Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 1 MONTH.
ON 06/07/2024 MORE THAN 2.101.500
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
01-08-2024
World's largest telescope continues taking shape on Chilean mountain (photos)
World's largest telescope continues taking shape on Chilean mountain (photos)
"Notice the cranes and vehicles at the bottom, which show off just how enormous the ELT is!"
Protective cladding being installed on the sides of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) dome.
(Image credit: ESO)
The dome enclosing the world's largest telescope is taking shape, with the installation of protective siding and supports for the primary mirror.
The European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is currently under construction on the Cerro Armazones mountain in Chile's Atacama Desert and is expected to see its first light by 2028.
Recent progress photos from the construction site taken in June 2024 show cladding being installed on the outside of the ELT dome. This layer of material serves as a thermal insulation barrier and provides weather resistance to help protect the telescope from the extreme environment of the Chilean deser
Part of the dome will have large sliding doors, which will remain closed during the day and open at night, allowing the telescope to survey the sky. Once complete, the telescope will hunt for Earth-like exoplanets in search of signs of life outside of our own solar system and probe the early universe to study the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang, among other tasks.
Assembly has begun on the beam structure for the sliding doors, which will help protect the telescope from the high daytime temperatures and dusty desert environment.
The frame of the dome’s sliding doors that will protect the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) during the day and open at night for observations. (Image credit: ESO)
Construction photos from June also show progress on the support structure in the center of the dome that will eventually hold the ELT's 128-foot-wide (39 meters) primary mirror (M1), which weighs a whopping 200 tons. The mirror will rest on the white lattice structure, which will allow M1 to move smoothly during observations and compensate for varying gravity loads, wind conditions, vibrations or changes in temperature.
"Notice the cranes and vehicles at the bottom, which show off just how enormous the ELT is!" ESO officials said in a statement releasing the updated images.
The support structure is assembled in the center of the dome, which will eventually hold the Extremely Large Telescope’s (ELT) 200-ton primary mirror. (Image credit: ESO)
The primary mirror will be made up of 798 individual hexagonal segments, making it the largest segmented mirror ever built for a telescope. The ELT will have a total of five mirrors, all of which have different shapes, sizes and roles but will work together to observe the cosmos.
The secondary mirror, M2, will hang above M1, reflecting the light collected by it to the tertiary mirror, M3. The hole in the middle of the white lattice structure will house the central tower, which will hold the M3, M4 and M5 mirrors.
It seems that acclaimed actor Laurence Fishburne ("The Matrix") has some uncanny attraction to sci-fi projects centered around doomed spaceships, having co-starred in 2016's "Passengers" and the 1997 cult classic, "Event Horizon."
Now he's sharing the screen with the Academy Award-winning Casey Affleck ("Manchester By the Sea") and Tomer Capone ("The Boys") in Bleecker Street's upcoming outer space thriller, "Slingshot," and we've got the first full trailer to share to prove our point.
The basic plot revolves around a harrowing 1.5-billion-mile trek to Saturn's moon Titan and one astronaut's inability to distinguish nightmares from real-life due to the side effects of a drug meant to induce hibernation sleep for the long haul.
"Slingshot" arrives in theaters on Aug. 30, 2024 as perhaps a bit of a sleeper hit in the late summer box office bonanza, and with Håfström at the helm this has all the makings of a future sci-fi classic.
The official poster for Bleecker Street's "Slingshot." (Image credit: Bleecker Street)
Directed by Mikael Håfström ("1408") from a screenplay by R. Scott Adams ("Donner Pass") and Nathan Parker ("Moon"), this riveting production also stars Emily Beecham ("Cruella") and David Morrissey ("The Colour Room," "The Walking Dead").
Check out the official synopsis:
"A psychological thriller starring Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne, 'Slingshot' follows an elite trio of astronauts aboard a years-long, possibly compromised mission to Saturn's moon Titan. As the team gears up for a highly dangerous slingshot maneuver that will either catapult them to Titan or into deep space, it becomes increasingly difficult for one astronaut to maintain his grip on reality."
As seen in this trippy trailer, Affleck's unhinged character is not dealing with the extreme mental rigors of the mission very well and is hallucinating heavily as the Odyssey 1 spacecraft prepares to whip around Jupiter to provide the craft with a super speed boost necessary to properly reach the moon of Titan.
Laurence Fishburne, Casey Affleck, and Tomer Capone star in "Slingshot." (Image credit: Bleecker Street)
Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne in 'Slingshot'
"Slingshot" was mostly filmed at Korda Studios in Budapest, Hungary and was produced by Richard Saperstein, Istvan Major, and Beau Turpin. Ivett Havasi, Shara Kay, Michael Hollingsworth, Tom Nohstadt, Ron Cundy, Nikolett Barabás, Jonathan Krauss, Brooklyn Weaver and Joanna Plafsky serve as the film's executive producers.
Bleecker Street's "Slingshot" streaks into theaters on Aug. 30, 2024.
The UFO event over Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in 2006 is one of the most intriguing UFO sightings in recent history. Despite being unremarkable as far as UFO sightings go, the reaction of the airline and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was anything but ordinary, suggesting some type of cover-up between the implicated authorities.
On November 7, 2006, United Airlines Flight 446 was preparing to depart from O’Hare International to North Carolina when a dozen of airline employees, including mechanics and pilots, spotted a gray and metallic saucer-like object hovering above Gate C17 of the United terminal. The object remained there for several minutes before flying off into the clouds at an unnatural speed. This event was captured in official FAA audio recordings, with a United controller and a colleague discussing the sighting.
The disc was estimated to be at least 22 feet in diameter and hovered around 1,500 feet off the ground, below a heavy cloud cover at 1,900 feet. One grounded pilot announced his sightings over the radio, alerting a taxi mechanic and several other pilots to the presence of the object. At least two grounded pilots were able to lean out of their cockpit windows and see the object in great detail.
The story of the O’Hare UFO incident went almost completely unnoticed until the Chicago Tribune published an article on December 31, 2006, nearly two months after the incident. The story became the highest-hitting article in the website’s history, and other news outlets picked up the story as well.
Jon Hilkevitch, a transportation reporter with the Chicago Tribune, started interviewing the witnesses. Initially, both the FAA and United Airlines denied any knowledge of the event but were forced to admit that this was a lie when an audio tape was leaked to the press that captured a United Airlines radio conversation on the date of the event.
The FAA supervisor identified as “Sue” was asking several controllers at O’Hare if they had seen a flying disc over gate C-17. They initially laughed off the question, but she called back 15 minutes later to confirm that several pilots had seen the disc and that one had captured a photograph of it. Unfortunately, this alleged photograph has never surfaced.
The tape also recorded the control tower operators warning outgoing planes of the UFO and advising them to be cautious. Even in the wake of the tape, United Airlines and the FAA continued to brush off the incident. The airline prohibited any employees from discussing the incident with the media.
However, after the Chicago Tribune article compelled them to address the situation, a spokesperson from the FAA claimed that the alleged disc was nothing but the reflection of airport lights off the low cloud cover. However, this explanation was unconvincing, as the sighting occurred in daylight, before any of the airport’s lights were turned on.
Despite the assertions of several credible witnesses, the airline and the FAA declined to investigate the matter further and wrote it off as a rare weather phenomenon known as a fallstreak or “hole-punch cloud.” However, Mark Rodeghier, the director for the Center for UFO Studies Scientific Director, did not accept this explanation and stated:
“It’s an unknown object over O’Hare, and it’s seen by official personnel and does United or the FAA take it seriously? Of course not, they have zero interest because UFOs can’t exist. But how can you not worry about something hovering over an airport after 9/11? It doesn’t make sense.”
This explanation did not stand up to reason too, as journalist Leslie Kean soon discovered. Hole-punched clouds form, when ice crystals from higher clouds fall down through a lower cloud shelf, punch a hole in it, and evaporate in the warm air below, only forming in below-freezing temperatures. The air at the altitude of the sighting on the day in question was 53 degrees Fahrenheit, which was above freezing.
Despite the FAA’s lack of interest in the O’Hare UFO incident, an independent investigation group called NARC conducted their own research. The team of former NASA scientists, pilots, meteorologists, and aerospace engineers, among others, prepared a 154-page report that confirmed the presence of a physical object over O’Hare. The report stated that the object’s maneuvers could not be explained by conventional means and advised the FAA to launch their own investigation. However, to this day, the FAA has not acted upon this recommendation. (Source)
Joe Abegg, Captain at United, says “The employees that I talked to about the sighting accepted it as real.”
“There have been documented cases where safety appears to have been implicated, and more and more we are coming to the point of view that we are dealing with an intelligent phenomenon. We must be proactive before an aircraft goes down,” said Richard Haines, a former chief of the Space Human Factors Office at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
The reaction of the airline and the FAA in the aftermath of the incident suggests some type of cover-up between the implicated authorities. The airline prohibited its employees from sharing the details of the incident, and the FAA provided unconvincing explanations for the UFO sighting, such as the reflection of airport lights off low cloud cover or a misidentified weather phenomenon. These explanations were quickly debunked by journalists and independent investigators.
Jon Hilkevitch emphasized how unusual it is for the FAA to ignore such a significant UFO sighting. The FAA has launched investigations for far less extraordinary incidents, such as spilled coffee pots and airport aisles. This lack of interest in the O’Hare UFO incident raises questions about the extent of government involvement in hiding the truth about UFOs from the public.
The taxi mechanic described Chicago’s O’Hare UFO as follows:
“The craft appeared to be hovering right below the ceiling of the cloud cover (about 700 or 800 feet). The cloud ceiling that day was 1900 feet. The top of the craft was clearly outlined as a very dark gray material, but the bottom and the edges of the craft were hazy like when you see the mirage-like surface of the road on a hot day.
The other interesting observation was that after the craft accelerated straight up (observed by other witnesses), there was a hole punched in the clouds. The hole in the clouds was about the same size as the unidentified craft. It looked like a cookie cutter hole stamped out of dough ‘very similar in size’ to the craft. The hole stayed for a little while and then dissipated into the overcast clouds. The sighting lasted about 20 minutes from the time of the first radio call to the time when the mechanic and witness parked the Boeing 777 that he was taxiing across the airport.”
Reddit user Buddy_Felcher describes what he saw during the 2006 O’Hare Airport UFO sighting:
“I was working at American Airlines as a ramp service clerk at O’Hare when that thing came. I saw it, and only one other coworker saw it as well. And nobody believed me even after other airline workers said they saw it too. Until I heard other people saw it everyone had me convinced I was crazy…
Have you ever seen the movie flight of the navigator? That’s what it sort of looked like but also kind of like it was a chrome bubble of air or like the way invisible people in movies look when it’s raining on them. I only saw the latter part of it being there, the guy I worked with said it was solid grey at first and then changed to what I saw.” (Source)
Images from the "Fly-around Observation" on July 15 conducted by Astroscale's ADRAS-J demonstration satellite. The idea was to image this space debris. Courtesy Astroscale/JAXA.
Near-Earth space is an orbiting junkyard of space debris. Everything from old rocket parts and pieces of dead satellites to cameras and tools floats in orbit. None of it serves a useful function any longer, but it does threaten other spacecraft. In fact, some missions have been damaged by this orbital debris and the problem will get worse as we launch more missions to space.
So, it makes sense to remove the existing space junk, but how to do that? A company in Japan called Astroscale is working with the Japan Aerospace Agency (JAXA) to figure that out.
On July 15 and 16th, Astroscale maneuvered a demonstration satellite called ADRAS-J into place around its target. Its goal was to do a “Fly-around observation” of a rocket upper stage that launched the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) in 2009. ADRAS-J was launched earlier this year on a trajectory to chase down space debris. The early July portion of the mission saw ADRAS-J fly around the object and get high-quality images of the object. In addition, it took data about the rocket motor’s motion in space (including its orbital parameters) and assessed its condition. The effort was successful and the teams captured great images of the motor from every angle.
More images of the target object of space debris from ADRAS-J on July 16th. Courtesy Astroscale/JAXA.
The maneuvers ADRAS-J made are technically challenging, requiring fine guidance control of the ADRAS-J module. Luckily, the target object was fairly easy to approach and move around. In on-orbit maneuvers like this one, it’s important to control the relative position and attitude of the servicer unit (ADRAS-J). Such control allows it to move around the object and zero in on specific parts for further work. The rocket motor was fairly stable. However, not all bits of space junk are as stable as the rocket motor targeted for this experiment.
Challenges to Working with Space Debris
Given the huge collection of space junk out there, not everything is going to be easy to capture. Future “clean-up efforts” could involve so-called “non-cooperative targets” whose motions are more chaotic, or are dangerous to approach. Those could be very challenging. So, it’s important to have the detailed shape and surface reflectance of the real target object. For most pieces of space junk that information isn’t readily available.
For example, it’s also useful to know the changing visibility of the target object, and the influence of earth-reflected light, which disturbs the navigation sensor (the so-called Earth background problem in non-cooperative relative navigation). These add to the complexity of the mission. That’s because the servicer spacecraft must overcome those challenges for relative navigation while achieving highly accurate relative six-degree-of-freedom control around the target.
The ADRAS-J mission is part of the “Commercial Remove of Debris Demonstration” initiative from JAXA to acquire and test debris removal in space. If it’s successful, that should help clear up space for future missions leaving Earth. Astroscale Japan, Inc. will continue to operate ADRAS-J and will carry out “Astroscale missions” to further test the hardware and maneuvering capabilities.
The next step will be to perform a “Mission termination service”. That involves the transfer of a target piece of space junk to a safe orbit. This will be done in cooperation with JAXA, which has already provided extensive technical advice, testing facilities, and other activities supporting ADRAS-J’s development and operation.
Fly-around images in sequence. Courtesy Astroscale/JAXA.
Why Clean Up Space Junk?
Tens of thousands of artificial objects orbit above Earth. That includes more than 5,000 operating satellites, plus space stations, and Starlinks, and other stuff shot into orbit since the late 1950s. Eventually, as the old adage says, “what goes up must come down.” In fact, some of it does come back to Earth, which also poses a safety issue.
In the case of dead rocket motors and other nonworking pieces of space junk, not only will they come down to Earth, but they get in the way of spacecraft launches. That includes crewed launches carrying astronauts to the space stations, the Moon, and beyond.
The danger isn’t just that a collision will hurt somebody in space or on the ground. Tiny pieces of space junk can knock holes in solar panels and instruments. Bits of dust and paint flecks and other materials literally “sandblast” spacecraft on the way up. Space shuttles showed a lot of this damage. All this space debris began littering our spaceways starting with the first launches in the late 1950s. The materials are tracked by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and their catalogs include details of all the objects including satellites, weapons, fairings, upper stages, cameras, tools, and other pieces of debris from satellites destroyed by collisions and other actions.
It makes sense to clean up the junk that doesn’t fall back to Earth (and hopefully burn up in the atmosphere). That’s why JAXA and other agencies are looking at proactive ways to approach, apprehend, and safely store the debris (or deorbit it to vaporize, if possible). The first steps with ADRAS-J are proofs of concept that should lead to a larger clean-up job and a safer near-Earth environment for future missions.
No Merger Needed: A Rotating Ring of Gas Creates A Hyperluminous Galaxy
This is a distant Hyper Luminous Infrared Galaxy named PJ0116-24. These galaxies experience rapid star formation that astronomers think is triggered by mergers. But this one suggests otherwise. Warm gas is shown in red and cold gas is shown in blue. Image Credit: PJ0116-24
No Merger Needed: A Rotating Ring of Gas Creates A Hyperluminous Galaxy
Some galaxies experience rapid star formation hundreds or even thousands of times greater than the Milky Way. Astronomers think that mergers are behind these special galaxies, which were more abundant in the earlier Universe. But new results suggest no mergers are needed.
These galaxies are called Hyper Luminous Infrared Galaxies (HyLIRGs), and they emit most of their energy in the infrared. New research examined a HyLIRG that’s 10,000 times brighter than the Milky Way in infrared. Instead of a chaotic merger, they found an organized rotating ring of gas that they say is responsible for the galaxy’s abundant star formation.
HyLIRGs are the rarest type of starburst galaxy, and they’re the most extreme type. They’re found only in the distant, ancient Universe. The galaxy is named PJ0116-24 and has a redshift of z=2.125. That redshift value means the light we’re seeing was emitted about 10.5 billion years ago, and the distant galaxy is now about 16 billion light-years away. At that distance, astronomers had to use gravitational lensing to look at the galaxy. That not only magnified the galaxy, it created an Einstein Ring.
This image is a VLT MUSE image of PJ0116-24 distorted into an Einstein Ring by a gravitational lens. The foreground lens is not removed in this image. Image Credit: Liu et al. 2024.
The researchers used a pair of telescopes to observe the galaxy. The Very Large Telescope traced the warm gas with its Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) instrument, and the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array traced the cold gas. By combining the observations from both, the astronomers found an organized ring of rotating gas. If a merger had occurred and triggered the galaxy’s abundant star formation, an organized structure like this wouldn’t have been present. Instead, the galaxy’s morphology would be much more chaotic.
The authors write, “A widely accepted scenario is that HyLIRGs are the distant higher-luminosity tail of the local ultra-luminous IR galaxies with extreme starburst activities triggered by major mergers.” Another possibility is that these galaxies are very young and are experiencing their maximum star formation rates associated with youth. The problem is that astronomers haven’t observed enough of them to be certain exactly what’s going on.
This galaxy was identified by the Planck All-Sky Survey to Analyze Gravitationally-lensed Extreme Starbursts project (PASSAGES), which found about 20 HyLIRGs. PJ0116-24 is the brightest one found in the southern sky.
This image from the research shows how the gravitational lensing created an Einstein Ring. It’s a distorted but still scientifically revealing image of the distant HyLIRG PJ0116-24. The gravitational lensing creates two images of the galaxy, with two AGN, labelled A1 and A2. The foreground lens has been removed from the image. Blue to green colours show stars, and red shows the cold gas out of which more stars form. (Note that the Einstein Ring is an artifact of gravitational lensing and is not the gaseous ring that the researchers found. That ring is revealed in velocity maps.) Image Credit: Liu et al. 2024.
The authors write, “We found PJ0116-24 to be highly rotationally supported with a richer gaseous substructure than other known HyLIRGs. Our results imply that PJ0116-24 is an intrinsically massive and rare starburst disk probably undergoing secular evolution.” Its star formation rate (SFR) is 1,490 solar masses yr-1.
Simulations predict that the maximum SFR is greater than or equal to 1,000?solar masses yr-1. If these observations are correct, then they show that a galaxy can reach its maximum SFR even if it is alone and hasn’t been involved in a merger.
“Unlike almost all other extreme HyLIRGs, which are major mergers, PJ0116-24 does not obviously have massive companions or disturbed kinematics as evidence for major mergers,” the authors explain in their paper.
These velocity maps clearly show a coherent rotating gaseous ring structure in PJ0116-24. If the galaxy’s rapid SFR were because of a merger, no such orderly structure would be present. Image Credit: Liu et al. 2024.
The galaxy also shows much higher metallicity than others in the early Universe. “These diagnostics indicate solar to supersolar metallicity,” the authors write. “This is much higher than in non-starburst galaxies at the same redshifts.”
Amit Vishwas is a postdoc at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences. He’s a co-author of this paper and a previous paper in 2023 that used the JWST to observe another galaxy at an earlier epoch with similar gas conditions and metallicity. PJ0116-24 is about five times more massive and luminous than that one. Vishwas says both of these galaxies are helping astronomers build a better picture of how galaxies evolve.
“In both cases, gravitational lensing helped us zoom in to study the details of the interstellar medium of these galaxies,” Vishwas said in a press release. “I believe these new observations are helping us build an argument for the way galaxies evolve and build up – efficiently converting gas to stars in rapid growth spurts separated by long periods of relative calm.”
“The robust confirmation of PJ0116-24 as the most rotationally supported HyLIRG from this work is key evidence suggesting that secular evolution, that is, without recent major mergers, can be responsible for maximal star formation in the Universe,” the authors conclude in their work.
The origins of the Moon have been the cause of many a scientific debate over the years but more recently we seem to have settled on a consensus. That a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth billions of years ago, with the debris coalescing into the Moon. The newly formed Moon drifted slowly away from Earth over the following eons but a new study suggests some surprising nuances to the accepted model.
According to current theory, the Moon formed around 4.5 billion years ago, shortly after the Solar System’s birth. It began with a massive collision between the early Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia. The impact sent debris into orbit around the Earth which eventually coalesced to create the Moon. There is plenty of evidence to support this theory chiefly the composition of Earth’s mantle and lunar rocks.
Artist’s impression of the early Solar System, where collision between particles in an accretion disc led to the formation of planetesimals and eventually planets. Those early particles brought primitive minerals to each world. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The majority of the debris cloud settled back down on the Earth, a large proportion formed the Moon but some of it was ejected from the Earth-Moon system. In the paper recently authored by Stephen Lepp and his team from the University of Nevada they explored the dynamics of the material ejected from the impact.
Shortly after the Moon formed it was orbiting Earth at a distance about 5% of its current value (average distance – 384,400km) but slowly, due to tidal effects between Earth and Moon it drifted away to its current altitude. Its surface was largely molten magma which gradually cooled and solidified forming the familiar crust, mantle and core that we see today. Heavy bombardment scarred the lunar surface with impact basins and craters and volcanic activity led to the slow formation of the lunar maria.
The orbit of the Moon around the Earth has settled into a slightly elliptical one with an eccentricity of 0.0549. It is not a perfect circle and moves from 364,397km to 406,731km from Earth. The system wasn’t so stable in the early days of the Earth-Moon system and the particles in the accreting Moon had more erratic journeys.
The Moon on August 24, 2023, with the eQuinox 2 telescope by Unistellar. Credit: Nancy Atkinson.
One of the terms that describes evolving orbits is nodal precession (where the orbital intersections slowly move around the orbit). There are two types and the first relates to where particles in an orbit slowly precess about the angular momentum vector of the Earth-Moon system. The other occurs around highly eccentric binary systems when the inclination of the orbiting object is large. The particle precesses about the binary eccentricity vector. Taking into account the Earth and orbits of particles in the debris cloud as the Moon started to form, such orbits described would be unstable.
The team showed that of all the possible orbits of particles, those in polar orbits were the most stable. They went further and showed that they existed around the Earth-Moon binary system after the Moon formed. As the separation of the Earth and Moon slowly increased through tidal interactions the region of space where polar orbits could exist decreased. Today, with the Moon at its current distance from Earth, there are no stable polar orbits since the nodal precession driven by the Sun is dominant
The team conclude that the presence of polar orbiting material can drive eccentricity growth of a binary system like the Earth and Moon. If a significant amount of material found its way into a polar orbit then the eccentricity of the Earth-Moon system would have increased.
I have always found Mariana’s Trench fascinating, it’s like an alien world right on our doorstep. Any visitor to the oceans or seas of our planet will hopefully get to see fish flitting around and whilst they can survive in this alien underwater world they still need oxygen to survive. Breathing in oxygen is a familiar experience to us, we inflate our lungs and suck air into them to keep us topped up with life giving oxygen. Fish are different, they get their oxygen as water flows over their gills. Water is full of oxygen which at the surface comes from the atmosphere or plants. But deep down, thousands of meters beneath the surface, it is not so easy. Now a team of scientists think that potato-sized chunks of metal called nodules act like natural batteries, interacting with the water and putting oxygen into the deep water of the ocean.
Thanks to robotic underwater explorers the sight of life teeming around thermal vents on the bottom of the deep ocean is not unusual. At those depths, no sunlight can penetrate to facilitate photosynthesis in plants. Somehow though, oxygen is present in the dark, deep regions of the ocean and its the rocks that a team of scientists led by Andrew Sweetman have been exploring.
A Three-dimensional cross-section of the hydrothermal system in the Chicxulub impact crater and its seafloor vents. The system has the potential for harboring microbial life. Illustration by Victor O. Leshyk for the Lunar and Planetary Institute.
The production of oxygen by plants is well understood. Light is captured by a pigment known as chlorophyll where it is then converted into chemical energy and stored in the glucose. During photosynthesis, carbon dioxide from air and water from soil are combined in a series of chemical reactions to produce glucose and oxygen that we use to breathe. This oxygen from the plants plays a role in maintaining levels in the atmosphere and the oceans and seas. The study challenges this somewhat simplified explanation.
The team focussed on measuring how much oxygen was being consumed by organisms in the depths of the ocean. Water sampled from the deep showed a surprising rise in oxygen levels instead of an anticipated decline. The study was repeated a few years later from the same location in a study commissioned by a mining company. Again they saw a rise in oxygen levels. Clearly something in the deep ocean was creating oxygen, but what?
Lab tests ruled out the possibility of microbes but the region being studied was peppered with lumps of rock known as polymetallic nodules. The nodules are known to form when manganese and cobalt precipitate out of water and form around shells. The nodules where theorised to be the source of the oxygen but the mechanism was not understood.
The answer came when Sweetman heard a reporter calling the nodules ‘a battery in a rock’. Putting batteries in saltwater results in bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen which is the result of a process known as electrolysis. The team measured the voltage on the nodules and found just one of them to be 0.95 volts – a little lower than the required 1.5 volts for saltwater driven electrolysis but the team were onto something, suspecting multiple rocks could cluster together to increase voltage.
The discovery of rocks on the bottom of the ocean generating oxygen is fascinating on its own but it has profound impacts on the search for life elsewhere in the universe. We have already discovered ice covered water worlds among the moons around some of the outer planets. It’s likely there will be others in planetary systems around other stars. If these worlds are common then it is quite likely that oxygen is being released through electrolysis from similar metallic nodules and perhaps, supporting entire ecosystems.
The Shocking Decline in Human Cranial Capacity: How do Evolutionists Explain it? They Don’t!
The Shocking Decline in Human Cranial Capacity: How do Evolutionists Explain it? They Don’t!
Bibhu Dev Misra
One of the stories that most of us have grown up hearing is that the human species is continuously evolving to higher levels of intellect, through a gradual process of evolution by natural selection. It has been drilled into us that the modern human species i.e. Homo sapiens, has evolved over millions of years from ape-like ancestors. The fundamental physical factor that drove the process of evolution was the increase in brain volume or cranial capacity, which, over time, led to a slew of innovations such as fire, tools, weapons, clothes, boats, shelter, burials, rock art, music, language, etc. The cranial capacity is regarded as the most important indicator of IQ, since many studies using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the brain in individuals who were tested for IQ, found significant correlations between the size of cerebral structures and measures of intelligence.
Now, if this story were true, then even in the modern day we should have found that our cranial capacities are gradually increasing over time. Instead, dozens of elaborate studies have revealed the exact opposite! The human brain has been consistently shrinking in volume over the past 12,000-odd years, since the end of the last Ice Age. We are dumber today than any time before in the Holocene era!
In one of the early studies titled, “Decrease of Human Skull Size in the Holocene”, published in the Human Biology journal in 1988, scientists computed cranial capacity (CC) for nearly 9500 male crania and 3300 female crania, originating from Europe and North Africa. The study found,
“Among male samples the peak CC (cranial capacity) occurred in the Mesolithic (1593 cc), the lowest value falls in modern times (1436 cc); in females sample timing is the same: Mesolithic maximum of 1502 cc and modern minimum of 1241 cc. For both males and females the decrease through time is smooth, statistically significant and inversely exponential. A decrease of 157 cc (9.9 % of the larger value) in males and of 261 cc (17.4 %) in females is a considerable one, of the order of magnitude comparable to the difference between averages for H. Erectus and H. Sapiens.”[1]
Separate studies conducted on large samples from Europe, the Near East, Africa, Japan and Australia have confirmed this general trend. Human cranial capacity has decreased by approx. 10% of its average value (i.e. 100-150 cc) since the Late Pleistocene until the early 20th century.[2]
If evolution by natural selection is consistently making us smarter then why did we lose such a large chunk of brain volume at a time when, supposedly, for the first time, humans transitioned from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to settled, agricultural communities that allowed the first great civilizations of the world to flourish?
One of the first recognizable members of the genus Homo is called Homo erectus (meaning “upright man”), whose earliest appearance in the fossil records occurred around 2 million years ago. Homo erectus is thought to have been the earliest human ancestor capable of using fires, hunting and gathering in coordinated groups, caring for injured or sick group members, seafaring, and possibly art-making. The difference between the average cranial volume of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens is roughly the same as the amount of cranial volume that has been lost in the past 12,000 years in the Holocene period.
Allow that to sink in. In just 12,000 years, we have lost the same amount of intelligence that, purportedly, took nearly 2 million years to develop! How does that happen? And why has the cranial volume been declining at a time when the most significant advancements in human civilization supposedly took place?
Clearly, something is amiss here. The data does not lie. Certain unfounded assumptions appears to have been made about human evolution and the origins of civilization that does not accord with the precipitous decline in human cranial capacity during the Holocene period. One of the thoughts that struck my mind when I came across this stunning data is, how do evolutionists and anthropologists explain it?
I had a hard time finding a well-written paper or article on this topic until I came across this piece in the Discover Magazine titled, “If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking?”[3], in which, science writer Kathleen McAuliffe, tells us that she was utterly dismayed when anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin told her that, over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cc to 1350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. “This happened in China, Europe, Africa - everywhere we look,” Hawks informed her.
When Kathleen contacted other experts to find out if they knew about the shrinking human brain, she came to a startling realization. It was a closely guarded secret. “Only a tight-knit circle of paleontologists seem to be in on the secret, and even they seem a bit muddled about the matter,” she wrote to her utter surprise.
One of the experts she consulted was Christopher Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Stringer told her something quite stunning: “Scientists haven’t given the matter the attention it deserves. Many ignore it or consider it an insignificant detail”. I could hardly believe this. This absolutely jaw-dropping piece of scientific data, which turns the Darwinian theory of gradual evolution by natural selection on its head, is treated by some scientists as an “insignificant detail”. What really is significant then? How the Homo erectus learned to pick his nose?
Besides, why is there so much secrecy around this information? Why is it that only a “tight-knit circle of paleontologists” knows about this, and everyone else seems to be in the dark? Isn’t it the duty of scientists, academia and the media to widely disseminate this kind of shocking information and invite debates and discussions over it?
The truth is that, and many have written about it, scientists and academics do not earn any brownie points by ruffling the calm surface of “Lake Consensus”, as John Anthony West put it. There is a strong tendency to adhere to the status quo, and very often, errant academics who do not toe the official line, are put in their place by being denied grants, positions and other academic privileges. As a result, even if grave anomalies are observed in a theory that has achieved consensus, they are ignored or quietly filed away from the public eye. This kind of knowledge filtering goes on continuously, and what we know as the truth is simply a “consensus”, and nothing more.
Kathleen went on to write that, some scientists have tried to explain why our brains are shrinking, but their explanations are vague, muddled and inconsistent. According to Christopher Stringer, the reduction in cranial volume may be due to the decline in human stature since the Holocene period, since a larger brain is required to control a bigger body mass. However, John Hawks has contested this, claiming that the brain has shrunk much faster than the body. “For a brain as small as that found in the average European male today, the body would have to shrink to the size of a pygmy”, Hawks said. Besides, the scientific data indicates that human height declined till the end of the Bronze Age, after which it has been steadily increasing. But, brain volume has continued to decline till the modern period. This means there cannot be any cause-effect relationship between body size and brain size.
Cognitive scientist David Geary of the University of Missouri believes that people actually became dumber in the Holocene period. According to him, as population density increased and complex societies emerged, people did not have to be as smart to survive; they could get by with the help of others. This created the selection pressure for the brain to become smaller. However, historical facts do not support his contention. It is only around c. 5000 BCE in the Eastern Mediterranean that we see a jump in population densities, followed by the emergence of complex Bronze Age societies. In many other parts of the world, complex societies arose even later than that. By that time, there had already been a substantial reduction in cranial volume. What this implies is that, only after humans became substantially stupid they began to form large, complex societies, and, as a result, some people were able to get by without possessing any specific skill or sufficient gray matter.
John Hawks put a different twist on the situation. He believes that humans may be getting smarter due to a re-wiring of the brain. The brain is an energy guzzler; it consumes nearly 20 percent of our calorie intake. A bigger brain uses up more energy. So, optimally, we need a brain that packs the most intelligence for the least energy. Hawks believes that, over the past 10,000 years, due to a series of advantageous brain-related mutations, the neural connections of the brain may have become streamlined and the molecular activity at the synapses improved, thereby making us more intelligent than our Paleolithic ancestors, even though we have smaller brains.
So, what Hawks is essentially saying is that, after moving in the wrong direction for nearly 2 million years, turning itself into an energy-guzzling SUV, the brain went through a sudden awakening at the end of the last Ice Age and decided to change course and transform itself into a Tesla. Hawks himself admits that such a course correction would require a large number of very rare, beneficial mutations, the chances of which are extremely slim. The fact is that random new mutations are more likely to reduce than to raise intelligence. A course correction for the human brain after 2 million years of evolution in the wrong direction, due to the sudden appearance of extremely rare beneficial mutations, is wishful thinking at best.
Besides, there is no tangible evidence that the neural connections in the brain suddenly became more efficient after the onset of the Holocene Period. Nor is it likely that any such evidence will ever be found since brain tissue is not preserved for such long periods of time. If they were, we might have found that even the neural connections have degraded!
The truth is very simple. Our declining cranial capacity indicates that we have been getting dumber over the course of the past 12,000 years. Our memories have declined substantially compared to our ancestors who could remember massive volumes of data, and transmit them orally to the next generation. Our powers of judgment and discrimination have declined because of which we cannot distinguish between the truth and lies, or discern what truly serves our welfare as opposed to what takes us down the path of misery. Our ethics and morality have nosedived, along with all the subtle abilities of the brain that we possessed in the bygone ages such as intuition, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.
Unfortunately, most people have been brought up to believe otherwise. They think that we are the smartest generation of people that ever lived since that is the idea that is pushed down their throats from an early age. The problem is, once people have been indoctrinated with a specific belief or ideology, no amount of evidence is enough to overturn that. The hardest things to get rid of are deeply held biases, and scientists are no exceptions to this.
Although the decline in cranial capacity during the Holocene period is at odds with Darwinian evolution, it is perfectly aligned with the doctrine of the Yuga Cycle or Great Year. The last 12,000 years comprise the descending arc of the Yuga Cycle, when human consciousness, memory and intelligence are supposed be in a state of continuous degradation. In the Mahabharata, the sage Markandeya told Yudhisthira, “Know, O Yudhisthira, that the period of life, the energy, intellect and the physical strength of men decrease in every Yuga!”[4] These statements, which have been generally brushed away as fanciful notions, are amply borne out by the scientific data collected over the past few decades.
Since we are now approaching the end of the Kali Yuga, the shrinking of the human brain has already started tapering off in some populations. We can expect that, once we come out of the Kali Yuga, our cranial capacity will again start increasing gradually and attain their peak value in the next Golden Age or Satya Yuga, after another 12,000 years evolution along the ascending arc of the Yuga Cycle.
So, what does all of this mean for human evolution? It means that the sinusoidal fluctuation in cranial volume, height and lifespan has been going on for millions of years, ever since man first appeared on the earth. Over a period of roughly 25,800 years, the cranial volume goes up and down with a 10% - 15% fluctuation in its value.
Contrary to oft-repeated claims, there has not been a gradual increase in cranial volume over the past 2 million years. That is an assumption and not a fact. We have found less than 200 pre-Holocene hominin skulls. 200 skulls in a span of 2 million years! How can such a scanty collection of pre-Holocene crania reveal the pattern of human evolution? A regression line was fitted through these data points assuming that cranial volume must have increased linearly. That is an unacceptable assumption. Any kind of curve can be drawn through a scatter of 200 data points over a 2 million-year time period. There are hundreds of thousands of years in the graph without a single data point!
On the other hand, tens of thousands of Holocene crania have been found, and that data indicates that cranial volume has been decreasing over the past 12,000 years and gradually flattening out. Surely, the true nature of the cranial capacity curve will be revealed where the data density is the highest.
The only sensible conclusion to be drawn from this is that human cranial capacity fluctuates in a sinusoidal manner over a 25,800-year cycle. I propose that all the available Homo sapiens cranial specimens can be plotted on this sinusoidal curve. Since I do not have access to a well-dated set of human skulls I cannot test it out myself. But, there is a well-known set of cranial specimens belonging to the Cro-Magnon, which supports this argument.
The Cro-Magnons were one of the earliest examples of modern Homo sapiens in Western Europe. Cro-Magnons were taller than modern humans, had more robust bones, with a cranial capacity of around 1600 cc, which is comparable to the peak cranial capacity of the Mesolithic period.[5] Their fossils have been found between 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, which straddles the peak of an earlier Golden Age at around 38,676 BP (Before Present) or 36,676 BCE.
The cranial volume of Homo sapiens fluctuates over a 25,800-year Yuga Cycle. Credit: Bibhu Dev Misra.
This can be easily calculated from the Yuga Cycle timeline. The peak of the last Golden Age was reached around 10,876 BCE, and we need to add 25,800 years to get the previous peak i.e. 36,676 BCE. This means that the Cro-Magnons lived in an earlier Golden Age and some part of the descending Yuga Cycle. This is why, their morphology and cranial capacities are larger than that of modern humans and comparable to the peak cranial capacities of the Mesolithic period i.e. the most recent Golden Age.
Skull and lower jaw of Cro-Magnon, exhibited at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. Credit: Thilo Parg, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia CommonsForensic facial reconstruction of a Cro-Magnon man, using a cast of skull. Credit: Cicero Moraes, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
What this means is that, over the past 2 million years, since the first hominin fossils began to appear, our cranial volume has been oscillating over a 25,800-year cycle, without a net increase or decrease in any direction. This is true not only for Homo sapiens crania but is likely to be equally applicable to all the extinct members of the human family, including the Neanderthals and Homo erectus.
For instance, the Neanderthals had a bigger skull than modern humans with an average cranial capacity of around 1500 cc, which is comparable to the cranial volume of humans who lived at the end of the last Ice Age. However, even Neanderthal skull capacities vary between 1300 to 1600 cc, and it is quite possible that this variation occurs in tandem with the 25,800-year precession cycle. No one has tested for this till now, but if we plot out the available Neanderthal skulls on this curve, we may be taken by surprise.
Comparison of Modern Human and Neanderthal skulls from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. The Neanderthal skull is the one on the right. Credit: hairymuseummatt CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
However, cranial specimens need to be accurately dated before plotting on the 25,800-year sinusoidal curve, because even a small percentage error in dating can make things go haywire. The difference between the peaks and troughs of the curve is only 12,900 years, which is very small in geological terms. Ideally, the hominin cranial specimens which have been discovered in the past 100,000 to 200,000 years should be used for plotting this curve, so that the error in dating is not very significant.
In case you are wondering what could be responsible for the decline in our cranial capacity during the Holocene period, certain studies indicate that genetics is the main driving factor. Over the past 12,000 years, we have been acquiring harmful gene mutations, and passing them on to our children, leading to the gradual degeneration of the human race. In a couple of papers published in the journal Trends in Genetics (2012), Professor Gerald Crabtree of Stanford University showed that, as a species, we are gradually declining in average intellect because we are accumulating mutations that deleteriously affect brain development or function.[6]
Professor John Sanford of Cornell University firmly believes that the human race is devolving and that there is no evidence of human evolution being directed by the forces of natural selection. In the book Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome (2008), he argued that the minimal rate of human mutation is estimated to be 100 new mutations per generation. While most mutations do not have any effect, some of them are deleterious. This causes a genetic degradation that leads to the gradual extinction of a species through time. In an interview with Jim Cantelon, he explained the new findings in the field of genetics:
“It’s kind of a trade secret amongst population geneticists - any really well-informed population geneticist understands that man is degenerating…what’s happening is that, every gene in every chromosome of every cell in my body is mutating, and so that guarantees my aging and my death. But the problem is that - these mutations that are accumulating in my body - some of them are transmitted to my children. I take all the mutations that I inherited from my ancestors – tens of thousands of deleterious mutations in my body – and I add my own contribution to that – about 100 new mutations at least – and pass it on to the next generation…It means we are a perishing people living in a dying world…there is no circle of life where things just continue staying the same, and it’s not an upward spiral of evolution where things keep getting better and better, it is a downward spiral.”[7]
A downward spiral indeed! In other words, the descending arc of the Yuga Cycle or Great Year in which human intellect gradually declines. The wisdom of the ancients is now being validated by different scientific disciplines. But why is there so much secrecy?
John Sanford said that the degeneration of man is a “trade secret amongst population geneticists”, while Kathleen McAuliffe had noted that the phenomenon of the shrinking human brain is a secret known to “only a tight-knit circle of paleontologists.” Why is this knowledge being concealed from the people at large? Why not just come out and say, “It's confirmed guys. We are idiots, and we are getting dumber, and that’s why we are messing up the world.” Is that too much to ask?
I believe that John Sanford’s statement that we are “a perishing people in a dying world” is a bit too pessimistic, for it seems to imply that there is no hope for the world. That is not exactly true. Had the deterioration of the human brain been going on ceaselessly for the past 2 million years, then we would have transformed into chimps by now. Or become extinct. But we didn’t, right? This means that the process of degeneration is not unidirectional, but reverses itself at periodic intervals. Humanity is not headed towards extinction but towards transformation.
At some point after the completion of the Kali Yuga, the harmful genetic mutations will get replaced by beneficial genetic mutations, which will then keep on accumulating and drive the upward spiral of evolution till the next Golden Age. This is how the Cycle of the Ages operate, and it is a shame that this essential wisdom has been discarded by the modern civilization. But, then, this is exactly what happens in the Kali Yuga, the age of ignorance and darkness, when, in spite of having so many advanced technologies, humanity remains completely oblivious of its origins and purpose.
One might naturally wonder what could be causing the harmful and beneficial genetic mutations to fluctuate over a 25,800-year cycle. Could the radiation from some powerful cosmic source be driving this phenomenon? The answer is yes, and I have explored this idea in my book Yuga Shift, and I shall write about it in future articles.
'UFO' spotted over Ibiza after tourists notice white 'orb' floating in the sky
'UFO' spotted over Ibiza after tourists notice white 'orb' floating in the sky
A group of tourists were peacefully watching the sunset when a strange white 'orb' floated into their field of vision. In a matter of seconds, the strange entity vanishes, leaving some people convinced it's a 'UFO'
When jetting off to sunny Ibiza, UFOs are probably the last thing on your mind.
Yet, one group oftourists believe they spotted exactly this while soaking up a stunning sunset by the sea - and it's left the internet utterly baffled. Now a clip of the mysterious aerial entity came to light onPubity'sInstagram.
The UFO was spotted in Ibiza, Spain.
It captures a crowd relaxed on a cliff, before one woman suddenly runs to the edge. The air is then thick with gasps, yells and confused questions as all eyes lock on to something next to the moon.
Eagle-eyed viewers will clock a white blob, slightly out of focus, floating in the sky. But just as the lens zooms in, it shoots off and vanishes.
Unsurprisingly, this strange footage racked up countless comments online, with many viewers dishing out their own theories on what this might be. Unconvinced by the sighting, one person said: "It’s probably just a drone," as another sceptic joked: "Bro that UFO took a pill in Ibiza."
Meanwhile, someone else quipped: "They saw the bottled water prices n zoomed," while one more scoffed: "Ohhh yes because every video starts with 'hey I’m going to run towards the edge and scream look look look' nice try."
According to the Majorca Bulletin, this isn't the first time a UFO has been spotted in the region. Incredibly, Sóller - a town in neighbouring Mallorca - was allegedly a hotspot for UFO sightings in the 1970s to 1990s.
The Ibiza sighting also comes less than a year after US Congress passed legislation that demands its government to disclose some UFO records, under certain conditions.
Maria Calafat, who is reportedly working on a UFO-based project for Netflix, believes this alone is motivating more people to come forward with their own personal experiences.
She told the Majorca publication: "The recent declassification of thousands of UFO files by US Congress, has made these cases fashionable again."
What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below...
A mysterious UFO above a town in the United Kingdom was recently captured on camera and the object appeared to change shape as it moved through the sky.
The UFO was spotted by a resident of Bellshill in Lanarkshire on Friday, July 26.
“The skies have been beautiful lately with bright colours and when I heard the helicopter for the third time that day, I did look up and i caught a glimpse out the corner of my eye of it,” the witness told Glasgow Live.
“It was the way it was moving that made me want a closer look. I just thought it was strange and reminded me of something out of Harry Potter the closer it got.
“Even at one point it did look like a giant chicken, but still dark even when it passed over my house.”
Meanwhile in Brazil, another UFO was spotted and caught on video less than a week prior to the one in the United Kingdom.
The witness, Zona Desconhecida, said he was leaving a bakery when he saw a mysterious object hovering in the sky above Curitiba and captured what some are calling “The clearest video of a UFO ever taken.”
Not everyone is buying it, but many people on Reddit and YouTube were.
“Creepy as hell,” one viewer wrote. “I don’t think this is a balloon or drone look close that s—‘s like moving like there’s little legs on the sides moving and the eye or whatever also moves.”
“Amazing zoom on that camera, and a strong case for a UFO,” read another comment. “Without it taking off and showing speed, it’s hard for me to say for sure. But still, great submission.”
“When it finally comes into focus at the end, it just looks like smooth, uniformly shaped thing,” another person tried to explain. “The ‘landing gear’ and the light colored features on the side I think were just artifacts of it being out of focus.”
“Looks like the exact same thing that hovered over Bogota,” someone else wrote.
History is gearing up for the premiere of their new UFO reality show Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation. It airs this Friday, May 31 after Ancient Aliens. The show has already generated a ton of press, and the show cast members were key in influencing the Navy to take a closer look at UFO reports, as reported in Politico by Unidentified cast member Bryan Bender.
Bender’s article, and a new article in the New York Times that includes witness testimony from Navy pilots, has hit the media by storm. Now, in the middle of the media fervor, History has released these clips of interviews with some of those pilots.
CLIP 1 – Former Navy pilot Lt. Ryan Graves recalls his experience encountering UFOs while on the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
CLIP 2– Former Navy pilot Lt. Ryan Graves and Navy pilot Lt. Danny Aucoin discuss their experiences encountering UFOs while on active duty with the Navy.
CLIP 3 – Former Navy pilot Lt. Ryan Graves makes the shocking claim that multiple unidentified crafts appeared in the Middle East over the Arabian Gulf, while the carrier strike group was launching air strikes in Syria.
Promos
Visit the History channel website for Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigationhere.
NASA Made a World-Shaking Discovery: Compelling Evidence of Past Life on Mars
NASA Made a World-Shaking Discovery: Compelling Evidence of Past Life on Mars
Story by Darren Orf
In its ancient past, Mars likely contained many of the necessarily ingredients for microbial life to flourish on its surface.
Now, a new discovery by NASA’s Perseverance rover shows a trifecta of compelling evidence—including the presence of water, organic compounds, and a chemical energy source—all on one rock located in the Jezero Crater.
Although this is the best clue yet that microbial life existed on Mars, there are still other explanations that could explain this geologic display without the existence of microbes.
“Is there life on Mars” is a question that has vexed astrobiologists and David Bowie alike. While the latter imagined some macabre collection of arachnids on the Red Planet, NASA scientists are fixated on finding evidence that microbial life once flourished on the fourth rock from the Sun. So fixated, in fact, that the space agency has spent more than $5 billion getting two immensely complicated robotic rovers—Curiosity and Perseverance—onto the Martian surface with this specific microbial mission in mind.
Now, one of those rovers might’ve discovered one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for Martian microbial life. Located on an arrowhead-shaped, three-foot-long rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” in the Jezero Crater (the 28-mile-wide crater that Perseverance has called home for the past three years), this “piece of evidence” is actually a trifecta of data points that suggest the presence of past microbial life. The rock in question features two vertical veins of calcium sulfate that likely formed from past water, and these stripes both flank a red band of rock filled with “leopard spots.”
NASA has discovered evidence of past water on Mars before, but it’s this narrow band of rock that brings new meaning to this discovery. Using its SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) and PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry) instruments, Perseverance determined the existence of organic compounds within the rock. Oh, and those “leopard spots?” Those likely indicate chemical reactions that could’ve supplied energy to ancient microbial Martians.
While each of these discoveries—the presence of water, organic compounds, and chemical reactions—would be notable even if discovered separately, NASA has never seen all three in one location, meaning the geological chemistry of Cheyava Falls is possibly our best clue yet that Mars once hosted life.
“Cheyava Falls is the most puzzling, complex, and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance,” Caltech’s Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist, said in a NASA press statement. “We have our first compelling detection of organic material, distinctive colorful spots indicative of chemical reactions that microbial life could use as an energy source, and clear evidence that water—necessary for life—once passed through the rock.”
While this site is particularly exciting, it’s far from the first Martian discovery to cause considerable microbial hype. Just earlier this year, scientists studying a 2017 soil analysis from Curiosity’s ongoing mission in Gale Crater discovered an abundance of manganese in the soil—something that usually requires the presence of oxygen and (you guessed it) microbes.
An annotated image of the Cheyava Falls rock, the two vertical veins of calcium sulfate can be seen on the left and right of the image.
But all of these discoveries come with more than a few caveats. In Curiosity’s case, too little is known about the Mars’ oxidation process to be certain that microbes existed in Gale Crater, and this new discovery also isn’t immune from scientific scrutiny. One big head scratcher is the presence of millimeter-sized olivine crystals—a mineral that forms from magma. This may possibility explain how past volcanic activity could produce this geologic phenomena without relying on the presence of microbes at all.
“We have zapped that rock with lasers and X-rays and imaged it literally day and night from just about every angle imaginable,” Farley said in the press statement. “Scientifically, Perseverance has nothing more to give. To fully understand what really happened in that Martian river valley at Jezero Crater billions of years ago, we’d want to bring the Cheyava Falls sample back to Earth, so it can be studied with the powerful instruments available in laboratories.”
The “six-wheeled geologist” (as NASA calls it) doesn’t contain an onboard lab like its sister rover, Curiosity. But that’s actually a feature—not a flaw. NASA originally designed Perseverance to also be a sample retrieval mission, meaning that the space agency would send an additional spacecraft to retrieve samples from Perseverance and bring them back to Earth for further study.
However, with the costs of such a mission edging into the $11 billion range, bringing back samples of this Martian geologic wonder is in now question—as is the possibility of definitively understanding if there was once microbial life on Mars.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) made history almost two years ago. This was the first time humanity attempted to intentionally alter the motion of a space rock. They succeeded.
A spacecraftslammed into the tiny moon of an asteroid, all while its onboard camera and an Italian robotic onlooker called LICIACube snapped photos.
The footage is a treasure trove. On Tuesday, teams published five scientific papers in the journal Nature Communications. Each contains new insights into what these rocks are like, and how tricky it may be for future planetary defense missions to strike another asteroid to avoid an impact’s calamity on Earth.
Behold the final five-and-a-half minutes before DART intentionally collided into asteroid Dimorphos.
Here are five discoveries about this binary asteroid system so briefly encountered on September 26, 2022.
1. THE LARGER ASTEROID HAS AN OLDER SURFACE THAN THE LITTLE MOON.
Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos are related to one another. But scientists still don’t know exactly how. One investigation looked at 16 craters on the larger asteroid, Didymos.
DRACO, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for OpNav scientific camera, was one image source. It took many photos of Didymos and smaller Dimorphos before impacting the latter’s surface.
The craters suggest that the Didymos surface is about 12.5 million years old. But the Dimorphos surface is a fraction of that, only about 90,000 years to 300,000 years old.
2. DIDYMOS IS A PILE OF RUBBLE.
Observations confirmed theoretical expectations: It’s essentially a clump of leftovers from a catastrophic event in the ancient past.
Scientists noticed Didymos boulders appear too large to have been excavated by whatever made the craters. Something grander was responsible, and its mess, rounded up through gravitational attraction, is now Didymos. The large boulders are heirlooms passed down from an ancient parent rock.
This image from Italy’s LICIACube show the plumes of ejecta streaming from the Dimorphos asteroid after NASA’s DART made impact. Each rectangle creates a different level of contrast. This helps viewers to better see the plume’s fine structure.
3. WE NEED TO KNOW MUCH MORE ABOUT FRACTURES ON DIMORPHOS’ BOULDERS.
Asteroid boulders live in an airless environment. But, they can be altered through thermal fatigue. As the Sun shines on them, cracks form.
The Dimorphos fractures were identified with the help of independent contributors who located them across boulders of different sizes. This work adds to what’s already been gleaned about the Near-Earth asteroid population from previous NASA, Japanese, and European missions.
The picture emerging from the data is that, should a kinetic impactor like DART slam into another space rock, the thermal cracks “may contribute to an enhancement in the ejected mass,” one study says.
4.ECLIPSES MAY BE ONGOING.
On the flip side, eclipses could be having an opposite effect: cooling rocks down.
This animation shows how Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos was seen from Earth about one week after the DART impact.
Based on limited data about how Dimorphos now spins after DART struck it, scientists think the moonlet remains tidally-locked to Didymos. This means Dimorphos shows the same face to Didymos, like the Moon does with Earth. If this relationship is fostering eclipses, a periodic drop in temperature could be happening on the asteroids.
Like thermal fatigue from solar radiation, the cooling effect of eclipses must also be factored into deflection techniques. This asteroid duo provides a unique chance to investigate this. Other closely-studied asteroids and comets have no companion to block out light.
5. THE DIDYMOS SURFACE IS WEAKER THAN DRY SAND ON EARTH.
One major thing researchers want to know before visiting any celestial object is how much weight you can put on it. This is called bearing capacity. It reveals a lot about the formation history of the Solar System. And in the case of planetary defense, bearing capacity also informs how to build something that can effectively knock a space rock off a collision course with Earth.
“The low surface strength of Dimorphos likely contributed to DART’s significant impact on its orbit,” NASA officials wrote in an announcement published Tuesday. This also seems to be a trait of the larger asteroid, Didymos.
Researchers looked at DRACO’s final full image of Didymos before it slammed into the moonlet Dimorphos. DART didn’t touch Didymos. But boulders on its surface left tracks. Scientists studied nine of these paths. They determined that the bearing capacity of Didymos is “at least 3 orders of magnitude less than the bearing capacity of dry sand on Earth, or lunar regolith [dirt].”
Researchers have already learned so much about Near-Earth asteroids from the DART mission. Thanks to the European Space Agency’s upcoming Hera mission to survey the duo in October 2026, even more discoveries could emerge.
Een reis naar lokale legendes over de hele wereld Etherische figuren, die doen denken aan eeuwenoude legendes, komen op subtiele wijze tevoorschijn uit het tapijt van culturen en wenken nieuwsgierigen en dapperen om de blijvende kracht van folklore te ontdekken. Deze verhalen zijn het gefluister van generaties, die de essentie van het mysterieuze en magische vastleggen, en in deze galerij worden ze gevierd als de schatten van ons gedeelde menselijke erfgoed.
LEES VERDER door de galerij om de verhalen van weleer te ontdekken!
Het fluisterende bamboe (China) In het hart van het oude China fluistert een verhaal over twee geliefden, getransformeerd in bamboe, voor altijd samen zwaaiend in de wind. Deze legende, diep geworteld in de Chinese folklore, spreekt over de blijvende kracht van de liefde die echoot door de ritselende bamboebladeren. Het is een herinnering aan de veerkracht van de liefde en de eeuwige aanwezigheid in de natuur.
Anansi's Web (West-Afrika) Onder de Afrikaanse hemel weeft Anansi de Spin meer dan alleen maar webben; hij weeft verhalen over wijsheid. Deze bedrieger, een prominent figuur in West-Afrikaanse verhalen, leert levenslessen door zijn sluwe en avontuurlijke heldendaden. Elke streng van zijn web symboliseert de complexiteit van de beslissingen in het leven en de wijsheid die hij door ervaring verkrijgt.
Het noorderlicht (Scandinavië) Terwijl je in de Scandinavische nacht staart, ben je getuige van de etherische dans van de Aurora Borealis. Folklore vertelt over deze lichten als een hemels fenomeen, waar de geesten van de overledenen in de hemel spelen, verhalen van verwondering weven en het aardse rijk overbruggen met het mystieke.
Het monster van Loch Ness (Schotland) Gehuld in de mist van de Schotse folklore ligt Loch Ness, de thuisbasis van Nessie, het ongrijpbare monster. Deze legende geeft de essentie weer van de enigmatische charme van Schotland, waarbij Nessie de mysteries symboliseert die op de loer liggen in de diepten van onze verbeelding en in de donkere wateren van het meer.
Baba Yaga's Hut (Rusland) In het hart van de Russische folklore staat de hut van Baba Yaga, een bijzondere verblijfplaats op kippenpoten. De enigmatische heks, die vaak een cruciale rol speelt in verhalen over heldendom en speurtochten, belichaamt de dualiteit van de natuur – soms een helper, soms een belemmering, maar altijd een belangrijke figuur in het rijke tapijtwerk van de Slavische mythologie.
De Feniks (Midden-Oosten) Uit de as van oude verhalen uit het Midden-Oosten rijst de Feniks op, een prachtige vogel die vernieuwing en het eeuwige leven symboliseert. Dit mythische wezen, helder brandend en herboren uit zijn eigen ondergang, vertegenwoordigt de eindeloze cyclus van leven, dood en wedergeboorte, een krachtig embleem van veerkracht en hoop in de folklore.
Kraken (Noordse Zee) In de diepe, koude wateren van de Noordse Zeeën schuilt de Kraken, een legendarisch zeemonster dat gevreesd wordt door zeilers. Dit enorme wezen, vaak vergeleken met een reuzeninktvis, belichaamt de mysteries en verschrikkingen van de oceaan, een bewijs van de eeuwenoude fascinatie en angst van de mensheid voor de onbekende diepten van de zee.
El Dorado (Zuid-Amerika) Diep in het hart van Zuid-Amerika fascineert de legende van El Dorado, de stad van goud, ontdekkingsreizigers al eeuwenlang. Dit prikkelende verhaal spreekt over grenzeloze rijkdom en ambitie en weerspiegelt de eindeloze zoektocht van de mensheid naar ontdekkingen en de ongrijpbare aard van onze grootste verlangens.
De Banshee (Ierland) In de Ierse folklore is het treurige gejammer van de Banshee onder het maanlicht een voorbode van de dood. Deze spookachtige figuur, gehuld in mysterie, belichaamt de Keltische eerbied voor de overgang van leven naar dood, een aangrijpende herinnering aan de dunne sluier tussen het levende en het spirituele rijk.
Tengu (Japan) Hoog in de Japanse bergen wonen de Tengu: mystieke wezens die deels mens en deels vogel zijn. Deze wezens staan bekend als zowel beschermers als bedriegers van de bossen en symboliseren de complexiteit van de natuur en menselijke interactie, waarbij ze kattenkwaad en wijsheid vermengen in het rijke tapijtwerk van de Japanse folklore.
Bigfoot (Noord-Amerika) In de uitgestrekte, onbekende bossen van Noord-Amerika roept de legende van Bigfoot, een mysterieuze reus, nieuwsgierigheid en debat op. Dit ongrijpbare wezen, vaak omschreven als een torenhoge, harige figuur, belichaamt de wilde en onbekende aspecten van de natuur. Bigfoot dient als symbool voor de mysteries die nog steeds verborgen liggen in de afgelegen wildernis.
De regenboogslang (Australië) Centraal in de Aboriginal mythologie wordt de Regenboogslang vereerd als een krachtige scheppende godheid. Dit levendige, slangachtige wezen, geassocieerd met water en leven, weeft door de verhalen van de inheemse bevolking en symboliseert de schepping, vruchtbaarheid en de onderlinge verbondenheid van alle levende wezens.
La Llorona (Mexico) Het verhaal van La Llorona, gefluisterd langs de rivieroevers, spreekt over een spookachtige vrouw, die eeuwig rouwt om haar verdronken kinderen. Dit aangrijpende verhaal, doordrenkt van Mexicaanse folklore, dient als een waarschuwend verhaal over liefde, verlies en de gevolgen van iemands daden, dat door de eeuwen heen weerklinkt.
De Djinn (Midden-Oosten) In verhalen uit het Midden-Oosten zijn de Djinn bovennatuurlijke wezens, noch geheel goed, noch slecht. Deze raadselachtige wezens worden vaak geassocieerd met het vervullen van wensen en weerspiegelen de dubbele aard van menselijke verlangens en de complexe gevolgen die de vervulling ervan met zich meebrengt.
De Krampus (AlpenEuropa) In de ijskoude Alpengebieden vormt de Krampus een schril contrast met de feestelijke vreugde van Kerstmis. Deze gehoornde figuur, bekend om het straffen van zich misdragende kinderen tijdens de kerstperiode, belichaamt de oude gebruiken en duistere aspecten van wintervieringen en herinnert aan de balans tussen welwillendheid en discipline.
Valkyries (Noorse mythologie) In de Noorse mythologie kozen Walkuren, goddelijke vrouwelijke figuren, het lot van krijgers in de strijd. Deze krachtige wezens, die door de lucht vliegen, vertegenwoordigen de concepten van het lot en het hiernamaals, een integraal onderdeel van de Viking-overtuigingen en -cultuur.
De rattenvanger (Duitsland) De rattenvanger, een mysterieuze figuur uit de Duitse folklore, staat erom bekend een stad van ratten te bevrijden en later zijn kinderen weg te lokken. Zijn verhaal is een waarschuwend verhaal over beloften en gevolgen, dat door de eeuwen heen weerklank vindt.
De Nian (China) Het angstaanjagende beest Nian zou in de Chinese folklore zijn verslagen met behulp van rode lantaarns en vuurwerk. Deze legende symboliseert de triomf over angst en tegenspoed, gevierd tijdens het Chinese Nieuwjaar.
De Golem (Joodse folklore) In de Joodse folklore werd de Golem, een tot leven gewekt kleifiguur, gecreëerd om de gemeenschap te beschermen. Dit krachtige verhaal onderzoekt thema's als creatie, controle en de onbedoelde gevolgen van onze acties.
Kappa (Japan) De Kappa, waterwezens uit de Japanse folklore, staan bekend om hun kattenkwaad, maar toch zijn ze gebonden aan een beleefdheidscode. Deze wezens symboliseren de genuanceerde relatie tussen mensen en de natuurlijke wereld en weerspiegelen het delicate evenwicht van co-existentie.
The Selkie's Secret (Schotse en Ierse folklore) Selkies, zeehondenmensen uit de Schotse en Ierse overlevering, belichamen de thema's identiteit en vrijheid. Hun verhalen, vaak romantisch en tragisch, spreken over de transformerende aard van selkies en hun diepe verbinding met zowel land als zee, en reflecteren op het universele verlangen naar iemands ware thuis.
What could a future sovereign Mars economy look like?
What would the economy of a future Mars society look like, and how could it be self-sustaining while being completely sovereign from Earth and its own economy? This is what a recent study submitted to Space Policy hopes to address as a sole researcher discusses a model that could be used for establishing economic freedom on Mars, enabling both monetary and political stability across all Red Planets settlements. This study holds the potential to help scientists, economists, and world leaders better understand plausible governmental systems used by human settlers on other worlds while maintaining sovereignty from Earth and its own governmental law and order.
Here, Universe Today discusses this incredible study with Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra, who is the Director and a Senior Research Investigator of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science (BMSIS) and sole author of the study, regarding the motivation behind the study, significant ideas presented in the study, the importance of establishing a sovereign economic system on Mars, eliminating capital exchange between Mars and Earth, how Mars can become a sovereign entity from Earth after humans settle there, and how an economic system can be established on a sovereign Mars. Therefore, what was the motivation behind the study?
“My motivation was to build on the idealistic framework for an independent Mars that I developed in my book Sovereign Mars,” Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today. “In my book, I describe five conditions for enabling Mars to be an independent planetary state, a juridical peer to Earth. In this new study, I develop a possible economic model that would be consistent with these five conditions.”
These five conditions outlined in Sovereign Mars include all permanent settlers on Mars completely acquiescing Earth citizenship and interests; Earthlings being unable to interfere with the Mars affairs, including financial, political, and social aspects; Earthlings requiring permission from Mars to conduct scientific investigations on the Red Planet; only Mars citizens can own land; and all resources brought from Earth, including technological or other items, will remain on Mars permanently.
For the study, Dr. Haqq-Misra dives deeper into the economic facets of a future sovereign Mars government while embodying these five conditions, specifically focusing on the financial aspects of such an economic system, including banking, currencies, capital ownership, and Earthling tourism. He emphasizes how such a system builds off the mistakes from Earth’s present-day economic systems that could potentially lead to both financial and political stability on Mars. He notes this is an “idealistic but feasible model” with the goal of establishing full economic freedom for future Mars citizens from Earth. So, what were the most significant ideas presented in this study?
“The first idea is ‘full reserve banking’,” Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today. “Our banking system today allows banks to loan out more money than they hold as cash in reserves, which is known as a ‘fractional reserve’ system. This can lead to problems such as a ‘run on the bank,” where too many people try to take out their deposits all at once, only to find that the bank does not have their money.”
Dr. Haqq-Misra continues, “The second idea is the diffusion of capital ownership. Many visions of space settlement imagine something like a world space agency or other centralized authority that could ensure justice and perhaps even serve as a way to redistribute wealth. But the centralization of sovereign power also carries significant risks for the abuse of such power. Some arguments even suggest a somewhat Marxists approach toward the centralized or government ownership of wealth-producing capital, which is then redistributed equitably, but this again carries significant risk of abuse and corruption. An alternative idea is to widely diffuse the ownership of capital, instead of wealth. This means that ownership of companies, equipment, and anything else that can generate wealth would be held in a wider range of hands than today—ideally, by everyone.”
Along with the five conditions of a sovereign Mars noted above, requirements will also be established by the full reserve banking system on Mars, including all transactions staying on Mars, no currency exchange with Earth, and currency issuance will be based on changes in population. All tourism on Mars will follow three conditions that coincide with the conditions of both a sovereign Mars and the Mars full reserve banking system, including tourists being unable to own capital on Mars, the prohibition of Mars currency from being returned to Earth, and no currency transactions from tourists while services would only be provided from the exchange of goods.
On present-day Earth, currency exchange is the primary method for purchasing goods and services, with a total of 180 currencies being recognized across 195 countries around the world. While the value of each currency across the globe varies daily, this system allows individuals from separate countries to own capital in other countries with minimal government interference. But what is the importance behind the complete lack of capital exchange between Earth and Mars?
“This is part of the idealistic framework in Sovereign Mars,” Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today. “Preventing exchange between the two planets would enable Mars to retain its maximum potential to develop new ideas in civilization, such as this economic model. In practice, these ideas could still be attempted on Mars even if there is some exchange between the two planets, although this may lead to different results.”
The prospect of sending humans to Mars has been the purview of science fiction and countless scientific discussions for over 100 years. this began with the Danish silent film A Trip to Mars and other films continuing throughout the 20th century while incorporating current Mars inhabitants or remnants of past Mars civilizations. While films of the last few decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century conveyed the first human trips to Mars, most recently with the film The Martian, little has been discussed regarding permanent human settlements on the Red Planet.
The closest this notion came was in the television series The Expanse, which depicted the Martian Congressional Republic on Mars being a sovereign entity from Earth, complete with its own military and political hierarchy. However, the economic system within this government wasn’t discussed in detail. But what steps need to be taken for Mars to become a sovereign entity after humans settle there?
“The biggest challenge is having sufficient infrastructure and resources to become self-sustaining on Mars,” Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today. “Some resources could be used on Mars, but not right away, and actually enabling an independent Mars may require benefactors with long-term visions for humanity or even Earth, without the need for an immediate or near-future financial return. I call this ‘deep altruism’ in Sovereign Mars.”
Additionally, regarding the importance of establishing a sovereign economic system on Mars and the steps required for this economic system to take hold, Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today, “We have many examples even in recent history of economic recessions and collapses. If space settlement is really to be a long-duration venture, then we need economic ideas that can remain sustainable over long timescales.”
Dr. Haqq-Misra continues, “The best way to establish this economic system would be for any initial settlers to agree on a method for implementing such a system prior to actually arriving on Mars. Part of the value in thinking about martian governance today is to anticipate such possibilities prior to the actual landing of humans on Mars. And thinking about governance on Mars can also help us gain better insight into our governance and economic systems on Earth.”
Sending humans to Mars could happen within the next decade, but sending humans to live there could be decades away, and establishing a sovereign Mars could be at least 100 years away, along with establishing and maintaining a sustainable economy separate from Earth. However, establishing protocols well in advance could lead to a smooth transition into an economic system on a sovereign Mars that is completely separate and free from the Earth’s systems.
Dr. Haqq-Misra concludes by telling Universe Today, “I am working with a talented group of students this summer through the BMSIS Young Scientist Program to examine historical analogues for sovereignty on Mars. We hope to have some new studies finished in the coming year.”
Will a future sovereign Mars successfully establish an economic system that is separate from Earth some time in the distant future? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
Having Trouble Traversing the Sands of Mars? A Lizard Robot Might Help
Mars exploration vehicles typically have wheels, allowing them to traverse some challenging terrain on the Red Planet. However, eventually, their systems start to wear down, and one of their wheels gets stuck. The “Free Spirit” campaign in 2009 was the most widely known case. Unfortunately, that campaign wasn’t successful, and now, 15 years later, Spirit remains stuck in its final resting place. Things might have been different if NASA had adopted a new robot paradigm developed by Guangming Chen and his colleagues at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics Lab of Locomotion Bioinspiration and Intelligent Robots. They devised a robot based on a desert lizard, with adaptable feet and a flexible “spine” that, according to their calculations, would be well suited to traversing over Martian regolith.
Planning for traversing tough terrain isn’t limited to rovers that are stuck. Curiosity and Perseverance, perhaps the two best-known operating rovers on Mars, currently spend a lot of their time trying to avoid areas where they might become entangled. This limits their ability to capture any data from those areas, potentially missing out on some cool rocks, like the pure sulfur that Curiosity recently found for the first time on Mars.
A lizard-inspired robot, on the other hand, would have no trouble traversing such terrain. It also has some advantages over traversing different types of terrain, such as rocks. Most rovers don’t have enough leg lift to get over medium-sized rocks, whereas a legged robot would, especially one with adjustable “toes” that would allow it to grip a rock tighter than would otherwise be possible with typical legged robots.
Lizard-inspired robots aren’t only useful for walking – they can also jump like their biological cousins, as demonstrated in this video from UC Berkeley’s robotics lab. Credit – UC Berkeley YouTube Channel
The design for the robot itself is relatively simple – it has four “feet” that are offset from each other by a chassis that essentially looks like a desert lizard. It even has a tail for counterbalancing. Each foot has a series of three “toes” powered by springs. They also have a servo for ankle articulation and a bearing for rotational control. This combination allows the lizard robot to walk on all fours effectively and adjust each leg to best adapt to the surface it is “walking” over.
The authors performed a series of kinematic calculations for different types of terrain to help understand how the robot would interact with each of those surfaces. Kinematic calculations are typically used in robotics when designers attempt to find the best way to move a specific robot part. The calculations are relatively detailed in this case, given the number of variable parts. However, a control algorithm is possible using just on-board computation, allowing for some basic autonomous terrain navigation if architecture is ever adopted for use in space.
Building an actual prototype would be a great way to work on that navigation algorithm, and that’s precisely what the researchers did. They 3D printed many of the parts for the chassis and foot, embedded some batteries and controllers in the head and tail sections, and started testing the prototype on simulated Martian test terrain.
Mars isn’t the only place that could benefit from legged robots – they could work on the Moon as well, as Fraser discusses.
They tested everything from grasping loose regolith to climbing over small rocks, and their algorithm seemed to work effectively for handling the relatively simple terrain in the test bed. However, the robot’s actual speed of movement was slower than originally simulated, mainly due to technical difficulties in balancing the motions of the springs and the spine.
Despite any problems that arose during physical testing, this new robot iteration is a step in the right direction, as this lab has been designing similar systems for years. They also plan to continue to another version, including mounting a continuous power supply and fully implementing an autonomous navigation algorithm. Their research is funded by both Jiangsu Province and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, so it seems it will continue to gain support, at least for the foreseeable future.
Image of Sierra Space's full-scale Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE®) on the test stand at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. (Credit: Sierra Space)
Ae inflatable habitats the future of human space exploration? This is what the space-tech company, Sierra Space, hopes to achieve as theyrecently conducted a successful Ultimate Burst Pressure test on June 18 with its Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE®) technology at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The goal of these tests is to inflate the test article until it explodes while ascertaining if the maximum pressure falls within NASA’s strict safety guidelines regarding a recommended operating pressure of 60.8 psi (maximum operating pressure of 15.2 psi times four as a safety factor). Upon explosion, Sierra Space engineers immediately found the recent test achieved 74 psi, thus exceeding NASA’s safety standards by 22 percent.
“We are 100 percent committed to maintaining U.S. leadership in Low Earth Orbit. Sierra Space is leading the way with the first commercial space station to replace the International Space Station when it is decommissioned and ensure there is no gap in LEO,” said Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice. “Our revolutionary, expandable space station technology reinvents the space station. Our technology, for the first time, will enable the right unit economics that will usher in the full commercialization of space. Our biotech and industrial partners will utilize our factories of the future to innovate new products that will massively disrupt terrestrial markets and benefit life on Earth.”
This recent test marks the technology’s second full-scale structural test and seventh key validation test, which comes after Sierra Space successfully conducted its first full-scale burst test in December 2023, achieving 77 psi and exceeding NASA’s safety standards by 27 percent. Both test units stood at more than 6 meters (20 feet) in height and had volumes of 300 m3 (10,594 ft3), or approximately 1/3rd of the pressurized volume of the International Space Station (ISS). Sierra Space is now planning for the first test of its 500 m3 (17,657 ft3) space station technology in 2025, which will be 55 percent of the pressurized volume of the ISS.
December 2023 burst test of the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE®)
“No other company is moving at the speed of Sierra Space to develop actual hardware, stress-tested at full scale, and demonstrate repeatability. We’ve taken a softgoods system that very few companies around the world have been able to design, and now we have consistent, back-to-back results,” said Shawn Buckley, VP of Earthspace™ Systems, Space Stations, at Sierra Space. “A second successful full-scale test is an absolute game changer. We now know it’s possible to equal or surpass the total habitable volume of the entire International Space Station, in a single launch.”
While these two recent tests were conducted at full-scale, Sierra Space conducted two sub-scale burst tests in July 2022 and November 2022, achieving maximum pressures of 192 and 204 psi, respectively, with NASA’s safety standards being 182.4 psi given the sub-scale sizes, thus both tests successfully exceeding these safety standards.
July 2022 sub-scale burst test
November 2022 sub-scale burst test
Sierra Space stated in June 2023 that they hope to launch a “pathfinder” version of the LIFE® habitat in 2026 with the goal of the technology being an essential piece to the Orbital Reef commercial space station, with the latter scheduled to be operational in 2027. Given its size, Sierra Space estimates the LIFE® habitat can comfortably accommodate four astronauts with the remaining volume being used for science experiments, exercise equipment, small medical facilities, and the Astro Garden® system, which can potentially grow food in space and has previously undergone testing at the Sierra Space Madison WI facility.
This comes as numerous commercial space companies are attempting to launch their own space stations, including the Axiom Station, Starlab Space Station, Haven-1, and the aforementioned Orbital Reef space station. Additionally, this also comes as NASA announced their plans to “retire” the ISS in 2030, although the agency announced in a July 2024 white paper that they will evaluate the possibility of extending the lifetime of the ISS if no commercial space stations are able to accommodate space-based research at that time.
How will Sierra Space’s Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE®) technology help advance human space exploration in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
New evidence reaffirms that cave art on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is the oldest known in the world, according to a study that now dates the enigmatic paintings to 51,200 years ago.
The findings push back the timescales on human activity on Sulawesi, raising new questions about the origins of the island’s ancient art and its relationship to early human migrations.
An aerial view of Karampuang hill in south Sulawesi, where the cave is located.
BRIN Google Arts & Culture
The entrance to Leang Karampuang cave, where some of the oldest cave art has been found.
Google Arts & Culture
Recent studies involving advanced laser ablation techniques examined the images on the cave’s walls, which include ancient depictions of animals like pigs and bovines along with stick renderings of anthropomorphic shapes. The new analysis reveals that the art is likely several thousands of years older than previously thought.
However, the extreme age of the art within the cave may point to another intriguing possibility: that its creators were not modern humans, and instead may have been one of our ancient hominin cousins. Such a discovery, if proven, would have profound implications for the origins of figurative art and the cognitive capabilities of our now-extinct hominin relatives.
THE ENIGMA OF SULAWESI
Renowned for its ancient cave paintings, Sulawesi has long fascinated archaeologists. Among the island’s most notable works of cave art include a 14-foot-wide panel that depicts crude imagery of early humans hunting what are commonly believed to be warty pigs and dwarf bovines with spears.
Past work had already revealed the presence of what archaeologists recognized as some of the world’s oldest rock art on the island. A process known as solution uranium-series (or U-series) was used to analyze calcite deposits that had formed over the art on the walls of Maros-Pangkep, a rock art location on the southern portion of the island. This technique, which scans rock walls without taking physical samples, provides a more accurate estimate by distinguishing between layers of sediment.
Cave art found at Maros-Pangkep on southern Sulawesi
(Credit: Cahyo/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0).
However, in their recent study, researchers led by Indonesian archaeologist Adhi Augus Oktaviana used what they describe as “a novel application of this approach,” called laser-ablation U-series imaging, which allowed them to more accurately date some of the earliest cave art in the area.
In a recent study detailing their work, the researchers write, “This method provides enhanced spatial accuracy,” resulting in older minimum ages for previously dated art.
The scene, covered with calcium carbonate deposits, shows three human figures and a pig.
Dominic Julian/BRIN Google Arts
Three human-like figures and a large pig are drawn on a limestone cave wall. Griffith University
REDATING THE WORLD’S OLDEST CAVE ART
The new analysis revealed remarkable results. A hunting scene found at the Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 location, previously dated to at least 43,900 years ago during previous analysis, has now been revealed to have a minimum age closer to 51,200 years ago, making the art at the location at least 4,040 years older than initial estimates had placed it.
“Painted at least 51,200 years ago, this narrative composition, which depicts human-like figures interacting with a pig, is now the earliest known surviving example of representational art and visual storytelling in the world,” the authors of the new study state.
The authors add that their new analysis reveals a much deeper origin of figurative portrayals of animals and humans than previously recognized.
Image comparison revealing separation between pigment and sedimentation buildup on the cave walls at Sulawesi
(Credit: A.A. Oktaviana / Wikimedia Commons)
Of course, revising the dates of the cave art on Sulawesi raises new questions about what species of ancient hominin had actually served as the ancient artists in residence. According to most commonly accepted timelines, modern humans are believed to have left Africa as recently as 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, although possibly as early as 90,000 years ago.
Considering those nearer estimates for when these ancient migrations might have begun, it does raise questions about how likely it is that modern humans could have been present on Sulawesi by the time the newly redated cave art was produced. The earliest known modern human remains on the island date back to no earlier than 25,000 years ago, although evidence of human presence in the form of rock shelters and stone tool use has been found that suggests humans may have been there far earlier, even as much as 118,000 years ago.
While the possibility of modern humans arriving on the island that long ago presents a challenging question, there is little doubt that our ancient hominin cousins were present on Sulawesi by then. Past fossil discoveries have presented compelling evidence of the presence of hominins on the island as far back as 194,000 years ago.
While pushing back the timescales for the use of figurative art on the island of Sulawesi and raising questions about what species could have made it, the new findings also challenge past ideas that attribute the origins of such art to Europe toward the end of the Ice Age.
To figure out when the cave paintings were made, the team used a new technique to date calcium carbonate deposits that formed on top of the art.
Dominic Julian/BRIN Google Arts
The team’s discoveries also suggest that it is possible humans may have been creating such art long before their arrival in Asia, if not even further back to times before modern humans are believed to have left Africa; a controversial possibility that some researchers, including British anthropologist Chris Stringer, have begun to propose in recent years.
However, if it were ever proven that some other hominin species had possessed the necessary cognitive development required to create figurative art so long ago, it would potentially upend our existing ideas about the capabilities of our early human ancestors and their hominin relatives.
At the very least, the authors concede in their study that the new findings suggest “a rich culture of storytelling developed at an early period in the long history of H. sapiens in this region — in particular, the use of scenic representation to tell visual stories about human-animal relationships.”
In 1962, many American moviegoers were treated to an unusual display during screenings of the popular Universal Newsreels that aired before feature presentations. That year, a segment entitled “Now Hear This! Italians Unveil Talking Chimp” was shown, introducing audiences to Renata, a chimpanzee who had reportedly been trained to say “mama” by her handler.
“As explained by her foster mother, this is one of the most extraordinary chimps in the world,” announcer Ed Herlihy’s famous voice could be heard saying in the decades-old footage. “You don’t have to know Italian to understand Renata’s accent when she gets her cue.”
Then, as Renata’s handler taps her on the chin, the chimpanzee is shown saying the word “mama” several times.
The footage, likely viewed as little more than a novelty at the time, represented something potentially extraordinary: evidence of a non-human primate displaying the ability to speak, albeit crudely. Despite Renata’s unique talent, the footage was largely forgotten, and prevailing wisdom continued to insist that humans were the only primates with the required neural circuitry capable of speech.
However, Renata was not the only known example of a chimpanzee who displayed a limited ability to learn and speak human words. Decades later, in a video uploaded to YouTube on August 17, 2007, a chimpanzee named Johnny was also shown saying “mama,” seemingly in response to requests from his owner, after which he was awarded a treat.
Now, an international team of researchers that reviewed the footage of Renata and Johnny have concluded that in at least three known instances, chimpanzees were indeed able to learn human words and exhibit limited speech capabilities.
“We recovered original footage of two enculturated chimpanzees uttering the word ‘mama’ and subjected recordings to phonetic analysis,” write the authors of a new study published in Nature: Scientific Reports by Axel G. Ekström and colleagues. “Our analyses demonstrate that chimpanzees are capable of syllabic production, achieving consonant-to-vowel phonetic contrasts via the simultaneous recruitment and coupling of voice, jaw and lips.”
In their paper, the researchers state that they conducted an online experiment in which participants were provided recordings of the utterances to listen to but were not told they were listening to chimpanzees. The participants “reliably perceived chimpanzee utterances as syllabic utterances, primarily as ‘ma-ma,’” the researchers write.
The researchers conclude that the vocal abilities great apes possess have largely been underestimated, writing that “Chimpanzees possess the neural building blocks necessary for speech.”
Great apes do not appear to display any signs of language use in nature, and it is noteworthy that Renata and Johnny appear to have learned their unique talents through human coaching. However, the findings are significant since they show that at least one nonhuman great ape species does possess the required neural components to facilitate speech, whether or not they utilize such faculties on their own in the wild.
Although speech is not an ability chimpanzees normally rely on, the same cannot be said of their overall ability to communicate. Recent studies have shown that chimpanzees frequently use gestures while communicating in a way similar to that of humans. In at least a few instances, chimpanzees have also shown a remarkable ability to understand human language. One notable example involves Kanzi, a bonobo who reportedly understands close to 3000 human words and has exhibited the ability to answer questions using a special keyboard that reproduces human words.
In their new paper, Ekström and colleagues note that past studies involving chimps and their ability to exhibit rudimentary speech had been largely dismissed due to lack of rigorous analysis. However, the new findings appear to support these previously unconfirmed observations, which have often cited words like “mama” as being among the ones most commonly learned by chimps.
Indeed, there could be more to the prevalence of this particular word in past studies involving chimpanzee speech. As the study’s authors note, “mama” is often among the first words human infants learn and may, in fact, have deeper roots as one of the earliest spoken language words ever created by humans.
“Accordingly, it has been argued that ‘mama’ may have been among the first words to appear in human speech,” the authors of the new study write.
“Our data complements this picture: chimpanzees can produce the putative ‘first words’ of spoken languages.”
The team’s new study, “Chimpanzee utterances refute purported missing links for novel vocalizations and syllabic speech,” was published in Nature: Scientific Reports on July 25, 2024.
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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..
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