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 Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
10-08-2024
Scientists Discover New Geological Link Between Earth and Venus
Ishtar Terra is a complex geological region on Venus. New research shows it may have formed through processes similar to Earth's. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS – http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00007, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18235544
Scientists Discover New Geological Link Between Earth and Venus
Venus is sometimes called Earth’s sister planet because of their shared physical, geological, and atmospheric features. Scientists have discovered something new about Venus’ geology that’s reminding us of the similarities between the two planets. We have to look deep inside both planets to see what the researchers found.
There are a few reasons why the pair of planets are sometimes called twins. They have several characteristics in common:
They’re inner Solar System neighbours.
They’re both rocky.
They’re roughly the same size and mass.
They both have few craters, implying young surfaces.
They both have atmospheres and dense clouds.
They both have geological similarities and surface features like volcanoes, mountains, plateaus, and plains.
New research published in Nature Geoscience focuses on the last item in that list. Its title is “Ishtar Terra highlands on Venus raised by craton-like formation mechanisms.” The lead author is Fabio Capitanio, an Associate Professor from the Monash University School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment.
Ishtar Terra is one of three large highland regions on Venus. Its topography includes mountains, plains, and plateaus. The Maxwell Montes mountain chain is in Ishtar Terra, and it’s about 11 km (6.8 mi) high, compared to Mt. Everest, which is 8.8 kilometres (5.5 mi).
Ishtar Terra has highly complex terrain and appears to be heavily deformed. These are indications that Venus underwent powerful geological activity in its past.
This view of Venus is centred on its north pole. Ishtar Terra is the red region just below the image’s centre. The white region is Maxwell Montes, and the left-most red lobe is Lakshmi Planum. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS – http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00007,Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18235544
Ishtar Terra also contains Lakshmi Planum, a two million square kilometre plateau about four km high and surrounded by extremely deformed terrain. It’s made of smooth lava flows and features two large shield volcanoes. Colette Patera is about 130 km in diameter, and Sacajawea Patera is about 200 km across and 1-2 km deep. Though Venus is tectonically inactive now, scientists think that ancient tectonic activity is responsible for the region’s wild topography.
Click on the image to explore an interactive 3D map of Ishtar Terra at Sketchfab by user v7x. Image Credit: Sketchfab/v7x
The new research in Nature Geoscience zeroes in on a specific part of geology called cratons. Cratons are the ancient geological cores of Earth’s continents. They’re stable parts of Earth’s lithosphere that are usually found in the center of the planet’s continental plates. Cratons have survived Earth’s extensive history of continental rifting and merging. They’re typically composed of extremely durable basement rock and have deep roots that can extend several hundred kilometres into the planet’s mantle.
Some cratons date from the Precambrian era, more than 2.5 billion years ago. Others may be even older and could date back to the Earth’s early days during the Hadean and Archaean Eons.
In this new work, Capitanio and his co-researchers used data from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft and high-performance computer simulations to investigate the formation of Ishtar Terra more deeply. They found that Ishtar Terra may have formed the same way that Earth’s cratons may have formed.
“The structures emerging in this model provide topography, gravity and crustal thicknesses remarkably comparable to the plateaus of Venus.”
From “Ishtar Terra highlands on Venus raised by craton-like formation mechanisms.”
On Earth, plateaus and belts of mountains like Ishtar Terra would clearly result from colliding continental plates. Ishtar Terra is similar to the Tibetan Plateau, and continental collision is the primary driver behind its formation. Something else must be behind Ishtar Terra and Venus’s other terrae because the planet lacks plate tectonics. But Ishtar Terra shares something particular with Earth. It has a thick crustal floor similar to Earth’s cratons.
This suggests that the planets have or had processes in common. Ishtar Terra and Venus’ other terrae may have risen from the planet’s hot interior. While there are several competing explanations for the formation of Earth’s cratons, one is the molten plume model. It states that rising plumes of molten rock came from deep within Earth’s mantle and built up thick layers with the cratons on top.
“The study challenges our understanding of how planets evolve,” lead author Capitanio said. “We did not expect Venus, with its scorching 460°C surface temperature and lack of plate tectonics, to possess such complex geological features.”
While Venus doesn’t have plate tectonics, it does have a hot lithosphere. The planet’s surface temperature is about 460°C (860°F). The heat extends into the lithosphere, which is hotter than Earth’s due to Venus’s runaway greenhouse effect. The surface simply can’t shed heat the way Earth does. The high heat means that Venus’s lithosphere is probably thinner than Earth’s. While Earth’s lithosphere can be as thick as 200 km, maybe even thicker, Venus’s is only about 50-100 km thick. Since it’s so much thinner, it’s also weaker.
“Venus’s hot lithosphere might make it a good analogue of early Earth and might enable the same types of continent-forming processes that occurred on Earth,” the researchers write in a briefing from Nature. “Our focus was on Ishtar Terra, the broadest of the plateaus, for which we found that the topography, crustal thicknesses and gravity signals are consistent with our simulations when the modelled lithosphere is about 10–50 times weaker than Earth’s.”
This figure from the research compares observations (a, c, e) with modelled results (b, d, f). The columns are topography, crust thickness, and gravity anomaly at 194 million years. “The structures emerging in this model provide topography, gravity and crustal thicknesses remarkably comparable to the plateaus ofVenus,” the researchers explain. Image Credit: Capitiano et al. 2024.
The thin lithosphere favours “the emplacement of a thick magmatic crust on top of a deep residual depleted mantle,” the authors write in their research.
“This finding provides a fascinating new perspective on Venus and its potential links to early Earth,” Capitanio said. “The features we found on Venus are strikingly similar to Earth’s early continents, suggesting that the dynamics of Venus’ past may have been more similar to Earth’s than previously thought.”
The research shows that despite their differences, divergent rocky planets can share underlying mechanisms. Spotting these cratons or craton-associated mechanisms on another planet can help scientists understand Earth. “By studying similar features on Venus, we hope to unlock the secrets of Earth’s early history,” Associate Professor Capitanio said.
Venus is like the Solar System’s plan B. If life couldn’t make it work on Earth, maybe it could’ve worked on Venus. There’s evidence that Venus may have once had liquid water and used to be in the habitable zone, though that’s not certain. In any case, while Earth is resplendent with life, Venus is far too hot.
Earth’s ancient cratons are a part of Earth’s story. On our planet, geology, life, and the planet’s atmosphere are all intricately connected. By recognizing what Earth and Venus have in common and how they are also so different, researchers can learn more about Earth’s trajectory toward a living planet.
Future missions to Venus are in the works, and they should provide even more explanations for the sister planets’ divergent outcomes.
“Our research has paved the way for future missions to Venus, such as DAVINCI, VERITAS, and EnVision,” Capitanio said. “These missions will provide further insights into Venus’ geological history and its connection to Earth.”
The Moon’s Atmosphere Comes from Space Weathering How do you get an atmosphere at a world that doesn’t have one and can’t keep one? If it’s the Moon, you simply bombard it for millions of years with tiny meteorites. Also, let it si
A future astronaut studies the lunar surface to understand space weathering of the Moon. Courtesy NASA.
How do you get an atmosphere at a world that doesn’t have one and can’t keep one? If it’s the Moon, you simply bombard it for millions of years with tiny meteorites. Also, let it sit in the solar wind and see what happens. Both space-weathering processes create a thin “exosphere” just above the lunar surface.
Scientists call the first process “impact vaporization” and now suspect that it’s a major reason the lunar atmosphere exists. It also helps explain how atmospheric atoms escape from the Moon to space.
A team of scientists at MIT and the University of Chicago recently published a paper describing their research into the space weathering causes of the lunar exosphere. It pinpoints the process of impact vaporization as a major player. “We give a definitive answer that meteorite impact vaporization is the dominant process that creates the lunar atmosphere,” says the study’s lead author, Nicole Nie, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “The Moon is close to 4.5 billion years old, and through that time the surface has been continuously bombarded by meteorites. We show that eventually, a thin atmosphere reaches a steady state because it’s being continuously replenished by small impacts all over the Moon.”
Tracking the Space Weathering Influence on the Moon’s Atmosphere
Researchers have known about the lunar atmosphere for decades. It was first observed in the 1980s as a layer of atoms hugging close to the surface. The LADEE mission specifically studied that exosphere. The atoms don’t just lie there, however. They bounce around, largely stirred up by constant impacts of tiny objects called micrometeoroids. Those dust-sized particles—along with larger objects smacking into the surface—kick up the lunar soil. That vaporizes some of the atoms of material—including potassium and rubidium. Those atoms are suspended in the thin exosphere. Or, if they get enough velocity in the weak lunar gravity, they escape to space.
The different ways that space weathering can affect the lunar surface. Cartoon by IntrplnetSarah, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
The MIT/Chicago team members wanted to prove the exosphere is produced by this impact vaporization component of space weathering. So, they analyzed samples of lunar soil collected during the Apollo missions. They zeroed in on the potassium and rubidium content. That’s because those elements vaporize easily. If the Moon’s atmosphere is atoms suspended above the surface, lighter isotopes of those atoms should be more easily lofted. The heavier isotopes are more likely to settle back in the soil. Furthermore, scientists predict that impact vaporization, and ion sputtering, should result in very different isotopic proportions in the soil. The specific ratio of light to heavy isotopes that remain in the soil, for both elements they tested, eventually proved that impact-related vaporization is an important part of exosphere creation.
The Solar Wind’s Effect on the Moon
The solar wind also plays a role in creating the Moon’s exosphere. That occurs as the ionized particles in the solar wind ions interact with the surface and “sputter off” neutral atoms. Not only does this process contribute to the creation of an exosphere, but it also affects the erosion of materials on the Moon. The current MIT/Chicago study, however, pinpoints the constant rain of impacts as a significant contributor and the two processes work together to create the lunar exosphere
“With impact vaporization, most of the atoms would stay in the lunar atmosphere, whereas with ion sputtering, a lot of atoms would be ejected into space,” Nie said. “From our study, we now can quantify the role of both processes, to say that the relative contribution of impact vaporization versus ion sputtering is about 70:30 or larger.”
Space Weathering and Future Missions
So, about 70 percent or more of the lunar exosphere is a product of meteorite impacts. The rest occurs thanks to the incessant influence of the solar wind. While this space weathering activity doesn’t produce anything like a breathable atmosphere that future lunar explorers could breathe, it does give insight into the processes that affect the Moon.
Both meteoritic bombardments and solar wind activity pose continuing risks to lunar visitors and their infrastructure. In addition to simply understanding the evolution of the lunar surface and atmosphere, such studies will be useful to anyone who seeks to build—and live—on the Moon in the future.
New Study Suggests that Our Galaxy is Crowded or Empty. Both are Equally Terrifying!
Gaia's all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. The map shows the total brightness and colour of stars observed by the ESA satellite in each portion of the sky between July 2014 and May 2016. Brighter regions indicate denser concentrations of especially bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer bright stars are observed. The colour representation is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky. The bright horizontal structure that dominates the image is the Galactic plane, the flattened disc that hosts most of the stars in our home Galaxy. In the middle of the image, the Galactic centre appears vivid and teeming with stars. More information on: http://sci.esa.int/gaia/60169-gaia-s-sky-in-colour/
New Study Suggests that Our Galaxy is Crowded or Empty. Both are Equally Terrifying!
Is there intelligent life in the Universe? And if so, just how common is it? Or perhaps the question should be, what are the odds that those engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) will encounter it someday? For decades, scientists have hotly debated this topic, and no shortage of ink has been spilled on the subject. From the many papers and studies that have been written on the subject, two main camps have emerged: those who believe life is common in our galaxy (aka. SETI Optimists) and those who maintain that extraterrestrial intelligence is either rare or non-existent (SETI Pessimists).
In a recent paper, David Kipping (Prof. “Cool Worlds” himself) and Geraint Lewis examined this debate more closely and offered a fresh take based on a form of probability analysis known as Jayne’s Experiment. By applying this method to astrobiology and the Drake Equation, they concluded that the existence of intelligent life in our galaxy may be an “all or nothing” proposition. To quote the late and great scientist and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
In 1961, famed astronomer Frank Drake hosted the first SETI meeting ever at the Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia. In preparation for the event, he created an equation summarizing the challenges SETI researchers faced. This came to be known as the Drake Equation and is expressed mathematically as:
N = R* × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L
Where:
N is the number of currently active, communicative civilizations in our galaxy.
R* is the rate at which stars form in our galaxy.
fp is the fraction of stars with planets.
ne is the number of planets that can potentially host life, per star that has planets.
fl is the fraction of the above that actually do develop life of any kind.
fi is the fraction of the above that develop intelligent life.
fc is the fraction of the above that develop the capacity for interstellar communication.
L is the length of time that such communicative civilizations are active.
The Drake Equation was not intended to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) in our galaxy but to stimulate dialogue about SETI. Since Drake first formulated it, the equation has been subject to criticism, additions, and revisions and has often been misrepresented in the process. As Prof. Kipping explained to Universe Today via email, part of the problem is how values are often arbitrarily applied to the parameters:
“Since we don’t know most of the parameters, this is just pure speculation, and it should be labeled as such. Another point often missed is that it represents the mean number of civilizations and, thus, an expectation value of some underlying distribution. These days, it’s become a bit of a sport to critique the Drake equation. Certainly, anyone using it as a calculator should be fairly criticized, but the basic idea is not wrong. There must be some number of civilizations out there, and we could, in principle, collect relevant parameters to calculate it. The issues arise in the exact formulation, which parameters to include, what they really mean, and how to deal with nuances like time variability.”
Jaynes’ Experiment
Edwin Jaynes (1922-1998) was the Wayman Crow Distinguished Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1968, he imagined an experiment where a person in a lab is presented with a jar containing an unknown and unlabelled compound (chemical X). Along a laboratory bench, there are a large number of beakers filled with water, and the experiment is to test how often chemical X will dissolve within them. Jaynes argued that one should expect the compound to either dissolve in nearly every instance or almost never.
The function of the Haldane prior (F –1(1 – F ) –1) that captures this behavior. Credit: D. Kipping & G. Lewis (2024).
When plotted on a graph, the probability distribution would be bowl-shaped, with values peeking at 0 and 1. As Kipping explained in more detail:
“Jaynes imagined a series of what we call Bernoulli experiments – that is, experiments that return yes/no answers. These could be anything really, but as an example, he imagined dissolving an unknown chemical into a series of beakers containing water and then asking – what fraction of them will dissolve? Another scientist, the legendary John Haldane, had already suggested that an answer of ~50% was unlikely a-priori. One should expect that either nearly all of them will dissolve or hardly any.
“Jaynes rigorously proved that and pioneered many of the tools of objective Bayesian inference. We can equally replace the Bernoulli experiment under consideration to other questions, like what fraction of stars will become a black hole? Before obtaining any observations, an answer of ~50% would be surprising, implying that the distribution of stellar masses is finely balanced such that half are above the critical mass threshold and half below. In reality the answer is one-in-a-thousand, which falls in line with Jayne’s position.”
Because of his immense contributions to the field of statistics, Jaynes is credited with being one of the founders of “Objective Bayesianism.” While his experiment was not intended as such, Kipping and Lewis saw its potential application in astrobiology.
All or Nothing?
In his seminal 1983 paper, “The Great Silence – the Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life,” David Brin addressed the ongoing debate regarding the existence of extraterrestrial life. From this, he discerned the presence of two camps when it came to the debate: “Contact Optimists” and “Contact Pessimists” – or as Kipping and Lewis refer to them in their paper, “SETI Optimists” and “SETI Pessimists” – those who believe that there are civilizations in our galaxy humanity can make contact with and those who believe it is fruitless since humanity is alone in the Universe.
When Jaynes’ Experiment is applied to the question of intelligent life in our galaxy, we should expect that it would either be very common or very rare. In the middle, where the probability distribution is weakest (i.e., extraterrestrial life is semi-common), is where the “fine-tuning problem” emerges. In the context of cosmology and astrobiology, fine-tuning refers to the proposition that the conditions for life can occur only when certain universal constants lie within a very narrow range of values.
If any of these fundamental constants were slightly different, the Universe would not be conducive to the development of matter, large-scale structures, or life as we know it. As Kipping explained, this presents a problem for SETI Optimists:
“Unlike the black hole example I gave you earlier, there’s no lower bounds on this problem. With black holes, we know the smallest and biggest allowed star mass from astrophysics and it’s only a few orders of magnitude. The black hole threshold must be in that fairly narrow range somewhere. When it comes to aliens, the probability of intelligence could be 1% or 0.000….00001% (add as many zero’s as you like).
“With a such a vast range of possibilities, SETI optimists have to believe the rather contrived view that the % value is not so high that we wouldn’t see anyone yet, but certainly far higher than the deep abyss of low probabilities that are plausible. Thus they have a fine-tuning problem essentially, needing the percentage to live in a fairly narrow corridor.”
If our galaxy were filled with extraterrestrial civilizations, surely there would be undeniable signs that we would have noticed—i.e., radio signals, megastructures, Clarke Bands, and other “technosignatures.” If this is starting to sound familiar, it’s because this argument is the very core of the Fermi Paradox (which we have written an entire series about!) As such, one could construe Kipping and Lewis’ argument as an example of SETI Pessimism. Luckily, the story does not end there.
Kipping and Lewis’s revised formalism for the Drake Equation, based on the theoretical birth and death rates of civilizations. Credit: Kipping, D. & Lewis, G. (2024)
A New Formalism
Faced with this result, Kipping and Lewis attempted to devise a new formalism for the Drake Equation that considers just two processes: the birth rate and the death rate of civilizations. When this is done, all of the parameters in the equation (except for L, the lifespan of civilizations) collapse into a single parameter: the birth and death rate of civilizations (rc). Or as it would appear mathematically: NC = rc x LC. Said Kipping:
“In the standard Drake equation, we often get caught up arguing about which parameters to include (should there be a fraction for the probability of life developing into multicellular life, for example). But it’s completely undeniable that every civilisations must have a beginning and an end, in fact we can even set the death rate to zero which corresponds to infinite lifetimes if we so desire in this framework. In an ecological system, like a petri dish, for example, there is a well-defined maximum possible population that we call the carrying capacity. So, we updated the birth-death version of the Drake equation to account for this nuance.”
In this case, the distribution of probabilities became S-shaped (see image above), but the end result was still the same: either the galaxy is crowded or empty. One way around this is the idea that humanity could be alive during a period in which ETCs have emerged and are beginning to expand throughout the galaxy and thus have not been noticed by our instruments yet. However, as Kipping and Lewis showed, this also suffers from the fine-tuning problem, as biology indicates that population growth is an accelerating phenomenon.
“You see, galactic expansion phases should be relatively quick on a cosmic timescale; in fact, really like the blink of an eye,” said Kipping. “So it’s unlikely you’d live during such a phase; you’re more likely to live when the galaxy is essentially empty before this happens or after it’s happened (which, in fact, is arguably impossible since your planet is colonized). Once again, Fermi’s Paradox rears its head, where the strongest likelihood is that humanity is either alone, early to the party, or one of a few civilizations currently existing in the Milky Way.
Hope for SETI?
But before you go thinking it’s all bad news, Kipping and Lewis emphasize that SETI is an important and vital experiment that deserves dedicated resources. “While the odds of success appear small, such a success would arguably represent the most impactful scientific discovery in human history,” they conclude. They also suggest several reasons to remain hopeful, which include Hanson’s “Grabby Aliens” hypothesis, which states that humanity is at the midpoint in the S-shaped curve and that we will encounter an ETI in a few hundred million years.
In the meantime, Kipping also suggests that SETI could benefit from casting a wider net. If, as their study suggests, advanced civilizations are very rare (or non-existent) in our galaxy, then we should look to extra-galactic sources. “I think my favorite way out is that our galaxy is just unusually quiet, most are busy and filled, but we are the first in the Milky Way,” he added. “This seems improbable, but perhaps being born in a busy galaxy is impossible since the habitable real estate has already been gobbled up. This suggests we should put more emphasis on extra-galactic SETI as our best shot.”
If Advanced Civilizations Using Quantum Communications, Is That Why We’ve Never Seen Them?
Establishing communication with an alien intelligence is one of the news items I, and I’m sure many others, long to see. Since we have started the search for advanced civilisations we have tried numerous ways to detect their transmissions but to date, unsuccessfully. A new paper suggests quantum communication may be the ideal method for interstellar communication. It has many benefits but the challenge is that it would require a receiver over 100km across to pick up a signal. Alas they know we don’t have that tech yet!
The search for alien signals has been undertaken under the banner of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or SETI for short. It began in 1960 when Frank Drake commenced the first search. It was of course not fruitful but since then, large radio telescopes have been used to undertake searches. There have been many projects but of particular interest has been Project Breakthrough. It has used advanced technology and international collaborations but still there has been no success.
Frank Drake writing his famous equation on a white board. Credit: SETI.org
To be able to effectively search for alien signals its imperative to fully understand the nature of communication. A quest that started back in 1948 with the development of the modern theory of classical communication. In 1959 it was proposed that human technology was available to send or receive interstellar classical communication which simply requires a message, someone to send it and someone to receive it.
Over the years that followed communication theories developed and quantum information theory emerged. It explores how quantum mechanics has an affect on the storage of and transmission of information. At the centre of the theory is the quantum bit or qubit which can exist in a number of states all at once due to the phenomenon of superposition. In classical information theory, bits of information are either 0 or 1 but in quantum theory they can be any infinite number of combinations with certain probabilities until measured. At that point, the wave function collapses to one of the definite states.
Another key element of quantum theory is entanglement where two or more particles are interconnected so that the state of one is related to the state of the other no matter how far apart they are. With qubits linked in this way data processing can be far faster than in classical model and more secure too. The paper authored by Latham Boyle from the University of Edinburgh suggests that it may be possible to send or receive information between the stars using quantum communications. A previous study by Arjun Berera proposed photon qubits could be used to transmit information over interstellar and even possibly intergalactic distances without loss of coherence.
The concept of quantum coherence describes the ability to maintain the specific quantum state but this alone is not enough for communication. The communication channel must also have sufficient capacity. In addition, specific wavelengths must be used (or avoided for example wavelengths less than 26.5 cm to avoid issues with the cosmic microwave background.) To facilitate this, radio telescopes with a diameter of 100 km must be used. Currently we don’t have the capability to build such instruments and this may explain why, in such a large and old universe, we still haven’t detected any aliens yet! We may simply have to wait until we can build such instruments before aliens can communicate with us.
Twee Amerikaanse astronauten die begin juni naar het internationale ruimtestation ISS gingen voor een missie van zo'n 8 dagen, moeten mogelijk tot februari 2025 in de ruimte blijven.
De twee Amerikaanse astronauten, Sunita Williams en Barry Wilmore, gingen begin juni met Starliner, de nieuwe ruimtecapsule van Boeing, naar het ISS. Zij zien hun verblijf verlengd door technische problemen met de Starliner.
Tijdens de koppeling op 6 juni werkten enkele stuurraketten niet en lekte helium, waardoor NASA nu overweegt hen met een ander schip terug te brengen.
De Crew Dragon van SpaceX is een mogelijk alternatief. Als deze optie wordt gekozen, zouden de astronauten wel pas in februari 2025 met twee collega's kunnen terugkeren. Een beslissing hierover wordt binnenkort verwacht.
(Fausto by Tagtik/Source: NOS, VRT/Illustration picture: Unsplash)
This weekend is the perfect time to catch the year’s most spectacular — and easiest to watch — meteor shower, the Perseids.
The annual Perseid meteor shower will peak late on Sunday night and into the early predawn hours of Monday morning, but the Perseids should put on a spectacular late-night show from now through the middle of next week. Here’s everything you need to know, from how to watch the Perseids to the science behind the light show.
The Perseids are known for long, bright streaks of light.
VCG/Visual China Group/Getty Images
When Is the Perseid Meteor Shower?
Short answer: Right now! The Perseid meteor shower happens around this time every year, from mid-July to early September, with a dramatic peak around August 12.
Meteor showers like the Perseids are a vivid reminder that we’re passengers on a ball of rock moving through space at more than 67,000 miles per hour — and right now, we’re flying through a stream of dusty debris left in the wake of a comet. Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle makes a long loop around the Sun every 133 years, and it leaves a trail of dust, ice, and pebbles in its wake. Every year, at about the same point in Earth’s 365-day lap around the Sun, our planet crosses Swift-Tuttle’s debris trail. As that debris patters against Earth’s upper atmosphere, like bugs hitting the windshield of a passing car, it creates bright streaks of light in the sky.
What to Expect from the Perseid Meteors
At the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, between 50 and 100 meteors an hour will streak across the night sky. That’s a meteor or more every minute, so your chances of seeing several meteors are very good.
The Perseids are known for leaving bright, colorful streaks of light that can linger in the sky for several seconds; the longest, brightest streaks come from meteors that just skim the top of our atmosphere, instead of plunging straight in. Most of the streaks of light you’ll see during the Perseids are objects about the size of sand grains, disintegrating 50 miles above you at temperatures hotter than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Larger grains, usually about an inch across, can burst apart in bright fireballs; if you’re lucky, you may spot a few of those an hour.
How to See the Perseid Meteors
The Perseids are one of the easiest meteor showers to watch, mostly because it offers so many meteors streaking across the sky, but also because Swift-Tuttle’s debris trail is so wide that we get several days of good viewing, unlike other meteor showers that may offer only a few hours of real meteor-watching. If the weather or your personal schedule don’t cooperate on the night of August 11, you can still see a fantastic show a few days before or after the shower’s peak.
As with any stargazing, darkness is key. You’ll want to get as far away from city lights as possible. The ideal meteor-watching spot is dark, with a wide-open view of as much of the sky as possible, but especially the north. Bring a lawn chair or blanket, and settle in. Turn off your headlights, flashlights, and cell phone, and give your eyes about 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness.
For casual viewers, meteors should be visible anytime after around 10pm local time, but the best views will be after midnight, when the bright half-Moon sets and leaves a dark sky for meteors to shine against. And the dark pre-dawn hours of Monday morning will offer the most and brightest meteors.
If going outside isn’t your thing, you can catch the Virtual Telescope Project’s livestream, starting at 9pm Eastern Time on August 11 and August 12.
This time-lapse photo shows the Perseids seeming to radiate from a point in the northern sky.
CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images
Do the Perseid Meteors Come from Perseus?
Short answer: no.
If you stare up at the night sky for long enough, you may notice that the Perseid meteors seem to radiate from a point somewhere in the constellation Perseus. It may look a little like the classic Windows 95 Starfield screensaver (for the history buffs out there who remember screensavers). That’s an optical illusion; as Earth flies through the cloud of dust and debris, the direction in which we’re moving will look like the center, from which all the meteors seem to radiate out and past us. In the case of the Perseids, that point is somewhere in the constellation Perseus, in the northern sky.
But the Perseid meteors are actually just bits of dust and tiny pebbles that, at this moment, are in a cloud all around us.
Is Comet Swift-Tuttle Going to Crash Into Earth Someday?
Short answer: maybe, but not anytime soon.
Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle is the largest object that regularly crosses Earth’s orbit and passes close to our planet, so astronomers have kept a close eye on it. They’ve calculated its orbit, and ours, for about the next 2,000 years, and Swift-Tuttle is in no danger of hitting Earth until sometime after the year 4400 (and even then, the chances aren’t huge). So you can relax and enjoy the show.
If Swift-Tuttle eventually does hit Earth, it’s going to wreck everything. The nucleus — the actual ball of ice and dust that forms the main body of a comet — of Swift-Tuttle is about 16 miles wide, which makes it twice the size of the object that smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago and ended the dinosaurs’ world. Because of how much faster Swift-Tuttle moves in relation to Earth, though, it would hit with about 27 times as much force as the Chicxulub object.
The two Boeing Starliner astronauts may remain onboard humanity’s farthest outpost for half a year more. Not everyone at NASA thinks the spacecraft has been proven safe enough to bring them back from Earth orbit.
When NASA’s associate administrator of space operations Ken Bowersox addressed reporters on Wednesday, internal debates within the space agency surfaced. The concerns were regarding the safety of Starliner’s two astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who’ve already been living in space two months longer than planned.
They flew into space on June 5 for what was, at the time, set as an eight-day mission. The mission was called Crew Flight Test and was meant to be a certification of Starliner’s abilities to become a commercial crew program spacecraft — second to the now tried-and-tested SpaceX Crew Dragon — that could bring spacefarers to the International Space Station (ISS) and back safely at a low cost to NASA.
With Starliner, NASA seeks comfort. If something goes wrong in space or with SpaceX’s launchers, astronauts can rely on Starliner to make it to space without interruption in the timelines.
Things went awry soon into the mission. Thruster and helium leak anomalies didn’t stop Starliner and its crew from successfully docking to the ISS, but raised serious concerns about how they would return home.
Problems arise on test flights, and that’s what the evaluative nature of these flights are for: to catch blindspots and remedy. But days, weeks and, now, months have passed.
To figure a way forward, NASA and Boeing have run hot fire tests of Starliner in space. And on Earth, engineers have put spare thrusters through the gamut at NASA’s White Sands Testing Facility in New Mexico to replicate the conditions that the hardware in space has gone through. They believe the thruster issue is due to overheating, plus swelling of a teflon seal that blocks the flow of fuel into the thruster’s combustion chamber. “What we're trying to do now is sort of understand what all that data means to us from the White Sands testing, and then what it means to the thrusters on orbit,” NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich said Wednesday.
As teams figure out the ramifications of the worst case scenario for thruster overheating, as well as of the helium leaks experienced during Starliner’s journey to the ISS,the test crew remains in space. Their return date continued to be pushed into the future. Their arrival home could now be as late as next year.
Don’t overstay your time in space
Tensions clashed last month, when Boeing Commercial Crew Program manager Mark Nappi scolded reporters during a press briefing for using language that called the astronauts “stranded” or “stuck” in space. Reporters pushed back asking for clearer responses from NASA and Boeing leadership as to when they’d come home, and more frequent updates on the Starliner troubleshooting. Then during a follow-up media conference, Nappi and Stich expressed regret that they had outlined the mission as an eight-day event, to avoid scrutiny.
Test flight or not, missions must adhere to schedule windows. The ISS is an aging spacecraft. To maintain its functions, astronauts are swapped in and out on assignments. Having two extra astronauts aboard the station strains the resources, occupancy, and schedules of the other space crews. That’s not even taking into account the private, personal tolls that the extended missions may have on the crew. Or, the physical changes they’ll experience as a result of longer periods in microgravity.
As a consequence of the idle Starliner, the SpaceX Dragon Crew-9 mission will no longer launch in mid-August with its crew of four. Its launch date has been pushed to September 24. Its crew may also be halved to open up two free seats for Wilmore and Williams to return home as a backup plan. But Crew-9 wraps up its six-month mission in February 2025, meaning the Starliner crew would come home eight months past schedule.
Not everyone at NASA agrees on Starliner’s safety
The same day that Bowersox and his colleagues announced the new Crew-9 launch date, he opened up about the internal discussions that have kept the Starliner crew from returning home.
“It's been really great to watch our team working, our Boeing team, our NASA team, the way people are speaking up. The way we're hearing different voices, different thoughts on how critical different factors are in the decision,” Bowersox said Wednesday.
“I think it's been very healthy. I have to admit that sometimes when we get disagreement, it's not fun. It can be painful having those discussions. But it's what makes us a good organization. And it's what will get us to a good decision as we approach that point here in the future. And I don't think we're too far away from making that call,” he added.
Starliner may still yet return with its crew. Data from recent tests and new evaluations might finally bring the team to a consensus for how — and when — to finally bring Williams and Wilmore home.
NASA Discovers Galaxies Older Than the Universe Astronomers were left stunned after NASA’s powerful James Webb Telescope captured several galaxies deep in the cosmos that appear to be older than the universe itself.
This sparked significant and engaging debate among astronomers about how such a thing is possible. Here's what the experts have to say about the strange phenomena.
The Beginning of the Universe Astrophysicists believe the universe was formed at least 13.8 billion years ago following a significant event commonly referred to as the Big Bang.
Prior to this, the entirety of the universe’s energy is theorized to have been concentrated in a singularity, defined as a point of infinite temperature and density. As this singularity began to expand, it resulted in an explosion dubbed the Big Bang.
The Fundamental Forces of Nature Appear After the violent explosion that gave birth to the universe as we know it occurred, the fundamental forces of nature, including electromagnetism and gravity, alongside the strong and weak forces, evolved in stages.
These led to the eventual formation of galaxies. However, observations carried out using the state-of-the-art James Webb Telescope have noticed that certain earlier galaxies appear to have skipped the gradual process of evolution, giving the impression that they are older than the universe itself.
The Webb Telescope Observes Early Galaxies The powerful Webb telescope can essentially peer back in time and observe galaxies when the universe was a mere 500 million years old, or 3% of its current age.
As the cosmos was still considered in its infancy at this period, researchers predicted small galaxies scattered throughout the universe. However, the JWST has observed galaxies that were far larger than previously anticipated.
Webb Telescope Makes Fascinating Discovery The galaxies spotted by the JWST contain a mass of stars that could be as much as 100 billion times the mass of the Sun.
To better understand this enormous cluster of stars in the early galaxies, we can compare it to our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which only contains a mass of stars equal to approximately 60 billion suns.
How is This Possible? The question that continues to perplex astronomers is how such an extensive number of celestial bodies and extensive galaxies existed at such an early period of the universe.
To better understand this, we must explore "redshifting." According to the European Space Agency (ESA), “Redshift is a key concept for astronomers. The term can be understood literally—the wavelength of the light is stretched, so the light is seen as 'shifted' towards the red part of the spectrum.”
The Visible Light Spectrum In simple terms, redshift refers to a particular section of the visible light spectrum.
The shortest wavelength of light is violet, at around 380 nanometers. The longest is red, at around 700 nanometers. Astronomers use the latter to gather valuable data on the age of galaxies.
ESA Defines Redshift According to the ESA, redshift is used to measure how far a celestial object like a galaxy has moved away from us.
“When an object (e.g. a galaxy) moves away from us, it is 'red-shifted' as the wavelength of light is 'stretched' so the light is seen as 'shifted' towards to red end of the spectrum,” according to the ESA.
Redshift and Dating Galaxies Astronomers can use this redshift to predict the age of galaxies found throughout the universe, as all celestial bodies and objects emit a frequency or hue of color that telescopes can pick up. This red color will differ depending on how young or old the galaxy is, allowing researchers to effectively discern how old galaxies are in the depths of the cosmos.
Redshifting can also be used to instruct researchers on the extreme age of galaxies in the cosmos, as well as to analyze several other factors, including their size. Astronomers can also use redshift to scour the galaxy for massive stars and to give researchers an indication of how far a celestial body is from our own planet.
Galaxies During the Infancy of the Universe Continues to Perplex Astronomers As galaxies in the cosmos age, they produce more suns, which is generally expected. However, the galaxy spotted by the JWST during the universe's infancy has a mass significantly larger than that of the present-day Milky Way.
Despite their attempts to explain this unusual phenomenon, astronomers and researchers have come up empty-handed, and there is no accepted explanation just yet.
The Universe is 26.7 Billion Years Old, Says Researcher Physicist Rajendra Gupta from the University of Ottawa in Canada is one researcher who believes he has an answer to the question, suggesting “redshift could be a hybrid phenomenon, rather than purely due to the universe’s expansion.”
He added, “Our newly-devised model stretches the galaxy formation time by several billion years, making the universe 26.7 billion years old, and not 13.7 as previously estimated,” Dr Gupta said.
Why Early Galaxies Appear to Have Larger Masses The suggestion that the universe is twice as old as originally thought has stirred up considerable controversy in the scientific community.
Such a revelation could undoubtedly explain why early galaxies, which emerged 500 million years after the beginning of the universe, appear with a mass generally associated with billions of years of evolution.
Starliner-astronauten keren mogelijk pas in 2025 terug naar aarde
Starliner-astronauten keren mogelijk pas in 2025 terug naar aarde
Starliner-astronauten keren mogelijk pas in 2025 terug naar aarde
De twee astronauten die begin juni met de Boeing-ruimtecapsule Starliner zijn aangekomen in het internationale ruimtestation ISS, moeten daar mogelijk nog tot 2025 blijven. Dat heeft het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartagentschap NASA gemeld.
Sunita Williams en Butch Wilmore zijn sinds 6 juni aan boord van het internationale ruimtestation (ISS). Hun testmissie zou ongeveer een week duren, maar door problemen met de Starliner kunnen ze voorlopig niet terugkeren.
NASA bestudeert nu twee mogelijkheden om hen terug naar de aarde te brengen. Een eerste optie is om hen toch met de Starliner te laten terugkeren, maar daarvoor moeten er wel nog werken aan dat ruimtetoestel worden uitgevoerd.
De tweede optie is om de Crew 9-missie van SpaceX in september met slechts twee van de vier voorziene astronauten te laten vertrekken. Wilmore en Williams zouden dan met hen kunnen terugkeren. Dat betekent dan wel dat ze tot februari volgend jaar vastzitten in het ISS.
About 80 percent of Greenland is armored in a continuous sheet of ice, three times the area of Texas. But it hasn’t always been that way. At various points in Earth’s past, much of the island was, in fact, actually green — covered in soil and vegetation. The last period of thaw may have been more recent than previously thought, according to new research. The new data comes with worrying implications for present-day climate change and sea level rise.
Tiny organic fossils found deep under the ice in central Greenland show that the middle of the landmass was ice free, serving as habitat for growing plants and insects within the last 1 to 2 million years, per a study published August 5 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The exact age of Greenland’s ice sheet remains unresolved, but the ballpark suggested by the new findings bolster the formerly controversial “fragile Greenland” hypothesis, which suggested that the island’s ice sheet has melted at least once since it first formed. And if it thawed entirely before, then it could easily do so again under human-caused global warming, spurring even more dramatic sea level rise than current climate models indicate.
The Pleistocene era lasted from about 2.6 million years ago to the start of the Holocene, 11,700 years ago. During this period, our planet went through several freeze and thaw cycles where glaciers expanded during ice ages and contracted during interglacials. Previously, glaciologists and the research record have disagreed about what was happening on Greenland, during this epoch. For example, one 2016 study of mineral deposits in ocean sediments indicated that the ice sheet has persisted for 7.5 million years. In contrast, another study published that same year assessing isotopes in ice cores suggested that the ice sheet is just 1.1 million years old, with more than 280,000 years of ice-free conditions leading up to its last freeze.
The new research supports that latter finding. The study scientists re-evaluated sediments collected in a two-mile-deep ice core more than 30 years ago from Summit Camp, Greenland, a research station positioned near the very center of the ice sheet. Isotope analysis of quartz extracted from the sand at the bottom of the core suggests that it was buried under ice no more than 2 million years ago.
Isotope analysis of quartz extracted from the sand at the bottom of the core suggests that it was buried under ice no more than 2 million years ago.
Inside the previously frozen sediment, the researchers also identified miniature fossils of a bygone ecological age. Among other bits of remarkably well-preserved biological matter, the scientists found a poppy seed, moss remnants, insect parts, willow wood, and fungi — hallmarks of a tundra landscape. These fossil finds suggest that not only was the center of Greenland ice-free within the past 2 million years, but that it was also unfrozen long enough for soil and a complex ecosystem to form — likely for thousands and thousands of years. “Poppies don’t grow on top of miles of ice,” said Hailey Mastro, co-lead study author and a master’s student researching paleoclimatology at the University of Vermont, in the news statement.
The assemblage of organisms suggests Greenland’s climate was not much warmer than today’s at the time of this last melt, with summer temperatures between 1 and 10 degrees Celsius. Though an ice-free Greenland might be good news for cold-adapted flowers, it’s not good news for us. “This new study confirms and extends that a lot of sea-level rise occurred at a time when causes of warming were not especially extreme,” said Richard Alley, a geoscientist at Penn State who reviewed the research, in a press release. It’s “a warning of what damages we might cause if we continue to warm the climate,” he added. Past assessment of the same 1993 ice core determined that, if the center of Greenland was melted, then 90 percent of the island would also be ice-free.
Already, the Greenland ice sheet is the largest single contributor to ongoing sea level rise, and that melt is accelerating. If the landmass were to lose all of its ice, it would raise global sea level by an alarming 24 feet. Even with current warming, that’s not set to happen right away. Likely it would take hundreds to thousands of years for the island to lose all of its ice mass. But still, less ice on Greenland means much, much less land above water elsewhere.
China’s super-secret space plane spotted above Europe
China’s super-secret space plane spotted above Europe
Story by Andrew Paul
So little is known about Shenlong, China’s ultra-secret, reusable space plane that there aren’t even publicly verifiable photos of the experimental aircraft. But that doesn’t mean knowledgeable astronomy enthusiasts can’t catch glimpses of the vehicle as it orbits Earth, as was recently the case for Felix Schöfbänker in Upper Austria. Based on his July 30 images first highlighted by Space.com, Schöfbänker theorizes he possibly identified a pair of previously unknown features on Shenlong’s underside—potentially a pair of solar panels that help power the craft.
China’s Shenlong space plane captured in orbit on July 30, 2024.
Credit: Felix Schöfbänker
Space planes like Shenlong are designed for multi-year, uncrewed orbital missions after hitching a ride aboard a rocket. Upon mission completion, however, the vehicles are capable of returning to Earth and landing on runways similar to conventional aircraft. China’s mysterious robotic vehicle has completed at least two confirmed missions since 2020, the second of which lasted 276 consecutive days in orbit above Earth. During that excursion, Shenlong deployed at least one free-flying object that experts believe may have been either a small satellite or external craft designed to monitor the plane itself. Its current mission began after launching from a Chinese space agency facility in the Gobi Desert on December 14, 2023. Since then it has released at least seven confirmed objects of unknown purpose into orbit. Thanks to the new images, it seems that it might receive at least some of its power sources through solar panel arrays.
“I am not really sure if they are solar panels or some other features like an antenna or something of that nature,” he added on Monday.
Altitude, time, and angle details during Shenlong’s sighting on July 30, 2024.
Additional information inferred from the data includes apparent confirmation that the space plane recently lowered its orbit down to about 217 miles above Earth, and that it does appear to measure somewhere within its previously estimated 30-foot length. Although its wings are not visible in the grainy imagery, it is still believed that Shenlong’s wingspan is at least wide enough to necessitate small cutouts in China’s Long March 2F rocket used to deliver it into orbit.
Shenlong isn’t the only experimental space plane currently conducting secretive missions above Earth. The US Space Force’s X-37B, built by Boeing and slightly smaller China’s aircraft, has been working on its own endeavors since its latest launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on December 28, 2023. Two Boeing X-37 variants are believed to exist, and have completed six previous missions so far—its last excursion lasting a total of 909 days in orbit.
Related video:
Shenzhou 15 Crew Launches To China's Tiangong Space Station (Space.com)
Mars Once Hosted Lake Larger than Any on Earth: Lake Eridania
Mars Once Hosted Lake Larger than Any on Earth: Lake Eridania
This new image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft shows Caralis Chaos, broken-down and dried-up remnants of a vast ancient Martian lake named Lake Eridania.
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Caralis Chaos, a Martian region where copious water is thought to have once existed in the form of an ancient lake known as Lake Eridania.
Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.
Lake Eridania once held more water than all other Martian lakes combined and covered an area of over a million km2.
The lake was larger than any known lake on Earth, containing enough water to fill the Caspian Sea nearly three times over.
It likely existed around 3.7 billion years ago, first as one large body of water and later as a series of smaller isolated lakes as it began to dry out.
Eventually Lake Eridania disappeared completely, along with the rest of the water on the Red Planet.
“The lower-left part of the frame features the remains of an old lakebed,” the Mars Express researchers said.
This oblique perspective view was generated from the digital terrain model and the nadir and colour channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express. It shows a region of Mars known as Caralis Chaos, where copious water is thought to have once existed in the form of an ancient lake.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
This colour-coded topographic image shows a region of Mars known as Caralis Chaos, where copious water is thought to have once existed in the form of an ancient lake. It was created from data collected by ESA’s Mars Express on 1 January 2024 (orbit 25235) and is based on a digital terrain model of the region, from which the topography of the landscape can be derived. Lower parts of the surface are shown in blues and purples, while higher altitude regions show up in whites and reds, as indicated on the scale to the top right. North is to the right. The ground resolution is approximately 15 m/pixel and the image is centred at about 38°S/177°E.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
This tan-colored slice of ground is smoother to the left and becomes covered in small hills and mounds to the right. Wriggly, uneven ridges cut horizontally across the frame, while two prominent fault lines cut down vertically on the left and right. Large and small craters are peppered across the terrain. The worn-away boundaries of a once-colossal lakebed can be seen curving up and away from the bottom-center to the top right; this skirts around the largest crater seen here, which sits in the middle of the picture encircled by rough, irregular valleys and channels.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
“The boundaries of this bed can be seen curving up and away from the center of the frame, skirting around the large central crater.”
“The old lakebed is now filled with lots of raised mounds, thought to have formed as ancient Martian winds swept dust across the planet.”
“This dust was later covered and altered by water, before drying out again and breaking apart.”
Alongside water, there are clear signs of volcanism at play in and around this region, known as Caralis Chaos.
“Two long cracks run horizontally through this image, cross-cutting both the aforementioned lakebed and the smoother ground to the top,” the scientists said.
“These are known as the Sirenum Fossae faults, and formed as Mars’ Tharsis region — home to the largest volcanoes in the Solar System — rose up and put immense stress on the Martian crust.”
“Volcanic stress is also to blame for the many wrinkle ridges found here.”
“These appear as wriggly lines weaving across the frame vertically.”
“Wrinkle ridges are common on volcanic plains, forming as new lava sheets are compressed while still soft and elastic, causing them to buckle and deform.”
“The impact craters here, created as space rocks collided with Mars, are also fascinating.”
For decades, a massive anomaly sprawling across 1.2 million square miles on the Indian Ocean floor has baffled scientists. This phenomenon, known as the “gravity hole,” has sparked endless debate and curiosity. Read on as we uncover this mystery, officially named the Indian Ocean Geoid Low.
The Indian Ocean’s Gravity Anomaly So, what’s the deal with this vast region of the Indian Ocean that sits up to 106 meters below the global average sea level? It turns out there’s a significant dip in Earth’s gravity here. This gravitational anomaly has puzzled scientists for years, but recent studies are shedding light on its origins and linking it to deep geological processes.
Understanding the Geoid Low Geologists have a term for this “hole”—a geoid low, where Earth’s gravity is weaker than average. It might sound alarming, but it’s just a natural part of our planet’s gravitational landscape. Recent research suggests that molten rock plumes rising from deep beneath Africa are responsible for this phenomenon; these plumes are at the edge of an ancient sea bed.
Earth’s Shape and Gravitational Variation Ideally, Earth would have uniform gravity, but it’s not a perfect sphere. It’s flatter at the poles and bulges at the equator, causing variations in gravity. Different regions exert varying gravitational pulls based on the crust, mantle, and core mass distribution. Such complexity contributes to gravitational anomalies like the low geoid of the Indian Ocean.
The Potsdam Gravity Potato To visualize these gravitational tugs, scientists use gravity measurements from sensors and satellites to create models like the “Potsdam gravity potato.” The model highlights Earth’s gravitational highs and lows, helping scientists understand the mass distribution beneath the surface. It’s like taking off each layer of an onion, discovering more with every peel.
Discovery and Confirmation of the IOGL The Indian Ocean Geoid Low (IOGL) was discovered by Dutch geophysicist Felix Andries Vening Meinesz in 1948 during a ship-based gravity survey. Since then, subsequent shipboard expeditions and satellite measurements have confirmed its presence. This IOGL is the planet’s most prominent gravitational anomaly, covering over three million square kilometers.
Investigating the Origins Researchers Attreyee Ghosh and Debanjan Pal compared various computer models of the region’s formation over the past 140 million years. Each model used different variables for the convection of molten material within the mantle. Their goal? To pinpoint the cause of the IOGL. Their findings point to a distinctive mantle structure influenced by ancient geological events.
The Role of the Mantle and the African Blob The study suggests that the IOGL is due to a unique mantle structure combined with an adjacent disturbance under Africa known as the “African blob.” This large low-shear velocity province (LLSVP) consists of hot, low-density material, thought to be remnants from ancient seafloor slabs, which influence the region’s gravitational characteristics.
Connection to the Tethys Ocean Geologists believe Tethyan slabs, remnants of an ancient seafloor from the Tethys Ocean, form the African blob. Over 200 million years ago, the Tethys Ocean existed between the supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana. As India moved northward, it created the Indian Ocean and left behind these geological traces.
Evolution and Persistence of the IOGL Around 20 million years ago, the geoid low probably formed its current shape as plumes began spreading through the upper mantle. The mantle material flow from the African blob sustains this anomaly. As long as these flows continue, the geoid low will persist.
Future Implications The IOGL will eventually dissipate when temperature anomalies cause it to move, which could take many millions of years. Studying this geoid low provides valuable insights into Earth’s internal processes and the dynamic nature of its mantle.
We weten al eeuwen dat de aarde slechts een punt is in een steeds groter wordend heelal, en het is vaak moeilijk om je deze afstanden zelfs maar voor te stellen. De bijna 400.000 kilometer die ons van de maan scheiden, verbleken in vergelijking met de 150 miljoen kilometer die nodig is om de zon te bereiken, en het is hoe dan ook een heel klein deel van de Melkweg. Alles rondom onze planeet is lege ruimte, of bijna, maar waar begint de ruimte dan? Dit is een minder banale vraag dan het lijkt: laten we eens kijken waarom!
Ruimte en het idee van ruimte
Wanneer een astronaut zich klaarmaakt om naar het Internationale Ruimtestation te gaan, zeggen we vaak dat hij de ruimte in gaat. Wanneer hij zich al in het ISS bevindt en buiten de structuur een taak uitvoert, spreken we van een ruimtewandeling. Maar is het dat echt? Op het eerste gezicht lijkt het een “eenvoudige” kwestie van grenzen: waar eindigt de aarde, waar begint de ruimte? Het zijn vragen die banaal lijken, maar verbonden zijn met de vraag wat een planeet is, of beter gezegd: wat onze planeet is.
We weten dat de aarde een atmosfeer heeft die ons in staat stelt om op het oppervlak te leven, dus de ruimte moet beginnen wanneer de atmosfeer eindigt, toch? Helaas strekt de atmosfeer van de aarde zich uit tot ongeveer 800 kilometer boven het oppervlak, met een grens verder weg dan de reizen van Gagarin en andere astronauten, zelfs hoger dan het ISS. Misschien begint de ruimte wanneer het effect van de zwaartekracht van de aarde eindigt, maar dan zouden we 21 miljoen kilometer van onze planeet moeten verwijderen en dichter bij Venus moeten komen. Dit is geen bevredigende maatstaf: zoals we al zeiden, we moeten op basis van conventie vaststellen waar de ruimte begint.
Van de atmosfeer tot de thermosfeer
NASA
Zoals vaak gebeurt bij metingen, is het noodzakelijk om een criterium vast te stellen, een bevredigende meting die ons in staat stelt te zeggen waar de ruimte begint. Volgens de Internationale Astronomische Federatie ligt de rand van de ruimte 100 kilometer boven zeeniveau. Daar is de atmosfeer al zo ijl dat gewone vliegtuigen niet kunnen vliegen: een bijna empirische meting, zoals die waarbij het begin van de ruimte op ongeveer 80 kilometer wordt geplaatst, de limiet die door de Amerikaanse X-15-raket in de jaren zestig werd overschreden. Maar is dit genoeg?
Een meer wetenschappelijke methode is die waarbij het einde van de aarde en het begin van de ruimte op ongeveer 118 kilometer boven zeeniveau worden geplaatst. Hier is sprake van een overwicht van deeltjes die uit de ruimte komen vergeleken met deeltjes die van de planeet komen: kortom, er is nog steeds een atmosfeer, maar de dingen worden verwarrend. Een paar honderd kilometer hoger bevindt zich de thermosfeer, het gebied van de atmosfeer waarin het Internationale Ruimtestation zich bevindt. Als er een grens is tussen de aarde en de ruimte, zou dit de grens kunnen zijn, ook al is niet iedereen het daarmee eens.
Waar begint de ruimte?
Zoals we hebben gezien, is het beantwoorden van deze vraag niet zo eenvoudig als het lijkt. Er is geen fysieke barrière die ons in staat stelt te zeggen waar de aarde eindigt en waar de ruimte begint, en er is zelfs geen enkele grens die onze taak gemakkelijker maakt. Er zijn veel grenzen, elk met uitstekende argumenten. De waarheid is dat we mensen zijn en beslissen wat ruimte is en wat niet: dit zijn conventies die meer vertellen over onze doelen en doelstellingen dan over de werkelijke ruimte.
Tegenwoordig heeft de IAF het begin van de ruimte gedefinieerd volgens de Kármánlijn, maar we hebben al gezien dat er meerdere interpretaties zijn, die allemaal legitiem zijn. Op dit moment hebben we het over 100 kilometer, 118 kilometer of de 400 kilometer hoogte van het ISS. In de toekomst zal het toenemende onderzoek ons misschien in staat stellen andere metingen van de ruimte te geven die uiteindelijk alleen maar metingen van onszelf zijn. Of weinig meer.
A team of North Carolina State University Engineers has devised a shapeshifting robot inspired by the ancient Japanese paper-folding art of Origami, capable of functions ranging from space exploration to disaster relief.
By implementing hierarchical concepts observed in nature, the team’s approach combines simple and efficient kinematics with “rich shape-morphing capability” to successfully mitigate the complexity and power use issues holding back earlier concept work from real-life implementation. The researchers believe these improvements could pave the way to a simpler, more malleable shape-shifting robot for practical use.
“The question we’re asking is how to achieve a number of versatile shapes with the fewest number of actuators powering the shapeshifting,” said Jie Yin, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, in a press release announcing their work.
“Here we use a hierarchical concept observed in nature – like layered muscle fibers – but with plastic cubes to create a transforming robot.”
A prototype of the transforming robot Shapeshifter is tested in the robotics yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Shapeshifter is made of smaller robots that can morph into rolling spheres, flying drones, swimming submersibles, and more.
An illustration of an early concept of Shapeshifter imagines the robots on Saturn's moon Titan. In the picture, the Shapeshifter breaks into smaller pieces that can investigate a methane waterfall from the sky.
An illustration of the small robots that form Shapeshifter. Dubbed "cobots," they each have a propeller for flying and can combine to form a sphere, rolling on the ground to save energy
In that same release, team leader Yin explained that they looked at the hierarchical construction of human muscle, of fiber wrapped in connective tissue, with those bundles once again joined by another layer of connective tissue. To this hierarchical concept, they added a combinatorial principle that the robot could split into sub-pieces or even into smaller autonomous units. According to the team’s new paper recently published in the journal Nature Communications, the combination of these two ideas provided the jumping-off point to rethink how a shape-shifting robot could be composed,
In that work, the team also looked at the issues plaguing previous work, including one Origami-inspired robot previously covered by The Debrief that was otherwise promising. Plus, while advances have been made in other biologically inspired robots, they have so far struggled to compare to the real thing.
For example, the variety of shapes that many robots could put themselves into was limited. Also, those with a more diverse array of potential forms quickly became a complicated mess of intricate control systems and actuators. Their transformations were difficult, lengthy, and tapped too much energy.
In an effort to overcome those limitations, the team designed a robotics framework that can bend, fold, and reshape itself into a variety of forms. In their shape-shifting robot’s final structure, four, six, or eight cubes are connected by an equal number of hinges acting as joints. These joints are also rotational, increasing the angles available to a single pivot.
Adding to the robot’s versatility, the servomotors that control them are controlled by Bluetooth and powered by rechargeable batteries.
Mori3: A polygon-based modular robot
Printing Out a Transforming Robot
To construct their test model, the team relied on 3D printing. First, they printed rigid ABS plastic panels, which were then connected into hollow cubes and joined with flexible hinges. According to the researchers, this design does not just make assembly easy; it becomes a snap to disassemble and change the hierarchy. Additionally, the model tested to have a significant amount of strength. For example, it could support two and a half times its weight even when deployed as a multistory structure. Simpler uses, such as bridges and tunnels, could bear even greater stress, over three and a half times its weight.
“We want to make a more robust structure that can bear larger loads,” said Yanbin Li, an NC State postdoctoral researcher and co-corresponding author of the paper. “If we want a car shape, for example, how do we design the first structure that can transform into a car shape? We also want to test our structures with real-world applications like space robots.”
The efficiency of this robust design relies on allowing for many possibilities while finding the simplest solution. While one robot is equipped with 22 motors controlling 36 joints, it only needs to use up to three at a time for a transformation. This includes rearranging itself from a dense cube into a fully open structure, a feat that was accomplished with only two motors actively driving 16 of its joints.
The Mori3 robot standing up.
Gif: EPFL RRL
This reduced transformation times to two minutes from the hours described in earlier work.
When highlighting the design’s efficiency, the paper’s authors noted that at its maximum expansion, the robot could occupy 200 times the initial volume of its components when packed flat. Based on its unprecedented speed of transformation and compactness for transport, the team identified the robots as perfect for use as emergency shelters or other structures needed in rapid deployment situations.
When operating on a planet’s surface, large-scale functions like transforming into a shelter or acting as a cargo robot are possible. In one proposed application, the separate pieces split into multiple robots with separate functions, an idea common in Japanese science fiction entertainment. This level of malleability also allows the shape-shifting robot to assume a more aerodynamic shape for either pointing down and landing or pointing up and taking off without turning the entire structure around. Such a robot could significantly cut down the needed equipment, while simultaneously increasing its own safety and efficiency.
MIT CSAIL
The Future of Space Exploration May Be In Transporting Less
In their paper, the researchers also illustrate an example of how such robots could be used in space exploration. This is consistent with recent work in the field that has been trying to identify ways to make devices more reclaimable and cost-effective. In a previous story, The Debrief looked at the ways engineers have been attempting to make space vehicles reusable.
One example highlighted by the NC State researchers is how it can form itself into a large, flat slab for solar panels, maximizing the surface area for energy collection. It can also reconfigure itself to create holes in its surface for objects to pass harmlessly through, avoiding collisions with small space objects. Such a feature would also allow it to generate docking ports for other spacecraft or even convert itself into a living space for future astronauts.
“We think these can be used as deployable, configurable space robots and habitats,” said Antonio Di Lallo, an NC State postdoctoral researcher and co-first author of the paper. “It’s modular, so you can send it to space flat and assemble it as a shelter or as a habitat, and then disassemble it.”
Whatever form the shape-shifting robots ultimately take, the researchers agree that ease of use will be critical to their overall value.
“For users, it needs to be easy to assemble and to control,” Yin said.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He can be reached at ryan@thedebrief.org.
Floating LEAVES Could Characterize Venus’s Atmosphere
Venus’s atmosphere has drawn a lot of attention lately. In particular, the consistent discovery of phosphine in its clouds points to potential biological sources. That, in turn, has resulted in numerous suggested missions, including floating a balloon into the atmosphere or having a spacecraft scoop down and suck up atmospheric samples. But a team of engineers led by Jeffrey Balcerski, now an adjunct at Kent State University but then part of the Ohio Aerospace Institute, came up with a different idea years ago – use floating sensor platforms shaped like leaves to collect a wide variety of data throughout Venus’ atmosphere.
The Lofted Environmental and Atmospheric Venus Sensors (or LEAVES) project was funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program in 2018. The mission design is simple enough: design lightweight platforms with a wide surface area, attach some low-cost and weight sensors to them, release them from a mothership transiting into orbit around Venus, and let those platforms float down through the Venusian atmosphere over the course of a few hours, all the while sending back atmospheric, chemical, and temperature data to the mothership.
There are a few enabling technologies behind the idea. The first is a lightweight yet robust and deployable structure that could support a platform of sensors and not be destroyed by Venus’s notoriously hellish environment. Designing this structure required understanding expected flight times and geolocation requirements, as well as the requirement that the system must be trackable by orbital radar in order to communicate back to the mothership. The resulting design resembles the famous inverted pyramid at the Louvre.
Venus is one of the most interesting planets in the solar system – and has captured Fraser’s imagination.
Inside that structure, the second enabling technology sits—harsh environment sensors designed to operate in Venus’s extreme environments. Chemical, pressure, and electrical sensors have undergone extensive development work over the past few years, and some are approaching readiness for use on Venus. They are also lightweight, allowing the structure to descend slowly, which is necessary to complete its mission goals.
After receiving the NIAC Phase I grant, the team led by Dr. Balcerski got to work modeling LEAVES’ structure and mission design. They quickly realized that delivery methodology and a system’s light weight would be critical to future missions. As such, they modeled depositing a series of upwards of 100 LEAVES throughout Venus’ atmosphere, each of which would be networked back to the mothership that deposited them as part of its planned orbital maneuver. They also thought there were several planned Venus missions, such as DaVINCI, which could easily take LEAVES on as a secondary payload with no real risk to mission success or uptime, as the LEAVES would fall and be destroyed by the lower Venusian atmosphere in a matter of hours.
But those hours of data, relayed back to the mothership and then on to Earth, could provide invaluable insights into the inner workings of Venus’s atmosphere. LEAVES would be able to reach a wide altitude range—it is estimated to operate between 100 km and 30 km in altitude. It could also be spread literally all over the world, allowing for a more complete picture of the Venusian atmosphere than other mission designs, which would only capture a small vertical slice of the atmosphere.
Venus’s environmental is rough on technology, to say the least. Fraser discusses the new technologies that could one day survive on its surface.
Given the potential impact of what we might find in the Venusian atmosphere, any mission designs that allow us to capture a large amount of information about a wide swath of it would be welcome. Dr. Balcerski and his colleagues think they have advanced the LEAVES concept to a Technology Readiness Level of 3-4. However, they haven’t yet received further support for LEAVES, and development appears to be on hold. But, given the increasing interest in exploring the Venusian atmosphere, perhaps it’s time to look at this lightweight, inexpensive way of doing so again.
The International Space Station (ISS) will soonretire. As humanity’s farthest outpost approaches its sunset, researchers are raking in data on how astronautsmight survive in the next iterations of human spaceflight. Unfortunately, arecent studyreveals there’s a long way to go before we’re ready to live long stretches off planet Earth.
In short, we can’t stomach it.
Biodata from astronauts and rodents in space are revealing that being up there significantly increases a major digestive issue called gut permeability.
Thursday’s lineup at the International Space Station Research & Development Conference in Boston included a presentation from University of Florida PhD student Oluwamayowa Akinsuyi. After looking at several datasets from NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Akinsuyi’s team found a “substantial reduction” in the expression of genes that maintain our intestinal barrier.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly performing a spacewalk on November 6, 2015.
NASA/Getty Images/Getty Images
“Our findings on this project underscore the critical need to develop effective countermeasures to treat gastrointestinal (GI) health during long-duration spaceflight, “Akinsuyi said in a July 20 presentation about the same work. “And also one key thing our work pointed out is that there is clearly more work that is needed to increase awareness about the problem of leaky gut during space flight.”
It Takes Guts
The human body takes a big risk when we eat. Many times a day, it’s exposed to potentially harmful substances that hitch a ride alongside the good stuff in food and medicine. The gastrointestinal tract operates in a delicately robust fashion consisting of two layers to transport water and nutrients into the rest of the body, secrete other material out, and, all the while, keep out harmful substances like bacteria and toxins.
When the GI tract is in a good groove, that’s intestinal homeostasis. Without homeostasis, when the gut barrier is too permeable, inflammation and a host of diseases can appear. This is called leaky gut.
Akinsuyi analyzed five datasets from the NASA Genelab program. Genetic information from astronauts and rodents that were flown into space seems to suggest that spaceflight alters the gene expression that prevents leaky gut.
The astronauts and rodents experienced an imbalance in their gut microbiome, which is associated with increased intestinal pathogens and decreased beneficial microbes.
“Osteoporosis ... can be worsened by gut microbes and also a weak gut barrier.”
A lack of intestinal integrity could trigger disorders like inflammatory bowel disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, cirrhosis and bone loss.
“Osteoporosis is a big problem astronauts experience during spaceflight, and this can be worsened by gut microbes and also a weak gut barrier,” according to Akinsuyi. The inflammatory response from leaky gut can “ultimately alter bone remodeling and result in bone loss,” he added.
Spaceflight is previously known to have an effect on gene expression and bone loss. If astronaut tummies are also connected to these phenomena, research into long-duration missions may have to continue in the few years that the ISS has left in orbit.
When NASA’s DART missionintentionally slammed into Dimorphos in September 2022, the orbit of the moonlet was altered. Researchers have studied the photos and data taken by DART before its impact, learning more about the geology of the Didymos/Dimorphos system. They have now estimated the surface age of both the asteroid and its moon. The asteroid Didymos has a surface age of 12.5 million years, while the moon Dimorphos is only 300,000 years old.
Additionally, the DART researchers concluded both Didymos and Dimorphos are rubble piles, with Dimorphos likely inheriting its boulders from Didymos.
“It’s a pile of gravel and boulders (and some sand/dust) held together by its own gravity, and really not anything else,” said Andy Rivkin, DART investigation team co-lead at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL), on Bluesky. “There’s really no cohesion between different pieces of gravel or rocks on Dimorphos.”
Several DART researchers published five papers in Nature Communications, looking at the geology and geophysics of Didymos and Dimorphos as seen by DART.
“These findings give us new insights into the ways that asteroids can change over time,” said Thomas Statler, lead scientist for Solar System Small Bodies at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a NASA press release. “This is important not just for understanding the near-Earth objects that are the focus of planetary defense, but also for our ability to read the history of our Solar System from these remnants of planet formation. This is just part of the wealth of new knowledge we’ve gained from DART.”
In “The geology and evolution of the Near-Earth binary asteroid system (65803) Didymos,” Olivier Barnouin, Ronald-Louis Ballouz, also of APL, and their team were able to determine the disparate ages of Didymos and Dimorphos. They also found that both objects have weak surface characteristics, which very likely contributed to DART’s significant impact on the moonlet’s orbit.
“The images and data that DART collected at the Didymos system provided a unique opportunity for a close-up geological look at a near-Earth asteroid binary system,” said Barnouin, in a press release from APL. “From these images alone, we were able to infer a great deal of information on geophysical properties of both Didymos and Dimorphos, and expand our understanding of the formation of these two asteroids. We also better understand why DART was so effective in moving Dimorphos.”
Based on the internal and surface properties described in Barnouin et al. (2024), this video demonstrates how the spin-up of asteroid Didymos could have led to the growth of its equatorial ridge and the formation of the smaller asteroid Dimorphos, seen orbiting the former near the end of the clip. Particles are colored according to their speeds, with the scale shown at the top, along with the continually changing spin period of Didymos. Credit: University of Michigan/Yun Zhang and Johns Hopkins APL/Olivier Barnouin
Images captured by DART and its cubesat companion the LICIACube – contributed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) — showed Dimorphos’ topography covered with boulders of varying sizes, while the larger asteroid Didymos was smoother at lower elevations, though rocky at higher elevations. It also had more craters than Dimorphos. The authors inferred that Dimorphos likely spun off from Didymos in a large mass shedding event.
“The size-frequency distribution of boulders larger than 5 meters on Dimorphos and larger than 22.8 meters on Didymos confirms that both asteroids are piles of fragments produced in the catastrophic disruption of their progenitors,” the team wrote. “This finding supports the hypothesis that some asteroid binary systems form through the spin up and mass shedding of a fraction of the primary asteroid.”
In another paper, “Fast boulder fracturing by thermal fatigue detected on stony asteroids” Alice Lucchetti, also of INAF, and colleagues found that the size and distribution of boulders on Dimorphos is consistant with thermal fatigue, which is the gradual weakening and cracking of a material caused by heat. This could rapidly break up boulders on the surface of Dimorphos, generating surface lines and altering the physical characteristics of this type of asteroid more quickly than previously thought. The DART mission was likely the first observation of such a phenomenon on this type of asteroid.
Thermal fatigue could also have a bearing on what happens if this type of asteroid would need to be deflected for planetary defense.
“The presence of boulder fields affected by thermal fracturing on near-Earth asteroid surfaces may contribute to an enhancement in the ejected mass and momentum from kinetic impactors when deflecting asteroids,” the authors wrote.
a. The approximate equator (dashed magenta line), example boulder tracks (magenta arrows) and likely boulders (white arrows) on the surface of Didymos. b. The 15 boulder tracks identified on the surface of Didymos are indicated by the magenta lines. Credit: Bigot, Lombardo et al.
Another paper, “The bearing capacity of asteroid (65803) Didymos estimated from boulder tracks” led by students Jeanne Bigot and Pauline Lombardo of ISAE-SUPAERO in Toulouse, France show that the bearing capacity — the surface’s ability to support applied loads of asteroid Didymos’ surface is only 0.1% that of dry sand on Earth. NASA said that this is considered an important parameter for understanding and predicting the response of a surface, including for the purposes of displacing an asteroid.
Finally, “Mechanical properties of rubble pile asteroids through surface boulder morphological analysis” by Colas Robin, also of ISAE-SUPAERO, and co-authors analyzed the surface boulders on Dimorphos, comparing them with those on other rubble pile asteroids, including Itokawa, Ryugu and Bennu. The researchers found “stiking similarities” the boulders on all four asteroids, suggesting they all formed and evolved in a similar fashion, and were also changed by impacts. This data, too, informs future planetary defense missions or attempts at impactor missions.
“Planetary defense efforts rely on estimates of the mechanical properties of asteroids, which are difficult to constrain accurately from Earth,” the team wrote. “The mechanical properties of asteroid material are also important in the interpretation of the DART impact.”
All the DART researchers team will continue to observe and study DART’s impact. Additionally, another spacecraft will launch in 2024 to study Dimorphos even closer. ESA’s Hera mission should arrive at Didymos and Dimorphos in December 2026. Hera will undertake a detailed study of Dimorphos to understand more deeply how the impact affected it.
Artist’s impression of the graphenes (C24) and fullerenes found in a Planetary Nebula. The detection of graphenes and fullerenes around old stars as common as our Sun suggests that these molecules and other allotropic forms of carbon may be widespread in space. Credits: IAC; original image of the Helix Nebula (NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner, STScI, & T.A. Rector, NRAO.)
In 2004, scientists at the University of Manchester first isolated and investigated graphene, the supermaterial composed of single-layer carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice. Since then, it has become a wonder, with properties that make it extremely useful in numerous applications. Among scientists, it is generally believed that about 1.9% of carbon in the interstellar medium (ISM) exists in the form of graphene, with its shape and structure determined by the process of its formation.
As it happens, there could be lots of this supermaterial on the surface of the Moon. In a recent study, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) revealed naturally formed graphene arranged in a special thin-layered structure on the Moon. These findings could have drastic implications for our understanding of how the Moon formed and lead to new methods for the manufacture of graphene, with applications ranging from electronics, power storage, construction, and supermaterials. They could also prove useful for future missions that will create permanent infrastructure on the lunar surface.
For decades, scientists have speculated that the Earth-Moon system was formed from a massive collision – the Giant Impact Hypothesis – between a Mars-sized body (Theia) and Earth roughly 4.4 billion years ago. This theory is supported by analyses of the moon rocks returned by the Apollo astronauts, which led to the notion of a carbon-depleted. However, recent findings have come to challenge this consensus based on the observation of global carbon ion fluxes on the Moon, which suggest the presence of indigenous carbon.
These observations are consistent with the analysis of one of the Apollo 17 samples that showed the presence of graphite. For their study, the team conducted a spectroscopic analysis of an olive-shaped sample of lunar soil (measuring about 2.9 mm by 1.6 mm) retrieved by the Chang’e 5 mission in 2020. This was China’s third robotic mission to reach the lunar surface and its first sample return from the Moon. From the spectra they obtained, they found an iron compound in a carbon-rich section of the sample that is closely related to the formation of graphene.
Upon further analysis using advanced microscopic and mapping technologies, they confirmed that the carbon in the sample was graphene flakes two to seven layers thick. In terms of how it got there, the team proposed that the graphene may have formed during a period of volcanic activity early in the Moon’s history when it was still geologically active. They further hypothesize that the graphene was catalyzed by solar winds that kicked up the lunar regolith and its iron-containing minerals, which could have helped transform the carbon’s atomic structure.
They also allow for the possibility of meteorite impacts, which are also known to create high-temperature and high-pressure environments similar to volcanic activity. As they state in their paper:
“Graphene is embedded as individual flakes or formed as part of a carbon shell enclosing the mineral particles. Our result reveals one typical structure of indigenous carbon in the Moon and its formation mechanism has been proposed. This finding may reinvent the understanding of chemical components, geography episodes and the history of the Moon.”
Artist’s impression of the interior of the Moon. Credit: Hernán Cañellas/Benjamin Weiss
These findings could also have a tremendous impact on research here on Earth, where graphene is being investigated for applications ranging from electronics and mechanics to materials science. As they indicate in their study, this study could lead to new methods for inexpensively producing the material and offer additional opportunities for lunar exploration:
“The identification of graphene in the core–shell structure suggests a bottom-up synthesis process rather than exfoliation, which generally involves a high-temperature catalytic reaction. Therefore, a formation mechanism of few-layer graphene and graphitic carbon is proposed here…
“In turn, the mineral-catalysed formation of natural graphene sheds light on the development of low-cost scalable synthesis techniques for high-quality graphene. Therefore, a new lunar exploration program may be promoted and some forthcoming breakthroughs can be expected.”
These findings could also prove useful for future missions that will lead to the development of permanent infrastructure on the lunar surface. This includes NASA’s Artemis Program, which aims to create a “sustained program of lunar exploration and development.” There’s also the ESA’s Moon Village initiative and China and Russia’s plan for an International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). In addition to exploration and scientific research, these programs could conduct experiments on the properties and uses of graphene, which could include the manufacture of lunar habitats!
The Milky Way is just a speck in a universe filled with an untold number of galaxies. But if we had to take an educated guess, how many galaxies are in the universe?
That sounds like a simple question, but it's anything but. The first problem is that even with our most powerful telescopes, we can see only a tiny fraction of the universe.
"The observable universe is only that part of the universe from which the light has had time to reach us," astrophysicist Kai Noeske, now outreach officer at the European Space Agency, told Live Science.
Arp 273 is a pair of spiral galaxies, which may have collided in the past. Their gravitational interaction pulled the galaxies into the sweeping shapes we see; it also produced a burst of star formation, which is visible as blue splotches in the spiral arms of both galaxies.
Credit: NASA
The universe is 13.8 billion years old, but the observable universe stretches more than 13.8 light-years in every direction. That's because the universe is expanding and light got a head start early on, when the universe was smaller
"Now, the total size in each direction is about 46 billionlight-years," Noeske said.
That's much smaller than even our smallest estimates of the entire universe. "We see at most 3% of the universe," Pamela Gay, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, told Live Science.
The second problem is that there are so many galaxies that we can only make estimates of the total number based on what we can observe in small regions of the universe.
"You look at a small patch of the sky, and you count everything in that small patch and then multiply over the size of the sky," Gay said.
But even that requires a cutoff. "What do we define [as] a galaxy?" Noeske said. "We have really giant galaxies that have to have a factor of 10 more" the mass of our galaxy, "and we have a lot of small galaxies, from lower-mass galaxies that have about 10 times less mass … down all the way to dwarf galaxies."
At some point, scientists need to define a minimum mass for a galaxy to make estimates possible.
The Antennae Galaxies have been colliding and merging into a single galaxy for roughly 100 million years. This image combines X-ray, infrared, and visible light to show how the collision is making new stars and churning the gas in the galaxies into marvelous shapes.
"If we set a mass cutoff and try to make this conservative, like a million solar masses, we end up with an average number of galaxies in the universe from the beginning to today of about 1 to 2 trillion," Noeske said. Scientists think there were more galaxies earlier in the universe's history than there are today, which is why galaxy estimates are an average over time.
"But those results come from the Hubble [telescope] — the James Webb Space Telescope is starting to speak to these results — which are near Earth, inside of our solar system, and are limited on what they can see by all the stuff in our solar system that adds light to the sky," Gay said. "We do have one spacecraft with a camera that has gotten beyond all the garbage within our solar system, and that's the New Horizons spacecraft."
A 2021 study used the camera aboard New Horizons to measure the total amount of light in various patches of sky and estimated how many galaxies would be needed to create that much light.
"And suddenly, as they're outside of all the light sources in our solar system, they realize we don't need as many galaxies as we thought," Gay said. "And so their estimates put us at, like, 200 billion, maybe even 100 billion galaxies in the visible universe.
"So somewhere between 2 trillion galaxies at the top edge and 100 billion at the lower edge is the number of galaxies in our observable universe," she said.
If you assume that's 3% — at most — of our universe, you can multiply that range of galaxies to get the total number of galaxies in the universe. If we're seeing less of the universe than we think, there will be a smaller total number of galaxies.
But considering we don't actually know the size of the universe, those estimates are murky. "If it's an infinite universe, you're going to have infinite galaxies," Gay said.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
