L'Égypte dévoile des «trésors» trois fois millénaires

Les autorités égyptiennes ont dévoilé dimanche au public de nouveaux «trésors» archéologiques découverts dans la nécropole de Saqqarah dont une cinquantaine de sarcophages du Nouvel Empire vieux de plus de 3000 ans.

Ces nouvelles mises au jour ont été effectuées près de la pyramide du roi Téti, premier pharaon de la VIe dynastie de l'Ancien Empire, par une équipe menée par le célèbre égyptologue Zahi Hawass.

«Cette découverte réécrit l'Histoire de Saqqarah et plus particulièrement l'Histoire du Nouvel empire, né il y a 3000 ans», a assuré dimanche à l'AFP M. Hawass, avant d'ajouter que «70% (de cette nouvelle découverte) restent à explorer».

Les sarcophages en bois, datant du Nouvel Empire (XVIe-XIe siècle av. J.-C), ont été retrouvés dans un puits funéraire, selon M. Hawass, qui précise qu'un sarcophage en pierre a également été retrouvé dans un autre puits.

«Nous avons découvert un total de 22 puits funéraires», a-t-il dit à l'AFP. Parmi les découvertes dans ces puits figure celle d'un «soldat à côté duquel reposait sa hache de guerre», a précisé M. Hawass.

En outre, M. Hawass a ajouté que son équipe avait retrouvé «un papyrus d'environ 5m de long contenant le chapitre 17 du livre des morts (...) des masques, des embarcations en bois, des jeux auxquels jouaient les anciens Égyptiens».

L'archéologue estime qu'il s'agit d'une «découverte rare, car la plupart des pièces retrouvées datent du Nouvel Empire. À Saqqarah, c'est plutôt 500 avant J.-C. habituellement».

Plusieurs de ces objets ont été présentés dimanche à la presse, alors que les fouilles se poursuivaient sur le site.

Le ministère des Antiquités et du Tourisme avait révélé dès samedi soir dans un communiqué la teneur de ces découvertes, qu'il avait qualifiées de «majeures».

Le site de Saqqarah, qui se trouve à un peu plus de quinze kilomètres au sud des pyramides du plateau de Gizeh, abrite la nécropole de Memphis, la capitale de l'Égypte ancienne.

Il est classé au patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO et est connu pour la célèbre pyramide à degrés du pharaon Djéser, la première de l'ère pharaonique.

Ce monument, construit vers 2700 avant J.-C par l'architecte Imhotep, est considéré comme l'un des plus anciens à la surface du globe.

Les autorités espèrent inaugurer en 2021 le «Grand musée égyptien» près du plateau de Gizeh, où se trouvent les célèbres grandes pyramides et le Sphinx.

L'Égypte espère que toutes ces découvertes et son nouveau musée vont redynamiser le tourisme mis à mal par l'instabilité politique et les attentats après la révolution de 2011 qui a chassé Hosni Moubarak du pouvoir, et par la pandémie de COVID-19.

VIDÉOS LIÉES, sélectionnées et publiées par peter2011

{ https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/ }

The McCallister Case: Alien Close Encounter and a Stolen Artifact

The Robert McCallister Case has everything, a UFO, a close encounter with the occupant, an alien artifact and a visit from someone who steals the artifact. The case was discovered from Gray Barker a UFO investigator, writer and president of Saucerian Publications a publishing company dedicated to books related to the UFO phenomena.

The incident most probably happened some time in the 60s. Robert McCallister was a boy at the time and on that day during the Christmas holiday season he was in a forest near Salt Lake City (USA) setting up traps to catch coyotes. As he was walking around to check if he had caught something he suddenly confronted a disc-shaped craft hovering about 2 meters above the ground. His first thought was that the object was a hovercraft something he had read about recently in a magazine and therefore was not afraid. The object hovered silently, it had a diameter of about 4.5 meters and featured triangular ports about a meter apart. From behind some rocks a group of strange looking individuals emerged. They were tall and wore helmets similar to those worn by old-time divers. The helmets were attached to a cable.

The same cable was also attached to a type of chair (no details exist of how this chair looked) that was floating in the air at a height of about 3 meters. On the chair sat an old man with white hair and a broad smile. This man did not have a helmet nor wore a uniform similar to the other individuals. Instead he wore a blue tunic and sandals. After a few moments both the old man on the chair and the three individuals floated towards the disc. One of the ports opened and they all entered inside, including the chair. After the port had closed something unexpected happened. The port opened again and the old man appeared; he looked at Robert for a few moments and then approached him. The man took Robert by the hand and started showing him around the discs exterior. Although the man spoke an unknown language, gestures indicated that he was explaining a few things regarding the craft. The man noted the ball-point pen in Robert’s pocket. Robert gave it to him and the man took a piece of paper from his pocket and scribbled on it. When the man handed back the pen Robert insisted that he should keep it as a present. The man accepted the gift with a smile and offered him one of their own pens, he reached out to his pocket and gave it to Robert.

After this exchange of pens the man floated back to the craft´s interior. From the craft’s port the man waved to Robert to move away from the craft most probably to ensure that he maintains a safety distance during take-off. But after a few moments the port opened again and the same man waved at him to move even further away. When he was about 100 meters away Robert turned to look at the craft as it was rising slowly and without any sound. Suddenly, it shot upwards at an incredible speed and disappeared. Once back home he shared his story with his parents and older brother. They laughed at him and did not believe him despite him showing them the pen. The pen was made by a black plastic tube with a glass or plastic point from which ink flowed onto the paper.

Upon his return to school after the Christmas and new-year holidays, Robert shared his story and the “alien artifact” with his teacher and classmates. Although they did not take him seriously he was allowed to pass the pen around for observation by his classmates. A few days later Robert was home alone doing his homework; parents and younger siblings had gone shopping and his older brother was at basketball practice. He heard a knock on the door. There stood a short smiling man trying to communicate through gestures. The man presented a deaf/mute card (item sold outlining the sign-language alphabet). Thinking that the man seeking a contribution Robert offered some coins. The man refused and continued to make gestures; he pointed at the card and then at the “alien-pen” placed on the boy’s shirt pocket as if requesting it to note something down on the card. Robert did not hesitate and gave the pen thinking that the man will write something down that will help their communication. The moment he got hold of the “alien-pen” the short man ran towards the back of the house . Robert heard a car rev-up and then the screech of tires as the car left the scene.

Was this short man part of a government agency dedicated to retrieving alien artifacts and silencing witnesses?

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

L’affaire McCallister : une rencontre rapprochée avec des extraterrestres et un artefact volé

Les plus belles images de la sonde New Horizons

Par Joël Ignasse 

La sonde New Horizons continue son exploration de la ceinture de Kuiper.

Le 19 janvier 2006, une fusée Atlas-V propulsait la sonde New Horizons dans l'espace en direction de Pluton et de la ceinture de Kuiper. Elle vogua d'abord vers la planète Jupiter qu'elle a survolée le 28 février 2007 à une distance de 23 millions de kilomètres. La manœuvre lui a permis de bénéficier de l'assistance gravitationnelle de la géante gazeuse et de prendre la route de Pluton.

A la découverte de la Ceinture de Kuiper

La ceinture de Kuiper est une vaste zone en forme d'anneau composée d'une myriade de petits corps et de plusieurs planètes naines dont Pluton. Elle est située au-delà de l'orbite de Neptune entre 30 et 55 unités astronomiques. Gigantesque et quasi inexplorée, cette partie du Système solaire recèle pourtant bien des secrets : c'est un réservoir de comètes périodiques qui abrite des astres probablement contemporains des débuts du Système solaire, tandis que d'autres ont pu s'y former puis migrer secondairement et se rapprocher du Soleil. C'est sans doute le cas de Cérès et de Triton (une lune de Neptune). Avec 2.372 km de diamètre, Pluton est le plus gros membre de cette ceinture de Kuiper mais pas le plus massif puisque Eris, découverte en 2005, la dépasse. C'est notamment à cause de cette dernière que Pluton a été déchue de son statut de planète pour devenir une planète naine selon la définition adoptée par l'Union astronomique internationale le 24 août 2006, soit à peine 8 mois après le lancement de New Horizons. 

Des milliers d'images et de mesure de Pluton

Si cette nouvelle définition n'a pas fait que des heureux (surtout de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique), elle n'altère en rien l'intérêt et les résultats qu'obtiendra la sonde. Après des années d'hibernation, elle sera réveillée quelques mois avant d'atteindre son premier but. Et le 14 juillet, après un voyage de près de 6,5 milliards de kilomètres, l'engin survolera la planète désormais naine à seulement 11.000 km de sa surface. De ce passage historique, il restera des milliers d'images et de mesure qui révèlent la complexité de ce monde recouvert de glace sous laquelle réside peut-être un océan liquide comme sur son satellite Charon.

New Horizons

La sonde New Horizons est dans l'espace depuis 15 ans.

Jupiter

Première planète photographiée par la sonde New Horizons.

Io

La surface de Io, survolée ici le 28 juin 2007 par la sonde New Horizons. On y aperçoit une éruption volcanique au sommet.

Europe

Europe est l'un des quatre plus gros satellites de la planète Jupiter. Cette vue est celle d'un lever d'Europe au-dessus de Jupiter.

Etoiles

Une des photos de l'espace lointain prise par la sonde New Horizons.

Pluton

New Horizons a réalisé un survol historique de la planète naine Pluton le 14 juillet 2015.

Surface de Pluton

De nombreuses images de la surface de Pluton continuent d'être analysées par les scientifiques.

Le cœur de Pluton

Le cœur de Pluton ou la région Tombaugh est une vaste plaine glacée de 2000 km de large.

Montagnes dans le cœur de Pluton

Rangée de montagnes dans le "coeur" de Pluton : une image de l'instrument Lorri de New Horizons.

"Dark side" de Pluton

Quelques minutes après son survol, New Horizons a photographié la face cachée de Pluton.

Macule Cthulhu

La région de Cthulhu sur Pluton héberge de hautes montagnes dont le sommet est couvert de glace de méthane.

Charon

Cette image de Charon a été prise le 13 juillet 2015, c'est-à-dire 24 heures avant le survol au-dessus de Pluton.

Nyx et Hydra

Nyx et Hydra sont deux petites lunes qui orbitent autour de Pluton.

Arrokoth

L'astéroïde Arrokoth a été visité par la sonde le 1er janvier 2019.

Disque de poussière du système solaire

L'instrument Student Dust Counter (SDC) mesure la taille et la distribution des particules de poussières se trouvant sur la trajectoire de New Horizons et dont la masse est comprise entre 10−12 et 10−9 g.

VIDÉOS LIÉES, sélectionnées et publiées par peter2011

{ https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/ }

NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe could make a 2nd stop at infamous asteroid Apophis

An artist's depiction of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft at work at the asteroid Bennu.

(Image: © NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)

"I thought for sure extended-mission targets were going to be flyby kind of opportunities, more traditional," Lauretta said. "Those are pretty easy to design in the inner solar system. But when [the OSIRIS-REx mission designer] came back and said we could put the spacecraft into orbit around a second large near-Earth asteroid, I was really excited."

But of course, the priority for the OSIRIS-REx team has been the primary mission of the spacecraft (formally dubbed the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer): collect and deliver a sample from the asteroid Bennu for scientists to analyze in their laboratories on Earth.

That task is going smoothly: OSIRIS-REx collected its space rock on Oct. 20 and will leave Bennu for the long journey home sometime this spring, arriving in September 2023. And just like the Japanese Hayabusa2 asteroid-sampling mission, which returned its samples from an asteroid called Ryugu in December, only a small capsule will actually return to Earth, jettisoned by the main spacecraft, which will then be free to explore other destinations — assuming, of course, the paperwork comes through.

The OSIRIS-REx team plans to propose an extended mission to NASA in the summer of 2022, Lauretta said. Visiting Apophis is one option for what that extended mission could look like, but so far, it's the only target that engineers have found the spacecraft could visit long-term. And a flyby might not do the spacecraft justice in terms of its capabilities and current condition, which Lauretta said is "excellent."

"We don't have a solution that gets us to rendezvous with another asteroid at all right now," Lauretta said. "It really is the unique nature of the Apophis close approach to the Earth in 2029 that even enables us to do this."

Same spacecraft, new asteroid, new science

OSIRIS-REx has lost only one mode of one instrument; otherwise, everything is in working order, Lauretta said.

In fact, a second asteroid visit would give scientists the opportunity to use an instrument that never actually studied Bennu: OSIRIS-REx was equipped with two lasers for the spacecraft to shoot off the rock and study the echo to facilitate its landing and sampling maneuver. But when the spacecraft arrived, mission personnel learned the asteroid was far too rocky for the system to work and devised an alternative navigation system.

Most lasers don't last long in space, so having two working lasers on a spacecraft older than a decade is rare, Lauretta said. "Having two fresh lasers that we've never used, I'm actually kind of excited about that," he said. "Especially because we built the hardware and we never got to use it. I just feel bad for the instrument. Like, aww, you got all the way to Bennu and all you got to do is get checked out and then we turned you off and you never got to see any action."

In general, an observation campaign at Apophis would likely look quite similar to what the spacecraft did at Bennu.

First, there's a long chain of approach observations, starting with the asteroid seen as just a speck of light, slowly growing into a whole new world. That sequence would begin perhaps around April 8, 2029. OSIRIS-REx won't have a front-row seat to Apophis' close approach, which will occur on April 13.

Particularly prominent might be a change in how the asteroid spins. A second possibility the spacecraft could explore is that the close approach would sculpt the space rock's surface as Earth's gravity tugs at Apophis

"It could trigger mass movement on the surface, and we would definitely be looking for that," Lauretta said. "Even though we might not see the motion due to the gravitational interaction with the Earth, we could see evidence that things had moved recently: freshly exposed surfaces, maybe even a population of particles that were kicked up, that are in orbit around Apophis."

But Lauretta isn't convinced that the drama of the asteroid's flyby is necessary to justify sending OSIRIS-REx on to Apophis once its precious cargo is delivered. Bennu and Apophis belong to different asteroid families with similar structures, and OSIRIS-REx was designed to create incredibly detailed portraits of large space rocks.

"In order to get as much science out of this vehicle as possible, it would be great to go to a different asteroid with a different composition, and collect the same kind of high-fidelity data that we had to generalize our understanding of the physical environment of asteroid surfaces as we've learned from the OSIRIS-REx mission," Lauretta said.

Sending OSIRIS-REx to visit a second asteroid could also help solve perhaps the biggest mystery the spacecraft discovered at Bennu: streams of particles shooting off the rock into space. "Those surprised us so much at Bennu," Lauretta said. "That's a day that I'll never forget, when I saw that first image of what looked like an eruption from the asteroid. And we don't know what's causing those."

The ejections could depend on Bennu's water-rich composition, or they might be a more common trait. As an asteroid of similar size and structure but very different stony material, Apophis could settle that question. "One of the hypotheses is that this is due to micrometeoroids impacting the asteroid," Lauretta said. "If that's the case, Apophis should have just as many particles as Bennu."

And then there's that ineffable quality that Apophis carries with it, from its discovery in 2004, when scientists' measurement of its orbit was uncertain enough that in some scenarios, its 2029 flyby went very, very badly indeed, with the asteroid slamming into Earth. Additional observations cleared up the concern, but it's a difficult reputation to shake for an asteroid named after a mythological Egyptian serpent of chaos.

"It really does enable some unique science," Lauretta said. "Quite honestly, any large asteroid that popped up as a rendezvous target would be super exciting for us. The fact that it was Apophis! Apophis is just famous, so everybody knows exactly what I'm saying when I tell them the asteroid that we want to target."

• Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Now-dead radio telescope finds bizarre venomous-spider star

By Rafi Letzter 

This thing has a bite.

Neutron stars are among the densest objects in the universe.

(Image: © Shutterstock)

Astronomers have discovered black widows and redbacks in space. While these cosmic objects don't kill and eat their mates, the stars share their eight-legged counterparts' violent behavior toward companions.

In addition to the run-of-the-mill spider stars, the researchers also discovered a bizarre black widow-redback crossbreed. The scientists used the now-destroyed Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico to discover the weirdo stars.

Spider stars are types of millisecond pulsars, or neutron stars that act like precise clocks in the sky, whirling around at least once every 30 milliseconds and flashing like a lighthouse with each rotation. Neutron stars, the tiny, compressed cores of old, exploded stars, often rip material from other stars locked in binary orbits with them and use the push of that infalling material to get up to pulsar speed. Spider stars are rare and special versions of these stars though: They orbit so close to their binary companions that they blast away their surfaces, inhaling vast amounts of material like a spider tearing its partner limb from limb. 

In a new paper, researchers identify three new black widows and a redback in the Milky Way. They also found a spider star that defies categorization, almost like a crossbreed of the two species.

• Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universe

When a spider star has reduced its companion to significantly less than a tenth the mass of the sun (usually 0.02 to 0.03 times the sun's mass), that star is called a black widow. Redbacks have heftier companions that boast more than a tenth of the sun's mass. These binary companions of redbacks pass between the spider star and Earth periodically, creating temporary eclipses. The shriveled companions of black widows don't typically pull off that trick. 

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The seeming crossbreed star is difficult to categorize. For now, researchers have labeled it a redback because its companion sometimes eclipses its ticking light. And that companion has a mass at least 0.055 times the mass of the sun (possibly larger), which would be quite heavy for a black widow, though quite light for a redback. For now, the exact mechanisms of that system are still a mystery.

Studies like this might get harder in the future. The paper, published Jan. 1 to the arXiv database, relied on data collected between 2013 and 2018 using the Arecibo 305-m radio telescope which has since collapsed, as Live Science reported.

• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Pluto's atmosphere gets its blue haze from icy organic compounds, study suggests

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured this image of the blue haze around the dwarf planet Pluto during its historic flyby in 2015.

(Image: © NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI/SPL)

NASA's New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015, unexpectedly revealed Pluto also possesses haze hugging the dwarf planet's frozen surface. Since Pluto, Titan and Triton are all icy worlds with atmospheres rich in nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide, researchers had thought they might all possess similar kinds of hazes.

Previous research found Titan's haze was the result of solar ultraviolet rays triggering chemical reactions in the icy moon's upper atmosphere. These created simple organic compounds that went on to help form ever larger and more complex organic molecules.

However, scientists now find the hazes on Pluto and Triton might have significantly different origins than Titan's.

"Although Titan and Pluto seem very similar, their haze properties can be drastically different," study lead author, Panayotis Lavvas, a planetary scientist at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne in Reims, France, told Space.com.

When the researchers analyzed computer models of haze formation, they discovered that if the same chemical reactions at work on Titan happened on Pluto, they could only create about half the haze particles that prior work detected on the dwarf planet. (Since Pluto's atmosphere is roughly 175 degrees Fahrenheit, or 80 degrees Celsius, colder than Titan's, its atmospheric chemistry runs slower.)

In the new study, Lavvas and his colleagues suggest that as on Titan, sunlight triggers chemical reactions in Pluto's upper atmosphere, forming simple compounds such as hydrogen cyanide, a molecule made up of one hydrogen, one carbon and one nitrogen atom. Their models suggested hydrogen cyanide might freeze to produce tiny ice particles.

As these microscopic ice particles settle downward due to gravity, other gases condense around these seeds to coat them. As such, haze particles on Pluto may be largely made of a variety of ices, instead of more complex organic compounds as on Titan. The sizes, amounts and atmospheric distributions of these ice grains in the computer models closely match those of the haze particles detected on Pluto, the scientists noted.

In addition, these ice particles on Pluto should interact less with incoming solar energy than haze particles on Titan, the researchers said. As such, they should play a smaller role in controlling heat in Pluto's atmosphere than previously thought, Lavvas said.

When it comes to Triton, since it possesses an even colder atmosphere than Pluto's, the scientists noted its hazes should prove even icier.

"This comparison of Titan, Pluto and Triton illuminates the important differences in the mechanisms of haze formation in planetary atmospheres," Lavvas said.

• The scientists detailed their findings online Dec. 21 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Recently, we showed you a cool new direct image taken of a brown dwarf, an object midway in mass between a planet and a star. But that image doesn’t show the brown dwarf’s surface features. No existing image does. These objects are too far away – and too dim – to reveal themselves in that way. Now, though, a brown dwarf’s surface appearance has been revealed by researchers. The new study indicates bands and stripes in the atmosphere of Luhman 16B – one of two objects in the Luhman 16 binary brown dwarf system – the closest known brown dwarfs to Earth at only 6.5 light-years. Scientists said their new technique for revealing the stripes and bands on Luhman 16B will also be useful someday in mapping surface features on Earth-like planets in distant solar systems. Now that would be something to see!

• EarthSky lunar calendars are back in stock! We’re guaranteed to sell out. Get one while you can.!

In our solar system, the gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn both sport stripes and bands. Scientists had wondered if brown dwarfs had any such stripes. Or would their atmospheres appear more chaotic? Based on the study of Luhman 16B, they believe that at least some brown dwarfs do have banded atmospheres.

As astronomer Daniel Apai at the University of Arizona – lead author of the new study – said in a statement:

We wondered, do brown dwarfs look like Jupiter, with its regular belts and bands shaped by large, parallel, longitudinal jets? Or will they be dominated by an ever-changing pattern of gigantic storms known as vortices like those found on Jupiter’s poles?

The researchers published the peer-reviewed study in The Astrophysical Journal on January 7, 2021.

The results provide a new glimpse of these mysterious worlds that are too massive to be considered planets, but not massive enough to ignite their nuclear fuel to become stars. And while it seems that brown dwarfs might look a lot like gas giant planets, at least in some cases, they’re still not planets. They are their own unique cosmic objects.

View larger. | WISE image of the brown dwarf binary system Luhman 16, closest known brown dwarfs to Earth at just over 6 light-years. This is the 3rd-closest-known system to our sun (after the Alpha Centauri system and Barnard’s Star). In the inset, the system is resolved into a pair. But no surface features are revealed for this brown dwarf system, or any other.

Image via NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

Apai and his colleagues determined that Luhman 16B looks a lot like Jupiter. High-speed winds flow parallel to its equator, just like wind patterns on the gas giant. These winds help mix the atmosphere and redistribute heat that originates from deeper down. The researchers also found that there are vortex-type storms at the brown dwarf’s poles, also similar to what we see on Jupiter. While scientists didn’t know exactly what the atmospheres of brown dwarfs would look like, for the most part, some computer models had predicted an appearance quite similar to what was seen on Luhman 16B. Apai said:

Wind patterns and large-scale atmospheric circulation often have profound effects on planetary atmospheres, from Earth’s climate to Jupiter’s appearance, and now we know that such large-scale atmospheric jets also shape brown dwarf atmospheres.

Knowing how the winds blow and redistribute heat in one of the best-studied and closest brown dwarfs helps us to understand the climates, temperature extremes and evolution of brown dwarfs in general.

This is a section of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Jupiter – the biggest planet in our solar system – is dominated by global winds, giving it a banded appearance. But Jupiter also has localized vortices, vast storms, at its poles. Researchers have long wanted to know if brown dwarfs – objects midway in mass between Jupiter and a star – looked like Jupiter, with a striped or banded atmosphere. Or would brown dwarfs look more like our sun, with a chaotic atmosphere? See the image below.

Like Jupiter, the atmosphere of Luhman 16B appears to be dominated by global winds. In other words, this brown dwarf has stripes and bands in its atmosphere, like Jupiter. This image is a video still from the video at top. Watch that video to see all the amazing details in the atmosphere of Luhman 16B, derived via data analysis by the University of Arizona scientists.

Brown dwarf surfaces can’t be seen directly. They’re too dim, and too far away, to reveal themselves in that way. So how did Apai and his team figure out what Luhman 16B looks like?

They used newly-developed algorithms designed for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to measure the brightness patterns of the two closest known brown dwarfs, Luhman 16A and Luhman 16B, only 6.5 light-years from Earth, and both about the size of Jupiter (but much more massive than Jupiter). Luhman 16A is approximately 34 times Jupiter’s mass, and Luhman 16B is about 28 times Jupiter’s mass. Luhman 16B is also about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (830 degrees Celsius) hotter than our sun (but still not hot enough to be a star). As Apai explained:

The TESS space telescope, although designed to hunt for extrasolar planets, also provided this incredibly rich and exciting dataset on the closest brown dwarf to us. With advanced algorithms developed by members of our team, we were able to obtain very precise measurements of the brightness changes as the two brown dwarfs rotated. The brown dwarfs get brighter whenever brighter atmospheric regions turn into the visible hemisphere and darker when these rotate out of view.

Daniel Apai, Associate Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona, who led the new study.

Image via University of Arizona.

Even though TESS, or any other existing telescope, can’t see brown dwarfs in detail, the brightness of the brown dwarfs can be measured, which provides clues as to their appearance. Apai said:

No telescope is large enough to provide detailed images of [exo-]planets or brown dwarfs. But by measuring how the brightness of these rotating objects changes over time, it is possible to create crude maps of their atmospheres, a technique that, in the future, could also be used to map Earth-like planets in other solar systems that might otherwise be hard to see.

And that’s exciting, isn’t it?

In the case of Luhman 16B, the researchers were able to collect data from multiple rotations of the brown dwarf. This, and also the fact that TESS isn’t hindered by daylight, allowed the scientists to obtain the most detailed view of a brown dwarf’s atmosphere to date.

It’s a preliminary, but fascinating, look at these bizarre objects. This new method will allow astronomers to observe in more detail the atmospheres of other brown dwarfs as well as gas giant exoplanets, according to Apai:

Our study provides a template for future studies of similar objects on how to explore – and even map – the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and giant extrasolar planets without the need for telescopes powerful enough to resolve them visually.

Brown dwarfs are unique objects, too massive to be considered planets, but not massive enough to become stars. Most are about the size of Jupiter, but much more massive.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCB/ Institute for Research on Exoplanets.

Being able to “see” these worlds in this way will help astronomers better understand how both brown dwarfs and gas giant exoplanets form and evolve. That data will also show in what ways these objects are similar, and how they are different. As we’ve seen with Luhman 16B, they may appear quite similar on the outside with their banded atmospheres, but what about deeper down? Are their compositions similar or significantly different?

In May 2020, astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile found that Luhman 16B’s companion, Luhman 16A, also has a banded atmosphere, although with fewer but broader stripes. At the time, it was thought that Luhman 16B had patchy clouds, but now the new study shows it is banded as well, and likely has more bands than Luhman 16A, making it look even more like Jupiter than its companion.

• Bottom line: New observations of the closest known brown dwarf show that it looks a lot like Jupiter, with bands of powerful jet streams in its atmosphere.
• Source: TESS Observations of the Luhman 16 AB Brown Dwarf System: Rotational Periods, Lightcurve Evolution, and Zonal Circulation*
• Via University of Arizona

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

Astronomers spot the fastest spinning magnetar ever seen

View larger. | In 2013, the Planck space telescope released the most detailed map to date of the cosmic microwave background, the relic radiation from the Big Bang. It was the mission’s first all-sky picture of the oldest light in our universe, imprinted on the sky when it was just 380,000 years old. Now a new, independent study agrees with Planck’s results. That’s good news for astronomers trying to pin down the universe’s age and rate of expansion.

Image via ESA.

How old is our universe? That’s one of humanity’s oldest and most fundamental questions. Now, astronomers using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), high in the Andes of northern Chile, have announced a new measurement of the cosmic background radiation, our universe’s oldest light, discovered in 1965 and sometimes called an echo of the Big Bang. The new measurement suggests the universe is 13.77 billion years old, give or take 40 million years. This new result agrees strongly with results from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which measured the cosmic background radiation from 2009 to 2013. And it agrees with what’s called the Standard Model of particle physics, developed in the 1970s and refined in the years since then. The Standard Model encapsulates scientists’ best current understanding of how elementary particles and the fundamental forces of nature relate to one another.

• The new peer-reviewed results were published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics on December 30, 2020.

Agreement between independent studies gives scientists confidence their work is correct. Non-agreement does the opposite: it makes scientists think their ideas need more work. In 2019, a study had suggested the age of the universe might be hundreds of millions of years younger than Planck’s data had indicated. The new results from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, on the other hand, agree with Planck’s results. Simone Aiola of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics – a co-author on the new study – commented:

Now we’ve come up with an answer where Planck and ACT agree. It speaks to the fact that these difficult measurements are reliable.

• The 2021 lunar calendars are here! Running low. Order yours before they’re gone!

Like the Planck satellite, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile also studies the cosmic microwave background. Here’s a portion of a new ACT image, covering a section of the sky 50 times the width of a full moon. This image represents a region of space 20 billion light-years across.

Image via ACT Collaboration/ The College of Arts and Sciences.

The new measurements don’t just tell us the age of the universe. They also suggest how fast the universe is expanding. 

The rate at which the universe is expanding is described by what’s called the Hubble Constant. Writing at his blog on January 6, 2021, astrophysicist Brian Koberlein described the Hubble Constant in the context of the cosmic microwave background in this way:

In the early universe, there were small fluctuations of density and temperature within the hot dense sea of the Big Bang. As the universe expanded, the fluctuations expanded as well. So the scale of fluctuations we see in the cosmic microwave background today tells us how much the universe has grown. On average, the fluctuations are about a billion light-years across, and this gives us a value for the rate (the Hubble parameter) as somewhere between 67.2 and 68.1 kilometers per second per megaparsec.

The new data from ACT gives a Hubble constant of 67.6 kilometers per second per megaparsec. The Planck researchers had previously estimated 67.4 km per second per megaparsec. Steve Choi at Cornell University, first author of the new paper, said:

I didn’t have a particular preference for any specific value; it was going to be interesting one way or another. We find an expansion rate that is right on the estimate by the Planck satellite team. This gives us more confidence in measurements of the universe’s oldest light.

Steve Choi at Cornell University, lead author of the new study.

Image via Cornell University.

It’s worth noting, however, that – though the values for the Hubble Constant derived from data by Planck and ACT agree well – neither agrees well with values for the Hubble Constant derived via distant variable stars and supernovae (exploding stars). Brian Koberlein explained:

… you can use variable stars and distant supernovae to create a cosmic distance ladder that tells you the rate of expansion. The problem is, this alternative method gives a larger value for the Hubble parameter. If the supernova method is right, then the universe is younger and has expanded more quickly than the [work on the cosmic background radiation] seems to support. For a while, the hope has been that new observations and new methods of measuring cosmic expansion would solve this problem …

But, Koberlein said, the new study from ACT dashes those hopes.

According to Michael Niemack, a co-author of the new paper:

The growing tension between these distant versus local measurements of the Hubble Constant suggests that we may be on the verge of a new discovery in cosmology that could change our understanding of how the universe works. It also highlights the importance of improving our measurements of the cosmic microwave background with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope as well as the future Simons Observatory and CCAT-prime projects that we are now building.

The universe is ancient, but how ancient? The current answer appears to be 13.77 billion years, give or take 40 million years.

Image via NASA/ WMAP Science Team/ Wikipedia.

To calculate the universe’s age, scientists need to estimate how far light from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the “afterglow” of the Big Bang and the measurable record of when photons first escaped the “fog” of the early universe – has traveled to reach Earth. But that is not an easy task, so astronomers use triangulation by measuring the angle in the sky between two distant objects. With Earth as the third point of the triangle, they can then estimate the distance of both objects from Earth.

ACT is able to measure slight fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background with great precision, which helps to refine the estimates. Suzanne Staggs at Princeton University commented:

The Planck satellite measured the same light, but by measuring its polarization in higher fidelity, the new picture from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope reveals more of the oldest patterns we’ve ever seen.

• Read more: The oldest quasar yet detected

Stunning view of some of the oldest known galaxies in the universe, from the Hubble Space Telescope in 2015.

Image via ESA/ NASA/ Smithsonian Magazine.

• Bottom line: New observations of the oldest light in the universe indicate that the cosmos is 13.77 billion years old, and help resolve inconsistencies with other previous estimates.
• Source: The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: a measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background power spectra at 98 and 150 GHz
• Via Cornell University
• Via The College of Arts and Sciences

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{ https://earthsky.org/ }

A mysterious 'wobble' is moving Mars' poles around

By Brandon Specktor  

Like a teetering top, Mars refuses to rotate on a straight axis.

Mars and its two moons, Phobos and Deimos

(Image: © NASA/ JPL)

The Red Planet is wiggling and wobbling as it spins, research in the journal Geophysical Research Letters confirms, and astronomers have no idea why.

Like a toy top that teeters as it loses speed, the poles of Mars are wandering ever-so-slightly away from the planet's axis of rotation, moving about 4 inches (10 centimeters) off-center every 200 days or so, researchers reported in a study published Oct. 13, 2020. That makes Mars only the second known planet in the universe to exhibit this phenomenon — known as the Chandler wobble — with Earth being the first, according to the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) news blog, Eos.org.

• Related: Here's what NASA's Opportunity rover saw before 'lights out'

This wobble — named for astronomer Seth Carlo Chandler, who discovered the phenomenon more than a century ago — is an effect seen in planets that aren't perfectly round, science writer Jack Lee wrote at Eos. On Earth, the wobble is much more pronounced: Our planet's poles wander roughly 30 feet (9 m) from its axis of rotation, wobbling in a circular pattern that repeats every 433 days or so.

This wonky wobble has negligible effect on our planet, according to Eos, but still presents a puzzle. Scientists have calculated that the wobble should naturally die down within a century of its origin, but our planet's current wobble has been going strong for much longer than that. Something — perhaps a combination of pressure changes in the atmosphere and oceans, one 2001 study proposed — seems to be perpetually reigniting the wobble, though the exact mechanism is still unknown.

RELATED CONTENT

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The Mars wobble is just as puzzling. The authors of the new study detected the wobble using 18 years of data collected by three satellites orbiting the Red Planet: Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor. This small shift in the Martian poles should also resolve itself naturally, the team calculated, but currently appears to be going strong.

Devoid of oceans, Mars and its wobbly rotation may be governed by atmospheric pressure changes alone, according to Eos, but further study of our tipsy neighbor is required to know for sure.

• You can read more about the Mars wobble at Eos.
• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Wandering polar vortex may cause a wild, snowy winter

By Laura Geggel  

Snowier, colder weather may be heading to the Eastern U.S.

A model showing of warm (red) air may impact the cold (blue) polar vortex that swirls over the North Pole.

(Image: © Atmospheric and Environmental Research)

High above the North Pole, the polar vortex, a fast-spinning whirl of frigid air, is doing a weird shimmy that may soon bring cold and snowy weather to the Eastern U.S., Northern Europe and East Asia for weeks on end, meteorologists say.

While it's not unusual for the polar vortex to act up, this particular reconfiguration — wandering around and possibly splitting in two — may be tied to climate change in the rapidly warming Arctic, said Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Massachusetts, part of Verisk Analytics, a risk-assessment company.

"Expect a more wintery back-half of winter here in the Eastern U.S. than what we had in the first half," Cohen told Live Science.

• Related: The reality of climate change: 10 myths busted

The Arctic is heating up faster than any other region in the world. As a result, sea-ice cover there is shrinking — in September 2020 and December 2020, the Arctic sea-ice cover shrunk to its second-lowest and third-lowest minimum on record for those months, respectively, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The warmer-than-usual temperatures in the Arctic are likely throwing the polar vortex out of whack, Cohen said. The polar vortex is a vast area of low pressure that sits high above the Arctic in the stratosphere — the layer above the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere where most weather conditions happen. This low-pressure system is usually filled with cold, swirling air. During the winter, a jet stream of air that keeps the polar vortex in place sometimes weakens, allowing the vortex's chilly air to extend southward. 

Here's an animated video Cohen made illustrating the process. 

Cohen and colleagues have suggested that less Arctic sea-ice cover means there's more moisture from the sea migrating inland over normally dry Siberia. This moisture then turns into snow, which reflects heat back into space and is making Siberia colder than normal; that in turn disrupts a thermal band in the troposphere extending over Eurasia. This discombobulated band can then destabilize the polar vortex, causing colder winters east of the Rockies in the U.S. and in Northern Europe and East Asia, Cohen and his colleagues wrote in a 2019 review in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"Think of the polar vortex like a quiet, fast spinning top that spins in place," Cohen said. "Then, you have this energy [from the troposphere] that starts banging" on the spinning polar vortex, making it wobble and wander. 

He added that this season, "snowfall across Siberia has been above normal so far. Therefore, I do believe it has contributed to the weak polar vortex."

(Image credit: NOAA)

Not everyone agrees with this increased-Siberian-snow-and-wobbly-polar-vortex connection, but it is clear that a weakened polar vortex leads to colder winters in certain parts of the Northern Hemisphere. It's also accepted that so-called sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events can weaken the polar vortex and make it teeter around. SSWs happen when large-scale atmospheric waves associated with weather systems reach into the stratosphere and disrupt the polar vortex, causing it to slow down and heat up as much as 90 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) within a few days.

Cohen noted that SSWs can be triggered by weather conditions associated with the Arctic's disappearing sea ice. SSWs happen an average of six times every 10 years, and right now we're experiencing a big SSW, The Washington Post reported. 

It's possible the SSW was caused by a high-pressure, low-pressure system, said Amy Butler, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chemical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

"Over the last few weeks, there was a persistent high-pressure system over much of the North Atlantic and northern Europe/Asia, and a low-pressure system over the North Pacific," Butler told Live Science in an email. This high-pressure, low-pressure duo is known to disrupt the stratosphere, where the polar vortex lives. 

It's also possible that the extreme bomb cyclone (a rapidly-forming winter storm with hurricane-strength winds) in the North Pacific a few days ago, contributed to the SSW, "but that will have to be investigated further," she said.

• Related: Images of melt: Earth's vanishing ice caps

On Jan. 5, the polar vortex's counter-clockwise winds reversed direction (a clue that a sudden atmospheric warming event had happened) and the vortex wandered from its usual location centered over the North Pole, toward Europe and the North Atlantic, Butler said. During that time, it began to (but didn't completely) split, Cohen said.

The polar vortex might split further in about 10 days, "but it's unclear if this will happen," Butler said. "Forecast models struggle with predicting a splitting of the vortex more than a week in advance."

RELATED CONTENT

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Disruptions to the polar vortex are key for forecasts, as about two weeks after they happen, the troposphere gets a wallop of weird weather, which can last for weeks. Because of this week's polar vortex disruption, "there's indications we'll see some colder weather within two weeks … in the Eastern U.S., Northern Europe and East Asia," Cohen said. 

For now, it's up in the air whether that means snowstorms or a rash of cold air, he said.

Meanwhile, "warmer-than-normal conditions can also occur over the Canadian Arctic and subtropical Asia and Africa," Butler said. "These effects could potentially persist for 4-6 weeks after the sudden stratospheric warming." 

• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Mount Shasta: Legends, Mysteries And UFOs

Located in Siskiyou County in Northern California, Mount Shasta rises 14,162 feet above sea level. Its beautiful snow-capped peak and easy gentle climbs attract more than 15,000 climbers every year.

However, Mount Shasta is more than just a mountain. The name of Mount Shasta itself is shrouded in mystery. Some believe it is named after a local Native American tribe.

Some believe it is a variation of the French word chaste, meaning “pure.” Others have pointed out that Shasta is Sanskrit for “One who lives according to divine law.” Whatever its name, Mount Shasta has been the location of many strange and miraculous events.

Since before the 19th century, there have been persistent rumors that a strange race of beings reside in the vicinity of—or deep inside—Mount Shasta. Some believe they are extraterrestrials.

Others speculate that they are the surviving remnants of the once great civilization of Lemuria. These accounts have survived for over a century, and have been kept alive by such authors as Billie Hershberger, Wishar Cerve and others.

In 1925 the Rosicrucian William Spencer Lewis published an article ‘Descendants of Lemuria: A Description of an Ancient Cult in California’ under the pseudonym ‘Selvius.’

Lewis claims that Mount Shasta is the home of the last descendants of the ancient Lemurians, whose village is ‘nestled at the foot of a partially extinct volcano.’ The village is secluded and protected by an invisible boundary so that only four or five strangers have ever set foot there.

Lewis claims that the number of strange experiences reported by visitors to the area is sure evidence of the presence of some mystical force. In particular, he claims that Professor Edgar Lucin Larkin, director of the Mount Lowe Observatory, had seen the temple of the mystic village while examining the area through his telescope.

He also notes that at one time a delegate from the mystic village had visited San Francisco and that tall, white-robed, gray-haired, barefoot saints had been seen on the highways and in the streets throughout the area, occasionally even shopping in local stores, paying for their purchases with gold nuggets. Eyewitnesses have also reported strange boats that sail upon the Pacific Ocean only to fly through the air to the mountain.

In any case, there are numerous reports of tall robed strangers visiting local towns and villages to exchange gold dust and gold nuggets for food, clothing and other products.

The strangers appear to be human, except for several peculiarities. They are always described the same. They are “tall, graceful and agile, with distinctive features such as large foreheads and long curly hair; the strangers wore unusual clothes, including headdresses with a special decoration that came down from the forehead to the bridge of the nose.”

Visits from these strangers began to cause considerable interest, and numerous local residents began to investigate the area. Several investigators were surprised to come upon areas which glowed with “powerful illuminations” with no known source. Others claimed to hear strange music.

Reportedly, those who came too close would find themselves suddenly and temporarily paralyzed; or they would be accosted by a “heavily covered and concealed person of a large size who would lift him up and turn him away.”

There are a few accounts of campers who claim to have been visited at their campsite by very tall, friendly people dressed in robes who would hold long philosophical conversations about love, spirituality and the fate of our planet. Needless to say, these antics brought more visitors to the area.

People attempted to chase down and photograph the tall strangers, but in each case, the strangers would either run away or simply vanish. Their rare appearances in local towns continued.

“Those who have come to stores in nearby cities, especially at Weed, have spoken English in a perfect manner with perhaps a tinge of the British accents, and have been reluctant to answer questions or give any information about themselves. The goods they have purchased have always been paid for in gold nuggets of far greater value than the article purchased, and they have refused to accept any change, indicating that to them gold was of no value and that they had no need for money of any kind.”

Other strange effects were noticed. Bright lights would flash causing cars to stall along nearby roadways. Others claimed to see bizarre-looking cattle, “unlike anything seen in America.” The cattle would reportedly run back towards the area inhabited by the strangers.

Mount Shasta is also the location of some of the earliest known UFO sightings.

“There are hundreds of others who have testified to having seen peculiarly shaped boats which have flown out of this region high in the air over the hills and valleys of California and have been seen by others to come on to the waters of the Pacific Ocean at the shore and then continue out on the seas as vessels … and others have seen these boats rise again in the air and go upon the land of some of the islands of the Pacific.”

{ https://anomalien.com/ }

Des astronomes font la découverte d'une «Super-Terre»

Just about everyone with an interest in the world of UFOs will know of the primary theories for what happened at Roswell, New Mexico in July 1047: A UFO crash, a secret military experiment, a weather-balloon, and a Mogul balloon. There are, however, some lesser known scenarios for what happened. So, with that said, here are my top weird theories for the Roswell affair. Here’s number one:  The late Jim Keith was the author of a number of conspiracy/UFO-themed books, including Casebook on the Men in Black; The Octopus (co-written with Kenn Thomas); and Black Helicopters Over America. In a small article titled Roswell UFO Bombshell, Keith described his clandestine meeting with “a longtime researcher / instructor of engineering at a school in New Mexico” who claimed to know the truth of Roswell.

As for what Keith was told, it goes like this:

“According to my source, the true story behind the alleged UFO crash was that there was an accident involving a B-29 flying from the Army Air Force Base in Sandia (Albuquerque) to Roswell…my source states that either an atomic bomb or what is termed a ‘bomb shape,’ or ‘test shape,’ the shell of a nuke lacking explosives and atomic capability, and sometimes filled with concrete to add weight, was accidentally or purposefully jettisoned above Corona, New Mexico, directly on the flight path between Sandia and Roswell. Along with the bomb, metal foil used for radar jamming, termed ‘chaff,’ may have also been dropped.”

In 2010, Anomalist Books published the final title from the late Mac Tonnies: The Cryptoterrestrials. Highly thought-provoking and deeply controversial in equal measures, the book focused on the idea that UFOs are not the products of alien races, but of very ancient, terrestrial people that dwell deep underground and who masquerade as extraterrestrials to camouflage their true identity. Tonnies speculated that the Cryptoterrestrials are likely very impoverished, but utilize subterfuge, hologram-style technology, and staged-events to suggest otherwise to us. He even theorized they may have made use of large, balloon-style craft, too. And on this very matter – of the Cryptoterrestrials using balloons in covert missions – Tonnies said: “Maybe the Roswell device wasn’t high tech. It could indeed have been a balloon-borne surveillance device brought down in a storm, but it doesn’t logically follow that it was one of our own.”

Nick Redfern

The Collins Elite is a quasi-official group within the U.S. Government that believes the UFO mystery is one of demonic origins. Yes, fork-tails, horns, fiery pits, and maybe even spinning heads – that kind of thing. It must be stressed that the conclusions of the group were chiefly belief-driven, rather than prompted by hard evidence. One of the conclusions of the group was that Roswell was nothing less than a brilliant Trojan Horse. For the members of the Collins Elite, deceptive demons had, essentially, used a kind of “cosmic alchemy” to create both (A) the so-called “memory-metal” found by Mack Brazel on the Foster Ranch; and (B) the curious bodies – or body-parts – also located on the ranch. In other words, Roswell – perceived by the Collins Elite, at least – was an ingenious ruse, a staged-crash, designed to have us believe vulnerable ETs are in our midst, when it’s really the all-powerful minions of Satan.

Timothy Cooper provoked a wealth of controversy in the 1990s, thanks to an enormous body of allegedly leaked, and, supposedly highly secret, documentation in his possession on everything from crashed UFOs to alien autopsies and from sinister deaths in the UFO field to alien viruses. One such document –titled UFO Reports and Classified Projects – offers a non-UFO-themed explanation for what occurred at Roswell. The relevant extract reads as follows: “One of the projects underway at that time incorporated re-entry vehicles containing radium and other radioactive materials combined with biological warfare agents developed by I.G. Farben for use against allied assault forces in Normandy in 1944. When a V-2 warhead impacted near the town of Corona, New Mexico, on July 4, 1947, the warhead did not explode and it and the deadly cargo lay exposed to the elements which forced the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project to close off the crash site and a cover story was immediately put out that what was discovered was the remains of a radar tracking target suspended by balloons.”

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{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

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How and Why Some People Report "Hearing from the Dead" According to Scientists

Spiritualist mediums might be more prone to immersive mental activities and unusual auditory experiences early in life, according to new research.

This might explain why some people and not others eventually adopt spiritualist beliefs and engage in the practice of ‘hearing the dead’, the study led by Durham University found.

Mediums who “hear” spirits are said to be experiencing clairaudient communications, rather than clairvoyant (“seeing”) or clairsentient (“feeling” or “sensing”) communications.

The Fox sisters: Kate (1838-92), Leah (1814-90) and Margaret (or Maggie) (1836-93). Lithograph after a daguerreotype by Appleby. Published by N. Currier, New York. In 1848, two sisters from upstate New York, Maggie and Kate Fox, reported hearing ‘rappings’ and ‘knocks’ that they interpreted as communication coming from a spirit in their house. These events and these sisters would eventually be considered the originators of Spiritualism.

Credit: N. Currier, New York

The researchers conducted a survey of 65 clairaudient spiritualist mediums from the Spiritualists’ National Union and 143 members of the general population in the largest scientific study into the experiences of clairaudient mediums.

They found that these spiritualists have a proclivity for absorption – a trait linked to immersion in mental or imaginative activities or experience of altered states of consciousness.

Mediums are also are more likely to report experiences of unusual auditory phenomena, like hearing voices, often occurring early in life.

Many who experience absorption or hearing voices encounter spiritualist beliefs when searching for the meaning behind, or supernatural significance of, their unusual experiences, the researchers said.

The findings are published in the journal Mental Health, Religion and Culture. The research is part of Hearing the Voice – an interdisciplinary study of voice-hearing based at Durham University and funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Spiritualism is a religious movement based on the idea that human souls continue to exist after death and communicate with the living through a medium or psychic.

Interest in Spiritualism is increasing in Britain with several organisations supporting, training, and offering the services of practising mediums. One of the largest, the SNU, claims to serve at least 11,000 members through its training college, churches, and centres.

Through their study, the researchers gathered detailed descriptions of the way that mediums experience spirit ‘voices’, and compared levels of absorption, hallucination-proneness, aspects of identity, and belief in the paranormal.

They found that 44.6 per cent of spiritualist participants reported hearing the voices of the deceased on a daily basis, with 33.8 per cent reporting an experience of clairaudience within the last day.

A large majority (79 per cent) said that experiences of auditory spiritual communication were part of their everyday lives, taking place both when they were alone and when they were working as a medium or attending a spiritualist church.

Although spirits were primarily heard inside the head (65.1 per cent), 31.7 per cent of spiritualist participants said they experienced spirit voices coming from both inside and outside the head.

When rated on scales of absorption, as well as how strongly they believe in the paranormal, spiritualists scored much more highly than members of the general population.

Spiritualists were less likely to care about what others thought of them than people generally, and they also scored more highly for proneness to unusual hallucination-like auditory experiences.

Both high levels of absorption and proneness to such auditory phenomena were linked to reports of more frequent clairaudient communications, according to the findings.

For the general population, absorption was associated with levels of belief in the paranormal, but there was no significant corresponding link between belief and hallucination-proneness.

There was also no difference in levels of superstitious belief or proneness to visual hallucinations between spiritualist and non-spiritualist participants.

Spiritualists reported first experiencing clairaudience at an average age of 21.7 years. However, 18 per cent of spiritualists reported having clairaudient experiences ‘for as long as they could remember’ and 71 per cent had not encountered Spiritualism as a religious movement prior to their first experiences.

The researchers say their findings suggest that it is not giving in to social pressure, learning to have specific expectations, or a level of belief in the paranormal that leads to experiences of spirit communication.

Instead, it seems that some people are uniquely predisposed to absorption and are more likely to report unusual auditory experiences occurring early in life. For many of these individuals, spiritualist beliefs are embraced because they align meaningfully with those unique personal experiences.

Lead researcher Dr Adam Powell, in Durham University’s Hearing the Voice project and Department of Theology and Religion, said: “Our findings say a lot about ‘learning and yearning’. For our participants, the tenets of Spiritualism seem to make sense of both extraordinary childhood experiences as well as the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practising mediums.

“But all of those experiences may result more from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the possibility of contacting the dead if one tries hard enough.”

Dr Peter Moseley, co-author on the study at Northumbria University, commented: “Spiritualists tend to report unusual auditory experiences which are positive, start early in life and which they are often then able to control. Understanding how these develop is important because it could help us understand more about distressing or non-controllable experiences of hearing voices too”

Durham’s researchers are now engaged in further investigation of clairaudience and mediumship, working with practitioners to gain a fuller picture of what it is like to be on the receiving end of such unusual and meaningful experiences.

Contacts and sources:

• Simon Wesson
• Taylor and Francis Group

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Multiple UFOs over Phoenix, Arizona | January 2021

These bright lights were hovering in the sky over Phoenix, Arizona recently.

Witness report: 

It was super weird the lights moved independently from each other two of them moved west right past the mountain then suddenly changed trajectory back east towards the other lights , they then disappeared one by one and then came back 30 mins later

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

This transforming NASA rover can go places others could only dream of

 14 Mars facts we’ve only learned in recent years

There's more to the Red Planet than you think.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

Six asteroids to pass close to Earth tomorrow, says NASA

The closest one should pass around the same distance the Moon orbits at.

 by Alexandru Micu

 The 2020 US Presidential election was really a wild ride, huh? Well, strap

in because it’s not over yet.

Artist’s impression of the double asteroid Antiope. Image credits ESO via Wikipedia.

NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies reported that six pieces of space rock will be passing by our planet tomorrow, 20th Jan., when the US celebrates Inauguration Day — the day when the new president-elect is vested with the powers of his office.

The agency says everything should be alright and that these meteorites will zip past harmlessly. Still, after 2020 and this election’s history, we can all be forgiven some wallowing in skepticism and despair at the thought that they might not. We’ve earned it.

Friends in high places

Inauguration Day marks the transition of power from one administration to the next — this year, that means from the Trump administration to the Biden team. It also marks the occasion on which four meteorites will do a close fly-by of Earth, hopefully missing us entirely.

According to NASA’s estimates, the closest one (asteroid 2021 BK1) will fly by Earth at around the same distance the Moon orbits at. So they should be pretty harmless. The largest of them is around 93 meters in width, which is the height of the Statue of Liberty.

All in all, we should be fine and well-missed by the space rocks. Still, this is close enough to be considered a “close approach” by NASA, and the agency will keep a close eye on the asteroids and their trekking. So let’s all hope for an uneventful Inauguration Day.

More information on these asteroids here (all six asteroids listed for 2021-Jan-20 in the table)

Object	Close-Approach (CA) Date	CA Distance Nominal (LD | au)	CA Distance Minimum (LD | au)	V relative (km/s)	V infinity (km/s)	H (mag)	Estimated Diameter
(2021 BQ1)	2021-Jan-19 12:14 ±    00:02	5.63 | 0.01446	5.60 | 0.01440	7.96	7.93	27.9	7.1 m - 16 m
(2021 BB1)	2021-Jan-19 17:05 ± < 00:01	7.15 | 0.01837	7.12 | 0.01830	25.03	25.02	25.8	18 m - 41 m
(2021 AN4)	2021-Jan-19 21:42 ±    00:05	11.92 | 0.03062	11.87 | 0.03049	3.62	3.60	27.4	8.9 m - 20 m
(2021 BO1)	2021-Jan-20 02:17 ± < 00:01	0.65 | 0.00168	0.65 | 0.00167	10.24	10.09	29.1	4.0 m - 9.0 m
(2021 BL)	2021-Jan-20 03:53 ± < 00:01	4.29 | 0.01103	4.28 | 0.01099	12.90	12.88	26.1	16 m - 36 m
(2021 AC6)	2021-Jan-20 08:13 ± < 00:01	7.37 | 0.01894	7.34 | 0.01887	14.27	14.26	25.2	25 m - 55 m
(2021 BK1)	2021-Jan-20 12:56 ±    00:02	1.24 | 0.00318	1.23 | 0.00315	26.78	26.75	26.2	16 m - 35 m
(2021 BS)	2021-Jan-20 16:57 ± < 00:01	15.36 | 0.03947	15.26 | 0.03920	11.04	11.03	25.5	21 m - 46 m
(2021 BC)	2021-Jan-20 19:47 ±    00:01	2.69 | 0.00692	2.68 | 0.00687	12.97	12.94	24.0	41 m - 93 m
(2021 BQ)	2021-Jan-22 09:55 ± < 00:01	8.54 | 0.02195	8.51 | 0.02186	7.82	7.81	26.3	14 m - 32 m

 { https://www.zmescience.com/ }

{ https://nationalufocenter.com/ }

{ https://nationalufocenter.com/ }

Speaking of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, a new series UFO Witness aired on Discovery+ last Thursday

"UFO Witness" is available on the discovery+ app starting January 14, 2021. The series follows UFO researcher Ben Hansen as he revisits cases originally investigated by Dr. J. Allen Hynek of the Air Force's Project Blue Book. With the help of researcher Mark O'Connell and Hynek's assistant Jennie Zeidman, Hansen compares the archives from Hynek to look for patterns repeating in modern-day UFO cases. See sneak peek at +/- 2:07.

CIA declassifies treasure trove of UFO documents for anyone to download

Jeff Parsons ** Wednesday 13 Jan 2021 9:38 am

The CIA has finally made public its records on UFO investigations

A treasure trove of UFO-related documents has been published online by the CIA so that anyone can download a copy of it.

The database contains hundreds of formerly top secret files on what the CIA calls ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ (UAPs).

The campaign to make the documents public dates back to the 1980s and was spearheaded by John Greenwald Jr. He now operates the website – known as ‘Black Vault’ – where the contents of the dossiers can be downloaded.

Many of the UAPs in the files may be tricks of the light or a misjudgment by a pilot. But some of them became targets investigated by the Pentagon.

‘Around 20 years ago, I had fought for years to get additional UFO records released from the CIA,’ Greenewald told Motherboard on Monday.

‘It was like pulling teeth! I went around and around with them to try and do so, finally achieving it. I received a large box, of a couple thousand pages, and I had to scan them in one page at a time.’

According to Greenwald, the documents are the result of 10,000 Freedom of Information reports. And the government agency made it as difficult as possible for anyone else to get eyes on their findings.

‘The CIA has made it INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner,’ Greenwald told the site. ‘They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a “search” tool.  In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose.’

Greenwald said there have been thousands of downloads of the files within the first 24 hours of them being made available.

And some of the scenarios described within the documents could have come straight out of The X-Files.

In one case, a small Russian town suffered an explosion ripping the roofs from buildings, blowing apart windows and leaving a 90-foot wide crater. Residents reported seeing a ‘moving fiery sphere’ but the local military concluded it was just an ammonium nitrate blast.

UFO enthusiasts have been attempting to get access to the files for 20 years

(Credits: Getty Images)

Another story deals with a Bosnian fugitive who claimed to have come into contact with aliens.

Yet another file deals with a CIA Assistant Deputy Director for Science and Technology who ‘exhibited interest’ in a redacted object ‘which was handcarried to his office’.

Interestingly, this information comes just as the Pentagon is expected to release yet more classified UFO documents into the public domain.

In December, President Trump signed a $2.3 trillion Covid-19 relief bill that included an act stating government agencies must publish a report in the next six months.

Attached to the bill was a provision requested by Sen. Marco Rubio who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee to include ‘detailed analysis of unidentified phenomena data’ in restricted US airspace.

This provision, attached as a ‘committee comment’, also requests data and intelligence collected or held by the Office of Naval Intelligence.

It means the Pentagon could reveal even more information relating to a highly sensitive investigation government project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

It has previously been confirmed that the US has studied a range of futuristic technologies which would allow it to exercise global military dominance for decades to come. The programme is dedicated to exploring ‘ unexplained aerial phenomena’ and is believed to have written a 490-page report which collects together UFO sightings from around the world.

In March last year, the Pentagon piqued global interest in UFOs by releasing three declassified videos showing what it tagged as a UAP.

Astonished navy fighter pilots filmed objects apparently moving at angles and speeds far outstripping any man-made craft.

Navy pilots filmed this UAP travelling faster than man-made craft

(US Navy)

Curiously, the Pentagon released the videos without having any obligation to do so. The trickle of clues has also included pictures of the secretive Area 51 military base, reported on by Metro.co.uk on Thursday, showing a strange triangular shape inside a hanger.

Nick Pope, a British UFO expert who worked for the Ministry of Defence, told Metro: ‘The clock is now ticking on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s demand for a report on the UFO phenomenon from the Director of National Intelligence.

‘A response is due within 180 days of the enactment of the Covid-19 relief bill, because this bill contained the Intelligence Authorization Act, where the UFO requirement was articulated.

‘But the US Department of Defense has known since June of the committee’s request, and the US Navy’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force is probably already working on drafting the response, so we may get it sooner than the late June deadline. This report, important though it may be, is only one part of a wider process.

‘There’s a lot going on and we’re going to see some big UFO stories in 2021.’

MORE : 

• UFO expert says ‘clock is ticking’ on possible seismic revelations

MORE : 

• Private journals of man who investigated 1947 Roswell UFO crash opened for the first time

Get your need-to-know latest news, feel-good stories, analysis and more

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://metro.co.uk/ }

A Look at the Black Triangle UFOs

{ peter2011 }

Some of the more spectacular and eyebrow-raising accounts within the UFO field have to do with what are usually termed alien abductees. These are those individuals who have been allegedly whisked away by alien entities for inscrutable reasons we will probably never understand, and they very often have incredibly weird stories to tell. Among these ranks is a former CIA agent, who not only claims to have been abducted by aliens on numerous occasions, but who also claims that this is going on on a wider scale than we ever realized and who has dedicated himself to hunting these entities down.

One of the more fascinating personalities right now in the world of alien abductees is Derrel Sims, a former military police officer, CIA agent, and current full-time ufologist, who claims to have had a lifetime of very strange UFO and alien encounter experiences. Sims claims that his very first conscious experience happened back in 1952 when he was just 4 years old. At the time it was evening at his home in Midland, Texas, and he was lying in bed trying to fall asleep when he had the sudden, unshakable feeling that there was someone else there in that darkened room with him. Sims said that he did not feel any particular fear at first, but sensed that it was not his mother or father, but rather an “it.” As his eyes adjusted to the dark further, details began to congeal in the gloom, pure white skin, very large elliptical eyes, an inhumanly thin frame, all of which suggested that it was not human. Even then Sims says he felt no fear or panic, but this was about to change. He would explain the series of bizarre and frightening events that would unfold in a 2007 edition of Journal of Abduction Encounter Research:

No speech or communication of any kind comes from this “thing,” whatever it is. The arms and legs are long and skinny, the body and neck, thin. The bulbous head, like an upside down teardrop, is cocked slightly to the side. I can see him from head to crotch, and he doesn’t have a “tee tee” or a belly button! Does he have knees? I can’t see them and I want to know what his feet look like too. He had a strange faint smell. It smelled awful. . . .I think it is a he, though I don’t know exactly why. It sure doesn’t have any mom or lady qualities about it. Suddenly, I realize it has become aware that I am aware and that I am able to move. Horror wraps around my small frame as his eyes seem to move or rotate. He definitely is now in control of me physically. Suddenly I Am Paralyzed. I cannot understand how I was fine (as I always had been) and now I am paralyzed and overwhelmed with a horrific fear, all while conscious. I wasn’t paralyzed until now! Why? I have never felt fear before. This is the moment in time. . .when I suddenly realize there is something wrong with the perfect world in which I live. For me, that moment was, “Mommy and daddy aren’t coming. He is, or they are!” He convincingly suggests that my parents don’t love me. They are not my parents! I suddenly know there are others like him, and they do other things. . .

I feel the paralysis hit me as he just stands there, emotionless and motionless with those large black, doll-like, shark-like eyes looking at me. Immense fear overwhelms me as he moves toward me. Because of his suggestion, I think I cannot move or make a sound. I fight the paralysis as the entity comes closer, bringing his face right up to mine. I squirm my tiny frame as hard as I can to get away. When the feel of the wall is against my shoulder, I push so hard the old army-styled single bed pulls away from the wall. This seemed to startle the entity (and me!) as with a thud, I hit my shoulder blades against the cold, hard floor. I can protect my head, and do; the paralysis is wearing thin here.

Derell Sims

Sims looked under the bed and could see that the thing was still standing there, its odd, duck-like feet planted on the floor, and it then bent down to look under the bed right at him. As it peered under the bed at him with those otherworldly, inscrutable eyes, Sims claims that its image then began to change, its features morphing and twisting right before his eyes into something else. He would later come to the conclusion that this was the entity manipulating his perceptions, and he says of this:

Next begins the most horrifying part of the experience for me. As he crawls slowly toward me, he begins making himself look like a pure white clown with large doll-like eyes. I know inside, “He wants me to remember this as a bad dream of a clown.” This is to make clear to me what I am to remember. However, since this hasn’t happened yet, how can I know it is what I will remember? Once again, I wonder, “How does he do that? He crawls under the bed, his large head next to mine, and makes his eye contact. “I will not believe this clown. I will not forget. It is not a clown. It is not a clown! I will not forget!” It gets very dark as I tell myself for the last time that night, “I will not forget. It is not a clown.” In the morning, I am back in bed, and cold. Numerous things tell me what I remember from the night before really happened. The soreness on my back where I hit the floor. . .the bed is no longer square against the wall. My covers come only near to my shoulders. (I always had them up to my head to keep me warm.) The sheets are a mess! . . .I definitely freaked in the morning.

Creepy indeed, and it was so traumatizing for him that he refused to sleep in his room alone, for several nights sleeping with his mother and father, although the mysterious entity would return. When it did, Sims says that even though he screamed out, his parents wouldn’t wake up, as if they had been kept in a deep sleep state by the creature. He says that this time there was more than one of them, and that as they plucked him out of the bed from right between his parents he blacked out. He would wake in his own bed later and not be able to remember what had happened until many years later under hypnosis, when he recalled that they had done experiments on him. Sims would have similar frightening experiences with the very same entities numerous times throughout his life, but it would get more horrifying when he was a married adult with children, when he claims they began to come for his own 6-year-old son. It was a turn of events that would change the course of his life and put him on a mission to warn of these creatures and do anything he could to stop them, and he says of the first incident:

In December 1980, my wife, two children and I lived. . .in a large ranch home on 4 acres near Huffman, Texas. [One night] I awoke suddenly with a feeling of dread. . . .In the dark, I ran as fast as I could to the living room, where I stood watching in horror: There was my 6-year-old son looking out the window. He was not asleep. He was deep in trance. They had come and, like my own dad, I was not there for him. . . .”Oh God,” I thought, “not my son, too.” The fact is you can mess with me or abduct me and I can live with it (I did). You mess with or abduct my son and I will come after you. I will protect and even avenge my children. Now, they — the alien — have my full attention. I am not sure this is what they wanted. It is certainly what they are getting for the trouble. This may have been a serious mistake on their part. Now, I hunt them that hunted me and later hunted my son. . . I am known as the “Alien Hunter.”

Sims went on to devote his whole life to understanding these mysterious entities more, to collecting and analyzing medical and scientific evidence of the alien presence such as anomalous marks on the body or alien implants, digging up classified information the government has on them, and helping other abductees to deal with their own traumatic otherworldly encounters, investigating over 2,000 such cases. He says there are at least seven types of alien species on Earth at present, as well as various hybrids, and when talking about alien abductions and the alien agenda, it does not take long at all to see that he has a very negative view of these beings. He says that they are here for malevolent purposes, and that their experiments on us are not in the best interests of human beings, that they are cruel, spiteful creatures that we should avoid at all costs. He has decried efforts to contact them, saying “It’s an uninformed position for them to get in contact with whoever’s out there. Some people have done that and died as a result. Some people have been injured.”

Sims also frequently mentions the aliens as being manipulative and deceitful, changing their appearance as it suits them and doctoring the memories that people have of them, and he also claims that much of the time the aliens prefer not to be seen at all, often surprised when someone can see them. He has said of the memories that abductees have, “In most cases, whenever you remember the event, it is a mistake on their part, or else, what you “remember” isn’t memory at all; it is an “installed memory” for you.” There is also the fact that, according to him, there are far more people who have had their memories successfully wiped and are blissfully unaware of what has happened to them, and that the abductees who remember are in the minority. Indeed, by his estimates there could be millions who have been abducted by aliens and just don’t know it. You can read all about Sims’ stories at his page here, and make up your own mind, but we are left to wonder just what is going on here. He seems to be a fairly reliable individual with solid credentials, so what are we to make of his stories. It remains unknown, but it is certainly another story to add to the many in the UFO field.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

It seems one can’t throw a stone or a dried camel turd in Egypt without hitting an ancient tomb with coffins and sarcophagi dating back to the pharaohs, but hitting an actual pharaoh or queen’s tomb is still a rarity. That may be why news of the recent discovery of 22 burial shafts, with one containing 54 coffins, and dozens of mummies and artifacts was quickly overshadowed by the announcement of the uncovering of the funerary temple of Queen Nerat, the wife of King Tati (or Teti), whose pyramid is nearby. The discovery is in the Saqqara archaeological site in Memphis where hundreds of coffins and well-preserved mummies have been found recently. Why does the head of the project say this discovery “rewrite the history of Saqqara during the New Kingdom, in addition to confirming the importance of the worship of King Teti during the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom”?

“The mission discovered the layout of the temple in which the queen’s tomb was being revived, and the mission also found within the temple three mud-brick warehouses attached to the temple in the southeastern side – these stores were built to store temple provisions, offerings and tools.”

Sistrum inscribed with the name of Teti.

While the popular movie depictions of ancient Egypt and mummies generally imply that most if not all of them were pharaohs or their relatives, this site and discovery – described in a Facebook post – led by Dr. Zahi Hawass with help from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and Bibliotheca Alexandrina, shows that coffin-building and mummification was a thriving business for the common folk as well. Not only were there rooms for the carpenters and mummifiers, the shafts were filled with hundreds of wooden coffins from the New Kingdom (16th century BCE to 11th century BCE). (Photos here and here.)

An adorned wooden sarcophagus is displayed during the official announcement of the discovery by an Egyptian archaeological mission of a new trove of treasures at Egypt's Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, on January 17, 2021.

(Khaled DESOUKI / AFP)

CORRECTS DAY OF WEEK TO SUNDAY -- A trove of ancient coffins and artifacts on display that Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass and his team unearthed in a vast necropolis, in Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt, January 17, 2021.

(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

An ancient coffin is on display that Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass and his team unearthed in a vast necropolis filled with burial shafts, coffins and mummies dating back to the New Kingdom 3000 BC, January 17, 2021, in Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt.

(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

CORRECTS DAY OF WEEK TO SUNDAY -- The excavation site where Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass and his team unearthed a trove of ancient coffins, artifacts, and skulls in a vast necropolis south of Cairo, Egypt, January 17, 2021, in Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt.

(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

An ancient coffin is on display that Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass and his team unearthed in a vast necropolis filled with burial shafts, coffins and mummies dating back to the New Kingdom 3000 BC, January 17, 2021, in Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt.

(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

Egyptian security officers man their station across from the step pyramid of Djoser at the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, on January 17, 2021.

(Khaled DESOUKI / AFP)

“The discoveries found in the shaft are considered one of the most important findings uncovered in the Saqqara region, and date back to the New Kingdom.

Inside the shafts, the mission discovered large numbers of archaeological artifacts and a large number of statues that represent deities such as the god Osiris and Ptah-Soker-Osiris, in addition the mission found a papyrus, whose length reached four meters and one meter in width, representing Chapter 17 from the Book of the Dead, and the name of its owner is recorded on it (Pw-Kha-Ef). The same name was found on four ushabti statuettes, and on an anthropoid wooden coffin. Many beautiful ushabti statuettes made of wood, stone and faience have been found dating back to the New Kingdom.”

Pyramid texts from Teti I’s pyramid at Saqqara

Not much is known or revealed about Queen Neit (or Nearit in some announcements). It appears this may be Iput, the mother of Pepi I, the third pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty. As the press release points out, the big deal is the shaft filled with coffins and artifacts that appears to have never been looted. All of this means King Tati and his queen (at least the first one) were revered a thousand years after their deaths and the funeral business boomed as a result. Based on that, more shafts, coffins, mummies, temples, and artifacts will undoubtedly be found – with or without the benefit of a camel turd toss. And that is the real reason why this discovery is so important to Egypt.

“Dr. Zahi Hawass confirms that this discovery is considered the most important archaeological discovery during the current year and will make Saqqara, along with other discoveries, an important tourist and cultural destination.

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Now and again I get asked about “missing government files” (or “hidden files”) on UFOs. It’s an issue that a lot of people don’t seem to understand – and it’s also something that demonstrates a great amount of naivety on the part of the questioner. I’ll explain what I mean. It relates to both those who believe there are UFO conspiracies and those who don’t – but for very different reasons. On many occasions, when I’m in debate with skeptics and debunkers, someone will say something like this: “There can’t be any truth to Rendlesham Forest or to Roswell because nothing of any significance has ever surfaced through the Freedom of Information Act.” That is such a pathetic and uninformed approach to take. And, it’s also a misinformed stance. A few day ago, I used the words “La La Land” in an article here at Mysterious Universe. I’ll use it again: “La La Land.” I use it because that’s where some of the debunkers and skeptics are happy to dwell. The same goes for those who think they actually have a chance in Hell of finding anything significant.

The fact is that numerous countries around the world have FOIA legislation. The long list includes Australia, the U.K., Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Sweden, and Uruguay. In fact, the number of countries that have FOIA legislation is now eight-five. That doesn’t mean – as a few debunkers have suggested to me – that the FOIA allows for everything to be released into the public domain. The reason? Because sometimes the material doesn’t even make it to the FOIA. Also, sometimes the reason why we don’t get to see anything – despite trying to use the Freedom of Information Act – is because of what are known as Special Access Programs (SAPs). You may wonder: what are they? Well, I’ll tell you. The Drive say: “For the better part of the last twenty-five years, the manner in which the U.S. government safeguards and restricts access of highly classified information is through a set of compartmentalization protocols termed ‘Special Access Programs.’ Thanks to the government’s love affair with condensing words, most people are likely familiar with this formalized system of security’s acronym—’SAP.’ For most of us stuck on the outside trying to get an idea of what’s inside, the term ‘Special Access Program’ is often misunderstood as being itself a classification level. In truth, SAPs are merely a set of security protocols limiting access of sensitive information to only authorized and necessary individuals. Cue the cliché, ‘That information is need to know, and you don’t have a need to know!'”

The Federation of American Scientists provide us the following: “The procedures for establishing, managing and overseeing special access programs (SAPs) in the Department of Defense are spelled out in an updated DoD Instruction that was issued yesterday.  See ‘Management, Administration, and Oversight of DoD Special Access Programs,’ DoD Instruction 5205.11, February 6, 2013. A special access program is a classified program that employs security measures above and beyond those that would normally be used to protect ordinary (or ‘collateral’) classified information. Such measures may include special eligibility reviews, polygraph testing, cover, and other controls on information.  Within DoD, SAPs fall into three broad topical categories: intelligence, acquisition, and operations and support.”

Not only that, there’s the matter of destroyed documents. If you think that Top Secret files don’t get destroyed, you would be very wrong. For example, when, back in the 1990s, the U.S. Government Accountability Office went digging for information on the Roswell affair of 1947,  the GAO said that: “…the Chief Archivist for the National Personnel Records Center provided us with documentation indicating that (1) RAAF records such as finance and accounting, supplies, buildings and grounds, and other general administrative matters from March 1945 through December 1949 and (2) RAAF outgoing messages from October 1946 through December 1949 were destroyed.” So, not only are we up against the SAPs, but now we know that material sometimes gets destroyed and will never be seen again.

The same applies to the aforementioned Rendlesham Forest affair of December 1980. There’s no doubt in my mind that what happened in the woods had nothing to do with aliens and everything to do with secret experiments And why can’t we find those files via the FOIA? Here’s why: one of the claims I’ve heard on a few occasions is that when the technology designed to make the personnel in the woods believe they were seeing aliens and UFOs (rather than being deceived by advanced holograms, which is the real story), there was no need to continue to keep the original papers. So, for safety and security, it was destroyed. This happens more times than you might think. Here’s one example of many. It’s the matter of  the CIA’s “mind-control” programs, the most well-known being MK-Ultra, much of which involved the experimental use of psychedelics. Yes, a large amount of that material is still available today, but back in 1973 huge amounts of papers on the programs were burned to a collective shred.

CIA Director Richard Helms chose a man named Sidney Gottlieb to take control of the situation – Gottlieb having been the person who ran the CIA’s occult-driven Operation Often program, which began in the latter part of the 1960s. Helms ordered Gottlieb, on the morning of January 30, 1973, to drive over to a certain installation owned by the CIA in Warrenton, Virginia. And burn as much as possible. Gottlieb followed his orders. The reasoning behind the destruction was simple: the program was in danger of being compromised by the U.S. media and the U.S. Senate. As the work of MK-Ultra, by 1973, had long been perfected, the old, historical records – which told the stories of the abuses that went on in the program – were deemed vital to be destroyed. From Roswell to MK-Ultra and to Rendlesham, files have been destroyed and will never be seen again. As for SAPs, they are a perfect way to to ensure that sensitive material will remain hidden.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Something really strange happened on January 16, 2021 when the Secchi Stereo Ahead EUVI 171 probe captured an enormous flash that then revealed a giant object in the vicinity of the sun. 

Blue beams, possible electrically charged, are visible on both sides of the object, apparently emanating from the object. 

The object, which looks like a giant UFO, comes from another dimension and arrives through a portal near the sun? 

A portal is an extraordinary opening in space or time that connects travelers, in this case a giant UFO, to distant realms. 

Source: https://www.helioviewer.org/ 

Stereo-A, Secchi, EUVI 171

Flash - date: 2021/1/16 Time:05.38.00 

Object - Date: 2021/1/16 Time: 05.43.00 

Flash and object only visible within a split second.

  

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

Former Chief of Israeli Space Security Says Extraterrestrials Exist, and U.S. Government Knows About It

An ex-Israeli space security head has made a buzz recently by saying that earthlings have been in contact with ETs from a galactic federation.

Haim Eshed, former chief of Defense Ministry’s space directorate in Israel, said that the UFOs have asked not to make public that they’re here as humanity isn’t ready yet.

Respected professor Eshed revealed that aliens were equally curious about humanity and were looking to understand the universe’s fabric.

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

Eshed stated there are signed cooperation agreements between species, including a base located underground in the depths of Mars where alien representatives and American astronauts have been holding their meeting.

He said U.S. governments and the extraterrestrials are signing an agreement to do experiments here. Eshed added that U.S. President Donald Trump was aware of the space aliens’ existence and had been on the brink of disclosing information but was asked not to prevent mass hysteria.

Eshed said they have been waiting until today for earthlings to develop and reach the level where we’ll understand what space and spaceships are in general.

Retired general Eshed, who oversaw several Israeli satellites into space, said he was only speaking now because people’s attitudes were changing and seemed more receptive. He said he has nothing to lose as he already received his degrees and awards and respected in universities abroad.

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

Oldest Tool Use Thrown Back To Two million Years In Oldupai Gorge Find

An interdisciplinary team of researchers have unearthed the oldest stone tools at the oldest archaeological site in the famous Oldupai Gorge, popularly known as the Cradle of Humankind. Their discoveries also reveal how the earliest hominins coped with climate change two million years ago.

An Acheulean hand-axe from the Olduvai Gorge is pictured in an undated file photo. 

PHOTO BY GERALD CORSI /iStock/Getty Images Plus

The new study is published in  Nature Communications  and provides an ecological perspective on early human adaptability two million years ago. It is focused on Ewass Oldupai - the oldest archaeological site in Oldupai (formerly Olduvai) Gorge. The study demonstrates how hominins adapted to the region’s diverse environmental conditions over a 200,000 year period.

New interdisciplinary field work has led to the discovery of the oldest archaeological site in Oldupai Gorge, which shows that early humans used a wide diversity of habitats amidst environmental changes across a 200,000 year-long period.

( Michael Petraglia )

Discoveries at Oldupai Gorge, the Famous Cradle of Humankind

Oldupai Gorge  is a very important paleoanthropological site located in Tanzania in the Great Rift Valley. For more than a century, researchers have been excavating in this area, and cumulatively they have found hundreds of fossils and stone tools which date back millions of years. The site was made famous by  Louis and Mary Leakey  and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

EurekAlert! reports that, despite the long history of surveys and excavations at the Oldupai Gorge, there has been a lack of ecological studies associated with the cultural remains which have been found there. This allows the new study to cast light on the environmental contexts in which the early hominins lived.

• Did Early Humans Cook Their Food in Thermal Springs?
• Are you a Righty or Lefty? Ancient Teeth and Tools May Explain the Evolution of Handedness
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The study comes from an international and interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, the University of Calgary in Canada, and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. The researchers convened for excavations at the Ewass Oldupa and they have unearthed the oldest Oldowan stone tools ever found at Oldupai Gorge. The stone tools date from roughly 2 to 1.8 million years ago.

Excavations at Ewass Oldupa uncovered the oldest Oldowan stone tools ever found at Oldupai Gorge, dating to ~2 million years ago, and also unearthed fossils of mammals, reptiles and birds.

( Michael Petraglia )

Remaining Stable in Changing Environments

Paleoanthropologists at the site studied fossils from a variety of animals, including primates, wild cattle and pigs, hippos, panthers, lions, hyenas, reptiles, and birds. They found that over 200,000 years, the habitat changed and included fern meadows, woodland mosaics, naturally burned landscapes, lakeside palm groves and dry steppe environments.

Outcrop geometry, stratigraphic architecture, and idealized vegetation at Ewass Oldupa. a) Post-eruptive, fern meadow. b) Coarse Feldspar Crystal Tuff  mosaics. c) Woodland with palms and ferns. d) Grasslands. e) Open woodland. f) Asteraceae-dominated scrub.

(Mercader, J. et al.  Nature 2021 )

The combined paleoanthropological and archaeological evidence shows that hominin activities recurred, but were periodically absent in the changing environment. Dr. Pastory Bushozi of Dar es Salaam University, Tanzania,  said that “the occupation of varied and unstable environments, including after volcanic activity, is one of the earliest examples of adaptation to major ecological transformations.”

Even though the environment was changing, the researchers found that the prehistoric hominin toolkits remained more or less the same. The iconic  Oldowan pebble and cobble cores, sharp-edged flakes, and polyhedral cobbles were still used to butcher animals and process plants, no matter how the habitat changed over the 200,000 years.

Who Made the Ewass Oldupa Tools?

You may be wondering by now which group of our prehistoric ancestors made the oldest Oldowan  stone tools  ever found at Oldupai Gorge. The possible toolmaker group is not certain, since no hominin fossils have been found at Ewass Oldupa yet, but it has been narrowed down to three possible hominin species.

Selection of stone tools from Ewass Oldupa.  

(Mercader, J. et al.  Nature 2021 )

One possibility is that  Homo habilis  created the tools. Their fossils have been found in 1.82-million-year-old deposits at a location just 350 meters (1148.29 ft.) away from Ewass Oldupa. Professor Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary  stated that “these early humans were surely ranging widely over the landscape and along shores of the ancient lake.”

But Mercader also noted that  australopithecines were also around Ewass Oldupa at the time and probably making and using stone tools in the area and members of the  Paranthropus genus also lived in Oldupai Gorge in the same time period; both of these groups could be not be ruled out as the prehistoric toolmakers.

Setting the Stage for Bigger Things

The researchers  write that their findings at Oldupai Gorge are “unique for this period and depicts complex behavior among early  Pleistocene hominins.” They explain  that the ability of the hominins to adapt to the changing environments at Oldupai Gorge prepared our prehistoric ancestors for bigger goals.

Combining the recent Oldupai Gorge discoveries with other finds across eastern Africa suggests that by 2 million years ago, hominins had the behavioral abilities they needed to expand into  new ecosystems , and they used those abilities. As Professor Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute  noted that “This behavioural flexibility arose in the context of the dawn of the evolution of our own genus, Homo, and it set the stage for the eventual global, invasive  spread of Homo sapiens .”

• Top Image: The excavations uncovered the oldest Oldowan stone tools ever found at Oldupai Gorge, dating to ~2 million years ago.
• Source:  Michael Petraglia / Mercader, J. et al.,  Nature 2021

By Alicia McDermott

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Titanoboa: The Monster Snake that Ruled Prehistoric Colombia

You may not want to read about this frightening creature if you suffer to any degree from ophidiophobia, or even if you are about to embark on a camping trip. Titanoboa fossils show it was the largest snake in the world. It lived during the Paleocene epoch, about 60 million years ago, so you are safe from its bone crushing grip now, but the image of the huge prehistoric snake slithering around South America is still a terrifying one.

So far, the South American country of Colombia has the only known fossils of the huge serpent. It is through these few fossils that paleontologists were able to estimate the size of this prehistoric creature. This estimation was then used to create a life-size model of Titanoboa, which was exhibited in 2012 in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal as a promotion for the Smithsonian Channel documentary entitled Titanoboa: Monster Snake.

The "Titanoboa: Monster Snake" exhibit from the Smithsonian at the Natural History Museum.

(Ryan Quick/ CC BY 2.0 )

A Titanic Boa

Titanoboa simply means ‘titanic boa’ and is an apt name for this prehistoric snake. According to estimates made by paleontologists, it could have grown to a length of between 42 feet and 49 feet (between 12.8 meters and 14.9 meters) and weighed up to a massive 2500 pounds (1134 kg). In addition, the thickest part of the snake’s body is reckoned to have had a diameter of 3 feet (0.9 meters).

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As a comparison, the anaconda, one of the largest snakes today, is known to reach lengths of over 20 feet (6.1 meters) and weigh more than 500 pounds (227 kg). Titanoboa was obviously a giant compared to the largest snakes we have today.

Artistic representation of Titanoboa.

(tuomaskoivurinne/ Deviant Art)

Discovering Titanoboa

The discovery of Titanoboa was made during the first decade of the 21st century in Cerrejón, a coal mine in the northern part of Colombia. The campaign that led to the discovery began in 1994, when the Colombian geologist Henry Garcia found an unfamiliar fossil which he labelled as ‘Petrified Branch’ and placed it in a display case of the coal company.

In 2003, a Colombian undergraduate geology student by the name of Fabiany Herrera was at Cerrejón for a field trip when he discovered fossilized plant remains . As the area had not been explored previously by paleontologists, an expedition was soon organized. One of the researchers invited to join the expedition was Scott Wing, the curator of fossil plants at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

A Titanoboa vertebra dwarfs that of a modern 17-foot anaconda

( Brian Tietz )

It was Wing who realized that Garcia’s fossil was not from a plant. He sent photos of it to another expert, Jonathan Bloch, a paleontologist at the University of Florida. Bloch identified the fossil as part of a jawbone of a land animal.

This was exciting news, as fossils of terrestrial vertebrates from the Paleocene epoch had not been found in that part of South America before then. It was believed that more fossils of such animals were to be found at the site, and this proved to be true.

Identifying the Monster Snake

It was not until 2007, however, that the vertebra of a Titanoboa was identified, when a shipment of fossils labelled ‘crocodile’ was being inspected. When this discovery was made, fresh expeditions were conducted in the hopes of finding more vertebrae of this animal. Eventually, a total of 100 snake vertebrae from 28 animals were collected. With the vertebrae, the paleontologists were able to make estimations as to the size of the prehistoric snake.

Titanoboa with a dyrosaur and a turtle.

( Jason Bourque/University of Florida )

In 2012, another important discovery about the Titanoboa was made. This time, a snake skull was found. Such a find is extremely rare, as snake skulls are very fragile and usually fall apart after the animal dies.

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What Did Titanoboas Eat?

One of the peculiarities of this skull is that it has closely packed teeth, even more than modern day boas. This has led experts to speculate that Titanoboa was a specialized fish-eater. Still, considering its size, Titanoboa could have easily preyed on prehistoric turtles and crocodiles, which lived in the same habitat as this snake.

Titanoboa.

(darkwaterlilly/ Deviant Art )

These later discoveries prompted the 2012 creation of a life-size model of Titanoboa exhibited in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal to promote the Smithsonian Titanoboa documentary. Some people also believe that Titanoboas still live deep in the Amazon.

• Top Image: Titanoboa.
• Source: Michael Rosskothen /Adobe Stock

By Wu Mingren  

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Northern lights in Alaska.

Image via Manish Mamtani Photography.

Throughout human history, people have witnessed the aurora, both the northern and southern lights, and sought to explain and make sense of these dancing patterns in stories and myths.

In the modern world, science has revealed most of the secrets of the northern lights (aurora borealis) and southern lights (aurora australis). We understand that auroras form when solar particles collide with Earth’s upper atmosphere. Larger solar storms cause a greater influx of particles, which can cause auroras to reach lower latitudes and appear to a greater number of observers. The colors of the aurora are determined by which gases are excited by the solar plasma.

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All this scientific knowledge slowly started accumulating more than 2 1/2 centuries ago. But even now, when we look up at the trembling curtains of red, green or blue, a feeling of awe and mystery can pervade this ghostly show. It’s easy to see how many of these centuries-old myths referred to an otherwise unreachable world.

The folklore begins with the name “aurora” itself. Aurora is the Roman goddess of the dawn. The lights, usually starting as a subtle brightening on the northern horizon (in the Northern Hemisphere), appeared to be an out-of-place and untimely arrival of morning.

Image via Jörgen Norrland Andersson.

Tying the mystical lights to gods was an easy step for early cultures. The Algonquins on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron thought an aurora was a sign of good will from their creator, Nanahbozho. The Chuvash of Siberia believed the aurora borealis was their heaven god helping women in childbirth.

One of the most common legends surrounding the northern lights concerned those who have passed into the Great Beyond. The people of the Six Nations Confederacy believed the northern lights showed the entry point to the Land of the Souls. The Vikings thought auroras were reflections from shields of the Valkyries, maidens who take dead warriors to Valhalla (heaven). The Salteaus of Eastern Canada and the Kwakiutl and Tlingit of southeastern Alaska all saw dancing souls in the flickering sky, sometimes of humans and sometimes of animals such as whales or seals. East Greenland Inuits viewed the lights as children who died at birth. In contrast to the many myths surrounding those who have passed on, the Lakota Sioux interpreted the lights as spirits of generations yet to be born.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | David Kakuktinniq at Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, Canada, captured the aurora borealis and Mars on September 12, 2020. He wrote: “Northern lights over the Hudson Bay, with Mars near the center of the image.” Thanks, David!

Violence and war frequently made an appearance in these myths. The Sami people of northern Scandinavia believed that the souls of those who died a violent death made up the energy of the northern lights. Fox Indian tribes of Wisconsin feared the lights as ghosts of their slain enemies, trying to rise up again. For this reason, auroras were regarded as an omen of war and pestilence.

Another predominant story found in aurora myth involved games played with balls. Many Inuits’ myths involve the dead playing ball with a walrus head. The Wabanaki of Maine had a story of ball-playing people who had peculiar-colored lights on their heads and rainbow belts that resulted in the aurora.

Tying various animals to the lights was common around the world. Some Scandinavian people from medieval times saw the flickering lights and believed them to be caused by gigantic schools of herring in the sea, the light of their shimmering bodies reflected into the sky. One Finnish myth claims that foxes made of fire flung sparks into the air with their tails. Spotting the northern lights in China is less common, but a myth still evolved that these displays were the result of fire-breathing dragons.

The stunning Dragon Aurora appeared over Iceland in February 2019.

Copyrighted image via Jingyi Zhang & Wang Zheng.

The production of these lights was often blamed on mysterious groups of people who lived beyond the horizon. The Mandan of North Dakota told stories of people in northern nations using giant stew pots to simmer their dead enemies, the reflections of which were cast upon the sky. In Washington state, the Makah people also saw fires of those in the far north, only they spoke of a tribe of dwarves boiling blubber. Menominee Indians of Minnesota and Wisconsin thought the auroras were torches of friendly northern giants used in spearfishing at night. The Maori of New Zealand interpreted their glimpses of the aurora australis as reflected light from torches or campfires from previous generations who had traveled south and settled there.

Sometimes the northern lights figured into part of the weather forecast, as in the Penobscot of Maine believing an aurora foreteold windy weather. In Scotland, auroras are called “merry dancers.” Some believed that the quick motions of the dancers meant unsettled weather, while slow and graceful movements foretold favorable weather.

While we no longer blame auroras for a turn in the weather, they are a part of space weather. The sun can unleash a geomagnetic storm at any time, triggering another round of magnificent auroral displays. Watch the next event and decide for yourself what the lights mean to you.

• Bottom line: For millennia, people have viewed the southern and northern lights and created their own myths and folklore explaining the dancing lights they saw in the sky.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

Autonomous robot swarm swims like a school of fish

These underwater robots operate as a collective artificial intelligence.

 by Tibi Puiu

Researchers have devised a swarm of small fish-inspired robots that can synchronize their movements by themselves, without any human input. The autonomous robots essentially mimic the behavior of a school of fish in nature, exhibiting a realistic, complex three-dimensional collective behavior.

Each robo-fish (called a ‘Bluebot’) is equipped with cameras and sensors that enable it to track its neighbors and get a sense of direction. This is a step beyond the typical multi-robot communication system, in which individual bots have to communicate with each other via radio and constantly transmit their GPS data.

The team of engineers at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering even mimicked a fish’s locomotion, opting for flapping fins instead of propellers. The fins actually improve the submersibles’ efficiency and maneuverability compared to conventional underwater drones.

“It’s definitely useful for future applications, for example, a search mission in the open ocean where you want to find people in distress and rescue them quickly,” Florian Berlinger, the lead author of a paper about the research that appeared in Science Robotics on Wednesday, told AFP.

Berlinger added that other applications for these cute underwater bots include environmental monitoring or the inspection of infrastructure.

Credit: Harvard University.

Each robot measures just 10 centimeters (4 inches) in length and the casing is 3D printed. Their design was partly inspired by the blue tang fish, native to the coral reefs of the Indo-Pacific (Dora from Finding Nemo is a blue tang fish).

During a test, a swarm of Bluebots was inserted in a water tank with a light source and no other external input from the researchers. When one of the bots was the first to detect the light, its movements signaled to the others to gather around. The robots could operate similarly in a search-and-rescue mission, the researchers said.

Berlinger hopes to alter the design in the future so that the robo-fish don’t require LEDs to track the direction of the swarm. This way they could be used outside the lab for conservation projects, such as for coral reefs. Ultimately, this remarkable fit of engineering may also one day reveal hidden insights about collective intelligence in nature.

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{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

A Secret Roswell Journal Becomes The Focus Of A New UFO Documentary

A secret journal offers new clues about the nature of the alleged 1947 AD UFO crash at Roswell in the New Mexico desert, or does it? Before we kick off, this isn’t one of these Reddit stories that emerged from some basement decorated with posters of the Starship Enterprise and Chewbacca. Quite the opposite.

Live Science is one off the internet’s more respected academic media outlets and today they tell the story of a hitherto unknown personal diary belonging to Major Jesse Marcel, a head intelligence officer at the Roswell Army Air Field. The secret Roswell journal could change the narrative of this famous UFO event. In particular, the secret Roswell journal may contain secret coded observations that will help to “clarify” what really happened in Roswell in 1947 AD.

Marcel investigated the famous Roswell site in New Mexico where in 1947 a UFO is believed by many to have crashed. Furthermore, he claimed to have recovered some of the debris from whatever ditched in the desert that July night near the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). Newspaper photos at the time showed Marcel with pieces of metallic material and on the afternoon of July 8, 1947 AD he disclosed to the media “the crash and recovery of a flying disc.” However, the following day, an army official made a statement saying that a weather balloon had fallen to earth, “not a flying saucer.”

This is a road sign near the original UFO crash site in Roswell. Hopefully, the secret Roswell journal of Major Jesse Marcel will reveal more about what “really” happened in New Mexico on that day!

Source: spiritofamerica / Adobe Stock

Will The Secret Roswell Journal Change Everything?

The Roswell story now takes a new turn since Major Marcel's family revealed they had kept his personal secret Roswell journal which contains “hitherto unknown clues about the crash.” The secret diary and its equally secret contents will soon be presented on History Channel´s History's Greatest Mysteries series in an episode called Roswell: The First Witness . The episode was released on December 12th, Saturday, 2020 AD. The show host, Ben Smith, is a former CIA operative and the show's lead investigator. He thinks it is very unusual that the day after the government claimed they had recovered a UFO they switched stories and maintained it was merely “a weather balloon,” Smith told Live Science .

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This story is another in a long line of recent reports pertaining to UFOs. According to The Guardian in 2017 AD a former Pentagon official confirmed the existence of a federal agency that had been “secretly investigating UFOs since 2007.” Then, in 2018, U.S. Navy pilots reported “three encounters with fast-moving UAP, or unidentified aerial phenomena” better known to us civies as UFOs. And building up this emerging alien narrative, officially declassified videos of these occurrences were published in April of this year, as previously reported on Live Science .

Secret Roswell Journal: A Problem Of Might, May And Could

Let´s now return to Major Jesse Marcel, the author of the secret Roswell journal. He investigated the site at Roswell and recovered what he believed to be debris from a flying saucer . In 1997 AD, Time published an article saying Marcel told an interviewer at the time that “he believed” the object that crashed in the New Mexico desert had extraterrestrial origins. Now, a forensic analysis of Marcel´s secret Roswell journal “could reveal” coded messages that he wrote about the crash at the time that it happened, Ben Smith said.

When it comes to UFOs and aliens there are believers and there are skeptics. But no one really knows.

( Alperium / Adobe Stock)

This application of the word “could” will no doubt have skeptics raging, because they all know what’s most probably coming here. If the diary really contained any actual evidence that the Roswell incident was nothing more than a collapsed weather balloon we would certainly have heard about it by now. Unless of course thousands of unpaid interns and staff at the network have all kept quiet, doubters can argue. Perhaps the skeptics greatest argument is presented in plain sight in the newspaper photograph of Marcel on the evening of the crash. To all but the most committed believers in extraterrestrials it is perfectly clear that Marcel is holding a piece of a crumpled (crashed) weather balloon.

When the History Channel episode airs and unavoidably “no evidence” of extraterrestrials is offered, perhaps then maybe some “believers” will consider the content of the Ancient Origins news article I wrote about this only last month.

A team of Oxford University researchers recently applied statistics to the question “are we alone” and concluded that “life on earth is probably a unique universal phenomena, and that it´s ‘extremely unlikely’ that any other intelligent life exists anywhere else in the universe.” This is a profound claim that sceptics love and believers loathe.

And the same extreme opinions are likely to flood across social media channels when the details of Major Marcel's secret Roswell journal are revealed.

• Top image: A UFO flying over the New Mexico desert. The secret Roswell journal may provide new information about what actually happened in Roswell in 1947 AD. ( aleciccotelli / Adobe Stock)

By Ashley Cowie

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

An Indonesian cave painting of a warty pig, sporting a pair of large bumps on its neck, ranks among the oldest known artistic portrayals of an actual object or living thing, researchers say.

M. AUBERT

The truth is in there! CIA declassifies TWO THOUSAND documents on UFOs dating back to 1970s that reveal a mysterious object was analyzed by agency's chief scientist in 1976

• A dossier with more than 700 files about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) was published on The Black Vault website on Thursday

• Black Vault founder John Greenewald Jr spent two decades suing the CIA to release the records and then scanning the pages one by one

• A DailyMail.com review of about one-tenth of the files in the Black Vault database revealed a few perplexing examples of UAP sightings

• One of the reports describes how seemingly urgent UFO information was hand-delivered to the CIA's deputy director for science and technology in 1976

• In another report, CIA officials discuss the possibility that UFOs were behind a 'mysterious blast' in the small Russian town of Sasovo in 1991

By MEGAN SHEETS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 

A treasure trove of newly-unsealed CIA records has revealed chilling accounts of hundreds of UFO sightings across the globe dating back to the 1950s - along with international intelligence agencies' efforts to understand them.  

The XXXX dossier with nearly 3,000 pages of documents about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) - the government's official term for what are commonly called UFOs - was published on The Black Vault website last week.  

Thousands of paranormal enthusiasts have already started poring through the collection of more than 700 individual documents, according to Black Vault's founder John Greenewald Jr, who has spent the past two decades suing the CIA to release the records and then scanning the pages into his database one by one.  

The CIA purports that the files account for its 'entire' collection of declassified UAP intel, but Greenewald cautions that there's no way to verify that claim and has vowed to continue searching for further records.  

The dossier was released ahead of a June deadline for US intelligence agencies to reveal everything they know about UFOs to Congress under a clause slipped into the $2.3trillion coronavirus relief bill signed into law by President Donald Trump in December.   

An ongoing DailyMail.com review of the files has uncovered a bevy of perplexing - yet unverified - accounts of mysterious disks tracking across the sky, spewing beams of light across small towns, causing explosions and even a few claims of military officers confronting aliens that come out of outlandish vehicles.  

Other documents show correspondence between CIA officers about the UFO sightings. Sometimes the officers brush off observers' stories as purely superstitious, even when another explanation isn't clear. But in several instances the officers show genuine concern that perhaps something XXXXX is at play. 

Russian airliner crew describes coming within 50 kilometers of a yellow disk shooting beams of light in Belarus in 1985 

Many of the documents included in the Black Vault archive describe UFO sightings in the former Soviet Union - but this one is particularly detailed. 

An article from Moscow's Trud newspaper dated January 30, 1985, describes how an airline crew en route from Rostov, Russia, to Tallinn, Estonia, came upon what they perceived to be a UFO about 120 kilometers from Minsk, Belarus, at about 4am.  

The article dramatically recounts the incident from the perspective of the crew. 'Glancing over his portion of the sky, the copilot noticed a large star that was not flickering on his upper right. But this is no star, this yellow speck the size of a 5-kopeck coin, stretched out along the edges.

'"No matter..,"' he told himself calmly, "refraction of light in the atmosphere or something else..." A very thin beam of light emerged from the speck and fell vertically down to the ground itself.' 

The pilot nudged his three comrades in the cockpit and they watched as the 'beam of light suddenly opened up, turning into a luminous cone. ... A second cone emerged, wider, ... then a third one, broad and quite bright.' 

 The pilot recommended that they report the sight to the ground, but the commander stopped him, unsure of how they would even describe it.  

The men estimated that the object was only about 40 to 50 kilometers away. The copilot pulled out a paper to draw it before 'the beam of the "projector" rose from the ground and focused on the aircraft.'

'The commander was still hesitating: should he report what is taking place or not? But something that put an end to his doubts happened here. The white spot flashed up, and a green cloud emerged in its place.'

The commander recalled seeing the object rush toward his plane, before it suddenly disappeared. 'Well, now they will say we weren't in our right minds.' 

The article goes on to describe the crew's conversations with dubious ground controllers.  

It concludes with a statement from N. A. Zheltukhin, deputy chairman of the Commission on Aerodynamic Phenomena, who said: 'The commission is conducting a systematic study of [UFO] sightings over the territory of the Soviet Union. 

'However, we have to note that regrettably, all the accounts which we have at our disposal suffer from being one-sided or fragmentary to one degree or another.' 

Swedish pilot and flight mechanic spot a 'completely unorthodox, metallic object' flying at 'the speed of sound' outside Stockholm in 1953

A CIA report from April 1954 includes three newspaper articles about a purported UFO sighting five months earlier in Sweden. 

Captain Christiernsson and flight mechanic Olle Johansson were flying a Trasnair Airlines plane between Malmo and Stockholm on December 17, 1953, when the object appeared in the sky in front of them. 

'I do not doubt for an instant that it was not a jet plane,' Christiernsson told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. 'What I saw was a completely unorthodox, metallic, symmetric, round object which was unlike anything I have seen before.  

'The silhouette was thin and it approached me at a very high velocity. Olle Johansson and I have discussed the matter of its speed, and we have estimated the speed to be about that of sound. The whole business took place fantastically quickly, but I believe that I was able to see the object for four to five seconds.' 

Johansson said: 'What I saw was an ellipse with sharp outlines and something between silver and white in color. It was approaching from the north in a direction opposite to ours, at a speed of about 1,200 kilometers per hour. It was flying entirely above the clouds. Since we had the automatic pilot on, we had no chance to turn quickly enough to see where the object went.' 

More than 700 declassified CIA reports about UFOs dating back to the 1970s were published on The Black Vault website on Thursday (file photo)

Urgent UFO information is hand-delivered to the CIA's top scientist for review in 1976 

Asked about which documents had piqued his interest, Greenewald highlighted a report about seemingly urgent UFO information being hand-delivered to an Assistant Deputy Director for Science & Technology at the CIA in April 1976. 

Most details about the information were redacted in the document, but Greenewald said he is determine to uncover more through further FOIA requests. 

The name of the deputy director was also redacted but records indicate that Carl Duckett served in that position at the time.  

The document states: 'We contacted A/DDS&T (Dr [redacted]) to see if he knew of any UFO program and also to answer the questions posed by [redacted]. 

'Dr [redacted] exhibited interest in [redacted] which was handcarried to his office. After a short examination of its contents Dr [redacted] advised us that he would personally look into the matter and get back to us.' 

A second document from June of 1976 appears to request an update on the review, but there is no record of the ordeal after that.  

The heavily redacted report above describes seemingly urgent UFO information being hand-delivered to an Assistant Deputy Director for Science & Technology in April 1976

CIA officials discuss the possibility that UFOs were behind a 'mysterious blast' in the small Russian town of Sasovo in 1991 

In another report, CIA officials discuss the possibility that UFOs were behind a 'mysterious blast' in the small Russian town of Sasovo - about 400 kilometers southwest of Moscow - in 1991. 

Residents reported seeing a 'fiery sphere' descend from the sky before a shockwave tore through the town, leveling an entire block. 

The report said investigators had failed to come to a conclusion about the cause of the explosion, leaving open the possibility of UFOs. 

It states: 'Some people are talking about munitions left buried since the last war, while others claim that a powerful bomb fell. A third group blame it on a meteorite, and a fourth group blame UFOs... There are people who supposedly saw a moving "fiery sphere".' 

Among the more than 700 files in the Black Vault database is this report, where CIA officials discuss the possibility that UFOs were behind a 'mysterious blast' in a small Russian town

UFO enthusiast hounds the CIA for information about a sighting at Ohio Air Force Base 

Several of the files appeared to reference the same incident, in which a possible UFO was sighted at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio in 1978. 

The reports refer to someone named Dr Leon Davidson who made multiple requests for information about the matter and did not appear to be getting any response. 

He is believed to be the same Dr Leon Davidson who studied UFOs for decades beginning in 1949, according to Columbia University, which was gifted a collection of the engineer's research on the subject after his death in 2007. 

One report states: '[Redacted] received a letter from Davidson [redacted] in which Davidson asked if the [redacted] tape had been analyzed at Wright Field.

'[Redacted] replied that the tape was forwarded to proper authorities for evaluation and no information was available concerning results. 

'[Redacted] then received a second letter dated 19 March from Davidson in which he said since [redacted] was not in a position to make enquires he would like the address of proper parties to make them to. 

'[Redacted] replied that he understood the proper address for forwarding information on "flying saucers" is Air Technical Intelligence Center, Wright Patterson Air Force Base. 

'Subsequently, [redacted] learned that Davidson made enquiries there. Apparently they stalled him.'

In May of that year another report asks: 'What progress has been made? This correspondence is more than a month old. I am afraid the longer we procrastinate the more fuel we add to the fire. Also, the people at Wright Field are holding their breaths awaiting advice.'

A third report, for which the date is illegible, says: 'Davidson is on our backs again. He wants a verbatim translation of the "space" message and the identification of the transmitter from which it came.'  

In a fourth report - which indicates that the case is 'closed' - the author states that Davidson was writing an article about the incident entitled: 'The Air Force and the Saucers, Part Three: The Central Intelligence Agency becomes involved with Saucers.'

It indicates that the CIA did provide Davidson with some information, but does not disclose what that information was. 

In the final report on the matter, the author indicates that the CIA will no longer be responding to Davidson's correspondence. 

Wright-Patterson AFB has long been linked to conspiracy theories about alien life, after serving as the headquarters of an Air Force program- dubbed 'Project Blue Book', which studied UFOs from 1947 to 1969.  

Over the course of those two decades the project garnered more than 12,600 reports of UFO sightings - 701 of which were never 'identified', according to the Dayton Daily News.  

Several of the files appeared to reference the same incident, in which a possible UFO was sighted at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio in 1978. The reports refer to someone named Dr Leon Davidson who made multiple requests for information about the matter and did not appear to be getting any response

In May of that year another report asks: 'What progress has been made?'

A third report, for which the date is illegible, says: 'Davidson is on our backs again. He wants a verbatim translation of the "space" message and the identification of the transmitter from which it came'

In a fourth report - which indicates that the case is 'closed' - the author states that Davidson was writing an article about the incident entitled: 'The Air Force and the Saucers, Part Three: The Central Intelligence Agency becomes involved with Saucers'

In the final report on the matter, the author indicates that the CIA will no longer be responding to Davidson's correspondence

UFO sighted in Morocco in 1976 

One of the most heavily-redacted documents reviewed by DailyMail.com is dated September 23, 1976, and features the words: 'To immediate director - with personal request to investigate UFO sighted in Morocco.' 

The full-page report is covered in 25 black lines that appeared to have been made directly with a pen. 

The report was first approved for release in February of 2010, a footnote indicates. 

One of the most heavily-redacted documents reviewed by DailyMail.com is dated September 23, 1976, and features the words: 'To immediate director - with personal request to investigate UFO sighted in Morocco'

Many of the files are similarly redacted to remove nearly every little detail beyond the word UFO. 

Some in the mix merely mention the keywords 'UFO', 'UAP' or 'extraterrestrial' in the context of unrelated topics, offering little to no insight about the CIA's overall knowledge about those keywords. 

For example, one document entitled 'Hypervelocity Test Techniques Discussed' describes a French study of a force which could be used to deflect UFOs - defined in the document as 'undesired flying objects' - not unidentified ones. 

Another document joined the pile because it features a newspaper column about a Bosnian fugitive, in which the author mocks the Pentagon's failure to find the man despite 'communicating regularly with extraterrestrial beings'. 

One document entitled 'Hypervelocity Test Techniques Discussed' describes a French study of a force which could be used to deflect UFOs - defined in the document as 'undesired flying objects' - not unidentified ones

Another document joined the pile because it features a newspaper column about a Bosnian fugitive, in which the author mocks the Pentagon's failure to find the man despite 'communicating regularly with extraterrestrial beings'

'It was like pulling teeth': Greenewald recounts the 20 years he's spent fighting for access to CIA records on UFOs 

Black Vault's founder John Greenewald Jr (pictured) has spent the past two decades suing the CIA to release the records and then scanning the pages one by one

Greenewald began investigating the US government's research on UFOs when he was just 15 years old in 1996. 

He described his painstaking efforts to Motherboard on Monday, saying he filed countless Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to unseal the records. 

'Around 20 years ago, I had fought for years to get additional UFO records released from the CIA,' Greenewald said.

'It was like pulling teeth. I went around and around with them to try and do so, finally achieving it.

'I received a large box, of a couple thousand pages, and I had to scan them in one page at a time.'

The dossier contains both the records that Greenewald requested and others that the CIA had already released publicly and compiled into a CD, which Black Vault purchased last year. 

In a blog post Greenewald noted that while the CIA claims it has released all of its UAP documents, there is no way to verify whether some documents may have been withheld.  

In a Twitter thread on Tuesday he explained how the records available on the CIA's website are incomplete, despite the agency 'giving the illusion' that everything is there. 

He posted screengrabs of a CIA site search which produced 415 results for UFO-related FOIA requests - compared to the 713 files on the Black Vault.  

In a Twitter thread on Tuesday Greenewald explained how the records available on the CIA's website are incomplete, despite the agency 'giving the illusion' that everything is there

Greenewald also emphasized how the CIA releases its records in a format that is far from user-friendly. 

'The CIA has made it incredibly difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner,' Greenewald told Motherboard.

'They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a "search" tool. 

'In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose. 

'Researchers and curious minds alike prefer simplicity and accessibility when they look at data dumps such as these.' 

Despite the inconvenience, Greenewald said thousands of people had already downloaded the archive on the first day it was posted on the Black Vault.  

He's offering the archive for free but set up a Patreon account for anyone who wants to donate money to support his past and future efforts to uncover CIA records. 

'Plain and simple, the public has a right to know,' Greenewald said. 

'When I began researching nearly 25 years ago at the age of 15, I knew there was something to this topic. Not because of viral internet hoaxes. Not because of back door meetings wherein I can’t tell you who, but I promise it was mind-blowing information. No, none of that. 

'It was simply because of the evidence that I got straight from the CIA. And the NSA. And the Air Force. And the DIA. I feel I am achieving what I set out to do. Easy access, to important material, for people to make up their own minds on what is going on.'

Greenewald (pictured) began investigating the US government's research on UFOs when he was just 15 years old in 1996. His Black Vault database is the result of countless different Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests

US intelligence faces six-month deadline to submit unclassified UFO report to Congress 

UFO detectives like Greenewald may soon have even more intel to sift through, with the upcoming deadline for US intelligence agencies to submit an unclassified report about 'unidentified aerial phenomena' to congressional intelligence and armed services committees.

The director of National Intelligence and the secretary of defense have just under six months to do so, after a stipulation in the 'committee comment' section of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 was included in the huge bill, according to CNN.

The Senate intelligence committee's directive said that the report should be unclassified, but it can contain a classified annex. Therefore, it is unlikely to reveal the discovery of extra-terrestrial life reaching earth.

It does, however, state that the report must contain detailed analysis of UFO data and intelligence collected by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI. 

Detail of 'an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the Federal Government' must be included, and it should designate an official responsible for that process.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed the requirement for the report to the fact-checking website Snopes. 

Navy pilots believe they spotted a UFO just off the coast in Jacksonville in 2015 (pictured)

In April last year, the Pentagon released three short videos - one from 2004 and two from 2015 - that showed 'unidentified aerial phenomena', which had earlier been confirmed to be real by the US Navy. 

The videos, recorded by infrared cameras, showed what appeared to be unidentified flying objects quickly moving across the sky.

In the background of two of the videos, service members can be heard reacting as they watch the objects, with one speculating it could be a drone.

In August, the Pentagon announced that it was setting up a task force to investigate the objects, but it is still unclear what the objects are or where they came from.

Both Pentagon officials and members of Congress have been concerned about the appearance of unidentified objects flying over US military bases, with some suggesting the objects in the video could be drones collecting intelligence.

In June last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to have the Pentagon and intelligence community provide public analysis of such encounters.

This is not the first time the Pentagon has investigated aerial encounters with UFOs, having previously studied recordings of such incidents as part of a classified program launched by former Senator Harry Reid, that has since been shut down.

That program was launched in 2007 and closed in 2012, the Pentagon says, after it decided there were higher priority areas that required funding.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

CIA releases entire collection of UFO-related documents to truth-seeking website

By Brandon Specktor  

The 'Black Vault' documents cover everything from mysterious Russian explosions to top government officials being hand-delivered UFO intel.

U.S. Navy videos of alleged UFO sightings were declassified in 2020.

(Image: © U.S. Navy)

More than three decades' worth of government UFO records are now yours to download and peruse, thanks to the efforts of some intrepid truth-seekers.

The massive data dump includes more than 2,700 pages of UFO-related documents declassified by the CIA since the 1980s. (The U.S. government also calls them "unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP). According to The Black Vault — an online repository of UFO-related documents operated by author John Greenwald Jr. — the documents were obtained through a long string of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed over the last quarter century .

Over time, so many requests piled up that the CIA created a CD-ROM full of declassified documents, known as "The UFO collection." In mid-2020, Greenwald purchased the CD-ROM, and he recently finished uploading its contents as a series of searchable PDF files on his website. (You can find them at The Black Vault.)

• Related: Flying saucers to mind control: 22 declassified military & CIA secrets

The documents cover dozens of incidents, including the 1976 account of the government’s then-Assistant Deputy Director for Science & Technology being hand-delivered a mysterious piece of intelligence on a UFO, to the description of a mysterious midnight explosion in a small Russian town.

"Although the CIA claims this is their 'entire' [declassified] collection, there may be no way to entirely verify that," Greenwald wrote in a statement on The Black Vault website. "Research by The Black Vault will continue to see if there are additional documents still uncovered within the CIA's holdings."

The data dump arrives months before officials from the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence agencies are due to appear before Congress and spill their guts on everything they know about UFOs, the New York Post reported. A provision attached to the nearly 5,600-page COVID-29 relief bill passed in late December 2020 requires the agencies, "to submit a report within 180 days … to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees on unidentified aerial phenomena."

Repository of sensitive government intelligence, or bootleg 'X-Files' DVD? This CD-ROM actually contains nearly 2,700 pages of declassified CIA documents, according to the Black Vault.  (Image credit: The Black Vault)

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The provision follows a banner year for UFOs, when startling footage of an unidentified object darting around several U.S. Navy planes in 2004 and 2015 was finally declassified.

While the new data dump is significant, it's also just a drop in the bucket of The Black Vault's enormous archive. The website reportedly contains more than 2.2 million pages of UFO-related material in its archive, which Greenwald obtained through more than 10,000 FOIA requests. According to the Vault website, Greenwald filed his first FOIA request in 1996, when he was just 15 years old.

• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Artist’s concept of a red giant star scorching a planet in orbit around it.

Image via ESO/ L. Calçada.

Earth exists thanks to our sun, having formed in orbit around it from a huge cloud of gas and dust in space, 4.5 billion years ago. Likewise, the sun will ruin Earth for living things, some 5 billion years from now. As the sun evolves, it’ll expand to become a red giant star and fry our planet to a cinder. What’s more, the death of the Earth will happen against a backdrop of change on a galactic scale. Our Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy will be in the midst of a colossal collision that’ll forever alter our galactic home in space.

Our sun is a G-type star currently about halfway through its life cycle. This type of star is very stable for the majority of its life, quietly fusing hydrogen into helium in its interior for billions of years. One day, the hydrogen in the sun’s interior will be depleted. At that point, the inward pressure of gravity will win out over the outward pressure of the sun’s internal fusion, until the sun heats up enough to start fusing helium. At that point, the sun will balloon outward to become a red giant star.

• EarthSky lunar calendars are back in stock! We’re guaranteed to sell out. Get one while you can!

As the sun heats up and expands, its outer layers will envelop the innermost planets, Mercury and Venus. The outer edge of the sun will grow to reach roughly the orbit of Earth. Our planet’s water and atmosphere will boil away, leaving nothing behind but a charred, lifeless rock. Mars will take a while to heat up, but, eventually, Mars will be outside the habitable zone for humans, too. At that point, the moons of the outer planets – like Jupiter and Saturn – will be the only places left in our solar system for human colonies.

But these locations, too, will be only temporary fixes in the search for a new home.

As our sun expands into the red giant phase, the habitable zone around it will be pushed outward in the solar system.

Image via NASA/ Wendy Kenigsburg.

The red giant phase of the sun might continue for a billion years or so, but eventually the helium will run out, too. Then the sun will blow off an envelope of gas. Astronomers peering through telescopes in other star systems will see our sun as what we call a planetary nebula, a great shell of gas surrounding a dying star. Ultimately that shell will dissipate off into space, and what’s left of our sun will become a white dwarf star.

Earth’s astronomers can look outward into space to glimpse of Earth’s future. For example, 400 light-years away, a star known to astronomers as SDSS J1228+1040 is a white dwarf with its gas nebula funeral shroud, and within it astronomers have found the signature of a planetesimal still orbiting its home sun long after its calamitous death.

And what of the Milky Way galaxy itself, the great island of stars containing our Earth and sun? By the time our sun is ballooning into the red giant phase – long before it settles down as a white dwarf – the Milky Way itself will be undergoing a long process of inevitable collision with the giant spiral galaxy next-door, the Andromeda galaxy. The last humans on Earth – if any humans are left a couple of billion years from now – will see the Andromeda galaxy growing larger and brighter in the night sky. It’s currently barely visible to the unaided eye from a dark-sky site. But, a couple of billion years from now, the Andromeda galaxy will be a breathtaking, unmistakable whirl of stars easily visible in the night sky of any and all Earthly inhabitants.

As Andromeda and the Milky Way move closer to each other, the Andromeda galaxy’s great mass will begin to affect the stars in our Milky Way. Our galaxy is wide and flat, like a pancake. We on Earth currently see its stars on a dark August evening as a great hazy band across the sky. But as the gravity of Andromeda distorts their paths, the Milky Way’s stars will be strewn across our sky.

It may seem incredible, but stars within galaxies are so far apart that even when the two giant spirals collide there will be few fireworks from collisions between stars. However, gas clouds in the two galaxies will likely collide, forming vast conglomerations of new stars.

This series of illustrations shows the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

Image via NASA.

Ultimately, the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will settle down to form a new massive blob-shaped galaxy. By this point, Earth, our sun and the rest of our solar system might be in some entirely new location with respect to the galactic center. At present, Earth lies some 25,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. After Andromeda and the Milky Way merge, astronomers believe our home in space will have been ripped outward to a new galactic orbit some 100,000 light-years from the center of the new, large Andromeda-Milky Way combo galaxy. As theorist T.J. Cox of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said:

You could say that we’re being sent to a retirement home in the country.

And what will be the fate of humanity? That’s impossible to say. If it survives, humanity’s future will depend on our ability to travel away from our dying sun and set up camp elsewhere.

Fortunately, we have a few billion years to figure out how to accomplish this monumental task.

• Bottom line: What will be Earth’s fate? Earth is bound to become a dry, scorched rock, as our sun becomes a red giant star. What’s more, as the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies collide, our sun and Earth (and the rest of our solar system) are expected to be hurled outward, away from the galactic center, to the outskirts of a new large galaxy created in the collision.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

2020’s sea ice minimum in the Arctic Ocean came on September 15. Arctic sea ice on that date covered an area of 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square km). It was the 2nd-lowest Arctic sea ice extend since modern record keeping began. How do we know? Scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) determined 2020’s sea ice minimum via an analysis of satellite data. 

See an animation of this image, from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

• Originally published by NASA Earth Observatory on January 6, 2021

Throughout 2020, the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas endured several notable weather and climate events. In spring, a persistent heatwave over Siberia provoked the rapid melting of sea ice in the East Siberian and Laptev Seas. By the end of summer, Arctic Ocean ice cover melted back to the second-lowest minimum extent on record. In autumn, the annual freeze-up of sea ice got off to a late and sluggish start.

But any single month, season, or even year, is just a snapshot in time. The long view is more telling, and it is troubling.

Image via NASA Earth Observatory.

Forty years of satellite data show that 2020 was just the latest in a decades-long decline of Arctic sea ice. In a review of scientific literature, polar scientists Julienne Stroeve and Dirk Notz outlined some of these changes: In addition to shrinking ice cover, melting seasons are getting longer and sea ice is losing its longevity.

The longer melting seasons are the result of increasingly earlier starts to spring melting and ever-later starts to freeze-up in autumn. The map above shows trends in the onset of freeze-up from 1979 through 2019. Averaged across the entire Arctic Ocean, freeze-up is happening about a week later per decade. That equates to nearly one month later since the start of the satellite record in 1979.

The change is part of a cycle called the ice-albedo feedback. Open ocean water absorbs 90% of the sun’s energy that falls on it; bright sea ice reflects 80% of it. With greater areas of the Arctic Ocean exposed to solar energy early in the season, more heat can be absorbed, a pattern that reinforces melting. Until that heat escapes to the atmosphere, sea ice cannot not regrow.

Image via NASA Earth Observatory.

The chart above demonstrates another way the Arctic is changing: the average age of sea ice is becoming younger. At the start of the satellite record, much of the ice covering the Arctic Ocean was greater than four years old. Today, most of the ice covering the Arctic Ocean is “first-year ice,” ice that forms in winter and does not survive a single summer melt season. (After sea ice reaches its minimum extent each September, the remaining ice graduates to second-year status.)

Dominated by thin first-year ice, along with some older ice thinned by warm ocean water, the Arctic sea ice pack is becoming more fragile. In summer 2020, ships easily navigated the Northern Sea Route in ice-free waters, and even made it to the North Pole without much resistance.

Fortunately, summers are still not entirely ice-free. Stroeve, a researcher at University of Manitoba, said:

We’ve been hovering for some time around 4 million square kilometers [1.5 million square miles] of Arctic sea ice each summer.

She added that she intends to examine which conditions and processes could push sea ice to the next “precipitous drop,” when the extent of summer ice cover drops to a new benchmark of 3 million square kilometers (1 million square miles).

Ice floes in the Laptev Sea, which lies north of the Siberian coast. This part of the Arctic Ocean is usually a factory for new sea ice. But sea ice in the Laptev Sea reached a record low in 2020.

Image via Olenyok/ Shutterstock.

• Bottom line: Satellite data show that 2020 was just the latest in a 40-year-long decline of Arctic sea ice.
• Source: Changing state of Arctic sea ice across all seasons
• Via Earth Observatory

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

La fin de l'énigme de l'origine des trous noirs supermassifs avec la découverte du plus lointain quasar connu ? - Part I

Comment sont nés les trous noirs supermassifs, dont certains sont à l'origine des quasars, tapis au centre des galaxies ? Ils ne se seraient formés à partir d'étoiles géantes qui se seraient ensuite effondrées en trous noirs géants, germes des trous noirs supermassifs. C'est ce que suggère maintenant la découverte du plus lointain quasar connu à ce jour qui accrédite une autre hypothèse.

Il y a presque 50 ans, les astrophysiciens ont commencé à soupçonner qu'au cœur des grandes galaxies on trouverait des trous noirs supermassifs. La montée en puissance des moyens d'observation à toutes les longueurs d'onde depuis plus d'une décennie a confirmé cette intuition. Nous pensons aussi que derrière les prodigieux quasars, ces noyaux actifs de galaxies si brillants qu'on peut les voir à des milliards d'années-lumière de distance, se trouvent également ces mêmes astres compacts accrétant voracement de la matière dont on pense savoir maintenant qu'elle provient de courants de matière baryonique froids, canalisés par des filaments de matière noire.

Mais une énigme en a découlé. Ces trous noirs contiennent de plusieurs millions à plusieurs milliards de masses solaires, de sorte qu'ils ne peuvent résulter de l'effondrement d'étoiles ordinaires dont toutes les observations montrent qu'elles ne dépassent que rarement les 100 masses solaires.

Plusieurs mécanismes ont été proposés depuis environ un demi-siècle pour produire des germes de trous noirs supermassifs, germes dont les tailles vont croître avec les apports des courants froids et les collisions galactiques conduisant à la fusion des trous noirs géants que les grandes galaxies contiennent.

Trous noirs primordiaux, amas stellaires relativistes ou...

Ainsi, la naissance de l'Univers observable devait s'accompagner d'un plasma dense et turbulent de matière dont la densité fluctuait chaotiquement localement. Parfois, cette densité devait être suffisamment élevée pour s'opposer, par son champ de gravitation et tout aussi localement, à l'expansion du cosmos et à la pression du plasma de particules élémentaires. Des trous noirs primordiaux, de tailles très différentes, pouvaient donc prendre naissance en s'effondrant gravitationnellement. Malheureusement, ce scénario, bien que toujours autorisé par les observations, est devenu sévèrement contraint, et il n'est pas certain que ce soit vraiment ne serait-ce qu'une partie de la solution de l'énigme des trous noirs supermassifs.

Une autre hypothèse, moins connue, fait intervenir la naissance d'amas globulaires si denses que la théorie de la relativité générale est nécessaire pour rendre compte de leur comportement. Ces amas relativistes d'étoiles sont instables et peuvent s'effondrer gravitationnellement en trou noir. On se pose des questions sur eux depuis les années 1960, comme le montre l'exemple du prix Nobel de Physique Kip Thorne. À l'époque, certains pensaient même qu'ils pouvaient expliquer les quasars. En générant un important décalage vers le rouge du fait de leur champ de gravitation, on pouvait croire par erreur en appliquant la loi de Hubble-Lemaître qu'ils étaient très distants et donc très lumineux, ce qui pouvait expliquer la vraie nature des quasars. On sait aujourd'hui que ce n'est pas le cas et ces amas stellaires relativistes attendent encore un vrai contact avec les observations.

Troisième hypothèse, celle de l'existence tôt dans l'histoire du cosmos d'étoiles supermassives, elles aussi instables en raison d'effets relativistes. Comme Futura l'expliquait dans le précédent article ci-dessous, des simulations numériques crédibles font effectivement naître ce genre d'étoiles qui va rapidement donner naissance à des trous noirs intermédiaires entre les trous noirs stellaires classiques et les trous noirs supermassifs, contenant de l'ordre de 10.000 à 100.000 masses solaires.

Un trou noir 1.000 fois plus brillant que la Voie lactée

Aujourd'hui, une publication dans Astrophysical Journal Letters et que l'on peut trouver en accès libre sur arXiv semble en mesure de départager les scénarios avancés. Elle provient d'une équipe internationale d'astronomes qui annonce en tout premier lieu avoir établi un nouveau record de distance avec la découverte du plus lointain quasar connu à ce jour. Il a été débusqué dans les observations du réseau de radiotélescopes de l'Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (Alma) au Chili.

Dans un catalogue, le quasar porte le nom de J0313-1806 et il est observé alors que le cosmos n'avait encore que 670 millions d'années environ. Or, la masse du trou noir derrière ce quasar, environ 1.000 fois plus brillant à lui seul que notre Voie lactée, est estimée à environ 1,6 milliard de fois celle du Soleil. Les observations d'Alma permettent d'estimer également que la galaxie hôte du quasar forme de nouvelles étoiles à une vitesse 200 fois supérieure à celle de notre Galaxie, et que la luminosité du quasar indique que le trou noir accrète et avale une quantité de matière équivalente à 25 Soleils chaque année.

Selon les chercheurs, un trou noir aussi massif, et né aussi tôt dans l'histoire du cosmos observable, serait donc apparu bien trop vite pour avoir démarré son existence suite à l'effondrement d'une étoile supermassive ou d'un amas stellaire relativiste.

Il ne resterait qu'une hypothèse en liste et ce n'est pas celle des trous noirs primordiaux bien qu'elle soit une cousine. Non, le trou noir derrière J0313-1806 se serait formé directement par l'effondrement d'un immense nuage d'hydrogène et d'hélium après le Big Bang.

• Comment sont nés les trous noirs supermassifs au cœur de presque toutes les grandes galaxies avec des masses vont de un million à quelques milliards de masses solaires et dont certains sont à l'origine des quasars ?
• Plusieurs explications sont possibles mais la plus probable semblait celle soutenue par des simulations numériques qui se multiplient depuis quelques années.
• Ils se seraient formés à partir d'étoiles géantes de quelque 10.000 à 100.000 masses solaires qui ne pouvaient bien s'établir qu'au tout début de l'histoire du cosmos observable, quand peu d'éléments lourds existaient.
• Ces germes de trous noirs auraient alors grandi en étant alimentés par des courants froids de matière baryonique.
• Mais la découverte d'un quasar lointain ne cadre pas avec l'hypothèse qui nécessiterait plus de temps pour faire naître celui aujourd'hui observé et qui bat un record de distance. Un immense nuage de gaz s'effondrant directement en trou noir supermassif ferait l'affaire.

Une coupe de l'intérieur d'une étoile supermassive d'environ 55.000 masses solaires débutant son explosion. Il s'agit d'une simulation montrant les courants de matière qui s'élèvent tels des panaches dans un volume dont le rayon est celui de l'orbite de la Terre.

© Ken Chen, UCSC 

Les trous noirs supermassifs sont-ils nés d'étoiles supermassives ?

Article de Laurent Sacco publié le 08/06/2020

Comment sont nés les trous noirs supermassifs, dont certains sont à l'origine des quasars, tapis au centre des galaxies ? De nouvelles simulations numériques sur le superordinateur japonais ATERUI II confortent le scénario où ils se seraient formés à partir d'étoiles géantes de quelque 10.000 masses solaires. Ces astres se seraient ensuite effondrés en trous noirs géants, germes des trous noirs supermassifs.

Le premier succès de la collaboration Event Horizon Telescope avec la première image d'un trou noir, en l'occurrence M87*, en sera sans nul doute suivi de bien d'autres, à commencer par une image d'un autre trou noir supermassif, celui au cœur de notre Voie lactée, Sgr A*. Mais cette réussite éclatante ne doit pas nous faire oublier que nous ne savons toujours pas vraiment comment sont nés les trous noirs, contenant de quelques millions à quelques milliards de masses solaires, que l'on observe depuis des décennies au centre des galaxies, qu'elles soient spirales ou elliptiques.

Il semble de plus en plus clair qu'ils sont nés à partir de trous noirs déjà bien plus massifs que les trous noirs stellaires, qui ne peuvent naître qu'à partir d'étoiles contenant une centaines de masses solaires tout au plus, et que la croissance de ces germes des trous noirs supermassifs se serait ensuite largement poursuivie, tout comme pour les galaxies, en raison de l'existence de courants froids de matière ordinaire canalisés par des filaments de matière noire. Mais quid de l'origine de ces germes eux-mêmes ?

Des nuages de matière géants qui s'effondrent directement en trou noir ?

Plusieurs hypothèses ont été avancées, par exemple, celle faisant intervenir des trous noirs cosmologiques primordiaux, vestiges de la phase à haute densité du Big Bang où de grandes quantités de matière pouvaient s'effondrer gravitationnellement en donnant directement ces trous noirs. Mais, il est aussi possible de faire intervenir des étoiles exotiques très massives faisant partie des toutes premières étoiles du cosmos observable, celles dites de Population III. Ces étoiles seraient nées dans les conditions particulières de l'Univers au moment des âges sombres, alors que la matière baryonique à l'origine de toutes les étoiles était constituée d'un mélange presque pur d'hydrogène, d'hélium et leurs isotopes, sans aucune trace d'éléments lourds comme le carbone, le silicium et le fer.

Cette différence est d'importance, depuis des milliards d'années, l'existence de poussières silicatées et carbonées est nécessaire pour permettre l'effondrement des nuages moléculaires et poussiéreux où naissent des pouponnières d'étoiles. En effet, en s'effondrant sous leur propre gravité, ces nuages s'échauffent et il apparait une pression qui stoppe l'effondrement, sauf si un agent dissipe une partie de la chaleur dans ces nuages, les conduisant à se refroidir. Au sortir du Big Bang, sans ces poussières, la formation des étoiles ne pouvait pas être la même, et de fait, on a également des problèmes pour faire naître des étoiles supermassives qui, après avoir explosé en supernovae, pourraient laisser des trous noirs géants contenant bien plus que quelques centaines de masses solaires, les germes des trous noirs supermassifs.

Il se trouve qu'une équipe d'astrophysiciens japonais de l'Université de Tohoku (Japon) vient d'apporter une nouvelle lumière sur la genèse possible de ces étoiles supermassives comme elle l'explique dans un article publié dans Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society mais que l'on peut aussi trouver en accès libre sur arXiv.

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Des étoiles de 10.000 masses solaires

Sunmyon Chon et son collègue Kazuyuki Omukai ont ainsi utilisé le superordinateur ATERUI II pour effectuer des simulations 3D haute résolution qui étaient impossibles à faire auparavant et qui concernaient certaines variantes des scénarios envisagées pour la formation des étoiles supermassives. Rappelons que la théorie de ces objets nécessairement décrits au moyen de la théorie de la relativité générale d'Einstein a une longue histoire qui remonte au début des années 1960 avec les travaux de Hoyle, Chandrasekhar, Feynman et Zel’dovich pour ne citer qu'eux. Certains espéraient rendre compte avec elles des quasars nouvellement découverts. Par nature très lumineuses, elles devaient aussi subir un fort effet de décalage spectral vers le rouge à cause d'un fort champ de gravitation les faisant donc passer pour très lointaines en raison de la loi de Hubble-Lemaitre.

Il se trouve que les précédentes simulations de formations d'étoiles massives en faisaient naître trop peu à partir du gaz primordial du Big Bang. Ensuite, le début de l'enrichissement très rapide de ce gaz en éléments lourds inhibait leur formation. Les calculs montraient en effet que ces éléments lourds conduisaient des nuages atomiques d'hydrogène à se fragmenter en donnant des étoiles nettement moins massives.

Un extrait de la simulation des chercheurs japonais. Trois étoiles supermassives en noir sont bien visibles, les autres, en blanc et jaune, sont des étoiles ordinaires. L'échelle est donnée en unité astronomique (1 au valant 150 millions de km environ ).

© NAOJ 

Mais, avec les moyens de calculs modernes, les algorithmes des modèles qu'ont implémentés Chon et Omukai sur ATERUI II se sont mis à raconter un tout autre scénario. Les nuages atomiques enrichis en éléments lourds par les premières explosions de supernovae se fractionnaient en étoiles non-supermassives. Mais l'existence d'un fort flux de gaz en direction des régions les plus denses de ces nuages conduisent les jeunes étoiles vers ces régions où elles fusionnent en donnant des étoiles 10.000 fois plus massives que le Soleil !

Au final, il semble bien que ce scénario soit en mesure de rendre compte de la population de trous noirs supermassifs observée car le taux de leur formation est fortement augmenté. Mais il reste du travail à faire pour vraiment le confirmer. Ce qui est sûr, c'est qu'une nouvelle voie de recherche a été ouverte.

Trous noirs supermassifs : des étoiles supergéantes en seraient à l'origine - PART II

Article de Laurent Sacco publié le 13/03/2017

Comment sont nés les trous noirs supermassifs, dont certains sont à l'origine des quasars, tapis au centre des galaxies ? De nouvelles et récentes simulations numériques consolident une des hypothèses avancées : ils se seraient formés à partir d'étoiles géantes de quelque 100.000 masses solaires. L'étude des ondes gravitationnelles pourrait confirmer, ou pas, ce scénario.

Dès le début des années 1960, l'existence d'étoiles supermassives a été postulée pour expliquer les observations étonnantes concernant les quasars qui venaient tout juste de faire leur apparition en astrophysique (voir article ci-dessous). La luminosité intrinsèque de ces objets semblait difficile à admettre étant donné leur décalage spectral vers le rouge qui indiquait qu'ils étaient très lointains. Des quantités prodigieuses d'énergie devaient être libérées chaque seconde et il n'était pas possible d'en rendre compte à partir de réactions de fusion thermonucléaire. Il était alors plus confortable intellectuellement de supposer l'existence d'étoiles géantes proches de la Voie lactée, voire dans notre Galaxie, mais avec un champ de gravitation si élevé qu'il produisait l'important décalage observé. Cette hypothèse aida à la création de l'astrophysique relativiste car de telles étoiles devaient nécessairement être soumises à des effets non négligeables de la physique d'Einstein concernant le champ de gravitation.

Les quasars sont expliqués aujourd'hui en postulant l'existence de trous noirs supermassifs possédant entre plusieurs millions et plusieurs milliards de masses solaires. Mais cette hypothèse, qui éclaire de nombreuses observations, a conduit à une nouvelle énigme : comment ces objets se sont-ils formés ?

Des étoiles de 100.000 masses solaires comme graines de trous noirs

Les astrophysiciens et les cosmologistes explorent plusieurs pistes, dont un renouveau de l'hypothèse de l'existence des étoiles supermassives relativistes au début de l'histoire du cosmos observable. Nous n'en avons pour le moment observé aucune mais cela n'empêche pas les astrophysiciens numériciens de simuler leur formation et leur comportement sur ordinateur, à travers divers scénarios. L'un des derniers en date à ce sujet provient notamment de chercheurs du fameux Los Alamos National Laboratory, là où a été conçu et fabriqué la première bombe atomique.

Selon Joseph Smidt et ses collègues, comme ils l'expliquent dans un article déposé sur arXiv, les premiers trous noirs géants pourraient être nés de l'effondrement direct d'importants nuages d'hydrogène moléculaire et d'hélium ayant conduit à la formation, tout d'abord d'étoiles supermassives de... 100.000 masses solaires ! En s'effondrant gravitationnellement, elles vont ensuite donner naissance à des trous noirs qui vont accréter rapidement du gaz et devenir supermassifs, de l'ordre du milliard de masses solaires. Ils étaient déjà nombreux, un milliard d'années après le Big Bang.

D'autres scénarios sont possibles et il est probable qu'ils opèrent simultanément, rendant compte du spectre de masses des trous noirs supermassifs observés. Il est possible ainsi d'invoquer des fusions précoces de trous noirs massifs.

En ce qui concerne l'existence des étoiles supermassives, la mise en orbite en 2018 du télescope spatial James Webb pourrait contribuer à nous les révéler. À plus longue échéance, si l'on en croit des travaux réalisés l'année dernière par des membres de l'Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) de l'université Durham au sein du projet EAGLE et qui ont réalisé des simulations, ces différents scénarios conduisent à des émissions d'ondes gravitationnelles distinctes que l'on devrait pouvoir observer et mesurer avec eLISA, ce qui permettrait de les départager (voir la vidéo ci-dessus).

L'origine énigmatique des trous noirs supermassif - PART III

Article de Laurent Sacco publié le 11/11/2013

Une des énigmes de l'astrophysique et de la cosmologie concerne l'origine des trous noirs supermassifs occupant le cœur des galaxies. En faisant revivre une vieille hypothèse à l'aide de simulations numériques, un groupe d'astrophysiciens vient de proposer qu'ils se soient formés au sein d'étoiles supermassives dépassant 10.000 masses solaires. En s'effondrant, elles produiraient même deux trous noirs, ce qui est inédit, qui finiraient par fusionner.

Les trous noirs supermassifs contiennent de quelques millions à quelques milliards de masses solaires. On ne comprend pas vraiment comment ils se sont formés. On admet cependant qu'il y a généralement une relation entre la masse de ces trous noirs et la taille des galaxies qui les abritent. Cela suggère donc que ces astres compacts croissent de pair avec les galaxies. Problème : on ne sait pas très bien non plus comment ces dernières grandissent. On pensait que c'était essentiellement lors de fusions entre galaxies plus petites, mais il semble que des courants d'hydrogène froids soient aussi un mécanisme efficace et peut-être tout aussi important pour la formation des grandes galaxies. Lorsque deux galaxies fusionnent, il doit aussi en être de même pour leurs trous noirs supermassifs et ceux-ci doivent continuer à grandir en accrétant des nuages de gaz ou des courants de matière.

On pourrait croire que pendant le premier milliard d'années de l'univers observable, les trous noirs supermassifs n'étaient pas encore les monstres que l'on connaît et qu'ils ont grandi rapidement à partir de trous noirs beaucoup plus petits. Malheureusement, cette hypothèse résiste mal aux observations et aux calculs. Il faut qu'il ait existé assez tôt dans l'histoire du cosmos des graines de trous noirs supermassifs, de masses déjà très importantes. Des simulations conduites par des astrophysiciens du célèbre California Institute of Technology (Caltech) viennent de donner un nouvel éclairage sur ce problème, en faisant intervenir des astres relativistes théorisés pendant les années 1960 : les étoiles supermassives.

Une alternative à la théorie des quasars

En 1963, alors que l'on venait de découvrir les premiers quasars, Fred Hoyle et Williams Fowler refusaient de les considérer comme des objets aussi lointains que leurs décalages spectraux vers le rouge le laissaient entendre. Ils ont préféré postuler l'existence de ces étoiles plutôt que de commencer à admettre que la théorie du Big Bang de Gamow et Lemaître devait être juste.

Dans le cadre du modèle cosmologique standard de l'époque, dont Hoyle était l'un des créateurs, découvrir que dans le passé (en l'occurrence avec des objets très distants), l'univers était différent d'aujourd'hui, revenait à réfuter l'idée d'un univers éternel sans commencement, ni fin, ni évolution bien qu'en expansion. Avec des étoiles contenant plusieurs millions et même plusieurs milliards de fois la masse du Soleil, le champ de gravitation est si puissant qu'il produit un décalage spectral vers le rouge important. Les quasars n'avaient pas à être situés à des milliards d'années-lumière. Ils pouvaient même être dans la Voie lactée.

Feynman puis Chandrasekhar ne tardèrent pas à découvrir que les effets de la relativité générale rendaient des étoiles aussi massives très instables et qu'elles devaient s'effondrer en trou noir. Les années passant, avec la découverte du rayonnement fossile confirmant la théorie du Big Bang et le développement de la théorie des quasars, les étoiles supermassives ont été reléguées au placard.

Deux trous noirs dans une étoile supermassive

Des chercheurs viennent de les en sortir, comme le démontre l'article qu'ils ont déposé sur arxiv. Ils postulent la formation, par effondrement de nuage de gaz dans un halo de matière noire, d'étoiles ayant des masses comprises entre 10⁴ et 10⁶ masses solaires. En quelques millions d'années, en se refroidissant, ces astres amorcent leur effondrement gravitationnel et tournent de plus en plus vite, et ainsi s'aplatissent et deviennent plus compacts. Il se forme à l'intérieur deux concentrations de matière orbitant l'une autour de l'autre. Devenant plus denses, ces concentrations voient leurs températures grimper. Comme l'avaient déjà prédit en 1965 Igor Novikov et Yakov Zel’dovich, elles finissent par atteindre le seuil d'énergie correspondant à la création de paires d'électron et de positron. Cela rend ces concentrations très instables et elles s'effondrent rapidement pour donner deux trous noirs très massifs.

Ces deux objets vont rapidement se rapprocher l'un de l'autre, car ils perdent de l'énergie cinétique en rayonnant des ondes gravitationnelles. Ils vont finir par fusionner pour donner un trou noir qui a les bonnes propriétés pour grandir suffisamment vite dans le jeune cosmos, et rendre compte de l'existence des trous noirs supermassifs. Si les chercheurs ont raison, il doit exister dans le fond d'ondes gravitationnelles cosmologiques des traces de nombreuses fusions de trous noirs binaires issus de l'effondrement d'étoiles supermassives. Il se peut que l'on puisse les détecter un jour avec des instruments dans l'espace comme Lisa.

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A Famous Harvard Professor Says an Extraterrestrial Visited in 2017, and We Can Expect More

When the first sight of intelligent alien life visits Earth from space, it won’t be a massive saucer hovering over New York. The chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy favors the possibility that it will be an extraterrestrial civilization’s trash. Avi Loeb believes he’s already found some of that trash.

The professor’s upcoming book, which will be out on January 26, lays out a compelling theory for why the object that recently wandered into our solar system was a piece of alien technology and not just another rock.  Dubbed as ‘Oumuamua,’ the space object measures only about a hundred yards long, but it was a major thing in the scientific community. It was first spotted in Hawaii through the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS).

Oumuamua traveled toward our solar system from star Vega, 25 light-years away from Earth, and intercepted our solar system’s orbital plane on September 6, 2017. It was the first-ever interstellar object detected inside our solar system. No crisp images were taken, but astronomers observed the thing for 11 days using their telescopes.

Scientists believed it was an ordinary comet, but Loeb suggested to have an open mind to another possibility. He explained that a cave dweller who has seen rocks all his life might have thought of a cellphone as just a shiny rock. Multiple strange properties about the space object helped Loeb conclude that it wasn’t a comet but discarded tech from an extraterrestrial civilization.