Japan ontwerpt de eerste ruimtelift: hij zal klaar zijn in 2050

 Door Janine

Tot voor kort betekende praten over een ruimtelift dat je je op sciencefictionterrein begaf. In staat zijn om naar een ruimtestation in een baan om de aarde te gaan zonder gebruik te maken van een ruimteschip lijkt iets onrealistisch, maar toch is het een steeds reëler wordende mogelijkheid. Het nieuwste bedrijf dat aan dit ambitieuze project is begonnen, is de Japanse Obayashi Corporation. Maar is het echt mogelijk om een ruimtelift te bouwen? En wanneer zal hij klaar zijn? Laten we daar samen achter komen!

Wat is een ruimtelift?

Liftport/Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED

Een ruimtelift is een hypothetische constructie die het aardoppervlak moet verbinden met een geostationaire baan, zo'n 36.000 kilometer boven de aarde. Dit speciale transportmiddel zou werken als een klassieke lift, met cabines die langs een lange, sterke kabel omhoog en omlaag gaan. Kortom, een ruimtelift zou mensen en goederen in de ruimte kunnen vervoeren zonder dat daar raketten en ruimtevaartuigen voor nodig zijn.

Hoewel het idee op zich niet nieuw is - een eerste vermelding dateert al uit 1895 - lijkt de aanpak van de Obayashi Corporation een concrete interesse in de realisatie van de eerste ruimtelift op aarde te bevestigen. Aan de andere kant zou zo'n constructie enorme voordelen bieden bij het transport van en naar de ruimte, maar tegelijkertijd ook aanzienlijke uitdagingen met zich meebrengen.

Het idee van Obayashi Corporation

大林組広報部/Youtube

De realisatie van een ruimtelift zou mogelijk worden gemaakt door de vooruitgang in het onderzoek naar koolstofnanobuizen, dat de kern van het project vormt. Volgens de Obayashi Corporation zou deze ruimtelift zich over ongeveer 96.000 kilometer van de aarde naar de ruimte kunnen uitstrekken en resistente kabels gebruiken om mensen en goederen naar een ruimtestation in een geostationaire baan te brengen. Op deze manier zou de omwentelingsperiode van het station gelijk zijn aan de rotatieperiode van de aarde.

Voor de bouw van de lift zijn echter verschillende stappen nodig. Eerst zouden materialen door raketten naar een lage baan om de aarde worden gestuurd, waar ze zouden worden gebruikt om een ruimtestation in elkaar te zetten dat wordt aangedreven door elektromotoren. Eenmaal klaar zou dit ruimteschip een geostationaire baan moeten bereiken om vervolgens de kabel naar de aarde te verlengen. Eenvoudig, toch?

Is een ruimtelift echt haalbaar?

大林組広報部/Youtube

Volgens Obayashi Corporation zeker wel. Het bedrijf wil zo snel mogelijk beginnen met de bouw en de ruimtelift operationeel hebben voor 2050, met alle positieve gevolgen voor de kosten van ruimtevaart, koolstofuitstoot en het transport van mensen en goederen.

Kortom, vandaag de dag wil het idee van een ruimtelift meer dan ooit breken met science fiction en onze dagelijkse realiteit binnendringen. In theorie is dit een haalbaar project, maar het vergt een gecoördineerde internationale inspanning. Velen zien het project wellicht als slechts een poging van de mens om het bereik van zijn doelstellingen uit te breiden naar de ruimte, duizenden kilometers voorbij het Internationale Ruimtestation. En dit behoort zeker ook tot de doelstellingen van de Obayashi Corporation, maar dat niet alleen. Het is ook een poging om iets werkelijkheid te laten worden wat tot voor kort alleen een verbeelding was. Een toekomstige realiteit, zeker, maar een concrete en tastbare realiteit.

Source:

• https://www.obayashi.co.jp/en/news/detail/the_space_elevator_construction_concept.html

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

26-05-2024 om 23:51 geschreven door peter  

How Betty and Barney Hill’s Alien Abduction Story Defined the Genre

Their account, recovered with the help of hypnosis, detailed extensive medical exams, including a crude pregnancy test.

BY: LINDA LACINA

Is it chasing us? That thought coursed through Betty and Barney Hill’s minds as they drove down the empty winding country road in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. It was a September night in 1961, they hadn’t seen a car for miles, and a strange light in the sky seemed to follow them.

When they finally got home to Portsmouth at dawn, they were far from relieved. They felt dirty. Their watches stopped working. Barney’s shoes were strangely scuffed and Betty’s dress was ripped. There were two hours of the drive that neither one of them could remember. What had happened

• https://youtu.be/pxo48Tv9yGE

With the help of a psychiatrist, the quiet couple eventually revealed a startling story: Gray beings with large eyes had walked them into a metallic disc as wide, Betty said, as her house was long. Once inside, the beings examined the couple and erased their memories.

Their experience would kick off an Air Force inquiry, part of the secretive initiative Project Blue Book that investigated UFO sightings across the country. The incident would also become the first-ever widely publicized alien-abduction account and shape how stories like it were told—and understood—from then on. Debate continues as to whether the husband and wife were liars, fantasists, crackpots or simply sleep-deprived people who later recovered seriously scrambled memories.

The Hills Saw Strange Lights Pursuing Their Car

The Hills’ road trip was spontaneous, a well-earned break Barney decided the couple needed, as explained in The Interrupted Journey, a 1966 book they collaborated on with author John G. Fuller. Barney worked a grueling night shift at the post office, driving 60 miles each way. Betty’s job handling state child-welfare cases was no easier. The little free time this biracial couple had was devoted to their church and activities related to the civil-rights movement. After 16 months of marriage, Betty and Barney saw this trip through Montreal and Niagara Falls as their delayed honeymoon. They left so impulsively they had no time to go to the bank before it closed for the weekend. They got in their car with less than $70 in their pockets.

On the last night of their three-day trip, the tired couple sipped coffee in a Vermont diner to recharge before driving back. Barney figured if they pushed through, they could beat the wind and rains from an approaching hurricane. They left the diner around 10 p.m., estimating they could reach their red-framed house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. at the latest.

As they drove, strange light in the sky gave another reason to hurry. At first it looked like a falling star, but grew larger and brighter with each mile. Barney, an avid plane watcher and World War II vet, was sure they had nothing to worry about. It’s just a satellite, he assured Betty. It probably went off course.

• https://youtu.be/c7knSt_4cnM

The light seemed to move with the car as Barney steered down the curving mountain road. The light zigged and zagged, ducking past the moon and behind trees and mountain ridges, only to reappear moments later. Sometimes it seemed to move toward them in a game of cat-and-mouse. It had to be an illusion, they thought. Maybe the car’s movement made it seem like the light, too, was moving.

Curiosity overcame them. The couple pulled over at road stops and picnic turnouts to get a closer look. Through binoculars, Betty saw that the white light was really an object spinning in the air.

“Barney,” she told her husband, “if you think that’s a satellite or a star, you’re being completely ridiculous.”

Betty and Barney Hills' Close Encounter

He knew she was right. Barney had an IQ of 140, noted Fuller in his book. Barney was also a pragmatic man who wouldn’t give flying saucers a second thought, remembered his niece Kathleen Marden in her work, Captured: The Betty and Barney Hill Experience. The night was too quiet for a helicopter, a commercial plane or even military jet with a hotshot pilot. He didn’t want to spook Betty, but he was becoming concerned. What was this light and why was it toying with them?

About 70 miles past the diner, the object hovered just above the treetops, approximately 100 feet above them. Barney abruptly stopped the car, keeping the engine running. He shoved a handgun he’d hidden beneath the seat into his pocket and rushed into a dark field, leaving Betty in the car. What he saw was as big as a jet but as round and flat as a pancake. “My God, what is this thing?” he recalled thinking. “This can’t be real.”

AN ILLUSTRATION OF BETTY AND BARNEY HILL'S 1961 ALIEN ABDUCTION

Behind rows of windows, gray uniformed beings seemed to look right at him, Barney recalled. He tried to lift his hand to his pistol but somehow couldn’t. A voice told him not to put down his binoculars.

He had a startling thought: We’re about to be captured. Yelling hysterically, he ran back to the car and barreled down the road as Betty tracked the craft, craning her head outside the car window. Without explanation, loud, rhythmic beeps sounded from the car’s trunk. The couple felt instantly drowsy and lost consciousness.

They came to around two hours later and 35 miles down the road.

Using Hypnosis to Recover the Hills' Abduction Memory

Back home in Portsmouth, they tried to make sense of the night. Barney felt compelled to examine his body’s lower half. Both seemed aware of a puzzling presence.

In the weeks and months after, Betty, an avid reader, checked out books from the library discovering the civilian UFO group National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). She also reported the sighting to the Air Force, worried about radiation.

IMAGE DEPICTING AN ALIEN SPACE SHIP, AT 200 FEET AND 100 FEET ABOVE THE EARTH'S SURFACE, DRAWN BY ALLEGED ALIEN ABDUCTEE BETTY HILL AND REGARDED AS ONE OF THE FIRST EXAMPLES OF THE FLYING SAUCER ALIEN SPACESHIP ARCHETYPE, SEPTEMBER 20, 1961.

In coming years, with Betty suffering from disturbing dreams and Barney developing an ulcer and anxiety, the couple sought mental help. The two met with Benjamin Simon, a psychiatrist and neurologist who specialized in hypnosis, a mainstream technique at the time.

Through months of weekly sessions, Simon helped the couple piece together what they think had happened: A vessel had landed on the Hill’s car, putting them to sleep. Afterward, gray beings walked them up a long ramp and into the spacecraft.

Once inside, the Hills were separated, taking turns in an examination room that had curved walls and a large light hanging from the ceiling. Each was asked to climb up on a metal table. The table was so short, Barney’s legs hung over the side.

During the examinations, the beings removed Betty and Barney’s clothes, plucked strands of their hair, took clippings of their nails and scraped their skin. Each sample was placed on a clear material, not unlike a glass slide. Needles, connected to long wires, probed their heads, arms, legs and spines. One large needle, around 4 to 6 inches long, was inserted into Betty’s belly. This pregnancy test left her twisting in pain. Throughout, a being Barney and Betty called “the leader” watched from the side.

After Betty’s examination ended, the beings rushed back into her room, excited. They discovered that Barney’s teeth could be removed. Betty laughed, explaining that Barney had dentures, a fact of human aging the beings struggled to understand.

Read more

• The UFO Sightings That Launched ‘Men in Black’ Mythology

In all of their different incarnations, the Men in Black usually have one main purpose: to muzzle witnesses of strange, paranormal phenomena.

• When Dozens of Korean War GIs Claimed a UFO Made Them Sick

Theories range from high-tech Soviet death rays to extraterrestrials studying human combat to combat-stress-induced hallucinations

• Meet J. Allen Hynek, the Astronomer Who First Classified UFO ‘Close Encounters’

When the U.S. government tapped the academic to help investigate UFOs, he was initially a skeptic. But not for long.

Later, alone with the leader, Betty asked where the craft had flown, admitting she knew little of the universe. The being joked with her, saying “if you don’t know where you are, there wouldn’t be any point in telling you where I am.” Later, under hypnosis, she drew a star map shown to her on the ship.

In 1965, the Hills' story was picked up by a Boston newspaper. After that, everything changed. The quiet couple’s story became the subject of a best-selling book and a movie starring James Earl Jones. The upstanding civil servants had become celebrity abductees.

The Hills' Story Became a Model for Alien Abductions

BARNEY HOLDING UP A DIAGRAM EXPLAINING THE ALIEN ABDUCTION

The Hills weren’t the first to spot a UFO or even to report an abduction. But their story did capture the nation’s imagination and was so widely publicized, it has helped shape how we talk about alien encounters and abductions to this day.

Before the Hill’s story, alien encounters were friendly, according to Christoper Bader, a professor of sociology at California’s Chapman University. Some aliens even lived on earth and commuted back on weekends. But once the Hills’ story became better known, abduction accounts shared certain characteristics, such as medical examinations and missing time. Aliens with large heads and big eyes—dubbed “grays” in UFO circles—became classic sci-fi staples in personal accounts and pop culture, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and shows like the X-Files.

The Hills’ story—and those that came after—helped pave the way for a new understanding of human experience. Richard J. McNally, a Harvard psychologist, puts it this way: “The ‘alien-abduction’ phenomenon, in my opinion, shows how sincere, non-psychotic individuals can develop beliefs about, and false memories of, incredible experiences that never happened.”

Experts of all stripes have tried to explain why intelligent, otherwise mentally stable people came forward with these experiences. Many psychologists say sleep paralysis and hallucinations played a role. Leading questions during hypnosis—the main way most abductees unlock their stories—could also have been a factor.

The Psychology of Alien Encounter Stories

BARNEY AND BETTY HILL HOLDING A NEWSPAPER REPORTING ABOUT THEIR ALLEGED ALIEN ABDUCTION IN A RURAL PORTION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE IN LATE SEPTEMBER 1961

Those who report abduction might also see the world a little differently. According to research, one of the strongest predictors of false recall is a vivid imagination. This group scores high in “magical ideation” and is more likely to believe in ghosts and tarot readings, according to McNally.

Some believe the Hill’s story was simply a myth in the making, with the supernatural meetings, vulnerable protagonists and otherworldly journeys that are often the hallmarks of legend. Many point to the stress of being an interracial couple living in a predominantly white state in a turbulent era. (The year of their hypnosis, 1964, was marked by Cold War tensions and civil-rights unrest, with numerous urban riots erupting that summer.) “You have a biracial couple at a time where obviously it was not easy to be a biracial couple,” says Bader. “Look what those aliens were: a mixture of black and white. I find that very meaningful.”

Abductee stories depend on first-hand accounts—the most vulnerable form of evidence. Memories can be distorted by stress or distraction, or even manufactured. When a false memory is in place, psychologists say, the brain works to fill in the details. Psychologist Michael Shermer points to ‘patternicity,’ the tendency to see patterns even when none exist, helping us to see faces in clouds or assume that one event caused another.

Read more

• How the ‘Little Green Men’ Phenomenon Began on a Kentucky Farm

The 11 witnesses who arrived at the Hopkinsville police station were genuinely terror-struck.

• This Scoutmaster Had a Run-in with a UFO. The Kids Saw it Too.

Investigators noted the hair on the alleged victim’s arms was singed, and the skin burned. The grass where he claimed to have had the encounter was also scorched.

• When Top Gun Pilots Tangled with a Baffling Tic-Tac-Shaped UFO

Fighter pilots and radar operators from the USS Nimitz describe their terrifying—and still inexplicable—2004 encounter.

Past experience also shapes human perception. Barney, a World War II vet, thought the head “gray” looked like Hitler and seemed menacing. Betty, meanwhile, who had been excited to see the aliens, bantered with the affable gray who performed her medical examination. That alien even agreed to give her a book to bring to earth with her, she said, though other crew members would later overrule that decision.

In this way alien abduction and encounter stories have helped psychologists understand the human brain, its defects—and the weaknesses inherent in memory and first-hand accounts, according to Christopher French, a psychologist specializing in human experience related to the paranormal. “What we see and hear, especially under less than ideal observational conditions, can be heavily influenced by our prior beliefs and expectations,” wrote French in the The Guardian.

NICAP’s scientific advisor cross-examined the couple and found their account credible. The Air Force’s Project Blue Book would ultimately dismiss the story, determining the unexplained craft could be explained by “natural causes”—hinting that the couple hadn’t seen a spacecraft but only the planet Jupiter.

For his part, psychiatrist Simon never felt the Hills had made up their story. He concluded Betty had dreamed the abduction and Barney had absorbed her story, especially since many of the most vivid details matched descriptions of dreams Betty had jotted down after the event. “I believe implicitly in the honesty of these people,” he said on a ‘70s radio program.

Of course, another explanation is always possible: The abduction actually occurred. The Hills stuck by their story, despite years of skeptics and detractors. Like many abductees, the couple never felt false memory or sleep paralysis explained what they experienced. Betty became a known voice in UFO research and claimed she was visited multiple times in the decades to follow.

{ https://www.history.com/ }

26-05-2024 om 22:06 geschreven door peter  

Alien Abduction: The True Story of Betty and Barney Hill – Revealed on Joe Rogan with Dan Aykroyd

The Joe Rogan Experience episode featuring Dan Aykroyd delves into one of the most intriguing alien abduction stories of the 20th century: the case of Betty and Barney Hill. This tale, recounted with rich detail and historical context, sheds light on the mysterious world of UFO encounters and the phenomena associated with them.

The Betty and Barney Hill Abduction

In 1961, Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials while driving through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This incident is often cited as the first widely publicized alien abduction story in the United States. According to their account, the couple experienced a close encounter with a UFO, followed by a period of missing time. Under hypnosis, they later recalled being taken aboard a spacecraft, where they underwent medical examinations.

Evidence and Credibility

Dan Aykroyd emphasizes several pieces of evidence that lend credibility to the Hills’ story. Notably, there was a fluid stain on Betty’s dress, which she believed was used during the medical procedures performed on her. Additionally, the couple’s car showed unexplained marks on its trunk. These physical traces, though not definitive proof, support the plausibility of their account.

The Hills’ testimonies, particularly those given under hypnosis by Dr. Benjamin Simon, are another compelling aspect of their story. Barney’s intense fear and detailed recollections, as captured in the tapes of these sessions, further underscore the authenticity of their experience. Aykroyd points out that neither Betty nor Barney had any prior interest in astronomy, making their detailed descriptions of the star systems they saw aboard the spaceship particularly intriguing.

The Zeta Reticuli Star Map

One of the most fascinating elements of the Hills’ story is the star map that Betty claimed to have seen during her abduction. Betty’s drawing of this map, under hypnosis, was later analyzed by amateur astronomer Marjorie Fish. Fish’s three-dimensional model identified the stars as Zeta Reticuli 1 and 2. This identification was significant because it suggested that Betty had seen a star system not widely known at the time, adding a layer of credibility to her account.

Broader Abduction Phenomena

The conversation between Rogan and Aykroyd expands to discuss other abduction cases and the work of researchers like Budd Hopkins. Hopkins was known for his work with abductees, using hypnosis to help them recall their experiences. He documented numerous cases where individuals reported being taken by extraterrestrials, undergoing examinations, and then being returned to different locations or in different states of dress.

Aykroyd draws an analogy between these abductions and the practice of catch and release in fishing. Just as fishermen release their catch back into the water, seemingly without concern for their exact return location, extraterrestrials might similarly abduct humans, perform tests, and then return them haphazardly.

Skepticism and Belief

A central theme in the discussion is the skepticism that often surrounds UFO and abduction stories. Both Rogan and Aykroyd acknowledge the difficulty many people have in believing such extraordinary claims. However, they argue that the infrequent and bizarre nature of these occurrences makes them challenging to dismiss outright. They urge a balanced approach, remaining open to the possibility of extraterrestrial life while critically examining the evidence.

Historical Context and Media Coverage

Aykroyd references numerous historical newspaper reports and government memos from the 1950s that document UFO sightings. These reports suggest that the phenomenon has been acknowledged for decades, albeit with varying degrees of seriousness. This historical context highlights the enduring public and governmental interest in UFOs and alien encounters.

John Mack’s Contributions

The discussion also touches on the work of John Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist who wrote extensively about abduction experiences. Mack’s academic background and his thorough investigations into these phenomena provided a measure of legitimacy to the study of alien abductions. His books, such as “Abduction,” have influenced many, including skeptics, by presenting well-documented cases and thoughtful analysis.

VIDEO:

• https://youtu.be/zZ-8CbF6PJI

The Joe Rogan Experience episode with Dan Aykroyd offers a comprehensive exploration of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction story, supported by various pieces of testimonial and circumstantial evidence. It places their experience within the broader context of UFO phenomena, highlighting the challenges of proving such extraordinary claims. Despite the skepticism that often accompanies these stories, the enduring fascination with the possibility of extraterrestrial life continues to captivate the public imagination.

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

26-05-2024 om 21:31 geschreven door peter  

Amid rising Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, anxiety over a missile gap soon led to an arms race, while wild rumours about the other’s technological innovation soon became rife.

The conspiracy theory: the US government covered up the crash of an alien spacecraft

In late June 1947, W W ‘Mac’ Brazel, a rancher living in New Mexico, discovered an unusual debris field on his land near Roswell.

Days later, he alerted the local authorities, who in turn notified Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). Military personnel were dispatched to the location whereupon they supposedly recovered material from a damaged extraterrestrial spacecraft and even the bodies of its alien crew.

The base issued a statement confirming that a “flying disc” had been recovered in the vicinity and “inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field”. Yet the following day a correction was released that clarified the debris was in fact a downed weather balloon.

• Read more | Why we should remember the Roswell incident

Decades later, in 1978, the so-called ‘Roswell incident’ returned to the spotlight. According to a whistle-blower who had been involved in the operation, the weather balloon story was a cover-up. Photographs of the balloon wreckage had been carefully staged, while the actual spacecraft was spirited away for investigation. At the same time, everyone connected to the incident was sworn to silence.

Researchers tracked down several witnesses who corroborated that a crashed alien spaceship had indeed been salvaged and taken to the enigmatic Area 51 in Nevada where technicians had subsequently reverse-engineered it for the US military.

Not only that, but it was said that extraterrestrial beings had been retrieved from the crash site and had been subjected to autopsies.

What is the source of the theory?

To understand the origins of the Roswell incident, historian and broadcaster, David Clarke, believes it is necessary to begin two weeks earlier on 24 June 1947 and over 1,000 miles northwest.

“Kenneth Arnold, who was a private pilot, was out flying a small aircraft over the Cascade [Range] mountains in Washington state,” says Clarke, who was speaking on our Conspiracy podcast series. “As he was flying towards Mount Rainier, in the distance he saw what he described as a formation of ‘strange aircraft’. They were flying in echelon formation, the way that geese or ducks [do].”

Arnold reckoned that these strange vessels, which he later described as ‘batwing-shaped’, were travelling at supersonic speed. Incidentally, the sound barrier would not be broken until 14 October later that same year by US Air Force officer, Charles Yeager.

“He radioed Yakima airbase and when he landed … [it had been] transmitted all around the United States that this guy had seen some weird objects in the sky. He was surrounded by newspaper reporters,” says Clarke.

His description of the objects’ movement as being akin to a saucer skipping over a pond caught journalists’ imagination, who coined the term ‘flying saucer’.

“The story went viral to use a modern expression,” says Clarke.

“Within 48 hours of Kenneth Arnold reporting what he’d seen, flying saucers were on the newswires across the United States, across North America and Europe. And people started seeing and reporting saucer-shaped flying objects in the sky”.

It was during this craze that the RAAF dispatched Major Jesse Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt to inspect the debris found near Roswell.

But whereas Cavitt maintained that the wreckage was ostensibly ‘normal’, Marcel convinced himself “that it was something very, very unusual and not something that was manufactured in the United States”, explains Clarke.

The reasons why the theory of the Roswell Incident took hold

The airbase’s correction, insisting that the discovery was in fact that of a weather balloon, negated the idea that something more peculiar had been found. That summer in New Mexico soon faded from popular memory – at least for the time being.

“I’ve got a huge collection of books on UFOs and flying saucers from the 1950s up to the present,” says Clarke, “the Roswell incident is not mentioned in any of those books and articles and magazines during the 1950s, during the 1960s”.

Decades later, after trust in the US government had been badly damaged in the wake of the JFK assassination and the unpopular Vietnam War, a more cynical audience was primed to reconsider the official narrative around the Roswell incident.

• Read more | How UFOs conquered the world – without firing a shot

Clarke believes that this context is the reason why the 1980 book The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore was so successful in introducing the idea of a government cover-up.

“They went and re-interviewed some of the people who were there at the time. Jesse Marcel, for instance – there’s no other way to describe him – he was a UFO believer. He bought into the idea that flying saucers were craft from outer space,” says Clarke.

According to conspiracists like Marcel, the cover-up even entailed intimidating would-be whistle-blowers with murder: “‘Bullets are cheap’ was the phrase that was used,” explains Clarke.

“There are people who worked in the morgue at Roswell [who] said that they remembered this truck turning up with armed guards and these small bodies of creatures being offloaded”.

By the end of the 20th century, the Roswell incident had acquired an iconic status within the ufology community but also within popular culture generally. During the 1990s, the conspiracy was woven into the X-Files TV drama series and the blockbuster movie, Independence Day.

“That shows how much it’s become a part of the collective American imagination – almost to rival the JFK conspiracies,” says Clarke.

The evidence that debunks the Roswell Incident

The UFO ‘wreckage’ that Brazel came across on his ranch – and later confirmed by Cavitt – consisted of balsa wood, tinfoil, metal strips and other detritus.

As was officially established that summer, these materials, though certainly incongruous to the location in which they were found, were the remnants of a high-altitude balloon.

Clarke points out that “there was a cover-up in some respects, in that when they announced that this thing that had been found was just a weather balloon that wasn’t true because it wasn’t just a weather balloon, it was [part of] a top secret balloon experiment”.

In 1994, the US Congress launched an official investigation into the events of summer 1947. Its conclusions formed part of a two-volume report that revealed that a highly clandestine operation code-named ‘Mogul’ had been conducted at the time from Alamogordo Army Air Field, less than 150 miles west of Roswell.

“The US Navy and the CIA were launching enormous balloon trains from Alamogordo. Everyone will remember at the beginning of 2023, the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by the US Air Force. A very similar thing was going on in 1947,” says Clarke, citing a recent incident that sparked speculation about alien aircraft visiting Earth.

With the Cold War just getting underway at the time, the US was keen to establish whether the Soviets were conducting nuclear tests.

“They were sending these enormous balloons up,” explains Clarke, “and they were riding the jet stream across the Atlantic, and they had a gondola underneath with cameras inside and a radiosonde where they could track the balloons”.

“One of these balloon trains in the logbook from Alamogordo was lost in the desert shortly before the debris [at Brazel’s ranch] was found,” says Clarke – though he stresses that a direct link between the two cannot be definitively made despite the circumstances.

A few years later, in 1997, the US Air Force published another report. One of its findings attributed the reports about humanoid ‘creatures’ turning up at facilities in and around Roswell to false memories.

According to Clarke, the report “tried to explain where some of the ideas about bodies being retrieved from the desert came from”.

As part of that later investigation, “it turned out that they were actually throwing dummies from aircraft over the desert”.

These tests were part of a secret programme to assess the effect on the human body if pilots ejected from aircraft and fell from high altitudes.

For Clarke, the Roswell incident also bears many of the age-old tropes about celestial visitors descending to Earth in a revelatory fashion.

“Effectively you could see the aliens in the flying saucer as being representative of gods or angels coming to give us their sacred knowledge. And they always crash in a remote area. They’re never crashing in Tunbridge Wells or anywhere like that. It’s always some remote area of desert”.

More than this, Clarke asserts that Roswell became an urban legend for the atomic age and that its DNA is typical of American folklore.

He cites the case of Aurora, Texas – where, in 1897, a UFO allegedly collided with a windmill. The locals “retrieved the body of this Martian pilot, buried it in the local cemetery, and they retrieved bits of metal from this airship that had hieroglyphics on it”.

Clarke says that this was in fact a hoax concocted to attract visitors to the small town after the railway had bypassed it, and he notes that the story is almost “a carbon copy of the Roswell incident”.

Perhaps the most expedient angle on Roswell is that the longevity of this conspiracy theory serves the US military’s interests and may even explain why some ex-military and ex-intelligence personnel have gone on record to suggest that extraterrestrials crashed there in 1947.

For example, ongoing rumours about Area 51 and the back-engineering of otherworldly technology makes for a formidable strategy.

“There’s no two ways about it that there’s some very good evidence that they just encourage that story because it’s a useful disinformation tool against an enemy … don’t mess with us because we’ve got alien technology,” says Clarke.

As conspiracy theories go, he believes that Roswell is among the more ‘harmless’ ones. “The idea that out there in the cold dead Universe there is someone who is interested in us, that we’re not alone, that they’re going to come and save us, that’s quite a comforting thought,” says Clarke, “and I think that out of all the conspiracy theories and myths, this is probably the most positive one of all”.

Earlier this year the US Government admitted that it has developed, tested and flown prototype aircraft some of which have been seen and reported as UFOs.

The Pentagon said “some of these systems had a ‘saucer’ or triangle-shaped appearance and were capable of hovering aloft”.

The US Department of Defence’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), released the first volume of its historical investigation of UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) in February.

The report traces military technology linked to UFOs back to the end of the second world war and the famous Roswell incident of 1947. It says that all the evidence points to “misidentified authentic highly sensitive national security programs”.

{ https://www.historyextra.com/ }

26-05-2024 om 21:03 geschreven door peter  

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt was deputy base commander at RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk at the time of the Rendlesham Forest incident in 1980 and blew the whistle after an extraordinary sequence of events

Two airmen carrying out patrols of the nuclear base were sent into the forest to investigate a strange object seen to land there. What they saw that night became one of the most compelling UAP military sightings mysteries of all time, anywhere in the world.

READ MORE: 

• Agonising last moments of tragic teen who made fatal mistake and instantly knew

American commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt added credibility to the sightings, when he recorded a memo claiming he saw another unidentified object in the forest two nights later.

The memo found its way into the British military archives and was eventually declassified and released by the US government. It described an encounter with an apparent UFO in the forest.

The sighting even made a News of the World front page story proclaiming " UFO LANDS IN SUFFOLK, And that's OFFICIAL"

But the Ministry of Defence said the event posed no risk to national security and was never investigated as a security matter. Government agents were later accused of a cover up.

7NEWS Australia journalist, Ross Coulthart interviewed Lt Col Halt in 2009 and reposted his chat on YouTube earlier this week, attracting almost 200,000 views at the time of writing.

In it, Lt Col Halt recalls witnessing a glowing object that was metallic in appearance, "bright-orangeish-red like fire" with coloured lights.

As he attempted to approach it, it appeared to move through the trees sending animals on a nearby farm "into a frenzy."

He said: "The first thing I saw out of the ordinary was when we were standing at the site, measuring and taking radiation readings and trying to ascertain what this thing was.

"I looked up through the forest and towards the coast. I can best describe it as something looking like an eye with a black centre. The object at first was very stable, still. But it was the equivalent of dripping molten metal. Something was shedding off it and drifting onto the ground."

From 200m away, he added: "When the object started moving towards us, it moved forward from the field into the forest...it's moving thorough the trees going up and down...it was under some kind of intelligent control. It had to be to avoid the trees.

"Then it came towards us at one point and then it receded. It went away. It went back into the field and stayed there for a few seconds and then silently it exploded into white objects and they just disappeared."

Lt Col Halt added: "We went out into the field after the object disappeared and we're searching around with our flashlights looking for some evidence because obviously something was dripping off this object, or appeared to be. And I thought there has be be some slag, some residue, something on the ground or some burn marks or something. And the only thing we found is evidence of being cattle there.

"We didn't find anything at all. And while we were out there searching around, we saw objects in the sky to the north. They were bright objects, they changed shape from half moon to elliptical to full circles."

Lt Col Halt said he requested air traffic experts check radar systems which drew a blank. He descrbed the beams as moving at "very high speed," adding: "They were sort of synchronised. They would move in sharp angular movements as though they were doing a grid search or something...It didn't make any sense to me and I'm puzzled at this point.

"Then we turned and looked, somebody saw one to the south, and then another one to the south...it was closest to us (and) came almost directly overhead at very high speed and stopped. It was stationary.

"We were standing there in awe then all of a sudden, a beam came down (from more than 1,000ft above), right to the side of us. It was an interesting beam, it was concentrated, it did not radiate. It came down like a laser.

"It illuminated a spot on the ground around 10 or 12ft away...I'm thinking is this a warning? Is this communication? What is this? What do we do now? And just as abruptly as it came on, click, it went off."

Police were called to the scene but reported that the only lights they could see were from the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse.

The next morning, servicemen returned to a small clearing and found three small impressions on the ground in a triangular pattern as well as burn marks and broken branches on nearby trees, but police concluded the indents had been made by an animal.

Lt Col Halt, who held one of the highest positions in the US military, made a 20-minute tape recording of his sighting and wrote a memo just days later which he sent to the Ministry of Defence.

But he claims there was a cover-up by a clandestine agency.

In his new introduction to the interview, journalist Ross Coulthart states: "...what he (Halt) told me stunned me. He was a man, one rank below a general, revealing what he believed was a conspiracy by the US military and the British military to conceal what was clearly some kind of intelligently controlled, highly technologically advanced object moving through a forest, immediately adjacent to a base crammed full of dangerous nuclear weapons.

"Why on earth would the Americans and the British want to supress such an incident?

"There's a great story told by an author called Georgia Bruny and she tells of how she met the British prime minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher, and she asked her about the Rendlesham Forest incident....Margaret Thatcher leaned across to her at a dinner party and said: 'You can't tell the people.'"

Nearly half a century on, mystery still surrounds the incident dubbed "Britain's Roswell" - named after the alleged UFO crash in the New Mexico desert in July 1947.

Sceptics have disregarded the sightings as nocturnal lights, the Orford Ness Lighthouse, bright stars or a possible hoax.

Since then, the sightings have been the source of much debate and speculation among UFO enthusiasts and the subject of numerous books, articles and TV programmes.

The forest even has its own official UFO trail, complete with a life-size replica of a flying saucer.

After the fascinating story resurfaced on YouTube, hundreds of viewers flocked to share their thoughts.

The flying saucer replica on the UFO trail 

(Image: Geography Photos/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

One said: "The Rendlesham Forest incident has always struck me as the most credible encounter, with the first-rate witnesses."

Another added: "The best summation of the Rendlesham incident I've ever seen and observed by a high-ranking colonel with no doubts that the objects seen were under intelligent control!"

READ NEXT:

• New space discoveries have scientists asking where 'Planet X' is in our solar system
• AI chatbot finally acknowledges artificial intelligence could cause the downfall of humanity
• What the Vatican knows about aliens and why UFO 'cover-up' won't go away for Pope
• Naked 'alien' photographs from 1986 reveal ET as white, lanky and proud of his pecker

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/ }

25-05-2024 om 22:18 geschreven door peter  

One explanation could be that the odd-looking beams of light are Starlink satellites but there were no launches during the first sighting in South America

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/ }

25-05-2024 om 20:55 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE: Ukrainian soldier who filmed 1,300-ft UFO speaks to DailyMail.com

By MATTHEW PHELAN SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

For four decades, since the height of the Cold War, a mysterious radio signal has been broadcast out of Russia — baffling ham radio fans, scientists and spies alike.

Some speculate it's part of the Russian government's own secret SETI program or even actively communicating with a visiting alien species. 

Others believe it might be a 'Dead Hand' doomsday trigger, ready to launch nuclear weapons if Russia's leadership is knocked out of commission. 

But according to a professor of electronics and radio engineering, who has studied the signal, one thing is certain: 'It is almost certainly the Russian government that is using it,' he said.

And: 'If it is the Russian government, it wouldn't be for peaceful purposes.'

For four decades, since the height of the Cold War, a mysterious radio signal has been broadcast out of Russia - example signal at left - baffling ham radio fans, scientists and spies alike. Above, right, one of the towers that broadcast the signal, 19 miles outside of Moscow

Professor David Stupples, who teaches electronic and radio engineering at the City University of London, personally believes that the enigmatic broadcast, nicknamed 'The Buzzer,' has likely been kept active as a fail-safe in case of nuclear war.

Broadcast at the 4625kHz shortwave radio frequency, the Buzzer has led some physicists to speculate that its signal is being used to monitor Earth's ionosphere.

But Professor Stupples — whose expertise is in orbital or otherwise space-based reconnaissance platforms, surveillance, and navigation systems — acknowledges that both incredible and mundane explanations are all still on the table.

'They may be just reserving the channel for air defense or some form of defense,' Stupples told Popular Mechanics this week.

'If they don't actually use it, someone will poach it,' according to Stupples. 'They are keeping the channel available by broadcasting and saying, "this is ours."'

In 2010, the source point of the UVB-76 broadcast shifted, surrounded by odd events and new quirks to its seemingly random tones, voices and information - which it has broadcast continuously since the 1970s

Amateur ham radio interest and unclassified scientific interest in 'The Buzzer,' officially known by its original call sign 'UVB-76,' first spiked in 1982.

Back then, the station was known to broadcast only a coded and baffling series of beeps, but by 1992 the broadcasts got stranger: a series of buzzing noises, 25 times every minute, for less than a second each, and occasionally an ominous foghorn.

During the nineties, UVB-76's buzzing would also become sporadically interrupted by anonymous male and female voices, who would read lists of seemingly random names, words, or numbers. 

The tones of the noises the station broadcast would vary as well, potentially with secret information packed inside those tonal shifts.

This diversity of odd broadcasts is what caught Professor Stupples's and other researchers' attention, because that variety is out of character for a simple 'emergency placeholder' signal.

According to the surveillance engineering expert, a government or military institution that simply wants to keep control of a certain radio frequency will typically just broadcast a single basic test pattern, over and over again.

Not only does the UVB-76 'Buzzer' broadcast more complex and confusing signals instead — it does so powerfully, with over many thousands of watts of energy transferred, based on Professor Stupples's measurements, and in all directions.

'I have put it through my signal spectrum analyzers,' Stupples said, 'and I can't pick any intelligence out at all.'

A Russian student based in Canada, Egor Esveev, tracked down the mystery broadcast to a seemingly abandoned Russian base near Pskov, on the border with Estonia. Esveev told MailOnline.com in 2014 that he found the abandoned location very eerie

Freelance radio monitor Ary Boender from Holland, who runs the website Numbers Oddities, has heard and entertained many theories about the signal over the years. 

'Some say that it is an old Soviet Dead Man's Switch that triggers a nuclear attack on the west when it stops buzzing,' she explained.

'Others say that it is a homing beacon for UFOs,' Boender continued, 'or a mind control device with which the Russians can program your mind.'  

'In the past it was said that it was a remote control station belonging to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,' she recalls.

Jochen Schäfer, who served for many years as head of a citizen's group in Germany that spied on professional spies, once maintained that the Buzzer is a numbers station: a radio broadcast that allows agents in the field to transmit coded messages.

'It's no typical numbers station, but it is one,' Schäfer insisted to Wired in 2011.

To this day, according to Stupples, all these theories, even the most outlandish ones, could still prove to be true. 

'It is always entertaining, isn't it?' Stupples told Popular Mechanics. 'And you never know, one of those crank views may be right, and then we all eat humble pie.'

But the mystery of UVB-76 got deeper in 2010, when it disappeared from its first broadcasting location, which had been tracked down to a Russian army base near the town of Povarovo, 19 miles outside Moscow. 

Most of the buildings, some half underground, were destroyed or abandoned according to Mr Evseev, while cables in some areas had been visibly torn from the ground 

'We found tons of rubbish documents,' Evseev added. 'One that we found was interestingly enough about ceasing operations of the base' 

The signal ceased broadcasting for a roughly 24 hours.

When it returned, odd pauses began appearing in the broadcast, and on August 25, 2010 amateur listeners eavesdropping on the station heard something they described as people shuffling around a room. 

Some of these odd new transmissions resembled Morse code. 

Then, one day, the station started blaring out snippets of composer Tchaikovsky's ballet 'Swan Lake,' and the call sign changed from 'UVB-76' to 'MDZhB,' spoken by a mystery figure saying 'Mikhail Dumitri Zhengya Boris.'

The station also once broadcast a time signal, with a one-minute long two-tune buzzer sounding at the top of every hour. This was disabled in June 2010, and no time signal has taken its place.

Interestingly, codes have also been repeated over months or years, for reasons unknown. On 26 January 2011 the operator read out 'ILOTICIN 36 19 69 46.' This was repeated almost four months later, on 11 May 2011.

Russian student Egor Esveev, 20, who originally comes from Moscow but now studies in Ottawa, told MailOnline in 2014 that he managed to track down the origin of the signal after it moved from Povarovo.

Esveev said he found it near Pskov, on the border with Estonia, which he explored and photographed himself.

'Like any abandoned building or area it was very creepy,' he told MailOnline in 2014.

'Strange people and very strange scenery.'

Esveev said he encountered 'a mid-40s woman' who was pushing 'a stroller.' 

'At first I thought that she is a resident of the town out for a walk but as she walked past I saw that her stroller was empty,' he said.

'Who goes to an abandoned military base with an empty stroller for a walk?'

He said the station was set up like a 'typical Russian military base' with two different perimeters.

Most of the buildings, some half underground, were destroyed or abandoned according to Mr Evseev, while cables in some areas had been visibly torn from the ground.

'We found tons of rubbish documents,' he added. 'One that we found was interestingly enough about ceasing operations of the base.'

Esveev said thinks that the station may be used for some form of internal communication that, 'while secret, isn't sensitive enough for them to care about masking or keeping it secret.'

But no matter how hard people try to investigate the mystery of Russia's 4625kHz signal, according to Professor Stupples, the UK-based electronic and radio engineering expert, any definitive conclusions will likely stay just out of reach without some official confirmation. 

'I think to find the whole truth—and nothing but the truth—I think it would have to come from the Russian Federation themselves,' Stupples said.

• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13374559/US-Navy-Thunderbirds-style-Manta-Ray-drone-sub.html

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

25-05-2024 om 18:43 geschreven door peter  

North Carolina man shares snaps of bizarre furry 'UFO' that landed in his garden - and believes it may have come from space

• Justin Clontz was doing grounds maintenance when he stumbled upon the 'UFO'
• The bizarre object was massive and covered in carbon fiber and some kind of fur
• READ MORE: Nine never-before-seen videos of craft flying over the U.S.

By MARTHA WILLIAMS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A shocked North Carolina man revealed the ginormous and bizarre UFO object he stumbled upon in the mountains. 

Justin Clontz was working on grounds maintenance at Glamping Collective, a luxury campsite in Haywood County, when he made a bewildering discovery.   

Clontz and his coworker were on a remote trail in Canton when they spotted a giant foreign-looking object

He said he was 'Just shocked as to what it was,' adding 'It's once in a lifetime you know, it don't happen every day.' 

The UFO-like object was covered in burnt carbon fiber and heavy-duty metal plates that were held together by thick bolts. It appeared to be covered in some kind of weird fur. 

The UFO-like object was covered in burnt carbon fiber and heavy-duty metal plates that were held together by thick bolts. It appeared to be covered in some kind of weird fur

Clontz had to tow the object out of the area because it was so massive and heavy

Clontz had to tow the object out of the area because it was so massive and heavy. 

'I just tied a rope to it and drug it out with a lawn mower. It's a one in a million chance that it lands, especially if it landed somewhere off the trail in the woods you'd have never found it but it just happened to land on the trail,' Clontz explained to WLOS.  

He said that the 'UFO' had landed perfectly in the middle of the trail - through an opening, and said that none of the trees or leaves looked like they had caught fire.

Nobody had even heard the object land, which is surprising because of its size and weight. 

Clontz said this wasn't surprising, 'Once you get so far on that trail you don't really hear nothing in the woods.'

The owner of Glamping Collective plans to reach out to aerospace experts to identify the object and its origin.

Justin Clontz (pictured) was working on grounds maintenance at Glamping Collective, a luxury campsite in Haywood County, when he made a bewildering discovery

The owner of Glamping Collective (pictured here) where the 'UFO' was found plans to reach out to aerospace experts to identify the object and its origin

UFO sightings across America have been rampant, with nine never-before-seen videos of crafts flying over the country being recently released by researchers.  

The videos were uploaded to Enigma Labs, which shows observations in California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada.

While shot in different locations, witnesses described the UFO as appearing out of nowhere without a sound and disappearing into thin air.

Enigma Lab's UAP advisor Alejandro Rojas said that all the images appeared to be the same, but suggested it could have been a rocket - 'but there were no rockets scheduled at that time.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

25-05-2024 om 18:30 geschreven door peter  

De eerste betaalbare “vriendelijke robot” ter wereld onthuld: hij kan rennen, noten kraken en nog veel meer

Door Janine

Unitree G1, de "kind"-robot, gepresenteerd

Unitree Robotics/Youtube screenshot

Mensachtige robots strijden om te zien wie van hen de meest indrukwekkende prestaties kan leveren. De grens van deze machines breidt zich steeds verder uit: robots kunnen rennen, werken, koken, dansen en nog veel meer. De simulatie van menselijke activiteiten wordt steeds nauwkeuriger en verrassender, hoewel de uitdagingen in deze innovatieve sector nog steeds talrijk zijn.

Nadat we de "arbeidersrobot" tijdens de live demonstratie na twintig opeenvolgende uren werk op de grond hebben zien instorten, hebben het nu over het nieuwe "wezen" van het Chinese bedrijf Unitree Robotics, dat de Unitree G1-robot presenteerde via een indrukwekkende video. De wetenschappelijke gemeenschap was verbaasd over deze robot en zijn mogelijkheden: G1 is zo groot als een kind en is uitgerust met kunstmatige intelligentie, maar de functies ervan zijn ongelooflijk geavanceerd.

• https://youtu.be/RQy-0IGX7GA

De ongelooflijke capaciteiten van de G1-robot

Unitree Robotics/Youtube screenshot

G1 kan in feite geraakt worden zonder op de grond te vallen: hij stapt gewoon een stukje naar achteren en toont uitzonderlijke weerstand en evenwicht. Bovendien kan hij worden opgevouwen om "compact" te worden en gemakkelijk te worden verplaatst. Zijn meest merkwaardige gave is echter dat hij veel handelingen met zijn handen kan uitvoeren, zoals het kraken van noten en het maken van een tosti.

In de video is te zien hoe G1 op de grond ligt en dan met grote behendigheid helemaal zelfstandig overeind komt. Hij lijkt wel een slangenmens, zo flexibel is hij in het aannemen van onnatuurlijke houdingen. Eenmaal rechtop, wordt hij gefilmd terwijl hij zonder aarzelen naar de muur loopt, zich dan omdraait, één arm opheft en naar de camera zwaait. Op dat punt begint hij te rennen - hij kan een snelheid van 7,2 km/u bereiken - om nog een van zijn vaardigheden te tonen, totdat hij laat zien dat hij tegen een stootje kan. Meteen daarna neemt hij een pauze, gaat op de bank liggen en “krult zich op” zodat hij opgepakt kan worden.

Daarna laat G1 zien wat hij in de keuken kan: hij heeft geen gereedschap nodig om de noten te kraken die hij uit een kom haalt, hij gebruikt gewoon één hand, waarmee hij zelfs een frisdrank kan openen. Het filmpje eindigt met de robot die de intentie heeft om met een hamer op zijn vingers te slaan: ze lijken onverwoestbaar en kunnen voorwerpen tot een maximumgewicht van 2 kg hanteren.

De prijs van de G1-robot is $16.000

Unitree Robotics/Youtube screenshot

Het publiek was echter vooral onder de indruk van de prijs: Unitree G1, die werd onthuld in Yokohama, in Japan, tijdens de ICRA, de conferentie over robotica van de IEEE, kost slechts 16.000 dollar. Hij is 127 cm hoog, 45 cm breed en 20 cm dik. Ingeklapt worden de afmetingen 69x45x30 cm en de lithiumbatterij zorgt voor een autonomie van twee uur.

Unitree heeft al mensachtige robots ontwikkeld en debuteerde op dit gebied met de H1-robot op mensenmaat, die 150.000 dollar kost. Dit tweede product is echter veel goedkoper, ondanks zijn ongelooflijke capaciteiten. Dankzij de Intel RealSense D435 dieptecamera en een 3D LiDAR kan hij zijn omgeving herkennen, waarin hij behendig beweegt dankzij gewrichten in de knieën, middel en heupen. Het is uiteindelijk de “eerste mensachtige die je kunt kopen voor de prijs van een goedkope cobot”, zoals professor Bruno Siciliano, een van de toonaangevende onderzoekers op het gebied van robotica, zei. De cobot is een collaboratieve robot, bedoeld voor mens-machine interactie in nauw contact.

Unitree Robotics/Youtube

• https://youtu.be/VAtoqAQ2aEg

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

25-05-2024 om 17:41 geschreven door peter  

Een oude Maya-techniek zou de groei van planten op Mars kunnen bevorderen, zo beweert een onderzoek

 Door Janine

Vroeg of laat zullen mensen naar Mars gaan. Misschien zal de missie niet in de nabije toekomst plaatsvinden, maar het staat vast dat het koloniseren van de rode planeet een van de doelstellingen van ruimtevaartorganisaties is. De vraag is: wat zullen toekomstige kolonisten eten? Leveringen vanaf de aarde zijn allesbehalve duurzaam, en dus blijft er maar één optie over: voedsel direct op Mars verbouwen, met enige hulp van oude Maya-praktijken.

De Maya's en de landbouw op Mars

PLOS ONE/Gonçalves et al./2024

De voedselvoorziening en de landbouw op Mars zijn verre van een ondergeschikt probleem, maar uiterst belangrijke kwesties. Met name een onderzoek van Wageningen University & Research in Nederland heeft mogelijk de eerste stappen gezet om het probleem op te lossen. De onderzoekers hebben in feite een moderne versie van een oude Maya-techniek overgenomen, genaamd intercropping of tussenteelt, en zijn begonnen met het telen van tomaten, erwten en wortels in dezelfde potten.

De resultaten, gepubliceerd in PLOS ONE, waren verrassend. Tomaten geteeld door middel van tussenteelt verdubbelden hun productie vergeleken met individueel geteelde tomaten, met grotere vruchten en in minder tijd. Hetzelfde gebeurde niet met erwten, die een onveranderde opbrengst behielden, en wortelen, die daarentegen een lagere opbrengst vertoonden. Terwijl aan de ene kant intercropping veelbelovende resultaten oplevert, is het aan de andere kant essentieel om zorgvuldig gewassen, grond en additieven te kiezen.

Verbouwen op Marsgrond: is dat mogelijk?

PLOS ONE/Gonçalves et al./2024

Bij het experiment van de onderzoekers van de Nederlandse universiteit waren in deze eerste fase drie soorten gewassen betrokken. Zoals we al zeiden, zijn de grondsoort en eventuele toevoegingen even belangrijk. Om de bodem van Mars te simuleren, ontwikkelden wetenschappers een bodem die bestaat uit regoliet, zonder organisch materiaal, waaraan ze vervolgens bacteriën en voedingsstoffen toevoegden. Een proces dat sterk lijkt op het proces dat toekomstige kolonisten zouden kunnen gebruiken om gewassen op Mars te verbouwen.

Als aanvoer vanaf de aarde moet worden uitgesloten vanwege de kosten en tijd die daarvoor nodig is, lijkt teelt op de rode planeet de enige optie. En intercropping, oftewel het gebruik van planten met complementaire eigenschappen, zou echt een levensvatbare toekomst kunnen vertegenwoordigen. Evenals een manier om het gebruik van water en voedingsstoffen te optimaliseren.

De nieuwe landbouw op Mars en de kunst van het kiezen van de juiste planten

PLOSE ONE/Gonçalves et al./2024 / 中国新闻网/Wikimedia Commons - CC BY 3.0 DEED

Uit de resultaten van hun experiment ontdekten de onderzoekers dat de tomatenplanten een concreet voordeel haalden uit de nabijheid van erwten. Deze laatste kunnen namelijk zeer efficiënt stikstof uit de lucht opnemen en omzetten in voedingsstoffen. Tegelijkertijd profiteerden de wortels niet alleen niet van de nabijheid van de erwten, maar werden ze er ook door geschaad, waarschijnlijk als gevolg van de concurrentie om licht. En we weten dat zonlicht op Mars niet in grote hoeveelheden beschikbaar is: ook in dit geval zal het nodig zijn om na te denken over duurzame alternatieven voor een menselijke kolonie.

Het succes van toekomstige missies naar de rode planeet hangt inderdaad ook af van het vermogen van de kolonisten om zelfvoorzienend te zijn. En deze capaciteit hangt op zijn beurt af van duurzame landbouw op Marsgrond, dat wil zeggen van de tussenteelt van de oude Maya’s. Naast het kiezen van de juiste gewassen om het project te starten, rest er vandaag nog maar één twijfel: niemand heeft de tomaten, erwten en wortelen geproefd. Wie weet hoe ze zullen smaken.

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

25-05-2024 om 17:19 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-05-2024 om 17:06 geschreven door peter  

The tests were multipurpose, making sure that communications protocols with mission control were effective, putting technological devices that will used by moonwalkers through their paces, and doing dry runs of science-related activities, such as gathering geology samples.

The technology tested included an augmented reality visor that could provide navigational information to astronauts, helping them stay oriented and relocate the lunar lander in an emergency.
The test also simulated the communications procedures, allowing both astronauts and ground-based- teams to work together remotely to retrieve the most valuable geological samples and problem-solve in real-time.

“During Artemis III, the astronauts will be our science operators on the lunar surface with an entire science team supporting them from here on Earth,” said Cherie Achilles, science officer for the test at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This simulation gives us an opportunity to practice conducting geology from afar in real-time.”

All told the astronauts performed four ‘moonwalks’ and six technology demonstrations over the course of the week. These activities represent the fifth in a series of field tests, and are the “highest fidelity Artemis moonwalk mission simulation to date,” according to a NASA press release.

Artemis III is targeting the lunar south pole, which is a new environment for humans, far removed from the landing sites of the Apollo mission of 1969-72. The permanently shadowed craters of the south pole are expected to hold water ice, a valuable resource in space not just as a refreshing drink, but also as a source of the primary ingredients (hydrogen and oxygen) needed to make rocket fuel.

Rubins and Douglas’s space suits were open-sleeved for the Arizona desert, but prototypes of the actual spacesuits, currently under development by Axiom Space, are also undergoing testing. Future tests will have them put through their paces underwater at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, Texas.

Learn More:

• “NASA Tests Technology, Practices Artemis Moonwalks in Arizona Desert.” NASA.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-05-2024 om 16:50 geschreven door peter  

Toxic Perchlorate on Mars Could Make Life More Interesting

The search for life in the Universe has fascinated humans for centuries. Mars has of course been high on the list of potential habitats for alien existence but since the numerous spacecraft images that have come back showing a barren landscape, it seems Mars may not be so habitable after all. That is, until recently. The Martian regolith, the top layer of dust upon the surface has been found to be full of perchlorate salts.  These chemicals are poisonous to most life on Earth but a new study suggests that some extremophile protein enzymes and RNA may just be able to survive!

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the last of the major planets to have a solid surface. To the casual observer, Mars has a red hue to it which is the result of an iron-oxide rich surface. You might known iron-oxide by its more familiar name of rust. It is about half the size of Earth but does have some familiar surface features. Volcanoes pepper the surface but these are, as far as we know, extinct and caps of ice adorn the polar regions. 

Early observers, with poor quality telescopes believed Mars was criss-crossed with a great global irrigation system that carried melt water from the polar caps to the drier equatorial regions. We have since learned that these were just optical illusions and that the polar caps were largely made of carbon dioxide ice. As time progressed, the expectations of finding alien life on Mars slowly dwindled away. It has been kept alive though with hints of surface liquid water making the odd appearance and chemicals found in Martian meteorites that suggest biological processes. There is no doubt that the debate of life on Mars has still not reached a conclusion.

As we continue to search for evidence of life we are in parallel expanding our knowledge of life on Earth. In our search, whichever way we turn, under whichever rock we look or even indeed whichever corner of the world we search we can find signs of life. No matter how extreme the environment, life seems to find a way and as we learn more about the conditions where life can exist here, it helps in our search for alien life too. 

Among the many missions to Mars, there is mounting evidence for perchlorate salts in the Martian surface. These salts are composed of oxygen and chlorine atoms and are usually considered to be harmful to life on Earth. They can combine with water in the atmosphere to produce solutions of brine (salty water). The presence of water in many different states on Mars has informed NASA’s strategy for the search for life there to ‘follow the water’. The concept is simple, look for water and you may find life! 

A team of researchers at the College of Biological Sciences have recently published their research in the Nature Communication journal. They studied how the geochemical environment on Mars could shape and support past, or even present life on the red planet! Led by Assistant Professor Aaron Engelhart, the team studied two types of RNA (ribonucleic acid) and enzymes that are key components to life on Earth. To their surprise they found that, while the RNA functioned well in the perchlorate brine, the enzymes were less suited. They did find though that proteins that have evolved to survive extreme environments on Earth were well suited to the brine solution. 

It is a tantalising twist to the hunt for life. Where we started to lose hope for finding signs of past or present life on Mars due to the hospitable environment, the results showed that RNA is actually well suited to salty properties of the brine. With tolerance to such environmental factors the research breathes tantalising new angles into the search for life. 

Source : 

• Exploring extremes in the search for life on Mars

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-05-2024 om 16:40 geschreven door peter  

Unveiling Pre-Roswell Mysteries: 5 UFO Crashes That Fascinate and Intrigue

The fascination with unidentified flying objects has captivated the public imagination for decades, often centered around the infamous Roswell incident of 1947. However, there were several intriguing UFO crash stories that predate Roswell, shrouded in mystery and controversy. Here are five notable UFO crashes that occurred before the Roswell event.

1. Trinity Nuclear Site UFO Crash (1945)

In December 2022, President Joe Biden approved a significant addition to the US military budget, which included a mandate to systematically investigate UFO incidents. This new initiative expanded its scope to include encounters dating back to 1945, prompted by an often-overlooked incident near the Trinity site in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was tested in July 1945.

On August 16, 1945, two young boys, Jose Padilla and Reme Bacca, discovered a mysterious crash site while searching for a lost cow near San Antonio, New Mexico. They encountered a large, round metal object with a jagged gash, through which they saw small, rapidly moving figures. The metal fragments from the craft reportedly had an unusual ability to return to their original shape when bent.

• https://youtu.be/l0CoM2p--Dw

Years later, in 2003, after successful careers in law enforcement and politics, Jose and Reme shared their story with Jacques Vallee, a former federal government UFO investigator. They described the beings inside the craft as about four feet tall, with spindly limbs and heads resembling praying mantises. Despite the military’s official claim that the object was a weather balloon, interest in this incident was rekindled by its inclusion in the recent military spending bill.

2. Mussolini’s UFO Crash (Italy, 1933)

In 1933, a UFO reportedly crashed in Italy, and the incident was allegedly covered up by the Vatican and later transferred to the US at the end of World War II. Italian ufologist Roberto Pinotti and US Air Force veteran David Grusch claimed that Italian dictator Mussolini had seized the spacecraft and kept it hidden until the Allies captured Rome.

The evidence includes purportedly classified documents and telegrams from Mussolini’s era, demanding absolute silence about the crash and threatening severe penalties for any leaks. The UFO, described as a bell-shaped object, was allegedly stored until 1944, with all documentation hidden in the Vatican archives. While no physical evidence has been found, and the authenticity of the documents remains in question, the story continues to intrigue researchers.

3. Aurora, Texas (1897)

In April 1897, residents of Aurora, Texas, reported seeing an airship crash into a windmill on the property of Judge J.S. Proctor. The pilot, described as “not of this world,” died in the crash and was buried in the local cemetery. The story, first reported by the Dallas Morning News, claimed the pilot had documents written in undecipherable symbols, and debris from the crash, including metal fragments, was dumped into a nearby well.

Skeptics argue that the incident may have been a hoax aimed at boosting the town’s declining economy. However, the legend endures, with some modern researchers pointing to unusual findings and high illness rates linked to the well as potential evidence of the crash.

• https://youtu.be/AfiX9I5EMJk

4. Cape Girardeau UFO (1941)

In 1941, Reverend William Huffman was called to deliver last rites at a crash site near Cape Girardeau, Missouri. According to his granddaughter, Charlotte Mann, Huffman discovered a disc-shaped craft with three non-human bodies. The beings, described as short with large bulging eyes, were all deceased by the time Huffman arrived.

The military allegedly cordoned off the area, confiscated the debris, and imposed silence on witnesses. Although no contemporary records exist, and no photograph purportedly taken at the scene has been found, the story has been passed down through generations, adding to the lore of pre-Roswell UFO encounters.

• https://youtu.be/AqiVt1QNn1U

5. Dundy County UFO (1884)

In June 1884, cowboys in Dundy County, Nebraska, reported seeing a fiery object crash near the settlement of Max. The Nebraska State Journal detailed the incident, describing fragments of machinery and a cylindrical object about 50 to 60 feet long. A follow-up party, including a local government inspector, reported that the wreckage dissolved in a rainstorm, leaving behind jelly-like pools.

While the Journal’s managing editor later claimed the story was a fabrication, some researchers believe there might be a kernel of truth. The discovery of strange green rocks near the alleged crash site in 2013 has further fueled speculation, though no concrete evidence has been found.

By Charles O'Rear, 1941-, Photographer (NARA record: 3403717) (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

VIDEO:

• 5 Mysterious UFO Crashes Before Roswell

• https://youtu.be/CLE3xxjUsfI

These five mysterious UFO crash stories, each with its own unique details and controversies, offer a fascinating glimpse into the early reports of unidentified aerial phenomena. Whether true, embellished, or fabricated, these accounts continue to spark curiosity and debate among UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike, adding rich chapters to the history of UFO lore.

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

25-05-2024 om 13:22 geschreven door peter  

• Luminous 'rods' have been caught on camera over South American countries
• Videos filmed by residents in Argentina, Chile and Brazil show the UFOs 
• READ MORE: The UFO Files: Nine never-before-seen videos of craft flying 

By JOSH BOSWELL FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Strange luminous 'rods' have been caught on camera in the skies over several South American countries in the past month, DailyMail.com can reveal.

The long white and blue objects appeared to slowly float across the sky in videos filmed by residents of Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

One stunning example was filmed on April 29 by UFO researcher and Petrobras engineer Rony Vernet on cameras he set up to monitor the southeastern night sky near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

An apparent cylindrical object glides into the frame at 5.01am, heading northeast and gradually moving out of sight over about 80 seconds.

Videos filmed by residents in Argentina, Chile and Brazil show UFOs. This particular video was taken in Chile on May 6

On May 6 a witness in Argentina filming with their phone captured a similar-looking white object moving slowly through the sky above their house.

The same day, at 7.14pm in Vina del Mar, Chile, a third witness videoed another incident, though this time the cylinder appeared blue.

Another video obtained by Vernet came from a Chilean witness in Luján de Cuyo the same evening.

On May 8, residents of a Brazilian town near the border with Uruguay filmed one that appeared to change color from white to blue and yellow.

The same day as the Chile sighting, a witness in Argentina filming with their phone captured a similar-looking white object moving slowly through the sky above their house

One stunning video was filmed in Brazil. Often a string of lights about as bright as stars, moving slowly across the sky, will be mistaken for a true UFO when it is in fact Starlink

A stunning photograph taken by a Fedex pilot of a meteor burning up in the atmosphere, with a white blob below it resembling the objects captured by Vernet and the other witnesses he gathered

A close up of the white blob resembling the objects captured by Vernet and other witnesses

Vernet shared videos he collected from four witnesses in Brazil on May 9, showing similar objects.

But experts are baffled as to whether the objects are indeed UFOs or the satellite constellation Starlink. 

Often a string of lights about as bright as stars, moving slowly across the sky, will be mistaken for a true UFO when it is in fact Starlink, the network of satellites launched by Elon Musk's company SpaceX.

But usually those lights will appear as distinct dots in a line, rather than a solid cylinder, and will not appear to change color.

Chris Spitzer, an expert in UFO analysis, told DailyMail.com that although Starlink generally appears as a trail of distinct dots in the sky once it is fully deployed, during its ascent it can appear as a solid line due to the satellites being grouped close together.

'Starlink sats may look like oblong objects right after deployment when they reach Earth orbit because they are stacked together,' he said.

Spitzer shared a likely example: a stunning photograph taken by a Fedex pilot of a meteor burning up in the atmosphere, with a white blob below it resembling the objects captured by Vernet and the other witnesses he gathered.

The white, bright nature of the objects could be just reflected sunlight, Spitzer explained.

'Starlink satellites also generate UFO sightings right after they are deployed, when they reflect sunlight. They are released in one batch with two clamps parallel to each other where they are stacked together. This could explain some recent sightings,' he said.

On May 6, the same day as the Argentina and Chile sightings, a Starlink satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6.14pm local time.

On May 6, the same day as the Argentina and Chile sightings, a Starlink satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6.14pm local time

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-05-2024 om 23:37 geschreven door peter  

Potentially Habitable Earth-Sized Exoplanet Discovered around Gliese 12

Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and many other telescopes, two teams of astronomers have discovered a temperate, Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a cool red dwarf called Gliese 12. Named Gliese 12b, the planet may have an Earth-like atmosphere, one more akin to Venus, no atmosphere, or perhaps a different kind of atmosphere not found in our Solar System.

An artist’s impression of Gliese 12b and its host star. µImage credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, Caltech-IPAC.

Gliese 12 is a M3-type dwarf star located 12.2 parsecs (40 light-years) away in the constellation of Pisces.

Otherwise known as TOI-6251 or GJ 12, this star is only about 27% of the Sun’s size, with about 60% of the Sun’s surface temperature.

The newly-discovered planet, Gliese 12b, is Earth’s size or slightly smaller — comparable to Venus.

“We’ve found the nearest, transiting, temperate, Earth-size world located to date,” said Dr. Masayuki Kuzuhara, an astronomer at the Astrobiology Center in Tokyo and lead author of a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“Although we don’t yet know whether it possesses an atmosphere, we’ve been thinking of it as an exo-Venus, with similar size and energy received from its star as our planetary neighbor in the Solar System.”

“Gliese 12b represents one of the best targets to study whether Earth-size planets orbiting cool stars can retain their atmospheres, a crucial step to advance our understanding of habitability on planets across our Galaxy,” added Shishir Dholakia, a doctoral student at the University of Southern Queensland and lead author of a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Gliese 12b has an orbital period of 12.76 days and an equilibrium temperature of around 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit). For comparison, Earth has an average surface temperature of 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit).

The alien world receives 1.6 times more energy from its star as Earth does from the Sun and about 85% of what Venus experiences.

“Atmospheres trap heat and — depending on the type — can change the actual surface temperature substantially,” Dholakia said.

“We are quoting the planet’s equilibrium temperature, which is the temperature the planet would be if it had no atmosphere.”

“Much of the scientific value of this planet is to understand what kind of atmosphere it could have.”

“Since Gliese 12b gets in between the amount of light as Earth and Venus get from the Sun, it will be valuable for bridging the gap between these two planets in our Solar System.”

The astronomers suggest that studying Gliese 12b may help unlock some aspects of our own Solar System’s evolution.

“It is thought that Earth’s and Venus’ first atmospheres were stripped away and then replenished by volcanic outgassing and bombardments from residual material in the Solar System,” said Larissa Palethorpe, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh and University College London.

“The Earth is habitable, but Venus is not due to its complete loss of water.”

“Because Gliese 12b is between Earth and Venus in temperature, its atmosphere could teach us a lot about the habitability pathways planets take as they develop.”

One important factor in retaining an atmosphere is the storminess of its star. Red dwarfs tend to be magnetically active, resulting in frequent, powerful X-ray flares.

However, analyses by both teams conclude that Gliese 12 shows no signs of extreme behavior.

During a transit, the host star’s light passes through any atmosphere. Different gas molecules absorb different colors, so the transit provides a set of chemical fingerprints that can be detected by telescopes like Webb.

“We know of only a handful of temperate planets similar to Earth that are both close enough to us and meet other criteria needed for this kind of study, called transmission spectroscopy, using current facilities,” said Dr. Michael McElwain, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“To better understand the diversity of atmospheres and evolutionary outcomes for these planets, we need more examples like Gliese 12b.”

• Masayuki Kuzuhara et al. 2024. Gliese 12b: A Temperate Earth-sized Planet at 12 pc Ideal for Atmospheric Transmission Spectroscopy. ApJL 967, L21; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ad3642
• Shishir Dholakia et al. 2024. Gliese 12b, a temperate Earth-sized planet at 12 parsecs discovered with TESS and CHEOPS. MNRAS 531 (1): 1276-1293; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stae1152

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

24-05-2024 om 18:37 geschreven door peter  

There have always been whistleblowers on the UFO/UAP/Alien phenomenon. These UFO whistleblowers assert that they can lift the veil of secrecy, revealing what is truly happening. The next whistleblower is Colonel Karl Nell, former leader of the UAP Task Force, who shares his insights on non-human intelligence (NHI) and UAPs. 

With a distinguished 30-year military career in aerospace and intelligence, Nell provides authoritative perspectives on these phenomena. 

He discusses his roles at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Bell Labs, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, and asserts with zero doubt that NHI exists and interacts with humanity. 

Nell also outlines six reasons for the government's reluctance to disclose UAP information and argues for the moral imperative of transparency. 

Below a compelling interview with Colonel Karl Nell, recorded on May 21, 2024.

 

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

24-05-2024 om 18:02 geschreven door peter  

Dit zijn de vijf nieuwste beelden van de Euclid-telescoop en onderzoekers staan versteld: ‘het overtreft al onze verwachtingen’

Hoewel men er al vanuit ging dat Euclid in staat zou zijn om de geheimen van het heelal te ontrafelen, laat de nieuwe data zien dat daar inderdaad geen twijfel meer over bestaat.

Vorig jaar juni werd ie gelanceerd: de spiksplinternieuwe telescoop Euclid. ESA’s Euclid-missie heeft als doel de mysteries van donkere materie en donkere energie te ontsluiten en te onthullen hoe en waarom het universum er vandaag uitziet zoals het doet. En de onlangs vrijgegeven, nooit eerder geziene afbeeldingen van het universum laten nu onderzoekers versteld staan. Ze overtreffen volgens de astronomen die met de data werken alle verwachtingen en laten zien dat Euclid in staat is om de geheimen van het heelal te ontrafelen.

Meer over de Euclid-missie
ESA’s Euclid-missie zal pogen de aard van donkere materie en donkere energie te ontraadselen. Om dat te doen, zal de sonde een 3D-kaart van het heelal maken (met tijd als derde dimensie) door miljarden sterrenstelsels tot 10 miljard lichtjaar afstand te observeren, verspreid over meer dan een derde van de hemel. Door de positie en beweging van sterrenstelsels in de loop van het grootste deel van de geschiedenis van het heelal in kaart brengen, kunnen wetenschappers namelijk zien hoe de vorm van het universum in de loop van de tijd is veranderd. Hierdoor zal Euclid hopelijk kunnen onthullen hoe het heelal is uitgedijd en hoe het zich heeft gevormd in de kosmische geschiedenis. Kortom, Euclid zal de verborgen web-achtige structuren van de kosmos traceren, miljarden sterrenstelsels in kaart brengen in een gebied van meer dan een derde van de hemel, onderzoeken hoe ons heelal is gevormd en geëvolueerd in de loop van de kosmische geschiedenis, en de meest mysterieuze van de fundamentele componenten bestuderen: donkere energie en donkere materie.

Hieronder zijn de nieuwe beelden te bewonderen. Ze maken deel uit van de Early Release Observations van Euclid, samen met de eerste wetenschappelijke gegevens van de missie, die vandaag zijn vrijgegeven. Bovendien zullen er binnenkort tien wetenschappelijke artikelen verschijnen. Deze eerste wetenschappelijke gegevens zijn minder dan een jaar na de lancering van de ruimtetelescoop gepubliceerd, en ongeveer zes maanden nadat Euclid zijn eerste fullcolour beelden van het heelal naar de aarde stuurde.

Abell 2390

Messier 78

NGC 6744

Abell 2764 (en heldere ster)

Dorado-groep

17 astronomische objecten
De volledige reeks vroege waarnemingen van Euclid was gericht op 17 verschillende astronomische objecten, variërend van nabije gas- en stofwolken tot verre clusters van sterrenstelsels. Deze waarnemingen vormen een voorbereiding op Euclids hoofddoel: het onthullen van de geheimen van de donkere kosmos en begrijpen waarom het heelal eruitziet zoals het er nu uitziet.

Afbeelding toont: Opgenomen door de Euclid-satelliet, toont de Perseus-cluster van sterrenstelsels badend in een zacht, zachtblauw licht afkomstig van weessterren. Deze weessterren zijn verspreid over de sterrenhoop en strekken zich uit tot wel 2 miljoen lichtjaar vanaf het centrum. De clusterstelsels vallen op als lichtgevende elliptische vormen tegen de donkere uitgestrektheid van de ruimte.

Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, beeldverwerking door M. Montes (IAC) en J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Parijs-Saclay)

Eerste datasets
De beelden zijn de eerste datasets die openbaar worden gemaakt. En dat is volgens Valeria Pettorino, ESA’s Euclid Project Scientist, een ‘belangrijke mijlpaal’. “De beelden en bijbehorende wetenschappelijke bevindingen zijn indrukwekkend divers wat betreft de waargenomen objecten en afstanden,” zegt ze. “Ze omvatten een verscheidenheid aan wetenschappelijke toepassingen, en toch vertegenwoordigen ze slechts 24 uur aan waarnemingen.”

Scherp
De beelden die met Euclid zijn gemaakt, zijn minstens vier keer zo scherp als die van aardse telescopen. Ze bestrijken grote delen van de hemel met ongeëvenaarde diepte en reiken ver in het verre heelal, zowel in zichtbaar als infrarood licht. En het zijn zeker niet zomaar kiekjes. Dankzij de nieuwe en unieke waarnemingsmogelijkheden van Euclid onthullen deze beelden nieuwe fysische eigenschappen van het heelal.

Weesplaneten
De eerste bevindingen tonen aan dat Euclid in staat is om vrij zwevende planeten (ook wel weesplaneten genoemd), met een massa van slechts vier keer die van Jupiter, in stervormingsgebieden te ontdekken. Daarnaast kan de telescoop de buitenste regio’s van sterclusters in ongekend detail bestuderen en verschillende sterrenpopulaties in kaart brengen om de evolutie van sterrenstelsels te onderzoeken. Euclid kan ook individuele sterrenhopen in verre groepen en clusters van sterrenstelsels detecteren, nieuwe dwergstelsels identificeren en het licht zien van sterren die van hun moederstelsels zijn weggerukt. In slechts één dag produceerde Euclid een catalogus met meer dan elf miljoen objecten in zichtbaar licht en nog eens vijf miljoen in infrarood licht.

Weessterren
Dankzij Euclid weten we nu dat er miljarden zogenoemde ‘weessterren’ bestaan. Zo blijkt uit de beelden dat er verspreid over de Perseus-cluster meer dan 1,5 biljoen weessterren te vinden zijn. De Perseus-cluster, die zich op een afstand van 240 miljoen lichtjaar van de aarde bevindt, is een van de grootste structuren in het universum, met duizenden sterrenstelsels. In deze kosmische samenstelling heeft de Euclid-telescoop zwak, spookachtig licht vastgelegd – de weessterren – die tussen de sterrenstelsels van de cluster drijven. Omdat sterren normaal gesproken binnen sterrenstelsels ontstaan, leidde de ontdekking van weessterren buiten deze structuren tot intrigerende vragen over hun oorsprong. “We waren verbaasd over ons vermogen om zo diep in de buitenste gebieden van de cluster te kijken en de delicate kleuren van dit licht te onderscheiden,” vertelt projectleider Nina Hatch. “Dit licht kan ons helpen om de donkere materie in kaart te brengen als we begrijpen waar de intracluster-sterren vandaan kwamen. Door hun kleuren, helderheid en opstelling te bestuderen, kwamen we erachter dat ze afkomstig waren van kleine sterrenstelsels.”

Bibliotheek
Astronomen, waaronder hoogleraar Observationele Kosmologie Henk Hoekstra van de Sterrewacht Leiden, verwachten dat de impact van Euclid groot zal zijn. “Een gemiddeld boek heeft 50.000 woorden, net als het aantal melkwegstelsels dat Euclid waarneemt in een opname,” vertelt hij. “Hubble heeft in de afgelopen 30 jaar een boekenkast gelezen, terwijl Euclid dat in een paar dagen doet, en in zes jaar tijd de hele bibliotheek uitleest. Je kunt veel leren van de boeken in een enkele boekenkast, maar in een hele bibliotheek kun je nog veel meer ontdekken.”

Begin
De beelden markeren nog maar het begin. “Euclid zal onze kijk op het universum volledig veranderen,” aldus Christopher Conselice, verbonden aan de Universiteit van Manchester. “De huidige resultaten onthullen al belangrijke nieuwe inzichten over lokale sterrenstelsels, onbekende dwergsterrenstelsels, exoplaneten en enkele van de oudste sterrenstelsels. Dit is slechts het begin van wat nog komen gaat. Binnenkort zal Euclid nieuwe details over donkere energie onthullen en een compleet beeld geven van de vorming van sterrenstelsels door de gehele kosmische geschiedenis.”

We kunnen ons dus opmaken voor meer. “We staan te popelen om met de eerste grote dataset van Euclid, die we in februari 2025 verwachten, aan de slag te gaan,” zegt Koen Kuijken, tevens een hoogleraar aan de Sterrewacht Leiden. “Deze beelden tonen nogmaals dat de data de verwachtingen overstijgen!”

Bronmateriaal

• "Eerste wetenschappelijke beelden Euclid-telescoop overtreffen alle verwachtingen" - Nederlandse Onderzoekschool voor Astronomie (NOVA)
  
• "First pictures from Euclid satellite reveal billions of orphan stars" - University of Nottingham
  "" -
  
• "Scientists reveal first data from Euclid telescope offering snapshot of cosmic history" - University of Manchester
  
• Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselm

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

24-05-2024 om 17:57 geschreven door peter  

Grote opwinding onder astronomen: aardachtige planeet ontdekt met aardachtige temperaturen (en die planeet bevindt zich ook nog eens vrij dichtbij)

Vivian Lammerse

De planeet heeft een geschatte oppervlaktetemperatuur van slechts 42 graden Celsius en bevindt zich op ongeveer dezelfde afstand als het bekende TRAPPIST-1 systeem.

Al jaren speuren astronomen het universum af naar planeten die mogelijk leven kunnen ondersteunen of op zijn minst bewoonbaar zijn, in de hoop werelden te vinden die op de aarde lijken. En een nieuwe ontdekking heeft nu voor grote opwinding gezorgd. Op zo’n 40 lichtjaar afstand zijn onderzoekers namelijk op de veelbelovende planeet Gliese 12 b gestuit. Zou dit de planeet kunnen zijn waar we al zo lang naar op zoek zijn?

Gliese 12 b
De mogelijk bewoonbare planeet Gliese 12 b draait elke 12,8 dagen om zijn moederster. Qua grootte is de exoplaneet vergelijkbaar met Venus, wat betekent dat hij slechts iets kleiner is dan de aarde. Daarnaast heeft deze aardachtige planeet ook nog eens een aardachtige temperatuur. Zo wordt de oppervlaktetemperatuur geschat op 42 graden Celsius. Hiermee is hij iets warmer dan de aarde, maar opvallend koeler dan de meeste van de ongeveer 5.000 tot nu toe ontdekte exoplaneten. De ontdekking van deze ‘exo-Venus’, is vandaag gepubliceerd in de Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Exo-Venus
Onderzoekers kwamen de veelbelovende planeet op het spoor met behulp van planetenjager TESS, die al heel wat exoplaneten aan het licht heeft gebracht. En onderzoekers zijn enthousiast. “We hebben de dichtstbijzijnde, gematigde wereld ter grootte van de aarde tot nu toe ontdekt,” benadrukt onderzoeker Masayuki Kuzuhara. “Hoewel we nog niet weten of Gliese 12 b een atmosfeer heeft, beschouwen we ‘m als een ‘exo-Venus’. Het heeft een vergelijkbare grootte en ontvangt een vergelijkbare hoeveelheid energie van zijn ster als onze buurplaneet in ons eigen zonnestelsel.”

Atmosfeer
Om er echter zeker van te zijn dat de planeet leefbaar is, is het van cruciaal belang om te bepalen of er wel of geen atmosfeer aanwezig is. Het is mogelijk dat de planeet een atmosfeer heeft die vergelijkbaar is met die van de aarde. Deze kan echter ook meer lijken op die van Venus, waar een omvangrijk broeikaseffect ervoor zorgde dat het oppervlak een verzengende 400 graden Celsius bereikte. Een andere mogelijkheid is dat de planeet geen atmosfeer heeft. Of misschien heeft ie wel een soort atmosfeer die we nog niet in ons eigen zonnestelsel hebben gezien. Het is erg belangrijk om hierop een antwoord te krijgen omdat het ons zal vertellen of Gliese 12 b temperaturen kan handhaven die geschikt zijn voor vloeibaar water – en mogelijk leven – op het oppervlak.

Moederster
Om dit te achterhalen, is ook de moederster relevant. De moederster van Gliese 12 b is een koele rode dwergster genaamd Gliese 12, die zich zoals gezegd op bijna 40 lichtjaar afstand van de aarde bevindt, in het sterrenbeeld Vissen. De ster is ongeveer 27 procent zo groot als onze zon en heeft een oppervlaktetemperatuur van ongeveer 60 procent van die van onze zon. Over rode dwergsterren is echter bekend dat het ‘opvliegende’ sterren zijn, die vaak magnetisch actief zijn. Dit resulteert in frequente, krachtige uitbarstingen, waardoor een mogelijk rondom cirkelende planeet van zijn atmosfeer wordt ontdaan. Toch lijkt Gliese 12 b er beter vanaf te komen. Analyses hebben namelijk aangetoond dat Gliese 12 geen tekenen vertoont van dergelijk extreem gedrag. Dit verhoogt de hoop dat de potentiële atmosfeer van Gliese 12 b nog steeds intact is.

Oppervlaktetemperatuur

Daarnaast is de afstand tussen Gliese 12 en de nieuw ontdekte planeet slechts 7 procent van de afstand tussen de aarde en de zon. Hierdoor ontvangt Gliese 12 b 1,6 keer meer energie van zijn ster dan de aarde van de zon, en ongeveer 85 procent van de hoeveelheid die Venus ontvangt. Dit verschil in de hoeveelheid zonnestraling die de planeet ontvangt, is van groot belang omdat het aangeeft dat de oppervlaktetemperatuur sterk wordt beïnvloed door de atmosferische omstandigheden. Voor je beeldvorming: de geschatte oppervlaktetemperatuur van Gliese 12 b is 42 graden Celsius, terwijl de gemiddelde oppervlaktetemperatuur van de aarde 15 graden Celsius bedraagt. “Atmosferen houden warmte vast en kunnen, afhankelijk van hun samenstelling, de werkelijke oppervlaktetemperatuur aanzienlijk beïnvloeden,” legt onderzoeker Shishir Dholakia uit.

Aarde en Venus
Het onderzoek naar Gliese 12 b heeft overigens niet alleen betrekking op de leefbaarheid van deze planeet. Het helpt ons ook om meer te weten te komen over waarom de aarde en Venus, die in veel opzichten erg op elkaar lijken, toch zo’n andere weg zijn ingeslagen. “Omdat Gliese 12 b een vergelijkbare hoeveelheid licht ontvangt als de aarde en Venus van de zon, kan het ons ook helpen om het verschil tussen deze twee planeten in ons eigen zonnestelsel te verklaren en te begrijpen,” aldus Dholakia. Dit kan waardevolle inzichten bieden in de atmosferische processen die de leefbaarheid van planeten beïnvloeden. Terwijl de aarde bewoonbaar is, is Venus dat niet, voornamelijk vanwege het volledige verlies van water. “Gliese 12 b, met een temperatuur tussen die van de aarde en Venus in, kan ons helpen begrijpen hoe planeten bewoonbaar worden, vooral door te kijken naar welke atmosfeer het heeft,” vertelt mede-auteur Larissa Palethorpe.

Onderzoek naar de veelbelovende exo-Venus gaat onverminderd door. Want het idee dat deze planeet mogelijk leefbaar is, prikkelt de verbeelding van menig astronoom. Gliese 12 b is zeker niet de eerste aardachtige exoplaneet die is ontdekt, maar volgens NASA zijn er maar een paar van zulke werelden die de moeite van nader onderzoek waard zijn. De volgende stap is om de krachtige ruimtetelescoop James Webb op Gliese 12 b te richten. Uiteindelijk hopen onderzoekers te achterhalen of deze planeet al dan geen atmosfeer herbergt. “Gliese 12 b vertegenwoordigt een van de beste doelen om te bestuderen of aardachtige planeten die om koele sterren draaien hun atmosferen kunnen behouden,” zegt Dholakia. “Dit is een cruciale stap om ons begrip van de bewoonbaarheid van planeten in ons sterrenstelsel te bevorderen.”

De dichtstbijzijnde aardachtige exoplaneet – en mogelijk de bekendste – is Proxima Centauri b (afgebeeld in een artist's impression), die slechts vier lichtjaar verwijderd is. Omdat het echter geen wereld is die zich verplaatst, moeten we er nog veel over leren, inclusief de vraag of er een atmosfeer is en het potentieel om leven te herbergen.
NASA Visualisatietechnologietoepassingen en -ontwikkeling (VTAD)
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