later, during the fall of that year, the star went supernova. Researchers were able to watch this supernova, which has been named 2020tlf (or SN 2020tlf), by using the W.M. Keck Observatory’s Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi.
Wynn Jacobson-Galán, who is the lead author of the study, discussed the significance of watching the star just before it exploded, “This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die,” adding, “Direct detection of pre-supernova activity in a red supergiant star has never been observed before in an ordinary type II supernova. For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode.”
Raffaella Margutti, who is an adjunct associate professor at CIERA and the senior author of the paper, described the moments before the explosion, “It’s like watching a ticking time bomb.” “We’ve never confirmed such violent activity in a dying red supergiant star where we see it produce such a luminous emission, then collapse and combust, until now.”
Jacobson-Galán finished off by stating how this observation will affect future research in regards to the moments prior to a star going supernova, “Detecting more events like SN 2020tlf will dramatically impact how we define the final months of stellar evolution, uniting observers and theorists in the quest to solve the mystery on how massive stars spend the final moments of their lives.” Their study was published in The Astrophysical Journal where it can be read in full.
A short video depicting the supernova can be viewed here.
Britten vinden grote en bijna complete ‘zeedraak’ van 180 miljoen jaar oud: “Eén van de beste fossielenvondsten in het Verenigd Koninkrijk ooit”
Britten vinden grote en bijna complete ‘zeedraak’ van 180 miljoen jaar oud: “Eén van de beste fossielenvondsten in het Verenigd Koninkrijk ooit”
Een grote prehistorische ‘zeedraak’ die is teruggevonden in de Engelse Midlands wordt omschreven als één van de beste fossielenvondsten in de geschiedenis van de Britse paleontologie. Het gaat over een ‘ichthyosaurus’, dat waren enorme zeereptielen die miljoenen jaren geleden in onze wateren leefden. Het g
evonden exemplaar is maar liefst 180 miljoen jaar oud.
Het fascinerende fossiel werd ontdekt in februari 2021, tijdens een routineuze drooglegging van een lagune-eiland bij het waterreservoir van Rutland, nabij de stad Leicester. Het skelet is zo’n 10 meter lang, de schedel weegt ongeveer een ton. Het gaat om het grootste en meest complete fossiel in zijn soort ooit bovengehaald in het Verenigd Koninkrijk, schrijft de Britse krant The Guardian maandag.
Ichtyosaurussen, die ook wel ‘zeedraken’ worden genoemd door hun erg grote en angstwekkende tanden en ogen, verschenen voor het eerst zo’n 250 miljoen jaar geleden en raakten zo’n 90 miljoen jaar geleden uitgestorven. Ze varieerden in grootte tussen 1 tot wel 25 meter. Als je kijkt naar de algemene lichaamsbouw van de zeewezens lijken ze het meest op enorme dolfijnen, met agressievere kenmerken.
De eerste ichtyosaurussen werden in de vroege 19de eeuw ontdekt door de beroemde Engelse fossielenjager en paleontoloog Mary Anning. Nu mag Joe Davis van het ‘Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust’ zich de ontdekker van dienst noemen.
De resten werden in augustus en september door een team van experten uit heel het Verenigd Koninkrijk uitgegraven. In de jaren 70 werden tijdens de constructie van het waterreservoir in het natuurreservaat van Rutland overigens al eens twee onvolledige en veel kleinere ichtyosaurussen gevonden. Maar de recentste onthulling is veel groter, en ook het eerste complete exemplaar.
Dean Lomax, een paleontoloog die al jaren de soort bestudeert en de kolos mee opgroef, legt bij The Guardian het belang van de vondst uit: “Hoewel er meerdere fossielen van deze zeereptielen zijn teruggevonden in het Verenigd Koninkrijk, is de ichtyosaurus van Rutland het grootste skelet dat hier ooit is blootgelegd. Het is werkelijk een ongeëvenaarde ontdekking en één van de grootste vondsten in de Britse paleontologische geschiedenis.”
Mark Evans van de Britse overheidsorganisatie ‘British Antarctic Survey’ bestudeert al meer dan 20 jaar specifiek de reptielenfossielen uit Rutland en Leicestershire. Hij zegt dat het al vanaf de eerste glimp van het gedeeltelijk blootgelegde fossiel duidelijk was dat het om de grootste ontdekking in de regio ooit ging. “Het was echter pas na onze verkennende opgraving dat we beseften dat het fossiel praktisch compleet was, van top tot teen.”
Nadat het fossiel zorgvuldig door het team was opgegraven, werd het kwetsbare skelet in een gipsen omhulsel met houten spalken gewikkeld, meldt watermaatschappij Anglian Water nog, de beheerder van het waterreservoir van Rutland. “Deze conserveringsmethode biedt extra bescherming voor de overblijfselen en maakte het mogelijk om ze in delen van de grond te tillen en veilig naar een onderzoeksfaciliteit te verplaatsen voor verdere analyse.” De maatschappij hoopt de vondst na onderzoek tentoon te kunnen stellen.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
