279-year-old file discovered on “first of its type” sight over Westminster in the London UFO mystery

Doctor Cromwell Mortimer saw an unexplained flying object soaring above downtown London on December 16, 1742, and he reported it to authorities. Mr. Mortimer, who was the secretary of the Royal Society at the time, observed the enigmatic object as it moved “slowly” above St. James’s Park around 8:40 p.m. while on his way home to Westminster. He noted that the object was moving quite slowly, which gave him about 30 seconds to acquire a good view of it.

Despite being short, 30 seconds is a lot longer than most sightings of meteors and other such phenomena.

He was even able to draw a schematic of the item, which he described in his 1746 report, which was recently discovered in the journal Philosophical Transactions, vol. XLIII.

In the south by west point, he claimed, “I saw a light appear hidden behind the woods and homes.”

After reaching a height of around 20 degrees, it moved in a direction that was almost aligned to the horizon and passed above the residences.

As he continued to observe the object, he thought that its route had taken it precisely over Bloomsbury, over Queen’s Square, and toward the nearby canal.

He also wrote that he had lost sight of it over the Haymarket.

Its action was so slow, he said, that I was able to see it for more than a minute and spend enough time studying it.

His illustration showed a thing with a blazing head that was “contained as it were in an open box” and bound by “bands of iron.”

Like contemporary airplanes, the extraterrestrial had a lengthy tail of light that was progressively becoming fainter.

The British UFO investigator Steve Mera was quoted by The Sun as saying, “It is the very first of its sort.”

People watching it from a balcony, he continued. They had good financial standing, which promoted thorough investigation.

The military has reported 400 sightings of UFOs and had 11 near experiences with them over the years, according to a top Pentagon officer who testified before the US Congress.

Due to a considerable increase in statements from military personnel concerning prior encounters, the stigma associated with reporting UFO sightings has decreased over the last several years, and this number has more than doubled.

These days, an “unidentified flying object” (UFO) may not always indicate alien sightings; it might even be highly developed drones.

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

How Astronauts Will Use Mars Soil For 3D Printing On The Red Planet

By Charles Nwali  

{ https://www.futurespaceworld.com/ }

The Milky Way Is Moving Through The Universe At 2.1 Million Kilometers Per Hour

{ https://blog.sci-nature.com/ }

Navy admits it has more UFO videos but says releasing the footage publicly would 'HARM national security' because it would reveal 'valuable' information regarding the Pentagon's operations and capabilities to America's enemies

• The U.S. Navy can't release more UFO videos that it has because doing so would 'harm national security,' a spokesperson said 
• The statement was made in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by government transparency site The Black Vault  
• 'The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information...' 
• During public hearings in May, the Navy revealed 400 'unidentified aerial phenomenon' reports in recent years  

By CHRISTOPHER CARBONE U.S. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

The U.S. Navy won't release additional footage of unidentified flying objects because doing so would 'harm national security.'

A spokesperson for the military branch made the statement in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the government transparency site The Black Vault - which has previously shared thousands of pages of UFO-related documents received from the CIA and other agencies. 

The FOIA request dates to April 2020, just after the Navy released the now infamous videos shot by its pilots that depicted some type of unidentified high-tech aircraft moving in ways that seemed impossible. 

The Black Vault had requested any and all other videos related to what the Navy prefers to call unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP). 

The U.S. Navy won't release additional footage of unidentified flying objects because doing so would 'harm national security' it stated in response to a FOIA request from The Black Vault. Above: a clip taken from a Navy cockpit in a training area and shows a spherical object floating by the aircraft

The FOIA request dates to April 2020, just after the Navy released the now infamous videos shot by its pilots that depicted some type of unidentified high-tech aircraft moving in ways that seemed impossible. Robert J. Salvo, a 13 year old boy walking his dog, purports to have taken a photo of a flying saucer, but no comment was made from the military

'The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities,' Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy's FOIA office, wrote in a response letter shared by The Black Vault. 'No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.' 

Carson explained that the Navy only released those previous three videos because they'd already been leaked to the media and were therefore 'discussed extensively in the public domain.'

'Given the amount of information in the public domain regarding these encounters, it was possible to release the files without further damage to national security,' he said. 

The Black Vault has filed an appeal to seek the release of the videos that have been denied.  

Regardless of what they choose to release, the Pentagon is certainly taking the threat of UFOs seriously. During public hearings in May, the agency revealed 400 'unidentified aerial phenomenon' reports in recent years - which is significantly higher than the 144 incidents since 2004 that were reported the previous year.

Eleven of the incidents have been 'near misses,' where military aircraft just barely brushed past the UAPs without colliding. 

The Black Vault has filed an appeal to seek the release of the videos that have been denied. Above: A UFO variety was photographed when it hovered for fifteen minutes near Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico. The object was photographed by a government employee and was released by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization after careful study. There is no conventional explanation for the object

'The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities,' Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy's FOIA office, wrote in a response letter shared by The Black Vault . 'No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.' Above: Another shot of the unidentified spherical object

Ronald Moultrie, the Pentagon's top intelligence official, said the government has not ruled out the possibility that these incidents could be connected to extraterrestrial life.

'There are elements of our government engaged in ... looking for extraterrestrial life,' Moultrie said at the hearing. 'Our goal is not to potentially cover up something, it's to understand what's maybe out there.'

'We are all curious and we seek to understand the unknown. And as a lifelong intelligence professional, I'm impatient. I want immediate explanations for this as much as anyone else. However, understanding can take significant time and effort. It's why we've endeavored to concentrate on this data driven process to derive fact based results,' Scott Bray, the deputy director of Naval intelligence, told lawmakers.

In July, the Pentagon announced that it has received federal funding to open a new office focused exclusively on managing reports of UFO sightings by the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. 

Read more:

• U.S. Navy Says ALL UAP/UFO Videos Are Classified And Exempt From Release - The Black Vault

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/}

'Cosmic' and 'phantom' UFOs are all over Ukraine's skies, government report claims

Hubble Just Confirmed The Largest Ocean World In Our Solar System And Its Not On Earth

The Ganymede Ocean is believed to contain more water than Europa's,” says Olivier Witasse, a project scientist working on ESA’s future Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE). “Six times more water in Ganymede’s ocean than in Earth's ocean, and three times more than Europa.”In March of 2020, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope revealed the best evidence yet for an underground saltwater ocean on Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon --larger than Mercury and not much smaller than Mars.

Identifying liquid water is crucial in the search for habitable worlds beyond Earth and for the search for life, as we know it“This discovery marks a significant milestone, highlighting what only Hubble can accomplish,” said John Grunsfeld, now retired assistant administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “In its 25 years in orbit, Hubble has made many scientific discoveries in our own solar system. A deep ocean under the icy crust of Ganymede opens up further exciting possibilities for life beyond Earth.”

Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system and the only moon with its own magnetic field. The magnetic field causes aurorae, which are ribbons of glowing, hot electrified gas, in regions circling the north and south poles of the moon. Because Ganymede is close to Jupiter, it is also embedded in Jupiter's magnetic field. When Jupiter's magnetic field changes, the aurorae on Ganymede also change, "rocking" back and forth.Just as Saturn's moon, Dione is perennially overshadowed by Enceladus and Titan, Ganymede's fame is eclipsed by its sister ocean world, Europa, slated for flybys by NASA’s Europa Clipper mission in the 2020s.

Ganymede's cycles of auroral activity on the surface, detected by the Hubble Space Telescope, reveal oscillations in the moon’s magnetic field best explained by the internal heat-generating tidal sloshing of a huge ocean hundreds of kilometers below the surface. JUICE will fly by the moons at distances between 1000 and 200 kilometers, orbiting Ganymede for nine months, with the latter four months at an altitude of about 500 km. While the oceans of Jupiter's moons are likely buried at significant depth below their icy crusts, radar will be able to help piece together clues as to their complex evolution.

For example, it will explore Europa's potentially active regions and be able to distinguish where the composition changes, such as if there are local, shallow reservoirs of water sandwiched between icy layers. It will be able to find 'deflected' subsurface layers, which will help to determine the tectonic history of Ganymede in particular.

{ https://blog.sci-nature.com/ }

Police officer Herbert Schirmer talks about being taken onboard a UFO, Nebraska

Police officer Herbert Schirmer talks about being taken onboard a UFO, Nebraska, December 3, 1967.

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

NASA Shares Largest-Ever Image Of Andromeda Galaxy, Internet Calls It "Extraordinarily Beautiful"

American space agency NASA on Sunday shared the "largest-ever" image assembled of the Andromeda galaxy by the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture was captured seven years ago and it is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic neighbor.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the image depicts a 48,000-light-year-long region of the Andromeda galaxy with over 100 million stars visible. The Instagram picture divides the panoramic image into three parts, with the last revealing a belt of blue stars with countless stars sprinkled around the image.

The photograph has captivated internet users since it was shared. It has received almost one million likes. "It is really gorgeous," one user said. "It's wonderful," commented another. "Absolutely wonderful," said the third person.

The space agency noted that because the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away, dozens of star clusters can be identified. According to NASA, our Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are comparable in size and form.

{ https://blog.sci-nature.com/ }

A new way to Discover Planets? Astronomers Detect an Exoplanet by Seeing its Trojan Belts

Although we have found thousands of exoplanets in recent years, we really only have three methods of finding them. The first is to observe a star dimming slightly as a planet passes in front of it (transit method). The second is to measure the wobble of a star as an orbiting planet gives it a gravitational tug (Doppler method). The third is to observe the exoplanet directly. Now a new study in the Astrophysical Journal Letters has a fourth method.

Each of the methods we currently use has its drawbacks. The transit method only works when an exoplanet’s orbit is lined up with our view of the star, the Doppler method tends to favor larger planets orbiting close to a small star, and the direct observation is best for large planets orbiting far from their star. But all of these methods only work for planets orbiting middle-aged stars. That is stars that have long since cleared the dust and debris around them. So while we have learned a great deal about the types of planetary systems that are out there, we’ve learned less about how young star systems form.

Thanks to radio observatories such as ALMA, we have gotten a good view of early debris disks around very young stars. These disks emit a faint radio glow that ALMA is particularly effective at seeing. One of the things we’ve noticed in many of these disks is that they have gaps or bands within them. We think they are caused by young planets that have cleared a path in the debris disk as they grow and evolve. The problem is that we can’t be certain that’s what’s happening. There are other possible explanations, such as turbulence or gravitational resonances within the disk that causes gaps to form. The problem is that while we can study the structure of the gaps, telescopes like ALMA can’t resolve an actual planet orbiting within a gap. Even a planet as large as Jupiter is too small to clearly detect directly.

So this new study took a different approach. Instead of trying to detect an exoplanet in the disk directly, why not look for signs within the debris disk that the planet is there? And they’ve found a pattern that works. You might even call it their trojan horse.

Jupiter is by far the most massive planet in our solar system, and over time it has influenced the orbits of smaller bodies such as asteroids. One of the clear influences is on the asteroid belt, where it has induced resonant gaps known as Kirkwood gaps. The other is in the collection of asteroids it has gathered to its orbit, known as the Trojans.

Trojan asteroids are small bodies that have happened to get trapped in Jupiter’s Lagrange points. These are regions in Jupiter’s orbit about sixty degrees ahead and behind Jupiter itself. Through the gravitational dance of Jupiter and Sun, the Lagrange points are rather deep gravitational wells, so anything that finds itself there tends to stay there. So as Jupiter parades around the Sun, it has a cluster of Trojans marching along ahead and behind it.

In this new study, the team focused on a young star known as LkCA 15 and looked for similar gravitational dynamics. By analyzing high-resolution images of the star and its debris disk, they found two very faint clusters of dust. The clumps were in the same orbit within the debris disk, and they were separated by an angle of 120 degrees. In other words, the clumps have all the signs of being within the Lagrange points of a young planet. Based on the data, the team estimates the planet is roughly the size of Neptune or Saturn. Given that the planet is likely only a couple of million years old, it seems to have formed pretty quickly.

All of this paints an interesting picture of planetary evolution. Large planets seem to form early within a star system, and they almost immediately start influencing its gravitational dance. The next question is whether astronomers can find similar planets in other young star systems using the same method.

Reference: 

• Long, Feng, et al. “ALMA Detection of Dust Trapping around Lagrangian Points in the LkCa 15 Disk.” The Astrophysical Journal Letters 937.1 (2022): L1.

The post A new way to Discover Planets? Astronomers Detect an Exoplanet by Seeing its Trojan Belts appeared first on Universe Today.

Source: 

• https://www.universetoday.com/157651/a-new-way-to-discover-planets-astronomers-detect-an-exoplanet-by-seeing-its-trojan-belts/
  

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Alien Royalty and VIPs In UFO Over England To Attend Queens Funeral, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sept 16, 2022

Location of sighting: Across England

 

Over 800 eyewitnesses reported seeing a glowing object for over 25 seconds passing over the UK last night. Reports poured in about it possibly being a meteor, comet or space debris. The object itself didn't always have a tail, as seen in the screenshot above I took which shows one large sphere craft and one much smaller sphere craft behind it. The UFO was flying horizontal to the ground...like a plane, like a craft carrying people would be when getting ready to land. Also this UFO was flying very slowly, much too slow to be a meteor and defiantly not a comet as some has said in my video comments...a comet would change the tides of our ocean causing tidal waves if it were inside our atmosphere like that. Most comets are .5km and bigger. 

 

I was actually waiting for this to happen, because I knew that alien dignitaries, royalty and VIPs would want to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Why? Because she was queen for nearly a century, maybe the longest ruling queen ever to date. Also, he royal perspective, respecting her royal duties, he royal roles that she was required to do, but...often humans refuse to partake in. 

 

So...here is the ship, from outside our solar system which contains alien royalty and dignitaries from across the universe...all which came to attend the funeral in person. To show respect to the fallen queen and to be in the same place, same location, same building with so many world leaders who are doing the same. A rare, painful and great moment not just for UK or England, but for the world and beyond. 

 

As I have said before, I mean what I say. I mean no disrespect to the Queen nor to the people of England or UK. I am only stating the obvious truth. And the truth is...she was respected across the Universe. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

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

NASA's Perseverance rover finds organic matter 'treasure' on Mars that could help to determine if life ever existed on the Red Planet

• Organic matter 'treasure' has been found by NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars
• This discovery could help to determine if life has ever existed on the Red Planet
• Suggests Jezero Crater may've had habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago
• There are no definite signs of life but experts think they are looking in right place 

By SAM TONKIN FOR MAILONLINE

It has been searching for clues about possible ancient alien life on Mars.

And now NASA's Perseverance rover has discovered organic matter 'treasure' that could help determine if extraterrestrials did in fact ever exist on the Red Planet.

The collection of organic matter from the Jezero Crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, suggests it had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago.

These organic molecules contain carbon that are widely considered to be the building blocks of life. 

The US space agency said Perseverance had collected four samples from the ancient river delta since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12. 

Discovery: NASA's Perseverance rover (pictured) has discovered organic matter 'treasure' that could help determine if extraterrestrials did in fact ever exist on the Red Planet

'The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission,' said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. 

The rover has taken measurements and samples in an area called Skinner Ridge.

This is made of layered sedimentary rocks, some of which contain materials that were most likely transported from miles away by running water billions of years ago. 

'With the samples we're taking now in this more sedimentary area, we're of course right at the heart of what we wanted to do to start with,' said NASA science lead Thomas Zurbuchen during a press conference.

The sedimentary rocks contain complex organic molecules called aromatics, along with clays and sulphate minerals. The latter can be produced when water interacts with rocks. 

There are no definite signs of life, or biosignatures, in these materials but scientists are encouraged that they are looking in the right place.

'While the detection of this class of organics alone does not mean that life was definitively there, this set of observations does start to look like some things that we've seen here on Earth,' said Sunanda Sharma at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California during the press conference. 

'To put it simply, if this is a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on another planet, organic matter is a clue. 

'And we're getting stronger and stronger clues as we're moving through our delta campaign.'

David Shuster, of the University of California, Berkeley, added: 'This is really important that this has sulphate in it and also clays, because that means that this rock has high potential for biosignature preservation, meaning that if there were biosignatures in this vicinity when that rock formed, this is precisely the type of material that will preserve that for us to study when [the samples] come back to Earth.'

It is not the first time Perseverance has found organic matter on Mars, but this time the detection was in an area where life may have once existed.

'In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,' Farley said.

'The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock – known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth – is important. 

The US space agency said Perseverance had collected four samples from the ancient river delta since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12. This image shows the holes from the first successful sample taken by the rover

'However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it's returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency's Mars Sample Return campaign.'

During its first science campaign, Perseverance explored the crater's floor, finding igneous rock, which forms deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the surface.

'The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks – formed from crystallisation of magma – discovered on the crater floor,' said Farley.

'This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. 

'For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater — and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.'

NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to return the rock samples to Earth around 2033. 

NASA MARS 2020: PERSEVERANCE ROVER AND INGENUITY HELICOPTER ARE SEARCHING FOR LIFE ON THE RED PLANET

NASA's Mars 2020 mission was launched to search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet in a bid to help scientists better understand how life evolved on Earth in the earliest years of the evolution of the solar system.

Named Perseverance, the main car-sized rover is exploring an ancient river delta within the Jezero Crater, which was once filled with a 1,600ft deep lake.

It is believed that the region hosted microbial life some 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago and the rover will examine soil samples to hunt for evidence of the life.

Nasa's Mars 2020 rover (artist's impression) is searching for signs of ancient life on Mars in a bid to help scientists better understand how life evolved on our own planet

The $2.5 billion (£1.95 billion) Mars 2020 spaceship launched on July 30 with the rover and helicopter inside - and landed successfully on February 18, 2021.

Perseverance landed inside the crater and will slowly collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth for further analysis.

A second mission will fly to the planet and return the samples, perhaps by the later 2020s in partnership with the European Space Agency.

This concept art shows the Mars 2020 rover landing on the red planet via NASA's 'sky-crane' system

Read more:

• Perseverance rover finds organic matter 'treasure' on Mars | CNN

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

NASA chose Jezero Crater which is 28 miles (45 kilometers) wide as the landing site for the Perseverance rover. Scientists believe the area was once flooded with water and was home to an ancient river delta and a key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. 

On July 21 and 22, 2022 the Rover captured an image of a very strange unnatural looking rock which according to NASA is an abraded rock at "Wildcat Ridge" in Mars' Jezero Crater. 

It seems almost impossible that such a perfectly round shaped rock was created by natural forces, also considering that no other comparable rocks are observable in the immediate vicinity of this rock with perfect curves, straight walls and flat plateau. 

And although it seems that NASA is talking about an ordinary rock that has been formed naturally over the years, it is questionable whether it was a natural process or whether this perfectly round and smooth shaped rock was artificially created by an unknown extraterrestrial race. 

As NASA said "an abraded rock"! 

Below an animated flyover of the 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater.

  

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

After 30 years, the world’s most clear UFO image of a diamond-shaped object has been discovered

It has been discovered that a cool UFO photograph taken by two hikers in the Scottish Highlands over 30 years ago and believed to be gone still exists.

A gigantic object in the sky (diamond-shaped) and what seems to be a Harrier jet far up there, may both be seen in the allegedly authentic “Calvine Photograph.”

It was discovered after years of investigation by journalist and researcher Dr. David Clarke and has been dubbed the “greatest” UFO photograph in the world by some.

The image was taken on August 4, 1990, on a hillside by two hikers close to Calvine, which is located approximately 35 miles northwest of Perth in Scotland.

The Scottish Daily Record newspaper received them and sent them on to the Ministry of Defense (MoD).

The narrative was never issued for an unknown reason, and the MoD stayed silent thereafter.

Due to the photographs never being made public until today, this gave rise to the current myth of the “Calvine Photograph.”

Then, it is said that the object abruptly rocketed into the sky before disappearing.

Dr. Clarke was able to locate the photograph after getting in touch with retired RAF press officer Craig Lindsay, according to The Sun. Dr. Clarke is an associate professor from Sheffield Hallam University and has served as a curator for the MoD UFO files project at The National Archives.

When the initial story was investigated in 1990, Mr. Lindsay was the one coordinating between the media and the MoD, hence he maintained a copy of the original image.

He still kept the Daily Record’s original envelope, which contained one of the Calvine images.

Dr. Clarke and Vinnie Adams from the advocacy organization UAP Media UK requested it, and Mr. Lindsay complied. It is currently housed in the Sheffield Hallam University archives.

It has been an honor to work on this case with such a committed team of academics, Mr. Adams told The Sun Online.

He also said that it felt nice to be able to share this rare photo with the public after 32 years and a thorough inquiry.

He pleaded for anybody with knowledge of the hikers’ identities or the case to come forward.

The photograph was originally displayed on the walls of the MoD’s “UFO office,” according to Nick Pope, who studied UFOs for the MoD in the 1990s. Nick Pope writes about the photograph in his 1996 book Open Skies, Closed Minds.

He said the US was questioned by the UK about whether the image was of an experimental aircraft.

The picture was afterward taken down from the wall and was never seen again.

The MoD is keeping the case of the sighting under wraps until 2072 for unknown reasons.

Despite the image’s obscurity, some think it was an experimental US aircraft, probably The Aurora, as the MoD had allegedly believed.

Although The Aurora’s existence has never been verified, some people think it was a hypersonic espionage plane with extremely high-top speeds.

In the late 80s and early 90s, some witnesses in the UK reported seeing angular flying objects.

Although they may not be any closer to determining what the object observed above Calvine in August 1990 was or whose it belonged, according to Graeme Rendall of UAP Media UK, an essential piece of the jigsaw has fallen into place as a result of careful investigation.

ALL RELATED VIDEOS AND INFO, selected and posted by peter2011

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

'Game-changing' new battery for electric cars charges in 3 minutes and lasts for 20 YEARS - more than twice as long as current EV batteries

• Researchers at Harvard have created a battery that's inspired by a BLT sandwich
• They say the lithium-metal battery can be charged and discharged 10,000 times 
• Startup in Massachusetts has been given a licence to build the battery at scale

By JONATHAN CHADWICK FOR MAILONLINE 

A 'game-changing' new battery for electric vehicles (EVs) that charges in three minutes and lasts for 20 years could soon be coming to new cars.

Adden Energy, a start-up based in Waltham, Massachusetts, has been granted a licence and $5.15 million in funding to build the battery design at scale to fit in EVs. 

The battery, developed by Harvard scientists, is lithium metal, rather than lithium ion found in EVs that are already on the market. 

Its intricate design, inspired by a BLT sandwich, prevents the growth of troublesome 'dendrites' that grow in lithium-metal batteries and shorten their lifespan.

Harvard has granted an exclusive license to Adden Energy to develop the solid-state, lithium-metal battery. The startup aims to scale the battery up to a palm-sized 'pouch cell' - which has components enclosed in an aluminum-coated film (pictured)

Long-lasting, quick-charging batteries are essential to the expansion of the EV market, but today's lithium-ion batteries fall short, because they're too heavy and expensive and take too long to charge (file photo)

Currently, EVs contain lithium-ion batteries that degrade over time and last up to seven or eight years, depending on how much they're used – much like a smartphone battery. 

These lithium-ion batteries can be replaced, but they can cost thousands of pounds, meaning drivers are often better off buying a whole new EV. 

But this new solid-state, lithium-metal battery can increase the lifetime of EVs to a comparable length to petrol and diesel cars – up to 20 years – without the need to ever replace the battery during this time. 

In the lab, the team's battery prototype has achieved battery charge rates as fast as three minutes with over 10,000 cycles in a lifetime. 

The new technology has been created by Xin Li and colleagues at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).

Adden Energy was co-founded in 2021 by Li, along with William Fitzhugh and Luhan Ye, both of whom contributed to the development of the technology as graduate students in Li’s Harvard lab.

The startup aims to scale the battery up to a palm-sized 'pouch cell' – which has components enclosed in an aluminium-coated film – and then toward a full-scale vehicle battery in the next three to five years. 

'We have achieved in the lab 5,000 to 10,000 charge cycles in a battery's lifetime, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 charging cycles for even the best in class now, and we don’t see any fundamental limit to scaling up our battery technology,' said Li. 'That could be a game changer.' 

Lithium-metal batteries hold substantially more energy in the same volume and charge in a fraction of the time compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries.

But they're prone to the formation of 'dendrites' – tiny, rigid tree-like structures that speed up battery failure. 

Researchers have therefore tried to harness the potential of solid-state, lithium-metal batteries, using a unique BLT-inspired design. 

A lithium-metal battery uses lithium in its pure metallic form, rather than lithium compounds used in lithium-ion batteries. 

Meanwhile, 'solid-state' just refers to the use of solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte, instead of the liquid or polymer gel electrolytes found in lithium-ion. 

'If you want to electrify vehicles, a solid-state battery is the way to go,' said Li, who is a scientific adviser to Adden Energy. 

'We set out to commercialise this technology because we do see our technology as unique compared to other solid-state batteries.' 

Batteries have three main components – the anode, cathode and electrolyte.

The electrolyte (typically a chemical) separates the anode and cathode and moves the flow of electrical charge between the two.  

Lithium-ion batteries move lithium ions from the cathode to the anode during charging. 

But when the anode is made of lithium metal, needle-like structures called dendrites form on the surface. 

These structures grow like roots into the electrolyte and pierce the barrier separating the anode and cathode, causing the battery potentially catch fire. 

Lithium ion batteries contain two electrodes - one made from lithium (cathode) and one from carbon (anode) - submerged in a liquid or paste called an electrolyte. When the battery is charged, electrons that were attached to the ions flow through a circuit, powering a device

To overcome this challenge, Li and his team designed a multi-layer battery that sandwiches different materials of varying stabilities between the anode and cathode. 

As previously described in Nature, the design prevents the penetration of lithium dendrites by controlling and containing them.

The battery is layered like so – first comes the bread (the lithium metal anode) followed by lettuce (a coating of graphite). 

Next, a layer of tomatoes (the first electrolyte) and a layer of bacon (the second electrolyte) and finally another layer of tomatoes and the last piece of bread (the cathode). 

The first electrolyte is more stable with lithium but prone to dendrite penetration, while the second electrolyte is less stable with lithium but appears immune to dendrites. 

In this design, dendrites are allowed to grow through the graphite and first electrolyte but are stopped when they reach the second. 

In other words, the dendrites grow through the lettuce and tomato but stop at the bacon. The bacon barrier stops the dendrites from pushing through and short-circuiting the battery.

The battery is also self-healing – meaning its chemistry allows it to backfill holes created by dendrites.

'Typically, lithium-metal anodes in other solid-state designs develop dendrites, twig-like growths that can gradually penetrate through the electrolyte to the cathode,' said Ye, who is now CTO of Adden Energy. 

'We defeat the growth of dendrites before they can cause damage, by novel structural and material designs. 

'As a result, the device can sustain its high performance over a long lifetime. Our recent study shows that this nice feature can also be maintained at scale-up.' 

Researchers also stress the importance of being able to help speed up the adoption of eco-friendly EVs in light of the climate crisis. 

EVs are generally seen as more eco-friendly than gasoline-powered vehicles, known for their planet-warming emissions. 

'Complete electrification of the vehicle fleet is one of the most meaningful steps we can take to fight climate change,' said Fitzhugh, CEO of Adden Energy. 

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Nieuwe batterij voor elektrische wagens laadt op in 3 minuten en heeft levensduur van 20 jaar: “Dit kan gamechanger zijn”

Een batterij die in amper drie minuten is opgeladen en die ook nog eens twintig jaar meegaat. Welke eigenaar van een elektrische wagen zou daar niet voor staan springen? Het zou over een paar jaar zomaar kunnen. Onderzoekers van de universiteit van Harvard ontwikkelden de technologie daarvoor en de start-up uit Massachusetts heeft nu de licentie beet om ze ook te produceren. Een van hen spreekt van een “mogelijke gamechanger”.

Bron: Daily Mail

De technologie is ontwikkeld door Xin Li en zijn collega’s van de Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). Li richtte in 2021 samen met William Fitzhugh en Luhan Ye - twee studenten die de batterij mee hielpen ontwikkelen - Adden Energy op, een start-up gevestigd in Waltham in Massachusetts. Hun bedrijf kreeg de licentie én ook nog eens 5,15 miljoen dollar om de batterij op schaal te bouwen voor elektrische wagens. Binnen drie tot vijf jaar willen ze dat voor mekaar krijgen.

De batterij die de onderzoekers van Harvard ontwikkelden is een lithium-metaalbatterij en geen lithium-ion-batterij die je vandaag in de bestaande elektrische wagens terugvindt. Lithium-metaalbatterijen kunnen aanzienlijk meer energie opslaan in hetzelfde volume en laden in een fractie van de tijd op in vergelijking met traditionele lithium-ionbatterijen. Het prototype van de nieuwe batterij presteerde erg goed in het laboratorium. Het haalde oplaadsnelheden van amper drie minuten met meer dan 10.000 cycli voor het op was. “We hebben in het laboratorium 5.000 tot 10.000 laadcycli in de levensduur van een batterij bereikt, vergeleken met 2.000 tot 3.000 laadcycli voor zelfs de beste in zijn klasse nu”, aldus Li. “En we zien geen fundamentele limiet voor het opschalen van onze batterijtechnologie. Dit zou een gamechanger kunnen zijn.”

© Adden Energy

Het ontwerp van de batterij is geïnspireerd door wat de Amerikanen een “BLT sandwich” noemen. Dat zijn twee sneden brood met daartussen als beleg: spek (bacon), sla (lettuce) en tomaat (tomato). Vertaald naar de batterij: de onderste boterham is de lithium-metaal-anode, de sla is grafiet, de laag tomaten is de eerste elektrolyt, de laag spek is de tweede elektrolyt en de bovenste boterham is de kathode. Die ingewikkelde structuur moet voorkomen dat de levensduur van de batterij verkort wordt door zogenaamde ‘dendrieten’. Dat zijn kleine, harde boomvormige structuren, waarvoor lithium-metaalbatterijen gevoelig zijn en die de werking ervan verstoren.

De huidige lithium-ion-batterijen in elektrische wagens worden minder performant na verloop van tijd en gaan maximaal zeven tot acht jaar mee. De batterij dan vervangen door een nieuwe kost zo veel, dat bestuurders vaak al beter een nieuw elektrisch voertuig zouden kopen. De nieuwe lithium-metaalbatterij kan de levensduur van elektrische wagens verlengen tot zo’n 20 jaar - vergelijkbaar met de levensduur van benzine- en dieselauto’s. De batterij moet al die tijd niet worden vervangen. Dit zou een wereld van verschil kunnen maken.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

• https://www.universetoday.com/157596/a-galaxy-with-ten-times-the-mass-of-the-milky-way-is-preparing-to-become-a-quasar/

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS

Two Large UFOs Leaving What Appears to be a Vapor Trail Over Kilbride Scotland!

Two large dark roundish UFO's Leaving a Vapor Trail over Kilbride Scotland!

Source Video YouTube Channel Sputnik

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27BKA...

Huge Black Triangle Shaped UFO Sighted Over England & Brightly Lit UFO Sighted Over New Mexico.

Clip One: This was sighted over Werneth Low which is a hill in Greater Manchester, England. This is a part of the Pennines, It is located on the borders of Stockport and Tameside. This object was sighted on August 31, 2022. The witness stated the following: "My first thought was that it was a balloon or kite, albeit an unusually large one. I couldn't see any lines holding it, nor strong winds affecting it, but we were at a significant distance. Shortly after this video, it disappeared without us seeing where it went."

Thanks to RyeZuul for allowing me the use of this footage and to view the original:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/HighStrangen... 

Clip Two: This was sighted on September 7, 2022 over Albuquerque, New Mexico. In this footage we see this brightly lit UFO hovering over the city's skyline and although it is a short clip we can see it long enough to see that there is no nav lights on this craft or no sound coming from it.

Thanks to Zenificial and his coworker's son for allowing me the use of this footage and to view the original:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/HighStrangen... 

UFO, OVNIs, UFO 2022, OVNI, UFOs, НЛО, Flying saucer, OVNI 2022

Huge Cloud Formation Looking Like Mothership in China

Two UFOs in East Kilbride, Scotland Sept 2022

Video shared on Reddit by Kiamh2230 on September 10, 2022. Filmed in East Kilbride, Scotland.

There’s more to say, more to explore together and we invite you now to join this new journey with us on Section 51 ! Subscribe now !

Top 7 Insane UFO Encounters Proving Aliens Exist

Sightings of strange objects in the sky, became the raw materials for Hollywood, to present visions of potential threats. Scientists and astronomers express varying degrees of enthusiasm, for the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. In fact, NASA has officially joined the search party, to hunt aliens and UFOs.

And today, we bring to you the 7 most mysterious, yet true sightings of UFOs, from around the world! #aliens #space #ufo

Ancient Aliens Base Under Ocean: https://youtu.be/QkEd-lYQGao

Top 3 Insane UFO Encounters Caught on Camera Proving Aliens Exist

Top 3 Insane UFO Encounters Caught on Camera Proving Aliens Exist

What lies beneath the Bermuda Triangle seabed?

There’s one place in the oceans that has particularly sinister fame.
In the distant 15th century, Christopher Columbus’s expedition faced something that made the whole team panic. The great discoverer's ship journal contains accounts of the compass needle going haywire, huge spurts of flame appearing out of nowhere, and the sea giving off a strange glow.
Many years later, this dead place proved once again how sinister it is.
Ships disappear without a trace here. Sometimes they are found - drifting, empty, and completely desolated... But more often than not we don’t even find wrecks.
But it’s not only the ships that go missing!
Planes disappear too. Even entire squadrons of military aircraft!
Facts and rumors about these incredible phenomena have quickly spread around the globe, and soon this region of the Atlantic became known as something sinister, and it continues to uphold its eerie reputation even today.
You’ve already guessed it. This is the Bermuda Triangle.
What kind of supernatural power is hidden under its waters?
And what does science say about all this?
The Bermuda Triangle.

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

Russian MIG Fighter Jets Chasing a Massive UFO in The Devil’s Grave

While Great Britain and the US have produced the majority of contemporary UFO sightings, there is no denying that other eastern nations have a rich history of inexplicable encounters. In the instance where Russia, the KGB, the military, and the government have all taken care to maintain a stringent and careful watch on the UFO data.

But in current years, UFO researchers and scientists have made material on the phenomena available online, exposing a wealth of mysterious incidents that took place on Russian soil and in the region.

A foreign presence was detected by ground radars on August 28, 1991, at 4:42 pm at the military base in the Caspian Sea more specifically at the Mangishlak Peninsula present-day Turkmenistan. At a height of 6,600 meters and a speed of 960 km/h, the UFO was traveling east.

The military station’s staff made many unsuccessful attempts to identify the craft. The operators tried a different strategy after a few fruitless “friend or foe” queries; they got in touch with the nearby airport of Kaputsin Yar to get further information. Kaputsin’s commanding officer verified that their radar had also picked up the strange object and that it was not a test flight conducted by them.

Two Mig-29 aircraft were swiftly constructed for a scouting mission, and the other two jets took off from the base on the peninsula after that since they couldn’t risk an evasive incursion. When the jet fighters caught up with the UFO, it was above the Aral Sea. They first kept an 800-meter safe distance between themselves and the UFO. The entire thing was easily visible from this vantage point.

The pilots initially perceived a massive object that was highly reminiscent of a zeppelin but much larger. The UFO was estimated to be a stunning 600 meters in length and around 110 meters in diameter using information from ground radars and the pilot’s intuition.

The flight commander asked the unidentified object to identify itself once more, but he never got a response. The Mig-29 fighters attempted to issue a second warning, this time demanding that the UFO follow them and be escorted to the closest airfield, but the UFO continued to ignore them, appearing unconcerned by their menacing presence.

The MIGs moved in closer to the craft in the following phase. The pilots observed two port holes towards the front of the UFO with green symbols encircling them as they got closer. It was inscribed in a tongue that the Russian pilots didn’t understand.

The pilots approached the UFO from both sides after getting the instruction to fire warning shots. They were about 500 meters away from the ship and prepared to fire, but to their amazement, nothing occurred when they depressed the trigger. They were compelled to return to base because the electrical systems on the four planes were broken and the armaments appeared to be jammed. The thing disappeared towards the horizon.

The UFO was being followed by ground radars as it approached an extraterrestrial speed of over 6,800 hm/h. After traveling in a zigzag manner over the Aral Sea for roughly 30 minutes, it vanished from radar. As the UFO passed over Lake Issyk-Kul, which is close to the boundary between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the tracking signal was lost.

After the incident, there was internal discussion since there were still many unresolved concerns about the precise origins of the device and the technologies used.

Speculation about a UFO that collided with the Tien Shan Mountains located in Central Asia started to spread by the end of September. Unexpectedly, the region is called Shaitan Mazar, which translates to “The Devil’s Grave.” Some people view this as an odd coincidence, while others see it as unmistakable evidence that the entire statement was fake.

Residents from the Karakol (Kyrgyzstan) region told stories of a massive object that forcefully collided with the eastern mountain range. A well-known UFO organization by the name of SAKKUFON was alerted by the reports, and soon after they launched an expedition to find the impact spot.

The team, led by Anton Bogatov, was made up of experienced mountaineers and SAKKUFON researchers from Russia. Fueled by claims that the crash location had already been found by the locals, the team spent two weeks trekking into the highlands. The UFO seekers found this account more convincing because of odd reports of persons experiencing small burns on their bodies, excessive amounts of static electricity, and watches that broke.

Sadly, the expedition was forced to turn around after weeks of dealing with challenging circumstances, opening the door for the government of Russia to become involved. The military had previously discovered the crash site, according to SAKKUFON, and deployed a helicopter to gather any UFO evidence. However, the chopper lost control and crashed into a near cliff, killing everyone on board.

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

The Phoenicians: Mysterious Merchant Mariners Whose Inventions Impacted the World Forever

The Phoenicians were an ancient people who once ruled the Mediterranean. Despite little being known about them as very few of their inscriptions have survived, their legacy has had an enormous impact on the world, which is still felt today.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Our Universe May Exist Inside A 4th-Dimensional Black Hole

Because of the size of our universe, it seems unlikely that anything else could exist. It's becoming more and more likely, according to experts, that our universe is housed inside a fourth-dimensional black hole.

A singularity, an interminably hot and dense point in space, is where our universe first formed. Black holes in our universe may exhibit the same properties as those defined by science, according to CERN physicists like James Beecham.

How A Black Hole Develops

Black holes are created when enormous stars die and collapse into an impossibly dense mass from which even light cannot escape. Scientists  refers to the space limit where light cannot leave and no object can return as the event horizon. 

Obviously, this sounds familiar, since the cosmos can be seen as its own event horizon. In the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe started to expand at a rate faster than the speed of light. Prior to this time, space did not exist, hence the universal speed restriction did not exist either. The expansion of the cosmos slows over time.

Einstein's theory of relativity states that enormous objects "warp" space-time, hence the space-time around a black hole is curved. Seeing black holes would be almost impossible if not for the light and heat that are pulled into them. 

The more matter a black hole swallows, the larger it and its event horizon will get. As the black hole expands, the rate at which matter falls decreases. To an onlooker, extreme gravity makes it seem as though nothing is moving. According to the theory of relativity, from the viewpoint of someone sucked into a black hole, time seems normal.

Do We Exist Inside A Black Hole Right Now?

Our cosmos contains three-dimensional black holes with two-dimensional event horizons. According to this reasoning, if our universe is an event horizon, it must have originated from a fourth-dimensional black hole. 

Calculating what occurs at the singularity of a black hole is impossible, which is why we get infinities, while the event horizon can be calculated using current knowledge and equations. The matter falls into the black hole, and the event horizon encodes it. As the black hole grows, so does the event horizon, so the surface area is just the right size to hold all the information for all the stuff that has fallen since the big bang. 

This information is the universe's information. Surprisingly, the math adds up and provides solutions to crucial puzzles about our universe and black holes,  according to researchers at the Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo.

"Is that the big bang hypothesis has our relatively comprehensible, uniform, and predictable universe arising from the physics-destroying insanity of a singularity. It seems improbable."

It is difficult to conceive our universe being inside another cosmic black hole. The black hole idea appears to make sense and fill in the missing parts that scientists and experts have been pursuing for a lifetime, leading us to assume that the universe is far larger and weirder than we had previously believed.

Reference(s): 

• Peer-Reviewed Research, 
• ScitechDaily

{ https://www.thespaceacademy.org/ }

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

In Gabon, Africa is a strange geologic phenomena. Approximately 1.7 billion years ago, a natural nuclear reactor formed without any human intervention at what is now the Oklo Mine. 

It formed due in part to an unusually dense uranium deposit alongside a consistent supply of groundwater. Thus, for several hundred thousand years, a natural fission reaction took place. 

This video, made by a geologist who is based in Arizona, will discuss this fascinating geologic oddity.

  

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

INTERESTING LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS

UFOs and the Deep State--The REAL One!

Despite all the wild claims, there's a very real deep state. Listen to long-time expert USAF (Ret) Kevin Randle unpack the true story.

WHEN WILL THEY OPEN THE FILES!?

Mothman: International Moth of Mystery (short documentary) - The Only News That Matters

A lot of folks know about the Mothman & the Silver Bridge collapse associated with his appearance.. but do they know the intriguing cast of characters that Mothman's appearance brought together? Furthermore, what does a smiling man named Indrid Cold & Adam West's "Batman" have to do with the whole situation? What kinda name is Apol? And who is Chief Cornstalk?! Santanon is here with some answers & another episode of The Only News That Matters. He dives into all the high-strangeness that happened in & around Point Pleasant, WV (both before and after the Mothman's first appeared). Tune in to hear all about it & the amazing tales of Mary Hyre & John Keel as well as testimony from the townsfolk of Point Pleasant. God Bless & Hail Santa!

Subtitles/Closed Captions are available on all of our videos!

UFOs: The Situation in Germany | Robert Fleischer Presentation for UFORQ

UFOs: The Situation in Germany
UFOs don't exist in Germany - officially, at least. While the German government denies any interest in flying saucers, its military seriously claims that they never had anything unusual on their radar screens which they could not eventually identify. Thus, you hardly ever hear anything from Germany about UFOs. The German journalist and researcher Robert Fleischer is trying to change that. For more than 13 years, he has been working to find out what the German government really knows about UFOs, digging into government archives and asking questions to politicians and the military. In his presentation, he discusses what the German Bundestag knows about Flying Saucers, how the German intelligence agency BND investigated UFO reports during the Cold War, what politicians say about the subject and how it all relates to the situation in Germany after World War II.

About Robert Fleischer: 

Robert is a TV journalist, presenter and filmmaker. He has worked for a number of German public broadcast TV networks and writes articles for magazines in Germany and abroad. In 2007, he founded Exopolitics Germany (www.exopolitik.org) and in 2013, he launched ExoMagazin.tv, a subscription-based online TV magazine for open-minded people.
He not only reports on UFOs and the paranormal but also on a wide array of subjects, including politics, future sciences and consciousness research. His work has been featured in major TV and radio shows as well as newspaper articles. He holds a university degree in conference interpreting for French and Spanish and has given talks in many European countries, including
Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic and the UK.

*Information and opinions presented at these meetings do not necessarily reflect the views of UFO Research Queensland Inc and are presented by speakers for research purposes only.

The UFO Lie: Shocking truth of Pentagon AAWSAP program | The Basement Office

Everything you were told is wrong. In 2017, the New York Times released a bombshell story revealing AATIP, the Pentagon's "UFO program" and Lue Elizondo, the director of that program. It proclaimed a shocking truth: UFOs are real. Since then, that story has been reprinted hundreds and thousands of times across the world and Mr. Elizondo has reached the status of cultural icon. But we've since learned that the whole story... was wrong. In this episode, we reveal the real story of the Pentagon's AAWSAP program - led by scientist James Lacatski - and it's even crazier than you could possibly imagine: $22 million in taxpayer money spent on werewolves, ghosts, goblins, and "dinobeavers" at the infamous Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. But UFO advocates, who are currently lobbying Congress to spend money on UFO investigations, hope you never find out about that. | Season 3, Episode 1

Watch more of The Basement Office: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw...

John Greenewald Jr, UFO/UAP Disclosure Breakdown

PODCAST - John Greenewald Jr gets into an interesting conversation about UFO/UAP disclosure within the US DOD and Senate, and also discuss the counter intelligence "Game" being played out. Will a significant public disclosure on UAP ever happen ?.

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

Woodrow Derenberger talks about his 1966 UFO sighting & encounter with a humanoid named Indrid Cold

November 2, 1966. Woodrow Derenberger talks about his UFO encounter in West Virginia and his first contact with a humanoid, Indrid Cold.

Aired on Live TV in Parkersburg West Virginia on November 3rd 1966. WTAP-TV.

Book: Visitors from Lanulos (Amazon link)

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

PISSEBED ONTDEKT DIE 25 KEER GROTER IS DAN DE EXEMPLAREN IN JOUW ACHTERTUIN

Vivian Lammerse

En hij ziet eruit als een echte Pokémon!

Onderzoekers hebben in de Golf van Mexico een gigantische en vrij griezelige zee-pissebed ontdekt. Het gaat om een nieuwe soort uit het geslacht Bathynomus – een mysterieuze en primitieve groep die leeft in de diepste uithoeken van de oceaan; plekken die nog nauwelijks door mensen zijn verkend. Het nieuw ontdekte, reusachtige, roomgele familielid is ongeveer 26 centimeter lang en doet volgens de onderzoekers vooral erg denken aan een Pokémon.

B. yucatanensis
De reuzenpissebed werd gevonden voor de kust van het schiereiland Yucatán, op een diepte van ongeveer 600 tot 800 meter. Het dier heeft de naam B. yucatanensis gekregen, vernoemd naar zijn vindplaats. Hoewel de pissebed er misschien een beetje eng uitziet – ze zijn maar liefst 25 keer groter dan de exemplaren in jouw achtertuin – is hij volkomen ongevaarlijk, zo benadrukken de onderzoekers.

Foto van B. yucatanensis.

Afbeelding: Dr Ming-Chih Huang, Journal of Natural History

Dat het hier overigens om een nog onbekende soort ging, was niet meteen duidelijk. Aanvankelijk zagen onderzoekers de pissebed namelijk aan voor B. giganteus; de grootste bekende pissebed die wel bijna 50 centimeter lang kan worden.

Nieuwe soort
De verwarring is niet onbegrijpelijk. In 2017 werd er bijvoorbeeld nog een B. giganteus op precies dezelfde plek en op dezelfde diepte gevangen. Bovendien lijken B. giganteus en B. yucatanensis op elkaar. Zo hebben ze bijvoorbeeld hetzelfde aantal stekels op hun achterlijf. “Oppervlakkig onderzoek, waarbij er alleen gekeken wordt naar deze stekels, heeft er gemakkelijk toe kunnen leiden dat de nieuwe soort ten onrechte werd herkend als B. giganteus,” schrijven de onderzoekers in hun studie.

Unieke kenmerken
Toen onderzoekers echter een betere blik wierpen, ontdekten ze enkele onderscheidende kenmerken. Zo is B. yucatanensis bijvoorbeeld een stuk slanker en net iets korter dan zijn tegenhanger. Daarnaast heeft B. yucatanensis langere antennes op zijn kop. De vlekkerige, roomgele kleur van de schaal onderscheidt hem verder van zijn grijze verwanten. Om er toch honderd procent zeker van te zijn dat het hier om een nog onbekende soort ging, voerden de onderzoekers een genetische analyse uit waarbij ze B. giganteus en B. yucatanensis vergeleken. “Vanwege verschillende sequenties van twee genen, in combinatie met verschillen in morfologie, identificeerden we B. yucatanensis als een nieuwe soort,” zo luidt de conclusie van de onderzoekers.

Verwant
Ondanks dat, zijn B. yucatanensis en B. giganteus wel het nauwst verwant aan elkaar. “Dit geeft aan dat de twee soorten waarschijnlijk een gemeenschappelijke voorouder hadden,” aldus de onderzoekers. Bovendien sluiten ze niet uit dat er mogelijk nog meer onbekende familieleden op ontdekking wachten.

Internethit
Op dit moment zijn er zo’n 20 levende soorten reuzenpissebedden die tot het geslacht Bathynomus behoren, bekend. Door hun vreemde en ongebruikelijke afmetingen zijn de pissebedden een ware internethit geworden. Er zijn zelfs een reeks producten op de markt gebracht die hun vertederende en bizarre uiterlijk vieren; denk aan pluchen speelgoed tot aan telefoonhoesjes.

Ondanks dat er er nog niet grootschalig op de reuzenpissebedden gevist wordt, worden ze weleens aangetroffen op het menu van Aziatische visrestaurants. “Sommige soorten Bathynomus zijn het doelwit geworden van diepzee-visserij,” zo waarschuwen de onderzoekers. En daarom is het volgens hen nóg belangrijker dat de verschillende soorten goed uit elkaar worden gehouden. “Hoewel de gigantische pissebedden slechts sporadisch worden geëxploiteerd, is het voor het beheer van de Bathynomus-visserij en het behoud van de dieren belangrijk om precies te weten welke soorten er worden gevangen,” besluiten ze.

Bronmateriaal:

• "Giant deep sea isopod is a relative of your garden slaters and looks like a real life Pokémon" - National University of Tainan (via Scimex)µ
• Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: Dr Ming-Chih Huang, Journal of Natural History

{ https://scientias.nl/ }

The monster star is still slowly recovering from this catastrophic upheaval. "Betelgeuse continues doing some very unusual things right now; the interior is sort of bouncing," said Andrea Dupree of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

These new observations yield clues as to how red stars lose mass late in their lives as their nuclear fusion furnaces burn out, before exploding as supernovae. The amount of mass loss significantly affects their fate. However, Betelgeuse's surprisingly petulant behavior is not evidence the star is about to blow up anytime soon. So the mass loss event is not necessarily the signal of an imminent explosion.

Dupree is now pulling together all the puzzle pieces of the star's petulant behavior before, after, and during the eruption into a coherent story of a never-before-seen titanic convulsion in an aging star.

This includes new spectroscopic and imaging data from the STELLA robotic observatory, the Fred L. Whipple Observatory's Tillinghast Reflector Echelle Spectrograph (TRES), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft (STEREO-A), NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). Dupree emphasizes that the Hubble data was pivotal to helping sort out the mystery.

"We've never before seen a huge mass ejection of the surface of a star. We are left with something going on that we don't completely understand. It's a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble. We're watching stellar evolution in real time."

The titanic outburst in 2019 was possibly caused by a convective plume, more than a million miles across, bubbling up from deep inside the star. It produced shocks and pulsations that blasted off the chunk of the photosphere leaving the star with a large cool surface area under the dust cloud that was produced by the cooling piece of photosphere. Betelgeuse is now struggling to recover from this injury.

Related Stories:

• Hubble Finds That Betelgeuse's Mysterious Dimming Is Due to a Traumatic Outburst

• NASA Satellite’s Lone View of Betelgeuse Reveals More Strange Behavior

Weighing roughly several times as much as our Moon, the fractured piece of photosphere sped off into space and cooled to form a dust cloud that blocked light from the star as seen by Earth observers. The dimming, which began in late 2019 and lasted for a few months, was easily noticeable even by backyard observers watching the star change brightness. One of the brightest stars in the sky, Betelgeuse is easily found in the right shoulder of the constellation Orion.

Even more fantastic, the supergiant's 400-day pulsation rate is now gone, perhaps at least temporarily. For almost 200 years astronomers have measured this rhythm as evident in changes in Betelgeuse's brightness variations and surface motions. Its disruption attests to the ferocity of the blowout.

The star's interior convection cells, which drive the regular pulsation may be sloshing around like an imbalanced washing machine tub, Dupree suggests. TRES and Hubble spectra imply that the outer layers may be back to normal, but the surface is still bouncing like a plate of gelatin dessert as the photosphere rebuilds itself.

Though our Sun has coronal mass ejections that blow off small pieces of the outer atmosphere, astronomers have never witnessed such a large amount of a star's visible surface get blasted into space. Therefore, surface mass ejections and coronal mass ejections may be different events.

Betelgeuse is now so huge now that if it replaced the Sun at the center of our solar system, its outer surface would extend past the orbit of Jupiter. Dupree used Hubble to resolve hot spots on the star's surface in 1996. This was the first direct image of a star other than the Sun.

NASA's Webb Space Telescope may be able to detect the ejected material in infrared light as it continues moving away from the star.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.

Illustration Credit:

• NASA, ESA, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)

{ https://www.nasa.gov/ }

Experts Have Found the True Age of Machu Picchu

Once again, advances in technology have forced archaeologists to change their interpretations of history. A new study published in  Antiquity has concluded that the world-renowned  Machu Picchu  site in  Peru was in use more than 20 years earlier than previously thought.  

So, What’s the Real Age of Machu Picchu?

One of the top tourist destinations in the world,  Machu Picchu  in Peru is known not only for its ancient  Inca ruins, but for its stunning natural setting. Hiking the Inca Trail has become a pilgrimage for backpackers from all over, so much so that the authorities have had to put strict limits on the number of  tourists who can hike the trail per day (500). The ruins itself are visited by about 6,500 people per day, according to  BD Destinations . 

• The Great Inca Emperor Pachacuti: The Famous “Earth Shaker” Of Peru
• Breakthrough Discovery at Machu Picchu is Blocked by the Government

Although it has become known as the “lost city” discovered by American explorer Hiram Bingham in 1911, in reality it was never “lost” as locals knew it was there all along. What is surprising is that with such a huge influx of visitors, and income, there is still more to be learned about this stunning World Heritage Site, including its age and ancient origins.

The construction of an Indiana Jones-style narrative, in which American explorer Hiram Bingham found the “lost” Inca city of Machu Picchu, has added to its allure.

( Public domain )

Pachacuti and the Founding of Machu Picchu

The legendary story of the Inca ruler Pachacuti has been told and retold for generations, and repeated as part of the tours of  Machu Picchu . It is believed that he rose to power thanks to a vision involving Inti, the Sun god, who inspired him to defend the city of Cusco from the Chanca. The first Inca ruler with imperialistic aspirations for an  Inca Empire he has been recognized as the creator of “the most powerful empire in pre-Colombian America,” explains an Antiquity press release. 

Pachacuti has also been credited with building  Machu Picchu , located to the north of Cusco. In fact, the ancient ruins are often described as having been his private estate. The Inca citadel was chosen as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World in a contest organized by the New7Wonders Foundation back in 2007, alongside Petra and the Great Wall of China. It was famously built using differently-shaped polished stones which fit together like a jigsaw puzzle to create walls without the use of mortar. 

Researchers at Machu Picchu in 1911, shortly before the remains dated in the new study were recovered.

( Yale University )

Applying New Technology to Discover the Age of Machu Picchu 

“Determining a site’s archaeological age isn’t always easy,” explained Erin Blakemore in a  National Geographic  article which gave a simple run-through of the ways in which archaeologists calculate the date of ancient sites. Assessing the age of Machu Picchu is no different.

Richard Burger, a professor from Yale University and the lead author of the paper published in   Antiquity explained why the famed Peruvian ruins have been labeled with the incorrect age in the past. “Until now estimates of its antiquity and the length of its occupation were based on contradictory historical accounts written by Spaniards in the period following the Spanish conquest,” he stressed. Remember, the Inca themselves had no written language, apart from a system of knotted cords known as  khipu.

A team made up of professionals from several institutions in the United States decided to apply the technique of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) in order to more precisely date the human remains which have been exhumed at Machu Picchu. This technology has been successful in dating human remains when minimal organic matter has been left behind.

Most history books state that  Machu Picchu  was built by Pachacuti in the mid-1400s. Nevertheless, the team used AMS dating technology to date bone and teeth from 26 skeletons found in cave burials which had been excavated back in 1912. Although past attempts had failed to provide consistent results, this new research concluded that Machu Picchu was actually in use from 1420 to 1530 AD.

The construction date of Machu Picchu has now been pushed back thanks to dating technology.

(David Stanley /  CC BY 2.0 )

Changing the History of the Inca Empire and the Age of Machu Picchu 

If this is true, it would mean that the scripted guided tours of Peru’s top  tourist destination  have been mistaken for decades. If  Machu Picchu  was in use from 1420, then this would push back the date of Pachacuti’s rise to prominence, as well as the age of the ancient citadel, by at least two decades. 

• Inaccuracies Found in Radiocarbon Dating Calibrations Could Change Historical Timelines
• Dating Methods in Archaeology. Are They Accurate?

The Antiquity study also puts into sharp relief the importance of continued application of groundbreaking technology to archaeology and ancient history. “The results suggest that the discussion of the development of the Inca empire based primarily on colonial records requires revision,” emphasized Burger. 

“Modern radiocarbon methods provide a better foundation for understanding Inca chronology than the contradictory historical records,” explained the lead author of the study. The idea that our understanding of history is versatile and apt to change as technology evolves assures that the study of famous sites like Machu Picchu will continue to be an adventure as we unravel the “lost” reality of the past. 

• Top image: Experts are reassessing the age of the Peruvian ruins at Machu Picchu.
• Source:  alexpermyakov / Adobe Stock 

By Cecilia Bogaard

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Mars Rover Finds Organic Matter in Rock

NASA's Perseverance rover has collected some intriguing samples of Martian rock. Just wait till we get them into a lab on Earth.

Amanda Kooser

Perseverance inspects a sedimentary sample site called Skinner Ridge. 

NASA, JPL-Caltech, ASU, MSSS

This story is part of Welcome to Mars, our series exploring the red planet.

In just a year and a half on Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover has rocked its science mission. The space agency hosted a briefing Thursday to discuss highlights from the mission so far, and it was a celebration of rock samples and the discovery of organic matter. 

Organic molecules in Wildcat Ridge

A rock named Wildcat Ridge, located in an ancient river delta region of Jezero Crater, was one of the stars of the show. Percy successfully collected two samples from the mudstone rock. Wildcat Ridge is particularly exciting because the organic molecules (called aromatics) found in it are considered a potential biosignature, which NASA describes as a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.   

The rover team emphasized that finding organic matter doesn't mean it's found evidence of ancient life. Organic molecules have been spotted on Mars before, by the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater and also by Perseverance, which found carbon-containing molecules earlier in the mission.   

Enlarge ImagPerseverance collected two core samples from Wildcat Ridge and also abraded a round patch to inspect the rock with its Sherloc instrument.

NASA, JPL-Caltech, ASU, MSSS

The rover's Sherloc instrument investigated the rock. (Sherloc stands for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals.) "In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the Sherloc instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date," NASA said.

Scientists are seeing familiar signs in the analysis of Wildcat Ridge. "In the distant past, the sand, mud and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived," said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley in a statement. "The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock -- known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth -- is important."

Perseverance isn't equipped to find definitive evidence of ancient microbial life on the red planet. "The reality is the burden of proof for establishing life on another planet is very, very high," said Farley during the press conference. For that, we need to examine Mars rocks up close and in person in Earth labs. 

Sample drop

Percy currently has 12 rock samples on board, including the Wildcat Ridge pieces and samples from another sedimentary delta rock called Skinner Ridge. It also collected igneous rock samples earlier in the mission that point to the impact of long-ago volcanic action in the crater.

NASA is so happy with the diversity of samples collected that it's looking into dropping some of the filled tubes off on the surface soon in preparation for the future Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. MSR is an ambitious plan to send a lander to Mars, pick up Percy's samples, rocket them off the surface and bring them back to Earth for close study. The mission is under development. If all goes as planned, those rocks could be here by 2033.

The complexity and importance of MSR means NASA and its partners are working out ways to ensure the samples can be collected. There's hope Perseverance will still be operating in good condition by the time the MSR lander arrives, and will be able to meet it and personally deliver samples. Leaving some samples on the ground this early in the mission at a cache site in the crater will give MSR another opportunity to get the precious rocks on board. 

Percy has been collecting paired samples. For example, it could keep one Wildcat Ridge tube on board and drop the other on the ground. "That we are weeks from deploying Perseverance's fascinating samples and mere years from bringing them to Earth so scientists can study them in exquisite detail is truly phenomenal," said NASA JPL Director Laurie Leshin. "We will learn so much." 

What's next for Percy

As thrilling as the delta has been, the rover team is looking ahead at future adventures beyond it. Perseverance could wander up the crater rim, with the team eyeing several possible paths for the climb. Its companion Ingenuity helicopter is in good health and expected to take to the air again. 

NASA chose Jezero Crater for exploration because of its fascinating history of water and how the rocks there might preserve evidence of ancient life, if it existed during more habitable times on Mars. Sherloc scientist Sunanda Sharma likened the mission to a treasure hunt for organic life on another planet, saying the samples with aromatics are a clue. The Martian mystery is only just beginning to unfold.

{ https://www.cnet.com/ }

The Mystery of Egyptian Tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings

Tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings was discovered by Edward R. Ayrton on January 6, 1907. Ayrton’s sponsor, Theodore M. Davis, published a summary of the excavation (The Tomb of Queen Tiye) in 1910.

KV55 is from the 18th dynasty, being a problematic archaeological site as it seems to have been used for several burials: the first is attributed to Queen Tiye, based on the broken wooden shrine dedicated to her (Tiye was brought here after the abandonment of Amarna, and finally brought to KV35).

The mummy found here may be that of her son, the pharaoh Akhenaten, although that of his successor, Smenkhkare (if this was a man) was also considered.

In 1923, Harry Burton used it as a darkroom to develop his photographs during the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter.

Egyptian Tomb KV55: Description

KV55 is a relatively small royal tomb, its total length is only 27.61 meters. It is located next to KV6, the tomb of Ramses IX , above KV7 (of Ramses II) and near KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Its entrance is open in the rock, heading east. It leads to a system of stairs that lead to a slightly sloping corridor and the burial chamber.

On the south side of this chamber there is passage to a small antechamber, and red masonry markings on the east wall indicate the planning of another room, which had it been built would have matched the layout of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Although the walls of the tomb are laid out in plaster, which is unusual for a royal tomb, they are not decorated. A drawing on an ostracon found by Lyla Pinch Brock in 1993, has been interpreted as the plan of the tomb, suggesting that its original entrance had been enlarged, corroborated by the marks found on the walls of the tomb.

The place was altered in antiquity, and therefore it is difficult to interpret. Evidence from the tomb complicates its attribution.

The door seals bore Tutankhamun’s name, evidently from the time its tenant was buried a second time; the canopic jars found in the tomb are similar to those of Akhenaten’s secondary wife, Kiya; the broken shrine, whose panels are distributed throughout the chamber, bear the name and representations of Akhenaten‘s mother, Queen Tiye.

Akhenaten’s name appears in a series of “magical bricks” found in the tomb, as well as that of his father, Amenhotep III, and his daughter and wife.

All these data are reminiscent of the main figures of the Amarna period, hence the popular name of the tomb: the Amarna cache.

It is thought that the tomb was initially designed for the burial of some nobleman or official, using it later for a royal burial, as later happened with the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Identification of the mummy

When the tomb was opened in 1907 the only mummy found inside was that of a male. This mummy was thought to be Akhenaten, due to the presence of some funerary items (mainly magical bricks) as well as the vandalism of the sarcophagus (Akhenaten was later vilified as a heretic).

The cartouches with the mummy’s name are erased and the uraeus removed. In addition, the mummy has several similarities to that of Tutankhamun.

This identification was not fully accepted because although KV55 does not contain any mention of Smenkhkare, some insisted on identifying the mummy with him. DNA analysis in 2010 confirmed that it was the remains of the famous Akhenaten.

Nicholas Reeves suggests a theory: Akhenaten and his mother, Queen Tiy, were originally interred in the new capital, Amarna, but their bodies were transferred to KV55 during the reign of Akhenaten’s son Tutankhamun and his secondary wife, Kiya.

The door was sealed with the name of Tutankhamun. There the mummies remained for about 200 years, until the tomb was discovered by workers excavating the nearby tomb of Ramses IX..

At that time Akhenaten was despised as the heretic king, so the sarcophagus of Queen Tiye was hastily removed from his desecrating presence, except for the gilded wooden shrine that covered it, which had to be dismantled to remove the sarcophagus. .

The portraits of Akhenaten were erased with a chisel, in his sarcophagus the golden mask was torn and the cartouche with his name removed, to condemn him to eternal oblivion. As a final insult, a large rock was thrown at the coffin, smashing the supports of the lion-shaped sarcophagus.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://historicaleve.com/ }

Two Supermassive Black Holes Are Expected To Collide Within Next 3 Years And We Will Watch It In Real-Time

According to astronomers, one of the most anticipated occurrences in modern astronomy may be upon us soon.

Fluctuations in light measurements from the galaxy SDSS J1430+center 2303 lead to the likelihood of a large collision between two supermassive black holes with a combined mass of around 200 million Suns, according to research.

• Real-time collision of two supermassive black holes

If the scientists' interpretation of the data is correct, the collision, along with the first black hole image captured by the Event Horizon Telescope, may rank among the biggest modern astronomical events. According to the scientists' data, the black holes in this condition will merge within the next three years, which is a very short period of time in the context of scientific investigations.

The findings of the study can be found on the pre-print portal ArXiv and have been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The event was detected in 2015 as a result of gravitational waves created by the first black hole merger, which rippled through space-time. However, the gravitational force from that collision, as well as subsequent observations, had an impact for years after it occurred. As a result, the collision at the core of SDSS J1430+2303 could be the first time astronomers have witnessed such an occurrence.

There is one crucial caveat in the run-up to this cosmic calamity. The gravitational wave range produced by supermassive black holes is too narrow for our current gravitational wave detectors to detect. Virgo and LIGO, which are both capable of detecting ripples in the frequency created by binary black holes, have identified nearly all black hole mergers to date.

Astronomers expect to be able to observe the event's massive outpouring of light using other observatories, which will continue to produce light over the full spectrum. If and when it happens, it could significantly increase our understanding of the formation of supermassive black holes.

Although there is some evidence that binary black hole mergers may be the source of the genesis of supermassive black holes, we still don't fully understand how they grow to be that large.

Astronomers will direct their telescopes to the region of space where the galaxy J1429+2303 is expected to witness a catastrophic supermassive black hole collision in order to examine the data before and after the event and better understand its implications as well as the processes that led up to it.

Reference(s): 

• Research Paper

{ https://blog.physics-astronomy.com/ }

World SHOCKED By New Swedish Fighter Jet

New Swedish Fighter Jet SHOCKED The World.

For a country with a population of just over 10 million people, it’s impressive that Sweden can maintain one of the best fighter aircraft programs.

An aircraft’s effectiveness is no longer determined mainly by how fast it can fly. Now it’s about how instant AI can interpret information and present the data for pilots to act upon in battle.

Unlike US or Russiαn fighters, Swedish Gripen can’t carry the most weapons, has no real stealth. To be clear, it isn’t the longest-range, the fastest, or even the cheapest jet.

Sweden has chosen another niche to compete. The country’s focus is to develop a fighter jet with the most advanced electronics to become a nightmare for its closest adversary – Russiα.

{ https://jackie88.com/ }

Scientists Find One of the Most Massive Black Holes With 34 Billion Times The Mass of Our Sun

Scientists just revealed the finding of the most massive black hole ever detected in the early Universe. It weighs 34 billion times as much as our Sun and eats one per day.

The research, headed by the National University of Australia (ANU), disclosed how large the Universe's fastest-growing black hole is, as well as how much stuff it can absorb. The same study team detected the black hole, known as 'J2157,' in 2018.

The report revealing the huge black hole's features was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

According to Dr. Christopher Onken and his colleagues, this object has a mass 34 billion times that of the Sun and consumes the equivalent of one Sun per day. That's billion with a capital B. The gigantic black hole has a mass nearly 8,000 times that of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.

“If the Milky Way’s black hole wanted to get fat, it would have to swallow two-thirds of all the stars in our galaxy,” explains Onken.

The object was analyzed by scientists when the Universe was just 1.2 billion years old, or less than 10% of its present age, making it the largest known black hole in terms of mass in the early Universe.

{ https://blog.physics-astronomy.com/ }

Sneferu, The pharaoh who built three pyramids

At the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty, Sneferu wanted to go one step further in achieving a perfect pyramid to be his abode of eternity. In this search, the pharaoh built at least three of these great monuments.

Contrary to what might be thought, the greatest pyramid builder in the history of Egypt was not Khufu, the pharaoh to whom the Great Pyramid of Giza is owed.

That title actually corresponds to his father Sneferu, who, according to scholars have calculated, used for the construction of the three pyramids that are attributed forty percent more cubic meters of stone than his son Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Furthermore, Sneferu was the first Egyptian pharaoh to build a perfect pyramid with smooth faces and to develop the classical structure of Egyptian funerary complexes, which would last for several centuries.

The three great funerary monuments created by Sneferu crowned the sensational development of Egyptian funerary architecture from Dynasty III onwards.

King Djoser, thanks to his well-known architect Imhotep, was the first to build his tomb entirely in stone, thus offering a sense of eternity to buildings that were previously made of adobe and therefore soon faded away.

In addition, in this great work that he carried out in Saqqara (a necropolis near Memphis, the capital of Egypt), Imhotep dispensed with the typical mastaba, a rectangular funerary building with sloping walls.

He replaced it with a stepped pyramid, made up of a total of six levels that reached 62 meters in height. It should be noted that this was the tallest building in the world until Sneferu’s reign.

Engineering feat and embodiment of the power of the pharaonic state, the stepped pyramid had a characteristic structure, in which scholars have seen the reflection of a stellar symbolism typical of Egyptian culture at that time.

Thus, the main axis of the complex, 544 meters long, is oriented from north to south and the entrance to the pyramid is located on the north side, as is the funerary temple of the pharaoh, attached to the pyramid on a base of two meters high.

Furthermore, the so-called serdab – a room on the north side of the pyramid in which the statue of the pharaoh’s ka (his spirit or life force) was placed – had two openings through which a statue of Djoser could observe Dubhe and Kochab, two important circumpolar stars.

Sneferu, The pharaoh who built three pyramids

During Dynasty III, the kings Sekhemkhet and Khaba erected buildings in Saqqara and Zawiyet el-Aryan similar to the step pyramid of Djoser.

The same did Sneferu at his pyramid at Meidum, a necropolis located 55 kilometers south of the stepped pyramid at Saqqara. There the pharaoh erected a great funerary monument in the form of an eight-step pyramid, with a central masonry tower and sloping walls, to which superimposed layers were added, also sloping with a 75º inclination.

However, at the end of his reign Sneferu launched a third constructive phase that would radically change the appearance of the Pyramid of Meidum.

At the base, the workers raised a leveled platform of limestone blocks, and on this they were placing successive horizontal courses of stone.

Finally, the entire construction received an exterior cladding of fine limestone from Tura. In this way, a perfect pyramid was obtained, with four smooth faces of 51º inclination, 144 meters in base and 92 in height.

The pyramid of Meidum

The architectural innovation promoted by Sneferu in Meidum is related to the rise of the solar cult during Dynasty IV, which promoted the identification of the pharaoh with the sun god Ra.

It is no coincidence that Huni, Sneferu’s predecessor, was the first monarch to inscribe his name and titles on a cartouche, the oval that symbolizes Ra’s journey; nor that Djedefre, Sneferu’s grandson, was the first pharaoh to be called Son of Ra.

According to this vision, the pyramid would symbolize the benben, the primordial hill, that first piece of land that, after the creation of the solar god Atum, emerged from the waters of the nun, the inert, dark and silent primordial ocean.

The pyramid, like the primeval hill, represents creation and rebirth and becomes the vehicle for the revitalization of the deceased pharaoh.

If the pyramids of Dynasty III symbolized stairs to the starry sky, now the pyramid, as a solar element, could also express the idea of ​​the rays of the Sun that allowed the king to rise to the solar divinity.

With their smooth faces that glowed thanks to their coating with white limestone from Tura.

According to this new conception, the main construction axis of the funerary complex became the east-west, instead of the previous north-south.

This is how it was intended to promote the union of the king with the solar god in his daily journey, from when he appeared in the east in the form of the Khepri beetle, passing through its culmination at noon as Ra, in the form of a solar disk, and its sunset by the west in the form of a ram, Atum.

The pyramid of Meidum marked the definitive triumph of this new model of funeral ensemble. Sneferu’s work includes for the first time all the characteristic elements of pharaonic funerary complexes from then on:

A satellite pyramid next to the main one, a funerary temple, another temple located on the river bank and a ramp that linked these two buildings. .

According to the solar model, the funerary temple was attached to the eastern face of the pyramid, instead of the northern one, although access to the interior was still from the north side, as in the pyramid of Djoser.

From this entrance, about 18 meters high, a descending corridor of almost 60 meters in length and an inclination of 28º starts.

The Bent Pyramid

Sneferu built a second pyramid at the Dashur necropolis, 45 kilometers north of Meidum. The final form this monument took is unique. Started as a pyramid with a 60º inclination, later an envelope made of blocks inclined 6º inwards and a reduction of the slope by five degrees was added.

From 47 meters in height, the slope of the faces of the pyramid was reduced to 43º, thus giving it the peculiar appearance of a “rhomboid pyramid”or the Bent Pyramid, as it is known.

It is not known whether this change in slope was due to structural problems that had to be solved on the fly or if it had a symbolic meaning:

The double slope would represent, for example, the unity of Upper and Lower Egypt. Once completed, the pyramid reached 105 meters in height, with a base of 188 meters on each side.

The Red pyramid of Dahshur

The internal structure of the Bent pyramid is unusual because of its two entrances. One is, as was customary, on the north side, 12 meters high, and leads to a corridor 80 meters long that leads to a horizontal corridor; this, in turn, leads to a chamber with a false vault 17 meters high.

The second entrance, originally camouflaged behind a cladding block, is on the west side, 33 meters high. It opens onto a descending corridor that continues as a horizontal corridor after 65 meters, where two chambers with closing blocks were arranged and, finally, a burial chamber with a false vault 16 meters high.

The third pyramid of Sneferu, popularly known as the “Red pyramid“, was built two kilometers north of the previous one, in Dahshur.

It is the second pyramid with the highest base (220 meters), only ten meters less than that of the Great Pyramid. However, it is also the one with the lowest slope of its faces (43º), so it only reached 105 meters in height.

Its access is 28 meters high on the north side, and from there starts a descending corridor of 63 meters that ends in a horizontal corridor.

This passes through two chambers with a false vault and then gives access to a burial chamber, located at a higher level, also with a false vault and almost 15 meters high. Perhaps the pharaoh was buried there.

Source:

• National Geographic

The Red pyramid of Dahshur

{ https://historicaleve.com/ }

Flying to (Hypothetical) Planet 9: Why visit it, how could we get there, and would it surprise us like Pluto?

In a recent study submitted to Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, an international team of researchers discuss the various mission design options for reaching a hypothetical Planet 9, also known as “Planet X”, which state-of-the-art models currently estimate to possess a semi-major axis of approximately 400 astronomical units (AU). The researchers postulate that sending a spacecraft to Planet 9 could pose scientific benefits much like when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft visited Pluto in 2015. But does Planet 9 actually exist?

Artist’s rendition of the hypothetical Planet 9, with Neptune’s orbit displayed as a bright ring orbiting the sun.

Credit: European Southern Observatory/Tom Ruen/nagualdesign

“It is hard to put a specific number on the confidence level because so many uncertainties remain,” said Dr. Manavsi Lingam, who is an Assistant Professor at the Florida Institute of Technology, and a co-author on the study. “For now, I would say that it seems likely that there is an unusual clustering of extreme trans-Neptunian objects. We do not know what is causing this clustering, but Planet 9 appears to be a promising candidate.”

Before NASA’s New Horizons arrived at Pluto in 2015, the only images scientists had of Pluto were fuzzy pictures from Earth-based telescopes, and even the Hubble Space Telescope couldn’t get anything better. The science about Pluto was equally scant, as we had an estimate for its mass, but since we couldn’t make out surface features, we knew very little about its atmosphere, geologic diversity, and interior. As the researchers point out, the “wealth of new data” from New Horizons surpassed the old, but could we be just as surprised with Planet 9 data if a spacecraft were to visit there?

“It is very likely,” said Dr. Andrew Hein, who is an Associate Professor/Chief Scientist at the University of Luxembourg, and a co-author on the study. “Even the best telescopes are vastly inferior to close-up observations from a probe flying by a celestial body. This is even more true for bodies which are far away and faint, which is the case for Planet 9. The reason is physics. The fainter an object, the larger your telescope needs to be to collect more light from that object and the longer you need to observe. The farther away the object, the more light you need to collect and the larger the telescope needs to be.”

For how to get to Planet 9, the researchers propose several mission designs. These include, Jupiter gravity assist, using either Jupiter’s or the Sun’s gravity well to accelerate the spacecraft, chemical rockets, nuclear propulsion, and laser sails. With the exception of laser sails, the amount of time each method would need to reach Planet 9 ranged from just under 40 years to 100 years. With laser sails, the researchers estimated that a spacecraft could reach Planet 9 within 6.5-7 years. But what steps are being taken to make this technology a reality?

“Laser sail technology is currently being pursued by Breakthrough Starshot, a project I am part of, and which has significantly advanced the technology over the last 6 years, including laboratory prototypes,” said Hein. “While flight technology is conceptual for now, some of the technology building blocks already exist in the lab. The project’s aim is to launch a laser sail to another star, but a small-scale version should be feasible to develop within the next 10-15 years or so with a budget of less than the one for a traditional space probe (few hundreds of millions of dollars). This small-scale version could be used to reach Planet 9 within a few years, once developed. But once the laser beamer is developed, such probes could be launched on a weekly basis at costs hundreds of times cheaper than current probes.”

For now, Planet 9 remains purely a hypothesized member of our vast and illustrious solar system, but would the vast time it takes to get there using conventional methods prevent us from potentially visiting this mysterious object so far from the Sun?

“Although we find that minimum mission times of 40-50 years are required (except for light sails), this long flight time ought not deter us,” said Lingam. “The Voyager spacecraft have been functional for roughly the same duration and continue to provide a wealth of data. A putative mission to Planet 9 (should it exist) would not only revolutionize our understanding of the outer Solar system, but it can also enable us to study other targets along the way – for instance, some of the maneuvers take us close to Jupiter and the Sun, indicating that these worlds could also be surveyed.”

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

• Featured Image: Artist’s rendition of the hypothetical Planet 9, with Neptune’s orbit displayed as a bright ring orbiting the Sun. (Credit: European Southern Observatory/Tom Ruen/nagualdesign)

The post Flying to (Hypothetical) Planet 9: Why visit it, how could we get there, and would it surprise us like Pluto? appeared first on Universe Today.

Source: 

• https://www.universetoday.com/157600/flying-to-hypothetical-planet-9-why-visit-it-how-could-we-get-there-and-would-it-surprise-us-like-pluto/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Barb Bergfeld on witnessing & filming a triangular-shaped UFO & lights in the sky, Owensville, 1994

Nov. 10, 1994; Owensville, OH 2:00 AM. Multiple witnesses reported a silent triangular configuration of lights that were captured on a home video camera. A dangerous rollover maneuver, putting the “aircraft” upside down at the conclusion of the roll, would seem to preclude this object being a stealth flight over populated areas.

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

Classified UFO videos would 'harm national security' if released, Navy says

Big Difference Between Neanderthal and Modern Human Brains Discovered

Neanderthals, a subspecies of archaic humans who split from modern humans sometime between 300,000 and 80,000 years ago, have been the subject of a new study. This study has revealed the presence of a single amino acid difference possessed by modern humans that dramatically increased the number of brain cells created, leading to a split in development and providing a cognitive edge for Homo sapiens over their Neanderthal cousins. This is being claimed as the first physical proof modern humans were smarter than Neanderthals.

How Did Modern Human Brains Outcompete Their Older Cousins?

For a long time, scientists and historians have been perplexed about the question – what makes modern humans unique? What sets them apart from other cousins on the evolutionary spectrum ? The study, published in Science, shows an increase in brain size and subsequent neuron production during brain development, even though Neanderthals and modern humans had brains of a roughly similar size.

• Neanderthals and Humans Were at War… For 100,000 Years!
• Top Ten Myths about Neanderthals

In addition to differences in skull shape and size, modern human brains developed more quickly compared to their Neanderthal cousins

(HairyMuseumMatt / CC BY SA 2.0 )

 “One concrete fact is that wherever Homo sapiens went, they would basically out-compete other species there. It’s a bit weird,” said Professor Laurent Nguyen, of the University of Liège, who was not involved in the latest research. “These guys [Neanderthals] were in Europe a long time before us and would have been adapted to their environment, including pathogens. The big question is why we would be able to out-compete them,” he said, quoted in a Guardian report.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) focused on a variation that was identified in Homo sapiens brains. This variation, occurring in our neocortex, boosts the brain progenitor cell counts, which implies that as a species, we made more neurons during the development process, compared to the Neanderthals during theirs, around 130,000 to 40,000 years ago.

“Making more neurons sets the basis for higher cognitive function ,” said Wieland Huttner, who led the work at the Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. “We think this is the first compelling evidence that modern humans were cognitively better than Neanderthals.”

• All about Neanderthals – The Surprising Facts
• Research Confirms That 20% of the Neanderthal Genome Can Be Found In Modern Humans

Detailed wax figure of Neanderthal prehistoric caveman. Faster development of modern human brains eventually helped Homo sapiens out-compete Neanderthals

( EdNurg / AdobeStock)

Comparing Modern Human Brains vs. Neanderthal Brains

For the study, the scientists inserted a Neanderthal brain gene into mice, ferrets, and blobs of lab-grown tissue called organoids. Organoids are tiny, self-organized three-dimensional tissue cultures derived from stem cells, sometimes called ‘mini brain structures’, reports Nature.

They focused on the gene TKTL1 (protein transketolase-like 1), which is heavily involved in the neuronal production in a developing brain. The Neanderthal version of this same gene differs by one letter from the modern human version. In modern humans, TKTL1 contains an arginine at the sequence position, whereas in the Neanderthals, it is the related amino acid lysine.

"We found that with the Neanderthal-type of amino acid in TKTL1, fewer basal radial glial cells were produced than with the modern human-type and, as a consequence, also fewer neurons. This shows us that even though we do not know how many neurons the Neanderthal brain had, we can assume that modern humans have more neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain, where TKTL1 activity is highest, than Neanderthals,” concluded Anneline Pison, first author of the study.

From these experiments, it was determined that the Neanderthal version of the gene created neurons slowly during the brain’s cortex development. This slower pace could be a huge factor that explains the superior cognitive abilities of modern humans. It wouldn’t be farfetched to say that it was all in the mind!

Therefore, if the production of neurons in the neocortex is greater during fetal development, it can be speculated that modern humans cognitive abilities associated with the frontal lobe were promoted, leading to better tools, weaponry, language, art, symbolism, and ultimately, smarter brains. Moving forward, Pinson hopes to understand the mechanisms through which TKTKL1 drives the birth of brain cells.

• Top image: Neanderthal and modern human skulls.
• Source: Bruder / Adobe Stock

By Sahir Pandey

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

Earth’s crust grew faster when our planet passed through the Milky Way’s spiral arms, study suggests

The rate at which Earth’s continental crust builds up goes through cycles, peaking around every 200 million years when the solar system travels through one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms. That is the conclusion of an international team of researchers, who argue that crustal production is boosted when more high-energy comets crash into the Earth. They say that these comets are dislodged from the Oort cloud by the influence of regions of space with dense interstellar clouds.

“As geologists, we normally think about processes internal to the Earth being really important for how our planet has evolved,” says team member and isotope geologist Chris Kirkland of Australia’s Curtin University. “But we can also think about the much larger scale and look at extraterrestrial processes and where we fit in the galactic environment.”

So far, Earth is the only planet that we know has continents and active plate tectonics. These features have helped make Earth hospitable to life because they influence the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.

Ancient crust

In their study, Kirkland and colleagues analysed zircon crystals deposited in the North American craton in Greenland and the Pilbara craton in western Australia — two regions that preserve some of Earth’s oldest continental crust, which dates to the Archean Eon.

By measuring the decay of uranium within the crystals, the team established a timeline for the formation of the cratons, spanning from around 2.8–3.8 billion years ago. They also looked at hafnium isotopes, which allowed them to identify times of juvenile magma influx associated with crust production. Analysis revealed a longer period, 200-million-year-long oscillation in the data, which correlates with Earth’s motion through the Milky Way. This finding is also mirrored in oxygen isotope data.

More specifically, they found that the observed rate of crustal production tracks the solar system repeatedly passing into the Milky Way’s spiral arms. “Our solar system and the four spiral arms of the Milky Way are both spinning around the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s centre, yet they are moving at different speeds. The spiral arms orbit at 210 km/s, while the Sun is speeding along at 240 km/s, meaning our solar system is surfing into and out of the galaxy’s arms,” the researchers.

Stellar traffic jam

“You can think of the spiral arms as dense regions that slow the passage of stars, much like a traffic jam, which only clears further down the road,” they said, adding: “This model results in approximately 200 million years between each entry our solar system makes into a spiral arm of the galaxy.”

Every time the solar system makes one of these entries, Kirkland and his team propose that interactions occur between the galaxy’s relatively dense spiral arms and the Oort cloud of icy planetesimals that surrounds the solar system. This increases the rate at which comets are ejected from the Oort cloud, with some of these icy bodies ending up hurtling towards Earth. These comets strike the Earth with considerably more energy than the more frequent meteorites that come from the asteroid belt.

Kirkland points out that this higher energy is important because it results in greater melting of the crust upon impact. “When it hits, it causes larger amounts of decompression melting, creating a larger uplift of material, creating a larger crustal seat.”

Spherule beds

Further evidence linking periods of increased crustal generation with higher rates of comet impacts come in the form of spherule beds. These are deposits containing small spheres formed either directly from molten impact ejecta or rained out from rock and vapour plumes in the wake of an impact event. The researchers note that the known ages of spherule beds around the globe also correspond with the solar system’s movement into the Milky Way’s spiral arms around 3.25–3.45 billion years ago. The dating of additional spherule deposits in the future could provide more evidence to support the hypothesis.

The team hopes that its findings will motivate further investigation of how forces from outside the solar system have shaped the planet on which we live. “It’s very hard to prove these things,” says team member and astrophysicist Phil Sutton of the UK’s University of Lincoln. He adds, “We want to make that link and start the conversation to look at geological processes beyond the Earth, beyond the solar system, and what might drive those. We didn’t just form in isolation.”

The study is described in the journal Geology.

{ https://physicsworld.com/ }

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Massive Stars don’t Always Grow Their own Planets. Sometimes They Steal Them

Recently astronomers have discovered Jupiter-sized planets orbiting at extremely large distances from giant stars. How can these stars end up with such big planets at such extreme orbits? A team of researchers has proposed that the answer is that the stars steal those planets from their neighbors.

Giant stars have a lot of trouble forming very massive planets. Even though there’s a lot of material in their protoplanetary disks that is more than happy to agglomerate to form heavy planets, the stars themselves are not very good at nurturing those newborn planets. The stars give off such intense amounts of UV radiation that they can boil away all the hydrogen and helium throughout their systems, preventing planets from getting to the size of Jupiter or larger. 

And yet despite that very clear line of thinking, astronomers with the BEAST (B-star Exoplanet Abundance STudy) collaboration at the University of Sheffield have identified exactly that scenario: Jupiter-size planets orbiting giant stars. More intriguingly, these planets orbit hundreds of times further away from their stars than the Earth does from the Sun.

As Dr. Richard Parker, a Lecturer in Astrophysics in the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, explained, “The BEAST collaboration has discovered at least two super-Jovian planets orbiting massive stars. Whilst planets can form around massive stars, it is hard to envisage gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn being able to form in such hostile environments, where radiation from the stars can evaporate the planets before they fully form.”

One way to explain this discrepancy is if those planets didn’t form with the stars that they currently orbit, as researchers at the University of Sheffield recently found.

Dr Emma Daffern-Powell, co-author of the study from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, explained, “Our previous research has shown that in stellar nurseries stars can steal planets from other stars, or capture what we call ‘free-floating’ planets. We know that massive stars have more influence in these nurseries than Sun-like stars, and we found that these massive stars can capture or steal planets – which we call ‘BEASTies’.”

Stars tend to form in clusters, all sharing the same parent gas cloud which fragments into dozens or even hundreds of stars at once. With their larger gravity, the massive stars are perfectly capable of ripping planets away from their neighboring systems and capturing them into orbits of their own.

“Essentially, this is a planetary heist. We used computer simulations to show that the theft or capture of these BEASTies occurs on average once in the first 10 million years of the evolution of a star-forming region,” said Daffern-Powell.

The researchers studied extensive simulations and found that this was indeed a plausible scenario. We still don’t know how common planetary theft is throughout the galaxy, or if it’s just confined to this very special case. Further detective work is definitely needed.

The post Massive Stars don’t Always Grow Their own Planets. Sometimes They Steal Them appeared first on Universe Today.

Source: 

• https://www.universetoday.com/157525/massive-stars-dont-always-grow-their-own-planets-sometimes-they-steal-them/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

On 17 January 2020 we already wrote about the fact that the US Navy has warned that the release of certain "TOP SECRET" UFO files requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) could “gravely damage” US national security with as a consequence that DoD won't release certain "top secret" UFO files. 

Now more than 2 and a half years later, the UFO cover-up still goes on as the U.S. Navy still holds unseen videos of UFOs also called UAPs, but Department of Defense (DOD) will not release the footage publicly because it would "harm national security," a Navy spokesperson wrote on September 7, 2022 reports Livescience.

The admission came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the government transparency site The Black Vault. 

Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy's FOIA office, wrote in a response letter. "No portions of the videos can be segregated for release." 

Cason added that the Navy was able to declassify the three UAP videos released in April 2020 only because the videos had been previously leaked to the media and had already been "discussed extensively in the public domain." 

Since it is clear that there are more videos of  UFO encounters in the Navy's archives, the Black Vault has filed an appeal seeking the release of the classified UFO videos.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

LA UFO Sighting “I saw a bright light that remained stationary for at least 5 minutes before slowly”

This bright UFO was seen and recorded in the sky above Las Vegas, Nevada.

Witness report: 

It was about 4:45am when I left my apartment to walk to the gym. I noticed an unusually bright light in the north sky. It was either directly above Nellis AFB or very close to it. The light would remain stationary for about 5 minutes while getting brighter at times. There was no sound that I could hear. I took my phone out and recorded 30 seconds of the object remaining stationary. When I stopped recording the object flashed small lights 2-3 times and slowly began moving west. When I viewed the video I could notice the object pulsating.

RELATED VIDEOS ( peter2011-)

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

Jacques Vallee on UFO materials, UFO crashes, and a lifetime of Investigation

Vallée is an Internet pioneer, computer scientist, venture capitalist, author, UFO researcher, and astronomer. He is regarded as one the most respected and senior scientific investigators on UFOs, having written over two dozen books on the topic. He has investigated reports of UFOs all over the world and has worked on related U.S. and French government projects. As a computer scientist, he co-developed the first computer-based detailed map of Mars for NASA. He also served as a close associate of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the top scientific consultant on UFOs under Project Blue Book.

He also worked as a member of the scientific advisory board of Bigelow Aerospace and conducted private research for their partners, which included the Pentagon’s highly controversial AATIP program. Today, Vallée will discuss the new edition of his book, Trinity: The Best Kept Secret, which explores a UFO crash at the Trinity Atomic Testing site, prior to the Roswell UFO crash of 1947. He will also discuss his latest work analyzing UFO materials and publishing scientifically reviewed papers on these materials. Vallée will share some of his most vivid memories throughout the years of investigating different cases and how they impacted his personal life. It is a powerful and emotional interview that explores the historical perspective of the world during certain UFO events, and why we must look back in order to move forward.

To purchase Trinity: The Best Kept Secret, visit: https://amzn.to/3D9SlcL

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

BREAKING: Cambridge Physicists Find Wormhole Proof

A theoretical basis for the existence of wormholes, which are tubes that link two distinct locations in space-time, has been created by physicists at the University of Cambridge. In the case that a piece of data or a tangible item could traverse the wormhole, time travel and immediate communication over vast distances may become feasible.

"But there's a problem: Einstein's wormholes are extremely unsteady, and they don't stay open long enough for something to pass over."

Scientists came to the conclusion that Casimir energy, a sort of negative energy, may keep wormholes open in 1988.

The theoretical answer developed at Cambridge has to do with quantum energy's characteristics, which show that even vacuums are teeming with energy waves.

“Does this mean we have the technology for building a wormhole?” asks Matt Visser at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. “The answer is still no.” Still, he is intrigued by Butcher’s work. “From a physics perspective, it may revitalise interest in wormholes.”

If you picture two metal plates in a vacuum, certain waves of energy would be disproportionately large and be able to fit between the plates, creating a negative energy field in the space-time between the plates. 

"Under the right circumstances, could the tube-like shape of the wormhole itself generate Casimir energy? Calculations show that if the wormhole's throat is orders of magnitude longer then the width of its mouth, it does indeed create Casimir energy at its center."

Source

What’s the Latest?

A theoretical basis for the existence of wormholes, which are tubes that connect two distinct sites in space-time, has been identified by physicists at the University of Cambridge. Time travel and quick communication across great distances might be possible if data or a physical object could pass through the wormhole.

However, there is a drawback: Einstein's wormholes are famously erratic and don't remain open for long enough for anything to pass through. Casimir energy, a kind of negative energy, was found to have the ability to maintain wormholes open by physicists in 1988.

What’s the Big Idea?

Built on the effects of quantum energy, which informs us that even vacuums are seething with energy waves, Cambridge's theoretical answer is based on this idea. A wave of energy that is too large to fit between two metal plates in a vacuum will produce negative energy in the space-time between the plates. To see this, picture two metal plates in a vacuum.

Could Casimir energy be produced by the wormhole's tube-like shape under the correct conditions? According to calculations, wormholes do actually produce Casimir energy at their centers if their throats are orders of magnitude wider than their mouths.

{ https://blog.physics-astronomy.com/ }

This stunning Hubble image of M104, also known as the Sombrero galaxy, is one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble observations. The hallmark of the nearly edge-on galaxy is a brilliant, white, bulbous core encircled by thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. This dust lane is the site of star formation in the galaxy. The center of M104 is thought to be home to a massive black hole.

Hubble easily resolves the Sombrero galaxy’s rich system of globular clusters, estimated to be nearly 2,000 in number — 10 times more than the number of globular clusters in our Milky Way galaxy. The ages of the clusters are similar to those in the Milky Way, ranging from 10-13 billion years old. Embedded in the bright core of M104 is a smaller disk (not visible in the image), which is tilted relative to the large disk. X-ray emission suggests that there is material falling into the compact core, where a one-billion-solar-mass black hole resides.

With an apparent magnitude of 8, the Sombrero galaxy is beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility but can be spotted through small telescopes most easily during May. M104 is located 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, and with a mass equal to 800 billion suns, it is one of the most massive objects in the Virgo galaxy cluster. 

M104 was discovered in 1781 by the French astronomer and comet hunter Pierre Méchain, one of Charles Messier’s colleagues.

For more information about Hubble’s observation of M104, see:

• Heritage Project Celebrates Five Years of Harvesting the Best Images from Hubble Space Telescope

This star chart for M104 represents the view from mid-northern latitudes for the given month and time.
Credits: Image courtesy of Stellarium

• Previous Object: Messier 102 (The Spindle Galaxy) | Next: Messier 105
• Back to Hubble's Messier Catalog

{ https://www.nasa.gov/ }

Scientists Successfully Sent A Particle Back in Time Using A Quantum Computer

Time travel was fiction before Einstein, but his calculations took us into the quantum world and we were introduced to a more complex picture of time. Einstein’s equations permitted time travel into the past, as Kurt Gödel discovered. The issue? None of the hypothesized time travel systems were ever physically feasible.

So, before sending a particle back through time, Argonne National Laboratory, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and ETH Zurich scientists wondered, “Why stick to physical grounds?

Many physics laws treat the future and the past as continuous. A closed system progresses from order to disorder according to the second rule of thermodynamics (or entropy). If you scramble an egg to produce an omelet, you’ve added a lot of chaos to the closed system that was the egg.

The arrow of time is an essential consequence of the second law. A process that develops entropy, like whisking an egg, is irreversible. An omelet won’t turn back into an egg, and billiard balls won’t spontaneously reassemble a triangle. Entropy, like an arrow, goes in one direction, and we see it as time.

The second rule of thermodynamics holds us captive, but an international team of scientists sought to test it in the quantum world. Since nature cannot do such a test, scientists utilized an IBM quantum computer.

Ordinary computers, such as the one you’re reading this on, work with bits of data. A bit is either a 1 or a 0. A qubit is a fundamental unit of information used by quantum computers. A qubit may be both a 1 and a 0, allowing the system to process data considerably quicker.

The researchers used qubits to simulate subatomic particles in a four-step experiment. They entangled the qubits first, such that whatever occurred to one affected the others. Then they utilized microwave radio pulses to evolve the quantum computer’s initial order into a more sophisticated state.

A specific algorithm changes the quantum computer to bring order out of chaos. They’re zapped by another microwave pulse, but this time they go back to their old selves. That is, they are de-aged by a millionth of a second.

Argonne National Laboratory researcher Valerii M. Vinokur compares it to pushing against a pond’s waves to restore them to their source.

Success was not guaranteed since quantum mechanics is about probability. In a two-qubit quantum computer, however, the algorithm accomplished a time leap 85 percent of the time. With three qubits, the success rate decreased to around 50%, which the scientists blamed on flaws in current quantum computers.

The findings were just reported in Scientific Reports.

The results are exciting but don’t go buying flux capacitors just yet. This experiment also illustrates that manipulating even a simulated particle in time is difficult. Our ability to produce such an external force to influence even one quantum wave is limited.

To time-reverse even ONE quantum particle is impossible for nature alone, says research author Vinokur.  “The system comprising two particles is even more irreversible, let alone the eggs — comprising billions of particles — we break to prepare an omelette.”

A press release from the Department of Energy notes that the “timeline required for [an external force] to spontaneously appear and properly manipulate the quantum waves” to appear in nature and unscramble an egg “would extend longer than that of the universe itself.” In other words, this tech specifically binds to quantum computation.

But the study isn’t just a high-tech exercise. While the approach won’t help us build real-world time machines, it will improve quantum computation.

Einstein’s equations don’t prohibit time travel, but they make it a difficult task, as Kurt Gödel demonstrated.

A quantum computer mixing chamber

(Photo: IBM Research/Flickr)

Reference(s):

• The New York Times | For a Split Second, a Quantum Computer Made History Go Backward
• Nature.com | Arrow of time and its reversal on the IBM quantum computer

{ https://astronomy.vercel }

Bob Lazar Explains How Aliens Use Element 115 To Fly UFOs

Bob Lazar is the most important entity in exposing the alleged secret activities related to extraterrestrials and UFOs happening at Area-51. He is widely recognized as the Area-51 whistle-blower who revealed aliens and the government worked together on secret bases in 1989. Thirty years ago, he claimed to have worked as an engineer near Area-51 at a hangar called S-4. There, as he claims, UFOs with tiny alien seats were made out of a material called Element 115.

The story of Element 115 gets weirder when Bob claimed that the FBI raided his business. His followers found this to be very suspicious, and have theorized that the FBI was attempting to recover samples of Element 115 that Lazar took from Area-51.

According to Motherboard, the FBI did actually raid Bob’s United Nuclear Scientific Equipment and Supplies, which sells radioactive ore and isotopes, X-Ray components, electrical items, high-powered magnets, lab equipment, jet engines, and UFO T-shirts.

This claim was revealed in Jeremy Corbell’s documentary “Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers.” Lazar and the documentary frame the raid as an attempt by the U.S. government to seize alien fuel that Lazar allegedly stole from Area-51. But the documents obtained by Motherboard had nothing to do with Element 115.

Corbell told Express.co.uk: “Lazar did have a stabilized version of Element 115 in his possession at one time. He did tests on it – and filmed the element bending light due to its unique gravitational characteristics. A handful of witnesses observed these tests – including investigative reporter, George Knapp. There is footage of one of these tests in my film. Lazar was able to acquire some of the element when it was being machined at Area 51.”

Read also:

• Four US Intelligence Directors Hint That UFOs Are Alien Spaceships & Believe There Are Other Dimensions
• FBI Chilling UFO Reports: Recovered 3 UFOs With Alien Bodies In New Mexico & 27,000 Mph Craft
• Ex-USAF Col. Testified Extraterrestrials Do Not Allow Nuclear Weapons In Space
• Does This FBI Document Suggest That Nikola Tesla Was An Alien From Venus?

Someone can still question the credibility of Bob Lazar, but there are many authentic people to confirm his credibility. George Knapp stated that he had spoken with former employees who worked with Bob and verified that he was a physicist, however, these claims were made informally and off the record. Knapp said that those employees were friends of Lazar’s and only specifically named Joe Vaninetti as being one who confirmed it. Vaninetti had a significant interest in UFOs and was involved in UFO research with Bob, both before and after Bob claimed to have worked at S-4. (Click here to read more about Lazar’s credibility)

Element 115: An Alien Fuel?

According to Bob, this alien artifact is a highly radioactive element that allows alien spacecraft to traverse the cosmos, impervious to gravity’s effects. Lazar has been claiming for years that he worked on the material at Area-51 and that it can be used to power spacecraft.

“It’s a superheavy element,” Lazar once told Larry King. “It’s a unique element. When it’s exposed to radiation, it produces its own gravitational field—its own antigravitational field, and it’s what’s used to lift and propel the craft.” The UFO fuel is stable and did not decay, according to Lazar. He said that the fuel creates gravity waves to propel the UFO.

In his initial TV interviews (check the video below) with George Knapp back in 1989, Bob first discussed Element 115 and how it was used in the propulsion system of the alien craft hidden at the S-4 facility. He never denied or confirmed if aliens had given them Element 115 but he told that they had 500 pounds (227 kg) for reverse engineering purposes.

In 2014, Bob did another interview with Knapp where he discussed Element 115 and how it is created both synthetically and naturally through a supernova, which is the cataclysmic explosion of a star.

Bob Lazar further explained in his interviews that bombarding Element 115 with protons leads to it creating Element 116 (Livermorium), which immediately decays and produces antimatter. The antimatter collides with normal particles creating a massive energy burst, which can be used for propulsion. It is quite likely Element 115 could also be the famed exotic matter that is needed to create traversable wormholes that physicists such as Drs. Kip Thorne and Carl Sagan have speculated, and was the subject of a recently leaked Defense Intelligence Reference Document titled “Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy.”

In September 2020, Corbell shared a photo of Lazar holding Aerogel that was used to package Element 115 for transport. He said that he could not include this part in his Netflix documentary but promised to publish the clip on his YouTube channel, discussing Element 115 and how he observed it functioning (Editor’s note: I searched throughout Corbell’s channel but could not find a clip explaining Element 115).

This image features Bob Lazar and the Aerogel that was used to package the ELEMENT 115 for transport. There has been a lot of confusion about this – and about the function of ELEMENT 115 in alien spacecraft. And this is a core aspect of what Bob Lazar has told you.

Image credit: Jeremy Corbell

“It’s reported that a distortion occurs – a gravitational distortion. This is highlighted by how these vehicles appear to negate the effects of inertia. You’ve heard it thousands of times from credible witnesses regarding their UFO encounters… ‘It shot off at an IMPOSSIBLE speed.’ Cmdr. Fravor & Cmdr. Select Underwood used those exact words to me when describing their encounters with the TIC TAC UFO. The craft displayed instantaneous acceleration – and was immediately gone from both sight and radar. Even the Princeton with it’s SPY-1 radar system confirmed this in real-time.

-So what’s up with these transmedium machines – these UFOs that fly with impunity in our airspace? Maybe ELEMENT 115 can give us a glimpse into the UFO presence on Planet Earth,” Corbell wrote.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }