How much matter is there in the universe? Now we (kind of) know

How do you measure... everyhing?

Dark energy is, for the lack of a better term, not matter. As far as we can tell, the universe is not only expanding, but it’s expanding at an accelerated rate. This dark energy is what seems to be driving this accelerated expansion — we don’t know what it is, we just know that it’s expanding the universe. It’s weird but you’ll have to live with that explanation because, well, we don’t have a better one yet.

Understanding the magnitude of dark energy is actually crucial to our understanding of the Universe. Even if we don’t know exactly what it is, knowing how it affects the universe expansion is essential. So how do you measure something when you’re not even sure what it is?

Turns out, galaxy clusters are a good tool for that. Galaxy cluster (neighborhoods of galaxies). Galaxy clusters are made of matter that has come together under the pull of gravity, and the number of clusters we can observe in a volume of space is dependent on the amount of matter. So if by counting and measuring galaxy clusters we can get a decent idea about the matter in the universe, and everything else is dark energy.

Of course, this is more easily said than done.

“The ‘Goldilocks’ challenge for our team was to measure the number of clusters and then determine which answer was ‘just right’. But it is difficult to measure the mass of any galaxy cluster accurately because most of the matter is dark so we can’t see it with telescopes,” said astronomer Mohamed Abdullah of the University of California, Riverside and the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics in Egypt.

Still, after a close analysis and a comparison with computer simulation, Abdullah and colleagues managed to create what they believe to be the most accurate measurement of matter in the universe. Spoiler alert: it’s… not that much.

“To put that amount of matter in context, if all the matter in the Universe were spread out evenly across space, it would correspond to an average mass density equal to only about six hydrogen atoms per cubic meter,”

“However, since we know 80 percent of matter is actually dark matter, in reality, most of this matter consists not of hydrogen atoms but rather of a type of matter which cosmologists don’t yet understand.”

So in reality, you’d get about one atom of matter per cubic meter — almost nothing. But this is the universe as we know it. The planets and the stars, you and me, we’re just one atom per cubic meter to the universe. As for the rest, we’re just now starting to understand what it is.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

30-09-2020 om 23:23 geschreven door peter  

This could be the first extragalactic planet we’ve ever found

Status report: astronomers may have found a planet outside our galaxy, something that has never been done before.

30-09-2020 om 23:10 geschreven door peter  

A better way to search for traces of life on Mars — and beyond! (op-ed)

By Patrick Gasda 

Meet OrganiCam, an instrument that could detect biological molecules on other worlds.

Catching a ride on a drone, OrganiCam could swoop into lava-tube caves on Mars to search for organic molecules marked by the tell-tale signature of life.

(Image: © Los Alamos National Laboratory))

Patrick Gasda is a staff scientist in the Space Science and Applications group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As a member of the OrganiCam team, he works with team leader Roger Wiens to study the geochemistry and astrobiology of Europa. The concept phase of OrganiCam is being funded by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program. Gasda contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

In the disappointing absence of little green aliens on one of Jupiter's moons or a canal-building civilization on Mars, hunting for life beyond Earth stretches our scientific and technological prowess to the limits. If we do find life out there, it will be tiny, on the molecular scale.

After a successful launch in late July, NASA's Perseverance rover is sailing silently through space on its seven-month journey to Mars, where it will scour Jezero Crater for evidence of habitability and life. In this peaceful interlude before the rover's Red Planet touchdown early next year, we have time to think about future missions seeking life on other planetary bodies across the solar system. 

• Related: 6 most likely places for alien life in the solar system

Those missions will hunt for biological organic molecules, the carbon-based building blocks that make up all living things that we know. That's because, if we eventually do find life — or evidence of past life — on Mars or somewhere else, it's not going to be a little green alien. It's going to be a biomolecule or fossilized bacterial life. 

The search focuses on habitable environments on Mars and beyond. Recent missions to the outer planets have observed evidence of water-vapor plumes from Jupiter's moon Europa, which raises the intriguing possibility of organic molecules on its surface, originating from the ocean below. Spacecraft have detected organic molecules within plumes emanating from Saturn's moon Enceladus. Most recently, NASA's Dawn spacecraft flew within 22 miles (35 kilometers) of the surface of Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, and detected brine and a likely vast, deep reservoir of liquid salt water.  

These are all high-priority places to look.

As one of the likeliest places to find life — and certainly the closest — Mars continues to command our attention. Although the cold, dry land, thin atmosphere, and extreme radiation at the surface are hostile to life, NASA's Curiosity rover, which is now exploring Mars, has found organic molecules. But are they biological? It's hard to tell because any molecules on the surface would have been severely damaged by radiation over millions of years.  

Biological organics might be more widespread in the lava-tube caves on Mars. Sheltered deep in the underground, life might once have thrived — or still does? — in salty brines that seeped from now-disappeared surface lakes. Salty water has a lower freezing temperature than plain water, and deep underground heat from Mars' mantle might keep water liquid. 

To find out if life might have formed any of the organic molecules on Mars, we've got to send instruments capable of answering that question, but exploring Mars deep underground is a daunting task. Most known lava tubes on Mars have at least one skylight opening to the surface. While we don't know how deep these caves are, their mouths are 300 feet (91 meters) wide, and some are thought to descend at least a quarter-mile (0.4 km) underground. 

Why not fly in? To do so, our instruments must be simple, rugged, lightweight and compact. The same goes for sending instruments to the rugged, icy, high-radiation environments of Europa, Enceladus or Ceres. To meet these challenging criteria, Los Alamos National Laboratory has leveraged expertise designing and fielding instruments for space exploration to develop a new model, OrganiCam. 

• Life on Mars: Exploration and evidence

One precursor instrument developed at Los Alamos, ChemCam, is currently exploring Mars on the Curiosity rover. Sitting high on the rover's mast, ChemCam fires an infrared laser beam at rocks and soils, creating a hot plasma. The instrument then measures the colors of light in the plasma, which provide clues about the rocks' elemental composition. A camera provides highly detailed photographs of the laser targets, which also help scientists determine the surface geology. 

ChemCam's discoveries have deepened our knowledge of Mars as a once warmer and more habitable planet, revolutionized our understanding of the planet's geology, and prompted us to revise upward our estimates of the former abundances of surface water and oxygen in the atmosphere — both conditions for life. 

SuperCam, developed jointly by Los Alamos with the French space agency, is ChemCam on steroids. Now sailing to Mars as part of Perseverance's Mars 2020 mission, SuperCam combines ChemCam's remote chemistry capabilities and imaging with two mineralogy techniques, making it even better at detecting compounds related to the possibility of life. On top of that, it can record sound through a microphone, a first on Mars. 

As the next branch of the family tree, OrganiCam brings further innovations, including unique fast-fluorescence imaging for detecting not just organics, but biomolecules. Here's how it works. When stimulated by the laser, biological organic molecules emit quick bursts of light (about 100 nanoseconds). But other materials, like rock, emit light more slowly (microseconds to milliseconds). OrganiCam uses the same super-fast camera as SuperCam to measure these fast emissions, letting us discriminate biological signals from the background rocks. As a next step in the instrument's analysis, Raman spectroscopy identifies the molecular structure of the biological materials, so we can tell limestone from a volcanic rock. 

OrganiCam also features ultra-radiation-hardened lenses, greater energy efficiency and a lighter and more compact design than its predecessors, so a small drone could carry it to far more places on Mars than it could go by piggybacking on a rover. Even better, a drone could whisk the instrument deep into one of those lava-tube caves. OrganiCam could also easily be adapted to a mission on an icy world. (You can watch a video about OrganiCam here.)

OrganiCam can be pointed at more earthly pursuits as well. It can nondestructively detect biological materials in unique samples without destroying them, such as material returned by missions from the outer planets and asteroids, and it can assess the presence of biological organics in cleanrooms, hospitals or other sterile facilities, to help stem the spread of infections or impurities in industrial processes. 

While these are worthy assignments for this new instrument, for those of us on the Los Alamos team that developed OrganiCam, the lure of finding evidence of life on another planet, a moon, an asteroid or a comet is the overwhelming motivation. A discovery of that magnitude is every scientist's dream. I hope we get the chance. 

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

30-09-2020 om 22:59 geschreven door peter  

Watch Firefly Aerospace test-fire its Alpha rocket in this stunning drone video

An epic set of new videos shows the fiery power of Firefly Aerospace's forthcoming Alpha rocket.

The company showed off first-stage testing, which will certify Alpha for a test flight this fall, in new YouTube videos which include drone footage, fixed ground footage and a mix of cameras that also show off the engines swiveling to test maneuvers during flight.

"Today we performed a test of the Alpha flight first stage," the startup company said on Twitter Sept. 20. "The four Reaver engines performed 35 seconds of thrust vector control maneuvers, challenging the flame deflectors to constrain all that Reaver power. Today's test was a major step in Firefly's march to first flight."

• Related: Firefly Aerospace uses rocket engine to light birthday candles in epic cake video

The two-stage Alpha rocket was supposed to make its debut earlier in 2020, but physical distancing and shipping delays related to the novel coronavirus pandemic delayed that timeline, company representatives told Space.com in August.

"Over the last few months, there have been even more challenges than we usually have in this industry," Robb Kulin, Firefly's chief operating officer, said at the time. Despite these obstacles, the company passed several key milestones to compete in the fast-growing small rocket industry, including shipping the Firefly mobile launch stand from Texas to its destination at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Firefly Aerospace arose after a predecessor entity, Firefly Space Systems, entered bankruptcy protection in 2016 due to a major investor pulling out due to Brexit. The company has been expanding rapidly, including a $52 million investment in 2019 that included starting a second launch site at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Other ongoing projects include developing a larger rocket called Beta and a robotic moon lander that will support NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

The 1.1-ton Alpha rocket is expected to launch missions for roughly $15 million apiece, compared to the larger SpaceX Falcon 9 booster that generally launches for $62 million. Alpha's first mission will carry satellites as part of Firefly's Dedicated Research and Education Accelerator Mission, which aims to bring payloads to space for no cost to the participants.

Customers for the second and third flights have yet to be announced, but Firefly has said it expects to run those missions in 2021.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

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30-09-2020 om 22:45 geschreven door peter  

By Varsha Rani

PHOTO COURTESY OF TOM FISK / PEXELS

In a breakthrough that could mean wonders for plastic recycling and disposal, scientists have created a new combination of enzymes to break down plastic faster. This “super enzyme” as they call it, not only breaks down plastic six times faster than current methods, but is also more affordable and can work on a larger scale.

This is done by a team of researchers who re-engineered a plastic-eating enzyme in 2018. They have now combined it with a second enzyme to make it have major implications for the recycling of bottles, clothing, and all other commonly found waste.

In a study published in scientific journal PNAS on September 28, the researchers revealed that the “super-enzyme” was made by combining two separate enzymes—a plastic-eating enzyme named PETase and the new enzyme called MHETase. Using a technique that is commonly used in the biofuels industry, researchers effectively stitched the two enzymes’ DNA together to create one long chain which formed this new blend of enzymes. The two enzymes were derived from a bacterium discovered in Japan in 2016, which scientists found could break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

While this was the first time they combined two enzymes to break plastic, researchers believe that there is still a huge potential to tweak and make the enzymes work faster. “When we linked the enzymes, rather unexpectedly, we got a dramatic increase in activity,” said John McGeehan, a professor of structural biology at the University of Portsmouth, UK to The Guardian. “This is a trajectory towards trying to make faster enzymes that are more industrially relevant. But it’s also one of those stories about learning from nature, and then bringing it into the lab.”

Plastic pollution has always been one of the most pressing environmental issues, as their disposal has rapidly overwhelmed the world’s ability to deal with them. They take about 500 years to degrade in the ocean—if they do at all—and even then, much of it breaks down into microplastics that have been found in marine life, ocean water, and even in the guts of humans.

The super enzyme could have major benefits for recycling PET, which is the most common thermoplastic used in single-use drinks bottles and clothing. PET takes hundreds of years to degrade in the environment. With this, it can break down in a couple of days. Combining the plastic-eating enzymes with existing ones that break down natural fibres could allow mixed materials to be fully recycled, added McGeehan.

• Follow Varsha on Instagram and Twitter.

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30-09-2020 om 22:21 geschreven door peter  

Has the mystery of 'Britain's Roswell' finally been solved? Rendlesham Forest UFO 'landing' was a prank SAS tricksters played on US Airmen, insiders claim

• Rendlesham Forest incident in Suffolk, has intrigued UFO enthusiasts since 1980 
• Military personnel said they saw lights flying in the woods in December that year
• The group was largely convinced they had witnessed an alien spacecraft
• Yet it has now been claimed that the extraterrestrial sighting was a hoax

By JESSICA GREEN FOR MAILONLINE

Dubbed ‘Britain’s Roswell’, the Rendlesham Forest incident in Suffolk, has intrigued UFO enthusiasts since taking place in December 1980.

On three separate nights just before the New Year, military personnel said they saw lights flying in the sky and descending into the woodland - the group was convinced they had seen an alien spacecraft. 

Yet it has now been claimed that the extraterrestrial sighting was a hoax, played on the US air force by the SAS in revenge for capturing a squad and subjecting them to a brutal interrogation.

Since the incident in 1980, Rendlesham Forest has become a site of endless speculation for UFO chasers 

The SAS were said to have regularly tested US security by probing the perimeters of RAF Woodbridge in the English county, which allegedly stored Nuclear warheads and was believed to be a key target for Soviet agents.

But when an SAS troop parachuted into the complex one night in August 1980 they were unaware the guards had upgraded their radar system.

Their black parachutes were immediately detected and the British were hauled off for questioning.

They claimed they were beaten up by their captors who refused to believe who they were and repeatedly referred to as ‘unidentified aliens’, before being released 18 hours later after the British authorities intervened.

On three separate nights just before the New Year, military personnel said they saw lights flying in the sky and descending into the woodland (pictured)

Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston sketched the craft he says he saw at the time of the incident

Seething from the interrogation, SAS soldiers were keen to take revenge.

British X-Files expert Dr David Clarke, who has been researching the story for three years, revealed: ‘After their release, the troopers made no complaint at their rough treatment but were determined to get their own back on the USAF for the beating that they had received.

‘In particular, their repeated characterisation as “aliens” sowed the seeds of a plan. They said: “They called us aliens. Right, we'll show them what aliens really look like.”’

As December approached, lights and coloured flares were rigged in Rendlesham Forest. Black helium balloons were also coupled to remote-controlled kites to carry suspended materials into the sky, activated by radio-controls.

Taking place over three nights between 26 and 28 December in 1980, military personnel from nearby RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge witnessed strange lights in the woods and hovering above the airbases which were on high alert as the Cold War was at its peak. 

‘A great deal of nocturnal Christmas fun was had at the expense of the USAF - and the matter should have ended there,’ according to a letter written to Dr Clarke by an alleged SAS source.

‘Unfortunately, a senior US officer (Lt Col Halt) led the US contingent out into the forest on the second night and took along his tape recorder.

‘The hovering and whizzing lights were sufficiently impressive for him to send a report to the MoD.

‘Someone in London recalled the events of the previous August and questions were asked. A few red faces - but also some satisfaction and amusement - followed.

Military personnel from nearby RAF Bentwaters (pictured) and RAF Woodbridge witnessed strange lights in the woods and hovering above the airbases

‘The USAF was 'reassured' at a very senior level and no UK investigation was undertaken - for obvious reasons.’

Dr Clarke said he was first contacted three years ago by ‘Frank’ who claimed to be a SAS insider.

He had seen Dr Clarke talking about Rendlesham on a TV documentary and felt ‘it was about time that the truth was revealed about the incident’.

Dr Clarke, of the Centre for Contemporary Legend at Sheffield Hallam University, said: ‘I investigated his incredible story by talking to trusted and open sources in the British military, including some high profile former SAS troopers.

‘What happened in the forest, according to Frank, would be bread and butter for special operation soldiers trained to deceive and misinform whilst remaining invisible.’

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30-09-2020 om 18:43 geschreven door peter  

In May of this year I had a new book published by Lisa Hagan Books. Its title: The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy. Here’s the publicity information for the book: “In the final days of December 1980, strange encounters and bizarre incidents occurred in the heart of Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England. Based upon their personal encounters, many of the military personnel who were present at the time believed that something extraterrestrial came down in those dark woods. What if, however, there was another explanation for what happened four decades ago? What if that explanation, if revealed, proved to be even more controversial than the theory that aliens arrived from a faraway world? The ramifications for the field of Ufology would be immense. In his new, sensational book, Nick Redfern reveals that one of the most famous UFO cases of all time was really a series of top secret experiments using holograms, mind-control programs, deception, disinformation, conspiracies and cover-ups. The shocking truth of a forty-year-old mystery is now revealed.”

There’s a good reason why, today, I’m mentioning the book again. There is some fascinating information that I wasn’t aware of, but which certainly now adds to the “secret experiment” angle of the Rendlesham affair. In my book, I pointed out that the events in the forest occurred over the Christmas period – something that would have ensured most people would not have been out and about at that time. They would be celebrating at home. And that also included significant numbers of military personnel who – on leave for the holidays – worked at the two nearby military bases: Royal Air Force Bentwaters and Royal Air Force Woodbridge. In other words, by running the clandestine program over the Christmas nights, few people would know what happened. One of the other issues I address in my book is the matter of how, in the latter part of 1964, U.K. military personnel were dosed with LSD in a couple of English woods – and without their knowledge of what was going down. It was an experiment coordinated by staff from Porton Down, Wiltshire – a facility that has a long, secret and controversial history of researching the effects of hallucinogens on people. That brings us to the latest bit of the story.

I should stress that it isn’t exactly a new revelation. In fact, it was noted back in the 1960s; however, as a result of what I learned while doing the research for my book, it now places this particular piece of information in a new, eye-opening light. The story can be found in the pages of Arthur Shuttlewood’s 1967 book, The Warminster Mystery: Astounding UFO Sightings. On the book’s jacket, we’re told: “Two years ago the small Wiltshire town of Warminster was suddenly gripped by a series of Flying Saucer sightings, which have persisted right up to the present day. No town in England, or for that matter in the world, has registered so many authentic reports of UFOs.” The publisher continues: “The Warminster Mystery is a dramatic unfolding of these sightings, with eye-witness accounts of strange ‘things’ seen by day and night; of bewildering mushrooms of smoke, crescents of fire, weird, disturbing sounds, and even accounts of conversations with those from Outer Space.”

Now, to the crux of it all. Stationed at a military facility called Knook Camp at Heytesbury (which is only four miles from the town of Warminster) was the 1st Welch Regiment. On Christmas Day, that same regiment found themselves in a very strange situation. As Arthur Shuttlewood wrote: “Over thirty soldiers awoke to a thunderous crescendo at the camp early on Christmas Day, 1964 [when it was still dark, in other words]. A sergeant told me ‘it was as if a huge chimney stack from the main block was ripped from the rooftop, then scattered in solid chunks of masonry across the whole camp area.'” Shuttlewood added: “The guard was alerted, standing by for action, but none developed. Surprised, the soldiers were unable to explain the blasting sounds, beyond asserting that they were decidedly not caused by conventional type aircraft. This aerial thunderclap was the forerunner of an astonishing series of incidents like that which occurred on Christmas Day, 1964.”

So, on Christmas Day, in both 1964 and 1980 – and when most Brits would have been at home celebrating Christmas – military personnel in the U.K. were exposed to strange and unexplained phenomena that was perceived as being UFO-based in nature. And, the LSD experiments run by Porton Down’s scientists took place in the final days of 1964. Not only that: Porton Down is located only twenty-four miles from Warminster. And, as my book on Rendlesham demonstrates, there was a Porton Down presence in Rendlesham Forest the night before the incidents began. There are, without doubt, significant parallels and threads to be unraveled here. For me, this is all beyond coincidence. We’re seeing two different experiments – one in the 1960s and the other in December 1980 – but with identical goals: to fabricate UFO events (both on just about the quietest day of the year in the U.K.) and to see how military personnel responded to amazing and bizarre phenomena (Many thanks to Ray Cox for bring this development to my attention).

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

30-09-2020 om 18:18 geschreven door peter  

In 1936, workers at archaeological excavations of monuments belonging to the Parthian civilization (248-226 BC) in the village of Khujut Rabu, near Baghdad, Iraq, stumbled across something unusual down in the ground. They found an ancient, weathered terracotta pot or jar, about 6 inches high, which contained a cylinder made of a rolled copper sheet, within which sat a rod of iron, and the whole of it was topped with plugs or stoppers of bitumen. The innards of the jar had been corroded with perhaps some sort of acidic juice or vinegar, and the whole of it was very odd and out of place amongst the other artifacts of the era that were being dug up. Others were found, twelve in all, and no one could figure out what the anomalous objects were supposed to be or what they were used for. At the time, the strange jars and the inexplicable contents were put on display in the National Museum of Iraq and sort of forgotten about. Little did anyone know that these unassuming little pots would turn out to be a persistent historical mystery.

It would not be until 1938 that anyone would take a really good look at the artifacts, when German archaeologist Wilhelm König was at the museum and saw one sitting there amongst other objects from the site, including some other similar jars. The curious objects drew his attention and he had them studied, deducing that they were from the 3rd century BC and were a form of crude galvanic cells, or basically electric batteries. He deduced that the iron and the copper were mounted in such a way as to insulate them with the bitumen, or asphalt, after which an electrolyte such as vinegar or some other acidic substance had been poured in to produce a voltage difference generated by the metals. He speculated would have been used for electroplating layers of precious metals such as gold onto objects.

Whatever the “batteries” were for, if that is what they were this would all be very interesting indeed, because it would usurp the generally held view that the battery was invented in 1800 by the Count Alassandro Volta, whose name is indeed where we get the word “volt.” If these were indeed batteries, then it would mean that human beings had created this technology thousands of years earlier than previously thought. König would go on to write a paper on this hypothesis in 1940, after which World War II came and the “Baghdad Battery” was forgotten once more. After the war, a Willard F. M. Gray, of the General Electric High Voltage Laboratory in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, did his own experiment with the battery and found that it could produce up to two volts of electricity, or about a fortieth of the power of a triple-A battery and other experiments produced similar results, further strengthening König’s case. In 1980, German scientist Egyptologist Arne Eggebrecht found that the voltage could be increased if several of the batteries were linked together, and demonstrated that the devices could produce enough electricity to gold plate a small statue when a gold cyanide solution was used. In more modern times, in 2005 the Discovery Channel TV show Mythbusters it was shown that ten replicas of the Baghdad Battery linked together could produce five volts of power. The problem with the experiments linking the jars together is that there is no evidence that the original jars ever had any sort of wires or electrical connections for links between them.

Although the idea that the Baghdad Batteries were some sort of batteries was and still is widely accepted by many, it is unknown for what purpose such a device would have been used, as there are no artifacts from the time of anything that would have required such a power source, and while many experiments work on the assumption that the power was used for electroplating, there is no evidence of gold plated items produced in such a way from the era these batteries supposedly belong to. Besides electroplating, it has been speculated that the devices were used for electrotherapy of some kind, for some theatrical or ritual purpose, or even that these were merely vessels for holding papyrus scrolls. Other more fringe ideas are that these were from aliens, or that they were made to power some as yet unknown and mysterious ancient technological device. No one really knows, and sadly we probably never will, as the original batteries vanished during the 2003 Iraq invasion, when the National Museum was looted and thousands of exhibitions were stolen or destroyed.

We are left to wonder what these strange objects were. Who made them and for what purpose? Why have there been no others found? Were they used for powering something, medicinal purposes, or were they simply some bored person’s little science project? Among the many instances of ancient technology that have been found over the years, the Baghdad Batteries have gone on to be continually discussed and talked about, as well as unsolved.

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{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

30-09-2020 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

Based on new research, scientists have discovered three salty lakes below Mars’ south pole and there could be several others.

Back in 2018, scientists found evidence of a subsurface lake located about a mile underneath the ice at the south pole. In order to study that lake, experts analyzed data gathered from the MARSIS radar sounder instrument that’s located on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft. The equipment scanned an area 155 miles by 185 miles at the location where the subsurface lake is situated.

The radar data provided more proof of the lake and revealed that it measures approximately 12 miles by 18 miles although they’re still uncertain as to how deep it is. And that’s not all; they found three additional lakes about 6 miles by 6 miles in size. These three lakes are separated from the larger main lake by strips of dry rocks.

According to the scientists, these lakes are extremely salty which is the reason why they’re still in liquid form and not frozen by the cold temperatures from the glaciers. This liquid water isn’t believed to be from melting glaciers as it was previously suggested that geothermal activity may have caused subsurface lakes. However, in order to form numerous underground lakes, it would have required much larger geothermal activity which “I don’t think it is physically possible, given what we know,” said Elena Pettinelli who is a geophysicist at Roma Tre University in Rome and a co-author of the study.

This leads researchers to believe that a bigger body of water was present on the surface of the planet millions or billions of years ago. Pettinelli went on to say, “This is a complex system of water, not just a single pond,” adding, “It suggests that the conditions that created these lakes might have been more spread across the region, that there might be other systems like this around.”

If the lakes “are remnants of water that was once on the surface, it certainly may have been a good habitat to harbor life, extinct or living,” she explained. But in order to know for sure, scientists would need to drill approximately 0.9 miles into the ice, which as of right now, they don’t have the equipment on Mars to conduct such an experiment. Hopefully in the near future we’ll be able to find out exactly what lurks beneath the ice and in the salty lakes of the Red Planet.

Dark narrow streaks called recurring slope lineae emanating out of the walls of Garni crater on Mars. The dark streaks here are up to few hundred meters in length. They are hypothesized to be formed by flow of briny liquid water on Mars. The image is produced by draping an orthorectified (RED) image (ESP_031059_1685) on a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the same site produced by High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (University of Arizona). Vertical exaggeration is 1.5.

Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Full image and caption

Their study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy and can be read in full here.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

30-09-2020 om 17:51 geschreven door peter  

Straling op maan blijkt 200 keer hoger dan op aarde: “Ruimtebasis zou beter onder grond worden gebouwd” - HLN.be

Artemis heet het programma waarmee de NASA tegen 2024 opnieuw astronauten op de maan wil laten landen en de weg wil banen voor een permanente basis tegen de jaren 2030. Maar het moet nog enkele hordes nemen eer het zo ver is.

Lees ook

Tom Cruise stijgt in oktober 2021 op voor eerste filmopnames ooit in de ruimte: “Maar eerst een half jaar opleiding”

Maanlander

Een van die hordes heeft te maken met de kosmische straling waaraan de astronauten op de maan blootgesteld zullen worden. Dat staat te lezen in een nieuwe studie die vrijdag gepubliceerd werd in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift ScienceAdvances.


In die studie wordt verslag uitgebracht van een van de bevindingen van de onbemande Chinese maanlander Chang’e 4, die begin vorig jaar de achterkant van de maan bereikte. De lander slaagde er onder meer in om voor de allereerste keer de straling op de maan in kaart te brengen. De dagelijkse dosis die astronauten te verduren zouden krijgen, blijkt maar liefst 200 keer hoger te zijn dan op de Aarde en drie keer hoger dan wat ze in het internationaal ruimtestation (ISS) ervaren.

Langdurige blootstelling aan een grote dosis kosmische straling – bijvoorbeeld als de astronauten een jaar of twee op de maan zouden kamperen voor onderzoek – kan echter een schadelijk effect hebben op de gezondheid. “Je kan er acute klachten van krijgen, maar ook cataract, kanker en aandoeningen die ons centrale zenuwstelsel of onze organen doen aftakelen”, staat er te lezen.

76 centimeter diep

Wie een maanbasis wil bouwen, houdt daar dan ook best rekening mee volgens de experts achter de studie. Zo zou een nederzetting op het maanoppervlak een minder goed idee zijn. Het zou beter zijn om de basis ónder de grond te maken. Een diepte van 76 centimeter is ideaal, aldus Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber, een van de auteurs van het onderzoek in een persbericht.

Voor de volledigheid: de astronauten van de Apollo-missies in de jaren 60 en 70 hadden ook instrumenten bij zich die de straling moesten meten. Maar die konden alleen tonen hoeveel straling de astronauten op hun vollédige reis te verduren hadden gekregen, niet alleen op de maan.

Op de Aarde hebben we overigens weinig last van straling door de dikke atmosfeer en het magnetisch veld van onze planeet.

• Lees ook: Ruimtestation ISS lekt ongebruikelijk veel lucht

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30-09-2020 om 17:19 geschreven door peter  

Ondergrondse meren ontdekt op Mars - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

De meren bevinden zich onder de zuidpool van Mars. Ze zijn ontdekt met de satelliet Mars Express van de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA. Die sonde ontdekte in 2018 ook al een ondergronds meer op Mars, op een diepte van 1,5 kilometer. De grootste plas heeft een omvang van 20 bij 30 kilometer. Er liggen een paar kleinere meren omheen.

Mars had vele miljoenen jaren geleden waarschijnlijk stromend water op het oppervlak, maar dat is verdwenen. Ondergronds bevindt zich nog wel water. Dat is mogelijk miljarden jaren oud. De meren zijn moeilijk te bereiken, maar zijn wetenschappelijk interessant omdat er leven zou kunnen voorkomen.

Op de aarde zijn vergelijkbare meren. Op vier kilometer onder de Zuidpool bevindt zich bijvoorbeeld het Vostok-meer. Dat is 250 bij 50 kilometer groot en ruim 400 meter diep.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

30-09-2020 om 17:01 geschreven door peter  

Beautiful Glowing UFO Seen During Day At Outer London, Sept 29, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 29, 2020

Location of sighting: Outer London, England

 

This is a tear drop shaped UFO hiding in the clouds above outer London this week. Also misidentified as a sun dog by some and accepted as a natural event. This is anything but natural. This is a cloaked UFO and when the sun, UFO and eyewitness form a perfect triangle, equal on all sides...then the UFO becomes visible. One day, science will catch up with reality, but right now...a lot of scientific facts are not only unproven, but absolutely false. This glowing object is a UFO. One day, science will change their statements about it...as science often does. 

 

Remember how science said UFOs didn't exist, and then the US pentagon releases videos of several actual UFOs? Science has some catching up to do. 

Scott C. Waring 

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30-09-2020 om 15:46 geschreven door peter  

White Cross UFO Seen Over France In Sept 26, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 26, 2020
Location of sighting: Aix Les Bain, France

If you watch the video carefully you will notice that at 1:20 into the video the UFO becomes mostly focused. The UFO is strange shaped, like a large white cross, but not a cross. UFOs come in all shapes, sizes, colors so I have to keep an open mind here. The object is rotating slowly from right to left as it moves across the hillside. This UFO is flying very low and seems to not care that its totally visible to the public below. The movement, speed and silence all point to it being a UFO. 
Scott C. Waring 

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

30-09-2020 om 15:27 geschreven door peter  

UFO Reacts To Laser Over Garden Grove, California Sept 27, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 27, 2020
Location of sighting: Garden Grove, California, USA

Watch this amazing video as a person is using a green laser to tag UFOs that pass overhead. I have done this myself and when I did...the UFO flashed back at me, so this does work. Here the UFOs actually try to dodge the laser beam and change directions. The objects clearly show intelligence. Also having a green laser helps in UFOs finding you at night in case you try to meditate an call them mentally to you. It works sometimes, but requires absolute focus. 
Scott C. Waring 

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

30-09-2020 om 15:20 geschreven door peter  

Five UFOs Hover Over Japanese Flag At Ball Park, Sept 29, 2020, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighing: Sept 29, 2020
Location of sighting: Yokohama stadium, Japan
News source: 

• https://note.com/kimiko12/n/n35ce168ca8f4
  
  

Five glowing orbs were seen over a stadium in Japan this week. The stadium is 29km from Tokyo. The UFOs are hovering over the Japanese flag on top of the stadium. The five glowing orbs are working in unison, but I believe they are five different craft. Maybe aliens are there to observe how Japanese are dealing with Covid19 and the stress of new rules. How humanity relaxes (at the ball park) is a great way to see how humans deal with the new and complex stresses of life. Its not clear if the eyewitness saw it or realized it later after seeing the photos, but the photos are amazing evidence that aliens are observing Japanese. 
Scott C. Waring 

Eyewitness states:

Again, UFO 🛸 appears on the stadium (on the flag 🚩) Same as mysterious phenomenon III? Maybe it's resident? I wonder if I'm enjoying baseball 🤗

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

30-09-2020 om 14:39 geschreven door peter  

See What Happens If Nazca Lines Are To Be Extended Around The Planet

Nazca Lines is a group of pre-Columbian geoglyphs etched in desert sands in southern Peru. There are around 300 different figures, including plants and animals, covering an area of nearly 1,000 square kilometers. The figures are composed of over 10,000 lines and some of which measure 30 meters wide and stretch over 9 kilometers. They are most visible from nearby hilltops or from the air. If extended until they would all intertwine, Nazca Lines would all meet up at the Angkor Wat.

The Angkor Wat is a megalithic site filled to the brim with tons of stone blocks. It stretches out for thousands of miles.

Anthony Horowitz theorized this many times in the past. He talked about it quite a lot in his series of books, known as the Power of the Five.

He states in these books that the Nazca Lines all unite for them to summon up the Old Ones. Watch the video for more interesting information and let us know what you think of this theory.

Check out this amazing book about the top 10 UFO cases in the history.

Get your’s on Amazon: Top 10 UFO Sightings: Best Cases: Aliens are visiting us

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30-09-2020 om 14:28 geschreven door peter  

Water-vapor geysers erupt from cracks at the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Scientists using Cassini data now have evidence for fresh ice at the moon’s north pole, too. Could it be more geysers for this fascinating ice moon?

Infrared images of Saturn’s moon Enceladus as seen by the Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn, weaving among its moons, from 2004 to 2017. A new analysis of Cassini date shows that Enceladus’ north pole might be resurfaced by fresh ice deposits. In this image, the famous tiger stripes fissures – from which water erupts in strange alien geysers – can be seen at the moon’s south pole.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona/ LPG/ CNRS/ University of Nantes/ Space Science Institute.

Saturn’s moon Enceladus is famous for the huge water-vapor geysers at its south pole, which are thought to originate from a global ocean deep beneath the moon’s outer ice crust. At this moon’s south pole, water is seen to comes up to the surface through giant cracks in the ice called tiger stripes. As the water vapor re-freezes in Enceladus’ extremely tenuous atmosphere, it forms ice particles that fall back down and coat the moon’s south polar region with fresh ice. Until now, this kind of activity was seen only at the moon’s south pole. Now that has changed.

Now, scientists studying new global mosaic infrared images of Enceladus, taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, have announced that they’ve found the first evidence that the moon’s north pole has also been painted with a fresh coat of ice fairly recently, geologically-speaking.

Weak geysers at this pole could be the reason. Or the fresh ice might be due to water forced up from the subsurface ocean through cracks in the moon’s icy crust.

The new peer-reviewed study was published in the October 2020 issue of Icarus.

The famous geysers of water vapor at Enceladus’ south pole erupt through huge cracks in the icy surface. Now scientists have evidence that the moon’s north polar region is also geologically active, although on a smaller scale. The plumes contain water vapor, ice particles, salts, methane, silica, molecular hydrogen and a variety of simple and complex organic molecules.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ Space Science Institute.

The new infrared images, from Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), are the most detailed ever made of Enceladus’ surface from data sent back by the Cassini mission, which ended in September 2017. The researchers found that, surprisingly, the moon’s north polar region also showed evidence of resurfacing by ice, even though it lacks any known geysers or tiger stripe-like fissures. This may be caused by as-yet unseen geysers or a more gradual movement of ice through fractures in the crust from the subsurface ocean to the surface. Gabriel Tobie, VIMS scientist with the University of Nantes in France and co-author of the new paper, said in a statement:

The infrared shows us that the surface of the south pole is young, which is not a surprise because we knew about the jets that blast icy material there.

Now, thanks to these infrared eyes, you can go back in time and say that one large region in the northern hemisphere appears also young and was probably active not that long ago, in geologic timelines.

VIMS collected light reflected off Saturn, its rings and its ten largest icy moons. This was both visible light that can be seen by human eyes as well as infrared light, which tells scientists more about the makeup of the material reflecting it.

Enceladus’ geysers originate from the subsurface ocean, venting through cracks in the icy surface at the south pole. They coat the surface with fresh layers of ice. Are there as-yet unseen plumes at the moon’s north pole as well?

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI.

A closer visible light image of Enceladus’ north pole, taken by Cassini on November 27, 2016. The terrain is much more cratered than in the south, but the infrared images in the new study – and the cracks in the surface seen here – show that there has been at least some geological activity in the region.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

Enceladus’ geysers were first spotted by Cassini back in 2005, and ever since then the moon has fascinated scientists and the public alike as to its potentially for being a habitable world. This was especially true after Cassini later confirmed that the water was originating from a global salty ocean beneath the icy surface, similar to Europa.

Additional studies have shown that the ocean is similar to Earth’s oceans in terms of salinity, and there is even evidence for active geothermal vents on the ocean floor. On Earth, such vents – like “black smokers” – are oases for a diverse population of lifeforms in the otherwise very dark and cold ocean depths.

Last January, scientists at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) announced that they had developed a new geochemical model of Enceladus that showed the interior of the small moon is more complex than previously thought, including carbon dioxide being controlled by chemical reactions on the seafloor of the ocean. Those findings open up intriguing new possibilities for life in Enceladus’ subsurface watery abyss.

Lead author Christopher Glein, of SwRI, said in a statement:

By understanding the composition of the plume, we can learn about what the ocean is like, how it got to be this way and whether it provides environments where life as we know it could survive. We came up with a new technique for analyzing the plume composition to estimate the concentration of dissolved CO2 in the ocean. This enabled modeling to probe deeper interior processes.

Gabriel Tobie, VIMS scientist at the University of Nantes and co-author of the new study.

Image via LPG.

During its mission, Cassini flew through through the water vapor plumes several times, analyzing what is in them. The spacecraft found water vapor, ice particles, salts, methane, silica (SiO2), molecular hydrogen (H2) and a variety of simple and complex organic molecules. Since this is basically seawater being spewn out into space, this provides important clues as to what conditions are like in the ocean. So far, all signs point to an ocean that is quite habitable by earthly standards. This doesn’t prove there is life there yet, but the evidence indicates there well could be.

The infrared images from Cassini are providing new clues about how geologically active Enceladus is, not only at its south pole with the dramatic watery plumes, but elsewhere on the this little icy world as well.

• Bottom line: A new study of infrared images of Saturn’s moon Enceladus shows that the moon’s north pole is geologically active. It might have weak geysers, or water being forced up from the moon’s subsurface ocean through cracks in its icy crust.
• Source: Photometrically-corrected global infrared mosaics of Enceladus: New implications for its spectral diversity and geological activity
• Via Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

30-09-2020 om 01:11 geschreven door peter  

The Vinland Map: A Most Non-European Artifact

The Vinland Map carries with it the air of mystery and, some would say, the stench of deception. In the vaults of Yale University, and insured for $25 Million, it is either a colossal fraud or an artifact of unparalleled value. The map appeared on the scene in 1957 when a couple of shady characters tried to sell it to the British Museum. Experts determined that the ink used was not typical iron gall ink, the map was declared a fake, and the museum declined the offer.

If authentic, the map is considered priceless, as it would be the first map that has unique information about North America . The major problem associated with the map is that there is no acknowledgement – or maybe, no knowledge - that the Vinland associated with the map was a real place, with a functioning society, on Newfoundland Island.

Aerial panoramic view of L’Anse aux Meadows, an archaeological site located on northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland. Evidence of a Norse presence was discovered there in the 1960s, the only one of its kind in North America.

( edb3_16 / Adobe Stock)

Defying Convention: Seeing the Vinland Map from a New Angle

Nobody seems to know the origin of the Vinland Map, except there is near unanimity that it was made in Germany. The argument presented in this article defies the conventional paradigm that the Vinland Map is a European artifact, arguing that the Vinland Map is the genuine article and that it was not made in Europe at all, but created in Vinland around 1420.

As will be shown, the Vinland Map is not a European artifact primarily because of the following three factors. First of all, the parchment on which the map is drawn is crude, so crude that it would be an embarrassment to European parchment makers of the 1400s. Let’s not forget that European parchment was an enterprise characterized by high skill and impeccable products. Secondly, virtually all of Europe used iron gall ink with a vegetable-based (gum) binder. In contrast, when preparing the Vinland map a soot-based ink was utilized that had an animal-based glue binder. Finally, the Vinland Map has an inscription that tells where it was manufactured, namely in Vinland.

inland Map on display at Mystic Seaport, May 2018.

( CC BY-SA 4.0 )

There are several controversial issues related to the Vinland map. The first is whether a country called Vinland existed as of 1420, the year that the map was drawn. Recent research on Newfoundland island indicates that not only did Vinland exist, but that the physical remains are still visible. Moreover, descendants of that Vinland are still very much with us. Not only did Vinland the city exist, but a structure that is being tentatively called Vinland Cathedral, a basilica-type stone structure, is still intact in the wilderness of Newfoundland Island.

As has been established, the Chinese arrived on Newfoundland Island around early autumn, 1417. Along with the Norse, whom the Chinese rescued from Greenland in 1418, a multi-religious medieval civilization that included elements of both cultures was founded. The Norse called it Vinland. There are clear references in various histories to indicate that the Vatican not only knew about it, but was also receiving tributes from Vinland from as early as the 1400s.

Model of Viking settlement at the L’Anse aux Meadows museum in Newfoundland.

(Torbenbrinker / CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Analysis of the Vinland Map

Experts have established that a communications channel existed between Vinland and Rome. For this to occur, a map would have been needed to indicate to the officials at Rome the approximate location of the new Vinland spiritual vineyard (Vinland was known for its wild grapes which led to its name which translates as “land of wine”). A rough map would show Rome the approximate position and major characteristics of the new land of the Norse. The crude vellum of the map indicates a simple matter of expediency. Someone needed to make a map that was never meant to be a cartographic masterpiece, a map simply to show where Vinland was, and a piece of parchment not yet fully prepared would be quite adequate for the task.

The fact that the Vinland itself (a.k.a. Newfoundland Island) is drawn in such an unusual configuration simply reflects the level of understanding of the religious about the piece of geography on which they found themselves. They drew the world as they understood it at the time. They understood Europe fairly well, Greenland they comprehended exceptionally well, and the island on which they now found themselves they knew hardly at all. They simply didn't know the dimensions nor the shape of the island; they had not been on Islandia Vinlandia (Vinland Island) long enough, barely two years in fact. One of the rivers is clearly the Exploits River, because it leads to a large lake known today as Red Indian Lake.

Left;Focus on Vinland on the Vinland map. ( Public domain ) Right; Focus on Vinland on a modern map

( CC BY-SA 2.5 )

This lack of knowledge simply means that the map was drawn soon after the Greenlanders arrived on Newfoundland Island and before they knew a great deal about the new land where they were now living. Some of them were probably still trying to separate the elements of the old Norse myth of Vinland the Good from the reality of the environment in which they found themselves. They may have utilized an existing map to draw the Europe portion. Regrettably, we do not have the documentation that accompanied the map. It was likely left in the Vatican archives when the so-called Vinland Map was stolen.

Refuting the Naysayers: Finding Truth in the Vinland Map

There are several other issues that seems to disturb the equanimity of the experts. One of these is the perceived inconsistency in some of the letters of the Latin script on the map. Several experts claim that the utilization of certain vowels, such as the old Latin character ‘æ’ rather than ‘e’, is indicative of the writer being Italian.

Among the priests, monks and nuns at Vinland, there were, undoubtedly, people from most countries of Europe. People got around, even then, and the city of Bremen, the “Rome of the North,” regularly supplied priests and other religious to the far north west missions. Kirsten A. Seaver determined that the lettering on the map was made by a German hand. This deduction about a “German hand” may be close to correct and an astute observation, but that particular German hand was not writing in Germany, but in Vinland.

Some experts dispute the authenticity of the Vinland Map because it shows Greenland as an Island. However, the general understanding of the time, at least in Greenland, was that Greenland was an island and had been proven so by some Norse voyagers who managed to circumnavigate the island during a warming period. Moreover, recent research indicates that Greenland was sufficiently warm for the Norse to grow Barley around that earlier time. On the Vinland Map, Greenland is drawn almost perfectly accurate, another indicator that the people who drew the Vinland Map were the Greenland Norse, who were new to Vinland.

Leiv Erikson discovering America.

( Public domain )

Finding Meaning in the Vinland Map Inscription

Morrison notes that the script on the Vinland Map “suggests that there had been somewhere on the North American seaboard a Christian community to which the bishop [Eric Gnupson] felt he should minister, and, hence, he made a voyage to Vinland and back.” The script says:

“Eric Bishop of Greenland and adjacent regions and papal legate, arrived on this truly spacious and opulent land, in the last year of our most blessed Pope Paschal, remained there a long time both summer and winter and afterwards returned northeasterly toward Greenland and proceeded thence in humble obedience to superior will .” (Morrison, 1971)

That is, indeed, a strange inscription if the Vinland Map was prepared in Europe, the inherent contradiction of which the esteemed experts do not bother to try to explain. The inscription, apparently, says, “... arrived on this truly spacious and opulent land.” If “this” is an accurate translation, then one might conclude that the map was made at the location that the map purports to show, wherever that is. In any case it would be difficult to confuse the Latin words huius (this) with est (that). Besides, who except a priest from the Greenland Norse religious community, now having migrated with his flock to Vinland, could have had that information?

The voyages of the Norse peoples to Vinland were recorded in oral tradition. These were finally written down centuries later, in the Saga of Eric the Red (seen in the image above) and the Saga of the Greenlanders.

( Public domain )

Did Chinese Explorers Reach Newfoundland?

As has been detailed, a Chinese fleet on a mapping expedition, arrived at Newfoundland Island in 1417. The island was at that time empty of people. The fleet continued north, mapped Hudson Bay, and proceeded south along the western coast of Greenland. Finding the Greenland Norse on the verge of starvation, the Chinese rescued them all and took them to Newfoundland Island, the mythical Vinland the Good of the Greenland Norse people. The Norse, all of whom were Christians, delighted to find themselves in the land of milk and honey, began to send tributes of thankfulness to God, personified in the guise of the Holy See.

Many experts, consistent with ignorance of the existence of Vinland circa 1418, assume that the ink is the typical iron gall ink that was utilized in medieval Europe. However, Skelton's scientific colleagues at the British Museum made a short preliminary examination in 1967 and found that “despite its appearance to the naked eye, the ink was certainly not conventional iron-gall ink… and indeed was unlike any recipe they had ever seen.” They spent several months after the initial testing trying to find similar inks as far afield as Iceland.

Indeed, if the map were drawn on Vinland, modern-day Newfoundland Island, as herein proposed, the ink could not be of iron gall composition because there were no oak trees on Newfoundland Island at the time, the “gall” of the typical medieval European iron gall ink coming from oak galls. Assuming that the Chinese of Vinland, experts from ancient times in the preparation of ink, had a hand in the ink utilized in the preparation of the map, that ink would have been prepared from the soot of pine tree roots and glue from animal sources.

Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada.

( CC BY 2.0 )

The Answers Lie in the Detail

Interestingly, some scientists identified the ink's binder as gelatin, probably made from animal skin. This would be consistent with the ink being made in China or being manufactured in Vinland under the supervision of the Chinese immigrants. Besides, iron gall ink as typically formulated in medieval Europe had a gum binder, not a gelatin binder which was typical of Chinese ink at the time.

The gall in all of this, to use the pun, is that the element anatase has been found in identifiable concentrations in the ink of the map. According to the scientists, the anatase particles are unique, having been synthesized only in 1917, and thus concluding it “impossible to have been prepared in 1440, 300 years before titanium was discovered and, … manufactured only with great effort and expense.” The anatase particles were not just sticking to the surface but were found to be a constituent aspect of the ink itself. Other researchers determined that the black pigment in the ink consisted essentially of soot-type carbon. They declared that the presence of a yellow line containing anatase, closely associated with a stable carbon ink, indicates that the Vinland Map is a modern forgery. The suggestion that the anatase is environmental pollution has been rejected.

Let's examine the assumptions. The first is that the map is determined to be a forgery because the ink is different from that which was expected. If someone were to construct a forgery, one would think that he or she would attempt to ensure that the ink be as close to the kind utilized during the era the map was purportedly created. If the ink is different, and easily determined to be so, surely it is not a forgery but a map that was created elsewhere, where the standard ink was different.

Looking for Answers Beyond Europe

However, the prevailing paradigm was – and still is - that the map simply had to be of European origin. Nobody, until now, has suggested that if the map is so different to those being made in Europe, down to the inferior parchment, then it must have been created elsewhere.

According to some investigators, because titanium was not recognized or identified by Western science until later, then it could not be utilized in any form, anywhere, before that time. That is patent nonsense. Regardless whether it was identified or recognized as such, titanium or its oxidized form TiO2 (anatase), could have been utilized for thousands of years (and likely was, given the Chinese record of natural medicines) simply because it was a constituent element in various natural products. The Chinese utilized a number of natural products having antibacterial, anti-microbial, and antiviral characteristics even if they were not able to synthesize the active ingredients.

Much is made about the 0.3 micrometer crystalized form of anatase that was synthesized around 1917 and appears to be in the ink of the map. It needs to be noted that plants take up various elements from the soil in elemental or, maybe rarely, molecular form. The crystallization process, and the resultant crystalline size and form, would depend on numerous unique characteristics of plants. Moreover, titanium is found in almost all living things, as well as bodies of water, rocks, and soils. For example, plants generally contain about 1 part per million (ppm) of titanium, food plants have about 2 ppm, and horsetail and nettle contain up to 80 ppm. 

• Can Oceanic Archaeologist Finally Zero in on Elusive Lost Viking Colony?
• Remote Sensing Satellite Uncovers Astonishing New Evidence of Viking Presence in Newfoundland, Canada
• The Beothuck Key: Finding a Lost Chinese-Norse Civilization in Canada

It is to be noted that titanium will oxidize immediately upon exposure to air. Whatever might have been in the Chinese inksticks, this article proposes that they contained titanium, would naturally default to anatase after some period of time after the ink was committed to the parchment. The Chinese may have added titanium or anatase (titania) to the ink base via extracts from plants known to have the needed antibacterial properties. The cost or difficulty of preparing modern anatase, factors that have been touted as somehow significant to the issue, have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the science of the issue at hand.

But, there is still an elephantine question that remains unanswered. If someone wanted to perpetuate a fraud, why go through the trouble of creating a completely new ink, of which no more than a gram or so would be utilized? If someone wanted to commit a fraud, wouldn’t they have been careful to use an ink that was typical of medieval European inks or, at least, an ink that had an iron gall base, which, by the way, are readily available in Europe. To create this particular soot-based ink, one would have had to make pine-root charcoal, and then boil down cow skin and hoofs in order to make the glue as a binding agent. The suggestion stretches one's credulity to the breaking point! Because the ink is clearly not European in constitution, one can suspect that neither is it European in origin. The fact that the ink is typically Chinese, and not at all European, despite the unresolved anatase issue, provides an even stronger argument that the map was created in Vinland.

The Vinland Map , subject of much controversy, and the Achilles heel for many fragile academic egos, is without a doubt an enigma. However, virtually nothing about this map is suggestive of European origin. All of the contextual information, much of it still surprisingly unknown to contemporary scholars, points steadfastly to a North American origin and, specifically, an origin in an ancient Nation of Vinland (circa 1418 – 1700).

• Top image: Whether the Vinland Map is a colossal fraud or an incredibly valuable artifact is still unclear. Said to be a 15 ^th century map, it is the first known map of the North American coastline. Source: Public domain

By Ronald Ryan, DA., PhD., Rev.

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{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

30-09-2020 om 00:45 geschreven door peter  

Study Reveals Sapiens Copulated the Y Out of Neanderthals

Early human interbreeding  with our “cousins” the  Denisovans and Neanderthals is an established fact but newly sequenced Neanderthal Y-chromosomes tell scientists that modern humans are the product of a complex history of interspecies sex. Neanderthals had lived in  Eurasia for more than 300,000 years, when our modern human ancestors left  Africa in the most recent wave some 60,000–70,000 years ago. When the two groups met in Eurasia around 45,000-years-ago they mated and a whole new kind of human was formed. Recent research confirms early human interbreeding but also provides evidence that makes our earliest encounters with both Neanderthals and Denisovans a much more complicated relationship.

According to the 2010 publication of the Neanderthal  draft genome  sequence, a comparison of the Neanderthal draft  genome with modern human sequences revealed that about “2 percent of the DNA in the genomes of modern-day people with Eurasian ancestry, is Neanderthal in origin,” most notably expressed in the skin, hair and diseases of modern people. While it is known that Neanderthals left their genetic mark in the DNA of modern humans, less was known about the reverse flow of  Homo sapiens’  DNA into Neanderthals when the two species met in Eurasia around 45,000 years ago.

However, a new study on early human interbreeding has shown that those Neanderthals already had  Homo sapiens’  genes on board from “much earlier encounters," and the new research also suggests the  Homo sapiens’  Y-chromosome had “completely replaced the original Neanderthal Y chromosome sometime between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago.”

DNA double helix molecules and chromosomes: the forensic evidence that proves early human interbreeding and when.

(Giovanni Cancemi /  Adobe Stock )

A Re-examination Of Early Human Interbreeding Based On Genes

The X and Y chromosomes are the two sex chromosomes in mammals, including humans, and they determine the biological sex of an individual. Females inherit an  X chromosome  from the father for a XX genotype, while males inherit a Y chromosome from the father for a XY genotype. Only mothers can pass on the X chromosome.

The new  paper by evolutionary geneticists Martin Petr and Janet Kelso, from the  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology , presents details of their team’s new method of sequencing Y-chromosome DNA, in their quest to understand early human interbreeding. The study results were based on Y-chromosome  DNA sequencing  of “two Denisovans and three Neanderthals samples gathered from sites in France, Russia and Spain dating between 38,000 to 53,000 years ago.” The results confirm early human interbreeding with these two species of  hominins. But the results of the study also indicate that these prehistoric sexual encounters resulted in “a really complicated population history spanning thousands of years and several continents.”

Modern Human DNA Entered The Neanderthal Population Slowly

Archaeologists and anthropologists have discovered several bones, which when gene sequenced, prove that a Neanderthal and a Denisovan had mated. Previous studies of non-sex chromosomes have established that Neanderthals and Denisovans share a branch of the human family tree, which split off sometime between 700,000 and 550,000 years ago.

However, according to this new paper “the Y-chromosomes tell a different story, suggesting our most recent common ancestor lived around 370,000 years ago.” This means that a long time after the three different groups had split up and evolved into different populations, they met up again and mated again. The paper says that “over time, our version of the Y-chromosome genome ended up replacing the Neanderthal version.” Therefore, early human interbreeding first occurred a long time ago, and then, after a very long break, it happened again.

In case you didn’t know already, an “ allele” is one of two or more versions of a known gene mutation identified at the same location on a chromosome. Previous gene studies have mostly all indicated that modern human “alleles” probably entered the Neanderthal gene pool  slowly. How slowly? At a speed, determined by Petr, Kelso, and their colleagues, to be “roughly single-digit percentage of the population,” which according to the scientists isn’t enough to become fixed.

A Neanderthal man holding a Neanderthal's skull perhaps wondering how much of his DNA was from modern humans and Denisovans. Today, we are wondering the same thing!

(Roni /  Adobe Stock )

Unfortunately, Most Ancient Hominin Bones Are Female

This very slow rate of change in the Neanderthal DNA makeup suggested to the researchers that  Homo sapiens’  Y-chromosome alleles may have offered some kind “of fitness advantage,” when compared with the Neanderthal versions.

To prove or disprove this theory, a computer simulation was created in which a Y-chromosome allele from  Homo sapiens  was passed on to one percent of the Neanderthal population. Even at one percent, the model showed that the chances of replacing the older Neanderthal version over a 50,000-year period only “shot up to about 25 percent, suggesting that whatever selective edge  Homo sapiens  alleles offered, it may have been tiny, but that's enough to stick around.”

• Modern Humans Interbred With At Least Five Archaic Human Groups
• Neanderthals Mated with Modern Humans Much Earlier than Previously Thought, Study Finds
• DNA Study Reveals We Have a Mystery Human Ancestor

The exact nature of this genetic “selective advantage,” which was written into  Homo sapiens ' Y-chromosome DNA, is yet unknown because of a distinct lack of Denisovans and Neanderthal genome samples. As fate would have it, the archaeological record is heavily populated by female Neanderthals and female Denisovans but almost void of male remains, and it’s the men that pass on the Y chromosomes. Hopefully, over time, more male Neanderthals and male Denisovans will be found and more gene sequencing can be carried out to solve the selective advantage puzzle. But it is very interesting to know that we modern humans carry a complex DNA mixture that could only come from early human interbreeding with other hominins over a very long period of time.

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• Top image: Early human interbreeding is well known but a recent research study has shown that modern humans both received and gave DNA to, proving that these hominin cousins met more than once in the long arc of prehistoric time.           
• Source: AlienCat /  Adobe Stock

By Ashley Cowie

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/general }

30-09-2020 om 00:18 geschreven door peter  

World’s first jet suit paramedic unveiled

It can reach people much faster than a car or ground teams.

 by Fermin Koop

Paramedics in the UK have carried out the first test of a jet suit that would get them to people in danger or distress in a fraction of the time it would take by car or foot. The exercise was part of a collaboration between Gravity Industries, which developed the jet pack, and the Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS).

The Lake District is among the UK’s most famous national parks, attracting more than 15 million people ever year. But its wild terrain can be treacherous, leading to several incidents that require the assistance of the team at GNAAS. They are forced to move by vehicle or foot, as helicopters can’t land in the area due to its peaks and valleys.

Looking for potential alternatives, GNAAS engaged in conversations last year with Gravity Industries, founded by Richard Browning. The company recently developed a jet suit with five mini engines. It can reach impressive speeds of up to 85 miles/hour for up to 10 minutes and a maximum altitude of 3,658 meters.

The year-long conversations finally culminated in a recent jet suit test flight, carried out at Langdale Pikes in the Lake District. Browning flew from the valley bottom to a simulated casualty site on The Band, near Bowfell. The whole flight took 90 seconds, which would have required 25 minutes and a steep climb on foot.

“It was wonderful to be invited to explore the capabilities of the Gravity Jet Suit in an emergency response simulation and work alongside the team at GNAAS,” said Browning in a press statement. “We are just scratching the surface in terms of what is possible to achieve with our technology.”

The scenario was that a 10-year old girl had fallen from the cliffs and sustained a serious leg injury. After receiving the coordinates of the casualty, Browning, dressed as a jet suit paramedic, set off across rocky hills and picturesque scenery to successfully reach the girl. The paramedics could then assess her injuries and provide treatment.

Andy Mawson, director of operations at GNAAS, came up with the idea of a partnership with Gravity Industries and described seeing the first trial as an “awesome” experience. He said the exercise had demonstrated the huge potential of using jet suits to deliver critical care services.

“There are dozens of patients every month within the complex but relatively small geographical footprint of the Lakes,” he said in a press statement. “We could see the need. What we didn’t know for sure is how this would work in practice. Well, we’ve seen it now and it is, quite honestly, awesome.”

World's first flying suit patent was recently unveiled. As the fastest flying suit, it has also been awarded with Guinness World record also.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

29-09-2020 om 23:43 geschreven door peter  

Mars has ‘multiple bodies’ of liquid water, new study concludes

This has been a tremendous month for discoveries on the inner planets.

 by Mihai Andrei

 

Astronomers have found that Mars might have salty lakes sealed under its icy polar regions.

The low pressure that results from the lack of an atmosphere makes surface water on Mars impossible — unless it’s protected by something. That something, it turns out, exists; it lies on the Martian south pole, and you might know it as ice.

Astronomers first reported on the possibility of a subglacial lake on Mars back in 2018, and they just published a new paper admitting they were wrong. There’s not one lake on Mars, there’s several, and they’re salty — which makes them all all the more interesting for extraterrestrial life.

“We identified the same body of water, but we also found three other bodies of water around the main one,” says planetary scientist Elena Pettinelli at the University of Rome, who is one of the paper’s co-authors. “It’s a complex system.”

The discovery was made using a radar from the European Space Agency’s Mars-orbiting spacecraft Mars Express. The existence of the first lake was proposed after 29 observations made from 2012 to 2015. Now, the dataset includes 134 observations from 2012 to 2019 and makes a much stronger case for the existence of water on Mars. The first lake, observations suggest, is around 20 x 30 kilometers (12 x 18 miles), buried under 1.5 km (1 mile) of ice. Separate from the main lake, multiple bodies of water of various sizes are thought to exist.

These lakes are tantalizingly similar to subglacial lakes we have here on Earth such as Vostok Lake, although the Martian lakes are thought to be much saltier. In fact, the authors suggest that the liquid bodies are hypersaline solutions, which would explain why they can remain liquid despite the cold environment at the Martian pole. But even so it’s not implausible that they can support life.

Polar ice caps of Mars are captured in this photo, taken in 1999 by the Hubble Space Telescope 

©  Flickr/NASA

A few billion years ago, Mars was warm and wet, much like Earth. But after its atmosphere slowly dissipated, Mars lost its water and turned into the dry desert we see today. However, there are still signs of water on the Red Planet.

Both satellite data and on-site analysis have supported the existence of former water bodies on Mars, this is the first time researchers have found solid evidence of actual bodies of water on Mars.

Whether this is an actual lake or something more akin to a sludge or slush is up for debate, and the lakes themselves are still debated. Jack Holt, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told Nature that he doesn’t think these are lakes.

So, for now, we’re left with a stronger, but still-not-fully-proven case for lakes on Mars. Thankfully, there may soon be additional data to help settle the debate. The Tianwen-1 mission will enter Martian orbit in February 2021, deploying a rover on its surface.

But it’s hard not to get excited at the possibility of liquid water on Mars because where water exists, life can also exist. If there really is life in these salty waters, it could take different forms, but it will almost certainly be microbial. Most scientists speculate that anaerobes (extremophile microorganisms that don’t need oxygen) are the most likely candidates, but the existence of oxygen-breathing microorganisms is also possible.

“The water bodies at the base of the (south polar layered deposits) therefore represent areas of potential astrobiological interest and planetary protection concern,” the study concluded, urging for more exploration studies to analyze these subglacial bodies.

Journal Reference:

• Multiple subglacial water bodies below the south pole of Mars unveiled by new MARSIS data, Nature Astronomy (2020). 
• DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1200-6 , www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1200-6

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29-09-2020 om 23:33 geschreven door peter  

WATCH A METEOROID BOUNCE OFF THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE

ESA

This image depicts the two areas where most of the asteroids in the Solar System are found: the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the trojans, two groups of asteroids moving ahead of and following Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun.

{ https://futurism.com/the-byte }

29-09-2020 om 22:20 geschreven door peter  

PARAMEDICS TEST JETPACK FOR DARING MOUNTAIN RESCUES

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29-09-2020 om 22:06 geschreven door peter  

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to trembling
Cuz there’s a black hole underground
— (“I Feel the Earth Move” — with apologies to Carole King)

If you think that version of Carole King’s “I Feel the Earth Move” would sound pretty bad, wait until you here the explanation given in a paper published in a scientific journal on why there’s a black hole in the center of Earth … an explanation that, like a black hole, pulls in references to everything from DNA to string theory, curved space-time and – hold onto your hat – your humble writer! Read on while I figure out whether to be honored or run like hell in the opposite direction.

“Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the centre of the earth. We show that the existence of life on the earth may be a reason that this black hole like object is a black brane that has been formed from biological materials like DNA. Size of this DNA black brane is 109 times longer than the size of the earth’s core and compacted interior it. By compacting this long object, a curved space-time emerges, and some properties of black holes emerge. This structure is the main cause of the emergence of the large temperature of the core, magnetic field around the earth and gravitational field for moving around the sun.”

Forget that … we’re here for the black hole

That’s the opening to “A Black Hole at the Center of Earth Plays the Role of the Biggest System of Telecommunication for Connecting DNAs, Dark DNAs and Molecules of Water on 4+N- Dimensional Manifold,” a paper published in the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences. Yes, asking “Why is a medical journal interested in black holes?” is a very good question – we’ll get to that. First, the statement “Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the center of the earth” may ring a bell – in May 2019, I wrote about a former NASA scientist named Louise Riofrio who proposed that a black hole the size of a grain of sand but with the weight of the Moon is at the Earth’s center. (She also claimed that the speed of light is changing.) Well, that article is referenced in this new study! It’s important to note here that my conclusion was “While this ‘black hole in the center of the earth’ idea does have a certain sci-fi movie appeal, with so little evidence and no scientific reviews or rebuttals, the needle on the meter is heading for that black hole known as “highly skeptical.”” But that didn’t seem to faze the long list of authors (13 in all) of the study.

Why is this study in a medical journal? The “brane” it references is a dynamical object which can propagate through spacetime according to the rules of quantum mechanics. A “black brane” seems to imply that the brane is a black hole, but then comes a HUGE black-hole-sized leap from “brane” to DNA. The study then devotes page after page of equations and illustrations to allegedly explain this. Rather than attempt to summarize them (a job FAR beyond the pay grade of this writer), let’s look at the follow-up paper published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information titled “Formation of Neural Circuits in an Expanded Version of Darwin’s Theory: Effects of DNAs in Extra Dimensions and within the Earth’s Core on Neural Networks.” Darwin linked to the Earth’s core? This study doesn’t make things any clearer.

Perfectly clear?

These year-old papers have suddenly popped up because some well-known and well-respected scientists like Paul Byrne (planetary geologist at North Carolina State unknown as the Planetary Guy) discovered it and are trying to figure out how these journals could have published what they believe to be well-written nonsense. Mathematician Sarah Rasmussen identified the “gotcha” – one co-author, Torello Lotti, wrote an article on so-called “predatory journals” – journals that charge to publish articles without checking them for quality and legitimacy – and identifies the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences as one that has ‘unknowingly been duped’ into publishing them in the past. The dots connecting this study to “let see if we can get someone to print this rubbish” are much closer than the distance between DNA and a black hole at the center of the universe.

Excuse me while I wrap this up and run as fast as I can away from the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences while singing another Carole King classic.

“There’s somethin’ wrong here, there can be no denyin’”
— (“It’s Too Late” – Carole King)

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

29-09-2020 om 21:29 geschreven door peter  

In the 1960s and early 70s, the U.S. space program was deeply involved in studying the lunar surface, launching its famous, historical Apollo program, also called Project Apollo, conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The ambitious program, which ran from 1961 to 1972, was notable for landing the first human beings on the moon in 1969, with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin making landing on the lunar surface with their Apollo Lunar Module, and there would be five further Apollo missions that would also land American astronauts on the moon. The program also set quite a few other major milestones in spaceflight, spurred growth in various areas of technology that have had far reaching effects beyond space travel, and with the many photos and lunar surface samples that were taken it taught us an unprecedented amount of information about our nearest celestial neighbor. Yet there have long been many mysteries and conspiracies surrounding the Apollo program and moon as well, and one of these is the supposed trainer of astronauts and keeper of moon photos who claims that there were many instances of photos of an alien presence on the moon, and efforts by NASA to cover it all up.

Among the scores of people who made the whole program work was aerospace engineer, pilot, and astronaut trainer Ken Johnston, who according to him was one of the four Civilian Astronaut Consultant Pilots who helped train astronauts for the Apollo 11 mission. Hired by Grumman Aircraft Corp., one of Johnston’s main duties at the time was cockpit and instrument development and training, as well as to test the lunar mission module in the vacuum chambers in order to make sure they were safe for flight, in the process helping to train the astronauts in how to land it. Johnston would supposedly later take on other duties, such as allegedly working at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, which dealt with processing and analyzing various samples taken from the moon, as well as photographs. Johnston says he handled the photographs from five of the Apollo missions, which were stored, curated, catalogued, and often sent off to scientists to be studied and analyzed. Indeed, Johnston claims he was the Director of the Data and Photo Control Department, and so had access to all of the photographic data being sent back to Earth from the moon, including photos, film and slides. It is with his work here that the conspiracies and strangeness begins.

When the Apollo program began to wind down and the samples were mostly sorted and take care of, Johnston was surprised when his superior, Bud Laskawa, to destroy all of what remained of the photo archive, and special emphasis was put on making sure a collection of glossy 8 by 10 prints never saw the light of day. He claims that the reason for this was that many of the photos had strange anomalies in them that NASA did not want the public to see, and which they were very interested in keeping quiet about, to the point that, according to Johnston, the photos would often be altered to cover up anything weird in them, with extensive manipulation and doctoring done on them to hide what he says were evidence of some sort on nonhuman structures on the lunar surface. He has said of all of this in an interview with Indian researcher Parvathi Benu:

Once we were done with the first three missions, I was put in charge of photographing and documenting their exact location. One day, my boss ordered me to destroy these images. I reminded him that the government had paid for them and that they should be made public to which he replied, “No. Get rid of it. I don’t care what you think.” It was because there were elements in the pictures that were unexplainable. You can see the lunar anomalies too. It looks like something has been smudged out. Way before Photoshop, they would paint things out. Once, when I walked into the photo lab, I saw a woman painting something out. She called herself a ‘stripper’ and said that she was paid for it. This really upset me as I was in charge of keeping a record of things. I guess that’s why they call me a whistleblower.

Johnston would end up defying his orders and keeping a set of these photos for himself as part of his personal portfolio and as evidence of what he had witnessed. He would sit on these photos for years, keeping them secret and afraid to come forward with them or show them to anyone else until 1995, when Johnston attended a lecture being given by the somewhat controversial researcher Richard Hoagland. After the seminar, Johnston allegedly approached Hoagland with his photo set, and the two would look through them together. According to Hoagland, the photos were very intriguing, and definitely showed evidence of an alien presence on the moon. Hoagland also claimed that he was allowed to take scans of the prints, which he says allowed him to uncover further details on analysis, and he would write of the photos in his 2007 book Dark Mission, saying:

In scanning Ken’s priceless Apollo 14 C-prints, I’d discovered that the computer could “see” what the human eye could not—incredible geometric detail in the pitch black areas, like the lunar sky. The sensitivity of modern CCD imaging technology, in even commercially-available image scanners, coupled with the amazing enhancement capabilities of state-of-the-art commercial software — like Adobe’s Photoshop—allowed the invisible detail buried in these supposedly black layers, of these thirty-year-old emulsions, to ultimately be revealed—a “democratization” of technology that no censor at NASA could have possibly foreseen over more than thirty years.

Hoagland would then go on to exhibit and lecture extensively on these photos, claiming that he had found all manner of anomalies in them that had never been uncovered before, but there has been quite a bit of skepticism towards these bold claims. One excerpt from the rational wiki has pointed out one the problems with these scans and Hoagland’s claims as follows:

Of course scanning cannot reveal “invisible detail” if it truly is invisible. Hoagland has made a career out of trumpeting the fact that his scans of Ken Johnston’s collection show things that the “official” scans do not. But of course, he’s comparing, on the one hand, a professionally scanned image from an original negative or internegative done in a clean room — and on the other hand, a photoprint stored in a ring binder for 23 years, then pulled out and scanned on Hoagland’s office scanner, the glass of which is quite clearly contaminated. For use as Powerpoint™ slides, Hoagland typically slams up the brightness — a procedure guaranteed to reveal any scanner contamination wherever the image is black.

The scans have been written off by skeptics as merely showing imperfections and artifacts in the scanning surface, such as blemishes or fibers. Regardless of what Hoagland’s scans show, they were responsible for making Johnston’s photos public, and Johnston himself would begin to be more open with his original collection, releasing them to the public for free in 2015 and donating the collection to the Roswell International UFO Research Center and Museum. Those who have looked at the photographs for themselves have claimed to see all manner of strange things in them, including satellite dishes, statues, ruins, buildings, and even a lunar alien base with visible lights and structures.

In the meantime, Johnston has travelled and lectured extensively on what he calls a NASA cover-up, as well as conducting various interviews. One of the most well-known and controversial of Johnston’s claims is that there were photos from the Apollo 14 mission that supposedly showed an alien base in Tsiolkovsky, an enormous crater on the back side of the Moon. Johnston claims that when he first saw the photographs he could see lights and a pentagonal cluster of domes showing that it was clearly a facility of some sort, but that the next day it had all been doctored to erase it. According to him it had essentially been airbrushed out. This claim has also become controversial, because according to NASA records Apollo 14 never flew over Tsiolkovsky and it was never photographed, although Johnston denies this.

Even in the face of such criticism Ken Johnston has nevertheless become almost legendary as a “NASA whistleblower” and champion of disclosure, and he has over the years his claims have gone ever more into the fringe, such as that there are bases on Mars and that he has been hypnotically regressed to learnt that it was in fact aliens that had told him to defy NASA and come forward with his strange findings. This has understandably brought a lot of attention to him, both by UFOlogists and conspiracy theorists, as well as skeptics, who have constantly challenged Johnston’s claims even as controversy surrounds him. One of the red flags that has come up is that Johnston has increasingly claimed that he is an actual astronaut, which is false, and he has been found to frequently misrepresent himself and blow up his credentials, also sometimes labelling himself as a former “chief trainer at NASA,” all of which has gotten him in hot water with NASA and the State Department. He has also made other extravagant claims that have been seen by skeptics as questionable at best, such as that he has a “Doctor of Metaphysics” diploma, and his close colleague Bret Sheppard, who often accompanies him to lectures, has also been a controversial figure within the UFO field.

For his part, Johnston has continuously fought off his critics and insisted it is all real. We are left to wonder, is there anything to this? Is Ken Johnston for real, or is he a fraud? Is this for real or a hoax? It has become hotly discussed and debated, and it shows that the moon will likely attract stories like this for some time to come.

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29-09-2020 om 20:41 geschreven door peter  

One of the 'most extreme planets in the universe' orbits its star every 2.7 days and has a surface temperature hot enough to vaporise IRON, astronomers discover

• Details of the orbit and temperature of the planet were confirmed by CHEOPS
• CHEOPS is a space telescope launched by ESA to examine known exoplanets
• Named WASP-189b, the planet is the first to be further examined by CHEOPS
• It orbits its host star every three days and has a surface temperature of 5,702F

By RYAN MORRISON FOR MAILONLINE 

A 'hot Jupiter' exoplanet with a surface temperature hot enough to vaporise iron has been dubbed 'one of the most extreme planets in the universe' by astronomers.

Using data from the European Space Agency CHEOPS space telescope, astronomers from the University of Bern studied the orbit, size and temperature of WASP-189b.

The planet, 322 light years from Earth, was first discovered orbiting its bright host star HD 133112 by the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) project in 2018.

CHEOPS was launched by ESA eight months ago to characterise known exoplanets and WASP-189b is the first planet examined by the orbiting spaceship.  

The gas giant planet is one and a half times the size of Jupiter and has a surface temperature of 5,792 degrees Fahrenheit - it takes just three days to orbit its star.    

This is an artist impression of WASP-189b orbiting its extremely hot 'blue' host star. The planet orbits the star every three days and has a permanent day and night side

This is an earlier artist impression of HD133112 and WASP-189b shared by NASA before the full extent of its ultra-hot surface were known

The star, named HD 133112, is the hottest star known to have a planetary system, according to the Swiss astronomers behind the CHEOPS discovery.  

Monika Lendl, lead author of the study from the University of Geneva said WASP-189b was particularly interesting as it is a close orbiting gas giant. 

It orbits its star 20 times closer than the Earth orbits the Sun and is 'very exotic' as it has a permanent day side always exposed to the light of its 'very bright' host star. 

Its climate is completely different from that of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn in our solar system which have different sides facing the Sun as they rotate.

'Based on the observations using CHEOPS, we estimate the temperature of WASP-189b to be 3,200 degrees Celsius [5792 F]. 

In comparison, Jupiter has an average temperature of -234 degrees Fahrenheit. 

'Planets like WASP-189b are called 'ultra-hot Jupiters'. Iron melts at such a high temperature, and even becomes gaseous. This object is one of the most extreme planets we know so far,' says Lendl.

The planet itself is too close to the host star for any direct detection methods - so other techniques were needed to study it in more detail, the team explained.  

As the planet is so close to its host star the dayside is so bright the team were able to measure the 'missing light' as it passes behind the star - called an occultation.

'We observed several such occultations of WASP-189b with CHEOPS,' Lendl says. 

'It appears that the planet does not reflect a lot of starlight. Instead, most of the starlight gets absorbed by the planet, heating it up and making it shine.' 

The researchers believe that the planet is not very reflective because there are no clouds present on its dayside.

The system featuring WASP-189b is 'very exotic' according to astronomers. The star is very hot - 3,600 F hotter than the Sun - and the planet orbits the star every three days

'This is not surprising, as theoretical models tell us that clouds cannot form at such high temperatures,' said Willy Benz, study co-author from the University of Bern.

'We also found that the transit of the gas giant in front of its star is asymmetrical. This happens when the star possesses brighter and darker zones on its surface.'

The star around which WASP-189b orbits is very different from our Sun - it is considerably larger and more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit hotter.  

Because it is so hot, the star appears blue and not yellow-white like the sun. 

Willy Benz said: 'Only a handful of planets are known to orbit such hot stars, and this system is the brightest by far.' 

'The star itself is interesting – it's not perfectly round, but larger and cooler at its equator than at the poles, making the poles of the star appear brighter,' says Lendl. 

'It's spinning around so fast that it's being pulled outwards at its equator! Adding to this asymmetry is the fact that WASP-189 b's orbit is inclined; it doesn't travel around the equator, but passes close to the star's poles.' 

This tilted orbit adds to the existing mystery of how hot Jupiters form - for a planet to have such an inclined orbit it must have formed further out and been pushed inwards towards the star, the astronomers explained. 

This is thought to happen as multiple planets within a system jostle for position, or as an external influence – another star, for instance – disturbs the system, pushing gas giants towards their star and onto very short orbits that are highly tilted. 

'As we measured such a tilt with CHEOPS, this suggests that WASP-189 b has undergone such interactions in the past,' adds Lendl. 

As a consequence, it forms a benchmark for further studies, the team explained - saying they expect further spectacular findings on exoplanets from CHEOPS.  

The CHEOPS mission was launched in 2019 as a 'follow up tool' to study known exoplanets in more detail and characterise their orbits and temperature

CHEOPS uses two methods to study exoplanets: Transit - detection of the dimming of a star as a planet passes in front of it, and occultation - when a planet passes behind a star and light reflected by the planet is obscured

'This first result from Cheops is hugely exciting: it is early definitive evidence that the mission is living up to its promise in terms of precision and performance,' says Kate Isaak, Cheops project scientist at ESA.

Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered since 1995 and many more are expected to be found in the coming years - from space and ground-based missions. 

'Cheops has a unique 'follow-up' role to play in studying such exoplanets,' explained Isaak, adding it will search for transits of planets that have been discovered on the ground and more precisely measure their sizes. 

'By tracking exoplanets on their orbits with Cheops, we can make a first-step characterisation of their atmospheres and determine the presence and properties of any clouds present,' Isaak added.

The research has been published in the journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Scientists study the atmosphere of distant exoplanets using enormous space satellites like Hubble

Distant stars and their orbiting planets often have conditions unlike anything we see in our atmosphere. 

To understand these new world's, and what they are made of, scientists need to be able to detect what their atmospheres consist of.  

They often do this by using a telescope similar to Nasa's Hubble Telescope.

These enormous satellites scan the sky and lock on to exoplanets that Nasa think may be of interest. 

Here, the sensors on board perform different forms of analysis. 

One of the most important and useful is called absorption spectroscopy. 

This form of analysis measures the light that is coming out of a planet's atmosphere. 

Every gas absorbs a slightly different wavelength of light, and when this happens a black line appears on a complete spectrum. 

These lines correspond to a very specific molecule, which indicates it's presence on the planet. 

They are often called Fraunhofer lines after the German astronomer and physicist that first discovered them in 1814.

By combining all the different wavelengths of lights, scientists can determine all the chemicals that make up the atmosphere of a planet. 

The key is that what is missing, provides the clues to find out what is present.  

It is vitally important that this is done by space telescopes, as the atmosphere of Earth would then interfere. 

Absorption from chemicals in our atmosphere would skew the sample, which is why it is important to study the light before it has had chance to reach Earth. 

This is often used to look for helium, sodium and even oxygen in alien atmospheres.  

This diagram shows how light passing from a star and through the atmosphere of an exoplanet produces Fraunhofer lines indicating the presence of key compounds such as sodium or helium 

Read more:

• The hot dayside and asymmetric transit of WASP-189 b seen by CHEOPS | Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A)

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

29-09-2020 om 18:43 geschreven door peter  

The “ultra-hot Jupiter” is called WASP-189b and it is located about 322 light-years away from Earth. It was first discovered in 2018 and the CHEOPS telescope has been studying its orbit, temperature, and size. In fact, WASP-189b was the first exoplanet that the telescope studied after being launched late last year.

(Not WASP-189 b)

The data revealed that the planet is one and a half times the size of Jupiter and it completes a full orbit around its host star in just three days. Additionally, they were able to determine that the planet’s surface temperature is a whopping 5,792 degrees Fahrenheit (3,200 degrees Celsius) – hot enough to vaporize iron. Another interesting fact is that the star, which is called HD 133112, is the hottest star that’s known to have a planetary system.

Only one side of WASP-189b is permanently facing its star, whereas in our Solar System, the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn rotate so different areas of the planets face our sun. There aren’t any clouds on the dayside of WASP-189b because of the extreme heat so it’s probably not able to reflect anything.

As for the star, astronomers found some pretty interesting information about HD 133112, “Thanks to CHEOPS data, we can conclude that the star itself rotates so quickly that its shape is no longer spherical; but ellipsoidal. The star is being pulled outwards at its equator,” said Willy Benz, who is from the University of Bern and a co-author of the study. It is over 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than our sun and is quite a bit bigger which makes it appear blue in color because of the extreme heat. (An artist’s impression of what WASP-189b would look like orbiting the star can be seen here.)

"This object is one of the most extreme planets we know so far," said Monika Lendl, a scientist at the University of Geneva and lead author of a study detailing the discovery EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY/AFP/File

(Not HD 133112)

Since the planet has an inclined orbit, it is believed that it was formed much further away from the star than where it is located today and was somehow pushed towards the star. “As we measured such a tilt with CHEOPS, this suggests that WASP-189 b has undergone such interactions in the past,” explained Monika Lendl, who is from the University of Geneva and the lead author of the study. Their study was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics where it can be read in full.

For its first project, CHEOPS has certainly done a fantastic job and there are thousands more exoplanets that are waiting to be studied. “This first result from CHEOPS is hugely exciting: it is early definitive evidence that the mission is living up to its promise in terms of precision and performance,” stated Kate Isaak who is a CHEOPS project scientist at ESA.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

29-09-2020 om 18:30 geschreven door peter  

29-09-2020 om 18:10 geschreven door peter  

The Advanced Atlantean Civilization... Built and Sunk by the Gods

COAST TO COAST AM INSIDER Archived Show - Investigative mythologist William Henry returned to discuss the symbols and lore of Atlantis. “It was the end and beginning of all myths,” he said of the fabled continent. Plato believed the high civilization was started by gods, but when its citizens lost their “divine essence” they were destroyed by intentional cataclysms.

Henry suggested that these gods, might have been the “thought beings of light” written about by Dhyani Ywahoo, in her book Voices of Ancestors, which documents Cherokee Indian creation myth. These light beings were said to come from the Pleiades and were called tla, which Henry related to the word tula, an ancient name for Atlantis.

{  https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

29-09-2020 om 17:56 geschreven door peter  

Base Found On Dark Side Of Moon, NASA Photo, Sept 2020, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Sept 29, 2020

Location of discovery: Earths moon

NASA Source: 

• https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunarorbiter/images/print/5155_h1.jpg

I found the white alien base in a  NASA photo today. The base is located on Earths moon on the dark side. The only reason we can see it here is because its in the shadows. In light...these white structures are incredibly reflective and mirror like...making it difficult to get a clear photo of them. Aliens like to do things the lazy way. They don't really want to get their hands dirty doing manual labor, so they often create biomechanics structures and ships. Thats a structure that grows itself. If you look at the uneven edges and varying thickness of the tunnels...you will come to the same conclusion. 

Scott C. Waring 

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

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

29-09-2020 om 17:27 geschreven door peter  

Structures On The Moon In Old Moon Atlas Book, Photos, Sept 2020, UFO Sighting News.

 

Date of discovery: Sept 2020

Location of discovery: Plaskett Crater, Earths Moon

Source: Book; "Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Near Side of the Moon," page 265.

 

This very sharp and white ceramic-like structure is in a book of old moon photos. The book only talks about the moon, but there are alien structures in it that go unnoticed. This is another tool I often use to help expose the truth...the use of old books that have NASA photos in them. These are often photos that have not been edited so we get to see the real surface of the moon and not what NASA wants us to see. NASA uses photo editing tools to edit their photos and delete, blur or deliberately cover up with shadow anything that could be used as evidence of alien life. 100% proof live exists on our moon and its in a NASA book. 

Scott C. Waring

 

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

29-09-2020 om 17:13 geschreven door peter  

UFO Fleet Over Rock Hill, South Carolina, Sept 28, 2020, UFO Sighting News. MUFON.

Date of sighting: Sept 28, 2020
Location of sighting: Rock Hill, South Carolina, USA
Source: MUFON #111610

This video was recorded in South Carolina yesterday. Multiple eyewitnesses saw an event with numerous glowing objects passing over them. You can hear the excitement and confusion in their voices as they watch the strange objects above. The man theorizes that they can't be glowing lanterns because they move too fast. Also you hear a dog barking...which often happens in authentic UFO reports. Animals sense the oddness of the UFOs or aliens who fly them. 

A lot of people mistakenly identify lights in the sky as Chinese lanterns, but I live in Taiwan and have seen Chinese lanterns yearly and they have some ways to identify them...a few always  are falling to the ground. Lanterns can't fly more than a few minutes before the candle dies and the light goes out...and it falls. We see none of in this video. The objects in the video are not lanterns. 

I do see one UFO come close to being over eyewitnesses then it turns to follow the others away. It shows its intelligently controlled. 
Scott C. Waring 

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

29-09-2020 om 15:22 geschreven door peter  

During a thunderstorm one night in September, Brennan Nedeff saw a weird light in the night sky and thought it was the moon but at the end it looks like something came out of the cloud formation.

The strange light is an atmospheric optic that sometimes occurs when clouds reflect the Moon's light or something supernatural has taken place in the sky over Yakima Washington?

  

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

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

29-09-2020 om 15:06 geschreven door peter  

July 31st, 1995. A Boeing 727 carrying 102 passengers is on final approach to the airport of San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. According to the radio transcripts, flight crew and personnel on the ground witnessed a rapid-moving, luminous…something. In the pilot’s words, “the object has bright flashing lights...this...is...we think it's a flying saucer.”

How many trained observers saw this? Did it perform an "impossible" maneuver seemingly defying the laws of physics? 

And what did the Fuerza Aérea Argentina (Argentine Air Force) conclude this was? One of the most interesting and truly lesser known strange UFO encounters.

0:00 Intro 

0:42 Declassified transcripts 

1:57 "Impossible" maneuver 

3:17 Three ground observers 

4:30 Air Force analysis 

7:14 Our thoughts

  

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

29-09-2020 om 14:35 geschreven door peter  

UFOs filmed over Rock Hill, South Carolina 28-Sep-2020

These strange lights were recorded in the night sky above Rock Hill, SC yesterday.

Witness report: 

These objects are strange. We tried to debunk them as floating lanterns, or drones, etc., but still is believed that they are UAP’s.

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

29-09-2020 om 14:22 geschreven door peter  

Life on Earth may have begun in hostile hot springs

Understanding how complex molecules formed on our planet could guide the search for life elsewhere in the solar system

By Jack J. Lee

At Bumpass Hell in California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park, the ground is literally boiling, and the aroma of rotten eggs fills the air. Gas bubbles rise through puddles of mud, producing goopy popping sounds. Jets of scorching-hot steam blast from vents in the earth. The fearsome site was named for the cowboy Kendall Bumpass, who in 1865 got too close and stepped through the thin crust. Boiling, acidic water burned his leg so badly that it had to be amputated.

Some scientists contend that life on our planet arose in such seemingly inhospitable conditions. Long before creatures roamed the Earth, hot springs like Bumpass Hell may have promoted chemical reactions that linked together simple molecules in a first step toward complexity. Other scientists, however, place the starting point for Earth’s life underwater, at the deep hydrothermal vents where heated, mineral-rich water billows from cracks in the ocean floor.

As researchers study and debate where and how life on Earth first ignited, their findings offer an important bonus. Understanding the origins of life on this planet could offer hints about where to search for life elsewhere, says Natalie Batalha, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “It has very significant implications for the future of space exploration.” Chemist Wenonah Vercoutere agrees. “The rules of physics are the same throughout the whole universe,” says Vercoutere, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “So what is there to say that the rules of biology do not also carry through and are in place and active in the whole universe?”

Lure of the land

At its biochemical core, the recipe for life relies on only a few ingredients: chemical elements, water or other media where chemical reactions can occur and an energy source to power those reactions. On Earth, all of those ingredients exist at terrestrial hot springs, home to some hardy creatures. Great Boiling Spring in Nevada, for example, is a scalding 77° Celsius, yet microbes manage to eke out an existence in water near the spring’s clay banks, researchers reported in 2016 in Nature Communications. Such conditions may reflect what it was like on early Earth, so these life-forms are most likely “related to some of the organisms that were originally on this planet,” says Jennifer Pett-Ridge, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Microorganisms at hot springs can form communities called microbial mats. Made up of layers of microbes, mats have been found in geothermal areas all over the world, including in Yellowstone National Park, the Garga hot spring in southern Russia and Lassen — home to Bumpass Hell.

Over time, microbial mats can form into stromatolites, structures of microbes and minerals that have accumulated on top of one another; the layered appearance of a stromatolite reflects the passage of time, like a tree’s growth rings. Researchers found evidence of stromatolites in the Dresser Formation, a 3.5-billion–year-old rock feature in the Western Australia outback, along with evidence of hot spring mineral deposits, describing the findings in 2017 in Nature Communications. These findings, plus other signs of past microbes, led the team to suggest that some of the earliest life on Earth flourished in a hot spring environment.

David Deamer, a biophysicist at UC Santa Cruz, has spent four and a half decades exploring how life on our planet may have begun. He started out studying lipids, oily molecules that make up the membranes surrounding cells. Deamer, a big proponent of hot springs as the source of life’s start, has shown that conditions at terrestrial hot springs can produce bubblelike vesicles, with an outer layer made up of lipids. Such structures may have been the ancestral precursors of modern-day cells (SN: 7/3/10, p. 22).

Bruce Damer, an astrobiologist at UC Santa Cruz who brings a computer science approach to questions about the origins of life, worked with Deamer to test whether conditions at hot springs could drive condensation reactions, which join two molecules into one larger composite.

When water splashes out of a hot spring and evaporates, molecules that were in the liquid could undergo condensation reactions and link up. A subsequent splash would add more molecules that could undergo additional condensation reactions as liquid dries again. Repeated rounds of wetting and drying could produce chains of molecules.

In 2018, Damer set up shop at an active geothermal area in New Zealand, named along the usual theme — Hells Gate — to test that hypothesis. He prepared vials with ingredients needed to assemble strands of RNA, a nucleic acid that acts as a messenger during protein synthesis and may have catalyzed chemical reactions involved in the origins of life on early Earth (SN: 4/10/04, p. 232). The concoction included two of the four RNA building blocks — the nucleotides that link together to form RNA chains.

Damer stood the open vials in a metal block, roughly the size of two CD cases stacked together, and set the contraption into a near-boiling hydrothermal pool. To simulate the sometimes-wet, sometimes-dry burbling of the primordial Earth, Damer squirted acidic hot spring water into the vials, let them dry out and then repeated the wet-dry cycle several more times. When he brought the vials back to the lab, he found that they contained RNA-like strands that were 100 to 200 nucleotides long.

These results, reported in December 2019 in Astrobiology, indicate that complex molecules can form at hot springs, supporting the hypothesis that life on Earth may have developed in such an environment. In 2020, Damer returned to Hells Gate with Deamer and colleagues to confirm Damer’s results and do more wet-dry cycling studies.

Nicholas Hud, a chemist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, studies the origins of life from a slightly different perspective: He explores how DNA and RNA nucleotides originated. He agrees that molecules are more likely to link together by condensation reactions on land, where wet-dry cycles can occur, than in the ocean. These reactions produce water; the formation of such a chemical bond isn’t energetically favorable when there’s already a lot of water around. “The best place to form that is in a hot, dry place,” Hud says. “The worst place to form it is in a wet, hot place.”

Underwater visions

Yet, wet, hot environs are just the place for life to originate, other evidence suggests. At hydrothermal vents on the deep, dark ocean floor, heated water spews into seawater that’s just a few degrees Celsius above freezing (SN: 7/23/16, p. 8).

In 2017, researchers found fossils in 3.77-billion-year-old rocks from Quebec that originated from the ancient ocean floor and had signs of hydrothermal activity (SN: 4/1/17, p. 6). The researchers claim that the distinct structures resemble those of microbes, suggesting that deep-sea environments may have supported some of the earliest life on Earth.

These environments can be extreme: Some vents belch dark plumes of water as hot as 400° C. However, if vents played a role in nurturing early forms of life, it likely happened at milder vents. For example, Lost City is a hydrothermal area in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the fluid streaming from vents ranges in temperature from 40° to 90° C. The region is named for dramatic limestone chimneys that rise as much as 60 meters above the seafloor.

These spires are home to microbes that feed off the products of a chemical reaction known as serpentinization. “Hydrothermal vents are interesting because they are at the interface of water and rock,” says astrophysicist Laurie Barge of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

A chemical reaction between water and rock at sites like Lost City makes the water coming out of vents more alkaline than the water in the ocean, which has a higher concentration of positively charged hydrogen ions. The resulting gradient from alkaline to more acidic water is like the difference between the positive and negative ends of a battery and can serve as an energy source for chemical activity.

To study the conditions at underwater vents, Barge creates simulated environments in the lab that, she says, “can mimic what you see in the natural world.” To represent an ocean on early Earth, she fills an inverted glass bottle with an acidic mixture containing iron but no oxygen. One end of a plastic tube pokes through the narrow end of the bottle, connected to a steady supply of a basic, or alkaline, solution just like a vent.

When Barge and colleagues injected an alkaline vent solution containing RNA nucleotides into an ocean-simulating bottle, individual RNA nucleotides linked up into short chains. These strands were only three or four nucleotides long, but the results suggest that the conditions at deep-sea vents could have supported reactions that led to the emergence of life on Earth, the researchers proposed in 2015 in Astrobiology.

Problems with both

To Deamer, there are big barriers to putting life’s pieces together near underwater vents: The vastness of the ocean would dilute molecules so they wouldn’t be concentrated enough to drive chemical reactions. Also, there are “no wet-dry cycles underwater.” In his view, repeated evaporation is needed to pull together enough molecules to bump into each other and react to form longer chains. Plus, unlike a hot spring’s freshwater, salty ocean water inhibits the formation of membranes and reactions that link together molecules, he says.

However, Deamer’s hot springs theory has its critics as well. DNA and RNA strands are composed of alternating phosphate and sugar molecules, but sugars “are profoundly unstable in hot spring environments,” says David Des Marais, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

And it may be too soon to rule out wet-dry cycles underwater. “You can have a little bit of water get stuck in a pore,” says Bill Brazelton, a marine microbiologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. And then, because the serpentinization reaction at a vent uses up water in making other molecules, “you can have these cycles of dehydration inside a rock underneath the ocean.”

It may be impossible to nail down how life truly began on Earth: Most geologic records of what actually happened during Earth’s earliest days have long disappeared. There are numerous alternative hypotheses for where life began, beyond terrestrial hot springs and deep-sea vents. Recent research, for example, suggests that asteroid impacts could have sent superheated seawater into the crust to produce hydrothermal systems resembling hot springs (SN: 7/4/20, p. 10).

“I think we have to admit that there might be more than one little torturous path that might have been traversed in order for life to begin,” Des Marais says.

Life beyond Earth

Researchers are using what they’ve learned about how and where life may have originated on Earth to guide the search for biological signatures beyond our planet. There are several promising locales in our solar system.

“One of the things that NASA is really interested in knowing is whether or not there could be life in the subsurface oceans of the icy moons, like Europa and Enceladus,” says Batalha, of UC Santa Cruz. Scientists have evidence that the two moons, one orbiting Jupiter and the other, Saturn, have oceans of salty, liquid water beneath their icy shells (SN Online: 6/14/19).

These moons are intriguing because, along with liquid water, both have plumes of water erupting from their surfaces (SN: 6/9/18, p. 11), suggesting ongoing hydrothermal activity. NASA’s Cassini space probe even identified compounds containing carbon, nitrogen and oxygen within Enceladus’ plumes, some of the ingredients of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Europa and Enceladus fascinate astronomers because activity on their ocean floors may resemble the hydrothermal vents found on our own planet and may provide the chemical conditions to support life (SN: 4/18/15, p. 10).

Icy moons may also promote condensation reactions. “Even if you were on an icy moon, you might have … freezing and thawing of ice,” Barge says. “So, I think it’s important to say, if wet-dry cycling is important, then we should look for any environment in the solar system that might be able to promote oscillating conditions of dehydration.”

But to find signs of past life, Damer and Deamer believe Mars is a more promising place to look. Mineral deposits indicate the presence of hot springs and hydrothermal activity in the planet’s past, which would have sustained the wetting and drying cycles that the two researchers see as crucial for condensation reactions to get life going.

Missions to the Red Planet are already under way. NASA’s Perseverance rover will be searching for signs of ancient life, such as telltale minerals in rock samples, at Mars’ Jezero crater when the mission lands in February 2021 (SN: 7/4/20 & 7/18/20, p. 30). Though at least 54.6 million kilometers separate them, Mars and Bumpass Hell may not be so different.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

29-09-2020 om 01:40 geschreven door peter  

{ https://futurism.com/ }

29-09-2020 om 01:27 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers in Canada say they have found evidence for 45 new tiny moons orbiting Jupiter, and that the planet may have a staggering 600 such moons in total.

Image of j22r94a24, one of the possible new moons discovered orbiting Jupiter by scientists at the University of British Columbia in Canada. The researchers say that Jupiter may actually have up to 600 of similar tiny moons. Image via Edward Ashton/ University of British Columbia/ SkyandTelescope.org.

As the largest world in our solar system, Jupiter is often referred to as the king of planets. Its kingdom contains at least 79 known moons, second only to Saturn with 82. Now, a new study from the University of British Columbia in Canada suggests that there might be many more Jovian moons waiting to be discovered. If these astronomers are right, Jupiter might have as many as 600 moons whirling around it! These additional waiting-to-be-found moons are sure to be very small, on the order of about 800 meters (yards) in size, these astronomers say.

The findings will be presented virtually on September 25, 2020, at the Europlanet Science Congress 2020, but in the meantime, you can read the pre-print version of the new paper on arXiv, to be published in The Planetary Science Journal, and there is also an abstract on the ESC 2020 website.

This fascinating news was reported by the University of British Columbia on September 14, 2020, as well as by Govert Schilling at SkyandTelescope.org on September 8, 2020.

So how did these researchers come to their conclusion of 600 moons for Jupiter?

Schematic representation of the orbits of Jupiter’s 79 known moons. The 45 new tiny moons potentially discovered are thought to have irregular orbits and belong to the retrograde group. Additional such moons would also likely be in similar orbits, far out from the planet.

Image via Carnegie Institute for Science/ Roberto Molar Candanosa/ SkyandTelescope.org.

Edward Ashton, Matthew Beaudoin and Brett Gladman at the University of British Columbia examined archival images of Jupiter, taken with the 340-megapixel MegaPrime camera on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The 60 images studied were all taken on September 8, 2010, within a period of three hours. In order to account for the various ways tiny moons might move across a field of view, the team digitally combined all the images in no less than 126 different ways. Their efforts paid off.

They found 52 possible new moons. The objects had diameters as small as 800 meters (2,600 feet), showing up in the images with magnitudes down to 25.7. Out of those 52, seven turned out to be already-known moons that are in irregular orbits, leaving a total of 45 new detections. The newly spotted moons also appear to be retrograde moons, meaning they orbit Jupiter “backwards” with respect to Jupiter’s rotation. This is a bit different from apparent retrograde motion, where a planet, such as Mercury, appears to change its direction moving across the sky as seen from Earth – but doesn’t really, of course – due to the relative positions of the planet and Earth and how they are moving around the sun.

It’s cool that the team found so many (unconfirmed) new moons, but how do they jump from those detections to 600 moons?

The answer is that this search was conducted in only one square degree of view of the space around Jupiter. By extrapolating to the rest of the region around the planet, the researchers estimate that Jupiter could have as many as 600 moons total.

Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie Institution of Science had previously estimated the number of moons larger than one kilometer (.6 mile) in size to be around 100. Regarding the new study, Sheppard told Schilling at SkyandTelescope.org:

We used a similar shift and stack technique for our Jupiter moon discoveries that were announced in 2018. In our paper, we also mentioned detections that we could not confirm as moons, because we didn’t observe them for the months and years required to reliably determine their orbits.

Jupiter is well-known for its four largest Galilean moons Europa, Io, Callisto and Ganymede (Io and Europa depicted here), but it also has many more much smaller moons as well.

Image via ElChristou/ Wikimedia Commons.

As of right now, however, those 45 new moons are not officially confirmed, as their orbits have not yet been precisely determined. Sheppard said:

It takes a lot of large telescope time to get reliable orbits for these very small and numerous moons, so one has to decide if that is scientifically valuable.

The fact that Jupiter already has 79 known moons is incredible enough, when we think of how Earth has only one. But gas and ice giants are much larger and have much stronger gravitational pull, so it really isn’t too surprising that they have many more moons than smaller rocky planets do. Hundreds of moons for Jupiter might be more than you or I imagined, but science fiction writers have probed this possibility for years.

Unfortunately, at the moment, there are no planned follow-up observations to try to confirm these new moons. Ashton said:

It would be nice to confirm them, but there is no way to track them without starting from scratch.

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Image via Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

The upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory might be able to help find them again however. According to Ashton:

They will then be linked back, so our observations will eventually be incorporated.

These tiny objects are just big enough to be considered moons – or moonlets – according to scientists. And what about Jupiter’s rings? Like the rings of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, they are composed mostly of particles much smaller than that, more like sand grains or even dust. It would be completely impractical to think of every one of those specks as a “moon,” obviously, so where is the size cutoff?

The answer is that the International Astronomical Union does not consider any rocky objects smaller than one kilometer (.6 mi) to be a moon. Ashton said:

Eventually one descends to ring particles, and some kind of cutoff will be useful.

Brett Gladman at University of British Columbia, 1 of the 3 researchers involved in the new study.

Image via The University of British Columbia.

It was also reported last week that Jupiter’s moons seem to be warmer than expected. Most of the heat (on the insides of these worlds) was thought to come from Jupiter’s gravity tugging at the moons’ interiors, creating extra warmth. But now it seems that the moons may be heating each other more instead. This applies to the four large Galiean moons Europa, Io, Callisto and Ganymede.

Saturn currently has 82 known moons. And it is surely likely that future studies will reveal dozens or hundreds more in the Saturnian system as well. What about Uranus and Neptune? It will be very interesting to see if the researchers’ prediction for Jupiter holds up, and how many more of these tiny worlds will be found, within our lifetimes, orbiting the largest planets in our solar system.

• Bottom line: Astronomers in Canada have found evidence for 45 new moons orbiting Jupiter, and say the planet may have as many as 600.
• Source: The Population of Kilometer-scale Retrograde Jovian Irregular Moons
• Via SkyandTelescope.org

The four largest moons of Jupiter, from left to right: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. 

UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

29-09-2020 om 01:19 geschreven door peter  

 ASHLEY COWIE

World’s First Complete Dinosaur Skeleton Has Been Vividly Brought to Life

A team of English scientists have unboxed the first complete dinosaur skeleton ever discovered, and after over 150 years the remains have finally been fully studied and recorded. Previously unknown traits have been discovered, as well as giving it a new home on the evolutionary timeline.

Rise of the First Terrible Lizard

Sir Richard Owen (1804 - 1892) was a controversial English biologist, comparative anatomist, and paleontologist who spent a lifetime interpreting fossils. He eventually assisted Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807 - 1894), the English sculptor and natural historian, in creating the first life-size sculptures depicting dinosaurs. Those sculptures were made for for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London’s Crystal Palace and were seen by over six million people that year.

Owen’s research identified several anatomical similarities between modern reptiles and the skeletons of giant ancient creatures that were being excavated across Victorian England , and it was he who published the first work on Mesozoic land-reptiles, which he named  Dinosauria, from the Greek words “ deinos,” meaning “terrible, powerful or wondrous”, and “ sauros” meaning “lizard”: directly translated to “ Terrible Lizards”.

Bipedal Scelidosaurus illustration from 1896.

(FunkMonk/ CC BY 2.0 )

The Story of the Lost Limb Lizard

According to a report on Science Daily , in 1850 James Harrison, a quarry owner in West England, sent a curious boulder he had found imprinted with fossilized leg bones and a skull to Richard Owen at the British Museum . When Owens completed his study he announced to the world that the fossils encased in this stone represented the very first practically-complete dinosaur skeleton ever discovered. And because of its extremely well-developed hind legs in 1859 Owen named this ancient beast “ Scelidosaurus,” the “limb lizard”.

Replica of a Scelidosaurus skeleton. (FunkMonk/ CC BY SA 2.0 ) The first complete dinosaur skeleton was a Scelidosaurus.

And while in 1861 Owen described this creature as a partially sea-dwelling fish-eater, he failed to make a life-size reconstruction of the creature, and he also neglected any attempt to place the dinosaur into historical context in a timeline with other species. And because in the following decades the fossils of much larger and more newsworthy dinosaurs were discovered, Owen’s “limb lizard” faded into relative obscurity and became all but forgotten in the vaults of London’s Natural History Museum . Until now this is…

• Footprints on the Wall: Were Dinosaurs Actually Climbing the Cliffs in Bolivia?
• Is the Creature Carved Into Angkor Temple Wall a ‘Domestic’ Dinosaur?
• Chinese Boy Accidentally Finds 66-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Eggs

Resurrecting the First Complete Dinosaur Skeleton

Marcel Proust said, “The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes,” and this sentiment applies directly to paleontologist David Norman of Cambridge University’s Department of Earth Sciences . Professor Norman and his team studied Owen's overlooked dinosaur specimen and a new paper they detail how Scelidosaurus had lived around 194-million-years-ago in forested regions that are now submerged beneath the former British Sea . The results of Norman's work, published as four separate studies in the  Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society of London , not only reconstruct what Scelidosaurus looked like in life, but reveal that it was an early ancestor of ankylosaurs, the armour-plated 'tanks' of the Late Cretaceous Period.

The new analysis shows that while Scelidosaurus was a relatively slow-moving creature measuring about 4 meters (13 ft) long, and its entire body was protected inside a thick case of armor, composed of bony spikes, plates and horny scutes. The creature’s teeth and jaw indicated that it was an herbivore that mostly fed on undergrowth. And it was also discovered that the creature probably stood on its hind legs to reach low foliage growing on trees, but its relatively long arms indicated that it had a greatly quadrupedal posture.

Skull of a Scelidosaurus.

( University of Cambridge )

Visualizing a 194-Million-Year-Old Creature

In the most part we humans are a very visually orientated group of creatures who say things like “photographs speak a thousand words,” and the inordinate success of Instagram perhaps speaks loudest about our thirst to be stimulated with graphical representations of reality. It is for this reason perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the new study is the new reconstruction of  Scelidosaurus.

Not only does this new study let us see how this lost dinosaur would have looked when it was grazing in the ancient forests of Europe, but the researchers also completed another major task that Owen had failed to do: they inserted the creature into a new found chronological station of the dinosaur evolutionary time line.

It was after establishing the creature’s 194-million-year-old origins that the team of researchers managed to determine that  Scelidosaurus was not an ancestor of the  Stegosaurian dinosaurs, an idea that has long been suspected in paleontological circles - instead it was an ancestor of the ankylosaurs which emerged around 68–66 million years ago.

David Norman has published the four studies in the latest Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society , listed below.

• Top Image: Reconstruction of a live Scelidosaurus, the first complete dinosaur skeleton ever discovered. Source: John Sibbick

By Ashley Cowie

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29-09-2020 om 01:01 geschreven door peter  

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29-09-2020 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

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29-09-2020 om 00:41 geschreven door peter  

The Anunnaki And The Origin of Mankind

Niamh Harris

Zecharia Sitchin  was one of the few scholars able to read and interpret ancient Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets. He based his bestselling ‘The 12th Planet’ on texts from the ancient civilizations of the Near East.

His controversial theories on the Anunnaki origins of humanity have been translated into more than 20 languages and featured on radio and television programs around the world

Anunnaki (Sumerian: “those who came down from the heavens”). The Anunnaki correspond to the old Hebrew Anakeim and Elohim and the Egyptian Neter.

Rise Earth reports: According to Sitchin, the Anunnaki came from Nibiru, the mysterious yet unconfirmed tenth planet in our solar system. They landed in the Persian Gulf area some 430,000 years ago and colonized our planet with the intention of mining monoatomic gold, which was scarce on Nibiru yet abundant on Earth.

Their mining operations went without a hitch for 200,000 years until their miners rebelled and the Anunnaki were left without their working force. Documents Sitchin claims to have translated tell of the efforts the Anunnaki undertook in search for new miners, efforts which ultimately led to the rise of Homo sapiens.

After unsuccessful attempts to splice animal and Homo erectus DNA, the Anunnaki chief scientists Enki and Ninhursag incorporated their own genetic material into H. erectus, fathering modern humans. Their success was shadowed by the fact that their new human slaves were sterile clones and as the demand for workforce increased, they genetically engineered mankind in order to be able to reproduce.

This ability led to overpopulation and many humans were banished from the safety of their cities, giving rise to the expulsion from paradise myth that so many cultures still recall.

Thousands of centuries later, the human species had evolved into stability and again caught the attention of the Anunnaki. They wanted to take advantage of the new genetic stock and some of them were chosen as sexual partners. The children resulted from these forbidden unions were called the Nephilim, “the giants of old”. This protocol breach also resulted in wiping out the resulting populace, save for a few chosen individuals who were protected by Enki, who still harbored sympathy for his creation. These events are present as the cultural heritage of many civilizations.

After hundreds of thousands of years of enslaving their creation to serve their obscure interests, the Anunnaki decided to leave Earth. Their influence reached every corner of the world, from Mesopotamia to India to South America.

According to Sitchin, the Anunnaki exodus happened around 6,000 years ago. Before they left, they decided to give humanity one more boost, which can be summed up as the Sumerian civilization, which was inexplicably advanced for its time. Indeed, they made a ‘sudden’ appearance as a mature and highly organized culture. The Anunnaki taught the Sumerians their way of life and established kingship. The king would act as their emissary on Earth and rule the people under their guidance. Their select bloodline was genetically enhanced with Anunnaki genes and they were taught astronomy, mathematics, technology and medicine.

Despite the skepticism with which this theory has been met, Sitchin cites several documents and discoveries in support of his claim.

The Babylonian epic of creation called Enuma Elish represents a history of the forming of our solar system. According to it, the Earth had not yet formed when a wandering planet called Nibiru was caught by our sun’s gravitational pull. It disturbed many of the planets’ moons and tilted Uranus’ orbit. It then collided with Tiamat, a planet that once orbited between Mars and Jupiter.

Earth was born out of this collision and Tiamat’s moon became our own. What was left of Nibiru settled into a 3,600 year elliptical retrograde (it spins opposite to all the other planets) orbit around the sun. Interestingly enough, computer simulations indicate such an event as the origin of our planet. It would certainly explain a lot of inconsistencies in our current theory about the Moon, which seems older than Earth itself.

Sitchin also believes that the existence of out of place artifacts such as the Baghdad Batteries or the Saqqara Bird can be attributed to an ancient yet highly advanced civilization. He also mentions the suppressed discovery of an Anunnaki gold processing plant on Mount Horeb by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1889.

Archaeological digs at the ancient Mesopotamian city of Niniveh uncovered 400 intact clay tablets in the library of Assurbanipal. These tablets contain continuous historical records fully encompassing the activities of the Anunnaki. The records place the location of the Anunnaki genetic laboratories in East Central Africa, which, interestingly enough is in the exact same area as our modern searches have placed ‘mitochondrial Eve’ and in the same time period. Even more interesting is that 100,000 year-old gold mines have been found in the area.

Sitchin believes that our evolution has been sped up beyond a doubt. He and others claim that our radical and anomalous differences should be evidence enough for this theory.

They also say the Anunnaki are not done ruling Earth.

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29-09-2020 om 00:24 geschreven door peter  

Is it possible that a famous author had secret access to ancient information surrounding the planet Mars? The story I’m sharing with you today revolves around none other than Jonathan Swift, the brains behind the classic novel Gulliver’s Travels. The book was first published in 1726, almost three hundred years ago. Before we get to the matter of Swift’s strange connection to Mars, though, let’s first take a look at the story-line of his famous novel. The planned, original title of Gulliver’s Travels was Travel into Several Remote Nations of the World in Four Parts…by Lemuel Gulliver. It’s hardly surprising that with a title like that the publisher chose to trim it down a bit! As for the story itself, it tells of the adventures of the aforementioned Lemuel Gulliver. We learn that he has a long affinity for the vast oceans of our world, that he is a skilled surgeon, and that he has traveled the planet, overseeing the crews of several ships. Swift’s story sees our hero head out to a series of tongue-twisting places, including Luggnagg, Laputa, and Brobdingnag, where adventures abound.

Mars’ moon, Phobos (NASA)

Although Swift’s acclaimed novel was first published in 1726, the man himself had been working on the story as far back as 1713. It wasn’t for a full seven years later that Swift finally decided to seriously get into the writing of what was, until then, a largely stalled manuscript. Swift certainly made up for lost time, however, toiling night and day to get the book whipped into good shape. He certainly did that. On reading Swift’s work, Benjamin Motte, a London publisher, eagerly decided to publish it. It was a most wise move: Gulliver’s Travels became a distinct bestseller. It’s still a crowd-puller to this day: in 2010 a big-bucks movie version, starring Jack Black, reaped in more than $200 million in the process. Now, we come to the matter – and the mystery – of Swift’s connection to Mars.

In Gulliver’s Travels, we learn that the people of Laputa – an island that Gulliver visits during the course of his worldwide trek – have “…discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary planet exactly three of its diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the center of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies.”

We might say that there is nothing particularly strange about all of this: after all, Mars does indeed have a pair of small satellites. Their names are Deimos and Phobos. So, why there is such a controversy surrounding Swift’s words? The answer is a fascinating and tantalizing one: Mars’ two moons were not discovered until 1877 – which was approximately a century and a half after Swift’s book was published. This begs an important and glaringly obvious question: how could Swift have known of the existence of the Martian moons long before anyone else? Certainly, in the 1700s there were no telescopes around at the time that could secure a viewing of the two moons. Not only that, Swift’s descriptions of Deimos and Phobos were not too dissimilar to the reality of the situation.

Deimos: Mars’ Other Moon

(NASA)

On this issue, astronomer David Darling says:”When the two Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, were eventually found, by Asaph Hall at the US Naval Observatory, their orbits proved to be quite similar to those described in Swift’s novel. Phobos is actually 6,000 km from the surface of Mars and revolves around Mars in 7.7 hours, whereas Swift gave the values 13,600 km and 10 hours, respectively. Deimos averages 20,100 kilometers from Mars and orbits in 30.3 hours; Swift gives 27,200 kilometers and 21.5 hours, respectively.” Adding even more intrigue to the story: Swift was not the only writer, in the 1700s, to address the matter of Mars’ two moons. They pop up in the pages of an early sci-fi story, Micromegas. It was written in 1750 by Voltaire, an acclaimed French philosopher and historian. Of course, the fact that Voiltaire’s story came after Swift’s makes it very likely that Voltaire simply decided to take a degree of inspiration from the pages of Gulliver’s Travels.

There is another possibility, too. A controversial – and now rightly dismissed – theory was postulated by a German astrologer and astronomer, Johannes Kepler, who was born in 1571 and who died in 1630. Kepler’s theory was that the numbers of moons that orbited the planets in our solar system adhered to a certain concept. Kepler, as a revered astronomer, concluded that neither Venus nor Mercury had moons. He was correct. Obviously, he knew that our planet has just one moon. And, in the world of Kepler, that meant Mars would likely have two moons. And Jupiter would have three, and Saturn four. And so on and so on. Today, we know that this idea has no merit to it at all. Was Kepler’s concept the cause of all the controversy surrounding the Martian moons? Was the whole matter a bizarre coincidence? Or, did Jonathan Swift have access to ancient secrets pertaining to a now-long-forgotten Martian race? They are questions that offer us a great deal of food for thought. So far, however, the questions remain unanswered.

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28-09-2020 om 20:42 geschreven door peter  

For millennia, we, the Human Race, have been intrigued by Mars. Indeed, a good case can be made that we have an absolute affinity to the Red Planet; an affinity that dictated the development of early religions and even the world of conflict, as NASA notes. NASA also states: “The ancient Greeks were fascinated by Mars. Its blood red color led them to attribute the planet to Ares, their god of war. When the Romans conquered the Greeks, they renamed the gods and the planet Ares became the planet Mars.” As for Mars, the god, N.S. Gill says: “Mars sired Romulus and Remus, making the Romans his children. He was usually called the son of Juno and Jupiter, just as Ares was taken to be the son of Hera and Zeus. The Romans named an area beyond the walls of their city for Mars, the Campus Martius ‘Field of Mars.'” Mars was important to the Roman Empire when it came to the matter of something that we, as a species, are all too aware of: warfare. And sacrifice, too, as Patti Wigington states: “Before going into battle, Roman soldiers often gathered at the temple of Mars Ultor (the avenger) on the Forum Augustus. The military also had a special training center dedicated to Mars, called the Campus Martius, where soldiers drilled and studied. Great horseraces were held at the Campus Martius, and after it was over, one of the horses of the winning team was sacrificed in Mars’ honor. The head was removed, and became a coveted prize among the spectators.”

Then, there’s the matter of the ties between Mars and the world of science-fiction. Take, for example, H.G. Wells’ classic sci-fi novel of 1897, The War of the Worlds. It’s a story which sees the human race up against an invasion by hostile extraterrestrials that live on the Red Planet. Moving on, there are Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic fantasy tales that chronicle the life of one John Carter. He’s a heroic, sword-wielding figure who has all kinds of adventures on faraway Mars, with the first story being published in 1912. Burroughs’ novels proved to be incredibly popular with the public of that era. They included A Princess on Mars; Swords of Mars; Synthetic Men on Mars; Thuvia, Maid of Mars; John Carter of Mars and…well…you surely get the picture.

On October 30, 1938, a radio-version of The War of the Worlds was broadcast on The Mercury Theater on the Air. It was directed by Hollywood legend, Orson Welles. So realistic was the drama, it led at least some of the listeners to believe that the Martians really were invading. In 1967, Hammer Film Productions released Quatermass and the Pit, the title of which was changed for American audiences to Five Million Years to Earth. It’s a gripping tale of ancient Martians who came to our world millions of years ago – and who genetically altered early, primitive humans. And, in a strange and very alternative way, the Martians of the movie are still wielding their strange, almost supernatural, powers in 1960s-era London, England, deep inside the tunnels of the London Underground rail-system.

In 1979, NBC broadcast a mini-series based on Ray Bradbury’s science-fiction novel, The Martian Chronicles. Mission to Mars was a big-bucks movie made in 2000 that starred Gary Sinise and Tim Robbins as astronauts who learn – to their amazement – that Mars is not the dead world that so many believe it to be. Then, in 2015, actor Matt Damon took on the role of astronaut Mark Watney in The Martian, a movie that saw Damon’s character forced to find a way to survive in the harsh environment of Mars. Moving away from the domain of sci-fi, there is the matter of the many and varied unmanned missions to Mars that have been undertaken by the United States, Russia, India, Japan, and the European Space Agency. The combined figure – of fly-bys, landings and orbits of Mars – now amounts to close to fifty. In other words, the world’s leading nations in the field of space-flight and astronomy have a deep interest in Mars. As a species, it’s almost as if we just cannot leave Mars alone, whether in mythology, history, science-fiction, or ambitious missions to the planet itself.

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28-09-2020 om 20:28 geschreven door peter  

New Asteroids Update! National Near Earth Object Preparedness USA Strategy via Israeli News Live

New Asteroids Update! National Near Earth Object Preparedness USA Strategy via Israeli News Live

Here is an update on events that have transpired since we first revealed that the earth is entering an asteroid belt as well as the weather changes that would impact the earth.

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28-09-2020 om 18:41 geschreven door peter  

The Simpson's Alien Invasion Prophecy

From correctly predicting the Presidency of Donald Trump to Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox, The Simpsons, yes the longest-running animated TV show ever, has correctly predicted a bunch of wild events. Join Ryan as he shares fifteen of his favorite predictions that have come true.

The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of working-class life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The show is set in the fictional town of Springfield and parodies.

Are both parties infiltrated by aliens? They certainly seem like it lately. Aliens that don’t give a s about us.

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28-09-2020 om 18:27 geschreven door peter  

NASA Releases a Picture of the Curiosity Rover With a Mysterious Shadow

NASA Releases A Picture Of The Curiosity Rover With A Mysterious Shadow

In September 2012, Nasa released a picture of the Curiosity, a rover that was exploring Mars. A regular photo of the rover’s exploration containing a mysterious shadow intrigued the internet and raised questions.

A Mars rover is a motor vehicle that travels across the surface of the planet Mars upon arrival. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. Wikipedia

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28-09-2020 om 17:56 geschreven door peter  

28-09-2020 om 17:42 geschreven door peter  

White Triangle UFO Over Las Vegas, May Be Alien Drone From Nellis AFB, Sept 27, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 27, 2020
Location of sighting: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Here is some very shaky raw footage of a white triangle UFO over Las Vegas, Nevada this week. This footage is real, it checks out and is not CGI. I have had contact with some people in Las Vegas over the last ten years or so that have also see these white UFOs over Vegas frequently. Nellis AFB is in Las Vegas and its known for having a Tall Whites alien base behind the old firing range of Nellis AFB. This ship fits the description of the Tall Whites craft. I believe this is a remote controlled craft...a drone from the Tall White underground base. They are stubborn and do what they want when and how they want. Why observe us? Humanity has many cultures, rituals and races. We are very different from their genetically enhanced race...genetically increasing strength, memory, stamina, speed, but not things like art, creativity, patience, or trust. 
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

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28-09-2020 om 17:12 geschreven door peter  

Two Mysterious Creatures Wander In Front Of Door Cam, Dallas, Texas, Aug 28, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: August 28, 2020

Location of sighting: Dallas, Texas, USA

 

This footage came from a Ring door cam. It was recorded automatically by the door cam. In the footage we see two very short creatures walking around in the parking lot. The creatures look to be about a foot tall or less. 

There are dozens of old UFO landing reports that talk about eyewitnesses seeing small alien creatures, some that move incredibly fast, but none were harmful but were reported to be very mischievous. These creatures in the cam look like they are looking for something. Its very possible that these are two intelligent alien beings and they landed to get a close up look at life on Earth for a few minutes. Intelligence is not regulated by size, but by will of the species to evolve and survive. 

Scott C. Waring 

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28-09-2020 om 17:06 geschreven door peter  

Mini-moons are a unique space phenomenon that usually happen when an asteroid is caught by Earth's gravitational pull and temporarily orbits the planet.

But now, astronomers are baffled by an object which is on track to enter Earth's orbit in November and it doesn't seem like an asteroid.

According to the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, this 'mini-moon', which they have called asteroid 2020 SO, could be a lost booster rocket from the 60s.

So they're basically suggesting that this man-made booster rocket traveled through space only to resurface close to Earth after more than 50 years. Is that possible or this object isn't man-made at all?

  

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28-09-2020 om 14:46 geschreven door peter  

On September 27, 2020 an unknown object came into the view of the International Space Station live cam until it disappears behind the earth and goes out of the field of view. About 30 minutes later it reappears.... 

Meanwhile the ISS is leaking air and till now they cannot find the leak. Since it looks like the object has the same color as the space station we may wonder whether something did come off the ISS or not.

  

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28-09-2020 om 14:28 geschreven door peter  

Two silver objects behaving oddly in the sky above Sydney TODAY!

This was filmed today over Sydney, Australia!

Witness report: 

About 11am 28/09/2020 two office associates noticed a round silver object moving at steady pace from north to south coming from about above the Gladesville area. After returning from getting a phone to record the object we noticed a second object high in the sky about Balmain/ Pyrmont area. The two objects began to slowly dance about in the sky by a cloud and one began to tumble forward whilst the other moved straight up into and through the cloud. Both objects were very shiny they caught and reflected the sun brightly. The objects continued this behavior for about 10 minutes and disappeared.

This area is directly in the flight path from Sydney airport. They were far too small to be areoplanes and they were too round and without a tail or visible rotor to be helicopters. I don’t believe they were drones as they were about the size of a small (pinky) fingernail to the naked eye.

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28-09-2020 om 14:08 geschreven door peter  

Big UFO/ORB over Odessa, Ukraine 8-Sep-2020

Check our this huge bright unidentified flying object flying over the sky above Odessa in Ukraine. This happened on 8th September 2020.

Witness report:

 I noticed a faintly glowing object that stood out from the background as it was 10 degrees above the horizon. A bright white glow with increasing intensity, the brightness has increased to a magnitude of -3 or -4, it’s like the brightness of Jupiter or Venus, one of the brightest planets. It took me about 15 seconds to pick up a 5x magnification night vision device. A UFO arose in the south over the sea, near the coast 5 km away, filmed from the village of Kotovsky, a wanderer was moving towards the city of Odessa, and Zhivakhova Gora, this place with a hill in the form of a mountain by the sea, in ancient times was a cult place of Greek colonists, now a place of anomalous zones. I rotated focus on the night vision device in an attempt to sharpen and see the possible outlines of the object emitting light but saw nothing but a bright circular sphere, even when the object faded, the sphere shrank to a small point and disappeared. I shot for another minute, in case an object suddenly reappears, but it disappeared from the sight of even infrared radiation invisible to humans, but visible to the device.

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28-09-2020 om 14:01 geschreven door peter