Friday 8th December 2017

A Ball Found on Mars

Was Mars once subjected to an ancient alien war that left the planet stripped of its atmosphere?

Since as far back as the days of the original John Carter novel, A Princess of Mars, humanity has been fascinated by the possibility of exotic warrior races existing on our planet’s closest neighbor.

Getting a better look at the planet has put paid to most of these romantic hopes, as astronomers have revealed that if life did ever exist on Mars, it was a long, long time ago.

While professional scientists and experts are eager to see whether any traces of microscopic life might exist on Mars, some people still hold out hope for proof of something far cooler, like evidence of an ancient warfaring race that explain how Mars transformed from a relatively nice vacation spot to a dusty wasteland.

Scott C Waring of the UFO Sightings Daily has released a video which claims to show evidence of a war on the planet Mars. In his video, Waring points to an image from the Curiosity Rover that appears to show a round metal cannonball. According to Waring, this sight displays “100% evidence of a war on Mars.”

“This projectile is sitting on the surface above all the wrecked stone structures around it. Fragments of a civilization is sitting scattered in tiny pieces around this cannonball. I do believe these balls and millions of others were deliberately shot at Mars from space all at once to destroy their atmosphere, burn it away. What I mean is a large enough man-made meteor shower could strip Mars of its atmosphere and thus, destroy all or most life on the planet surface.”

The photograph is quite compelling – the image shows a single round grey ball that stands out from the red and brown rocks all around it. Waring does seem to have a point here, as the cannonball looks too perfect and spherical to be a complete accident, especially considering that it stands out so distinctly from anything else on the horizon. There’s just one problem—the “cannonball” is 100 percent not evidence of war, because it’s a commonly occurring natural phenomenon that has already been explained by scientists studying the planet, and has been common knowledge among genuine Mars enthusiasts for many years.

According to the team at NASA behind the Curiosity Rover, this is an example of a phenomenon called “concretion,” in which minerals build up in bubbles within sedimentary rock at the bottom of lakebeds and oceans. The minerals are nice and hard, while the sediment rock is relatively soft, and is worn away over time by the water in the lake. Thus, perfectly spherical metal balls are left behind when the lakes dry up, and YouTubers can speculate endlessly about a bunch of facts they’ve just made up about the effects of cannonballs on Martian atmosphere.

It’s also worth noting that Mars does have an atmosphere, albeit one that’s a lot weaker than our own, which doesn’t exactly help Waring’s case.

Even a basic Google search reveals the specifics of the process of concretion, and the fact that NASA has been very eager to talk about the process in the past. Waring seems to have deliberately opted to either ignore scientific fact, or has refused to research anything that might explain away his “cannonball” theory.

It’s almost as if, having created a YouTube channel named “UFO Sightings Daily”, Waring finds himself under a tight deadline to find new proof of extraterrestrial life, and feels that pesky research and accurate facts would get in the way of all the sweet, sweet advertising money that he could otherwise get. This has clearly worked out for him—at the time of writing, he’s made approximately a whole $7 from his ill-researched, speculative hogwash. Clearly, this endeavor has proven worthwhile.

Of course, while Waring shouts into his own personal echo chamber, the sign of concretion spotted in the video is actually very exciting – these round balls are evidence that Mars once had large lakes of water, and so the more of these that are spotted, the better we’re able to map out the ancient landscape of the planet. It could be that one of these lakes holds evidence that bacteria once lived in pools of nutrient-rich water upon the planet. We know that micro-organisms can survive on Mars, so at present, this is perhaps our best chance for finding alien life.

ALf knows for a fact that the truth is nothing like the story of the cannon ball. The truth is that in a match between Aston Villa and Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in 1966 his second half 30 yard shot went so high and so wide that the ball was never seen again. It went high and higher still into outer space landing on the surface of Mars 12 years later.

Anthony Hateley was an English footballer who played as a centre forward. He played for several clubs in The Football League, including Notts County, Aston Villa, Chelsea and Liverpool.

Tuesday 21st November 2017

Oumuamua 

Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first” It seems to have come from the direction of the constellation Lyra, but the asteroid’s exact origin is still unknown.

Astronomers are now certain that the mysterious object detected hurtling past our sun last month is indeed from another solar system. They have named it 1I/2017 U1(’Oumuamua) and believe it could be one of 10,000 others lurking undetected in our cosmic neighbourhood.

The certainty of its interstellar origin comes from an analysis that shows its orbit is almost impossible to achieve from within our solar system.

Its name comes from a Hawaiian term for messenger or scout. Indeed, it is the first space rock to have been identified as forming around another star. Since asteroids coalesce during the process of planet formation, this object can tell us something about the formation of planets around its unknown parent star.

The latest analyses with ground-based telescopes show that ’Oumuamua is quite similar to some comets and asteroids in our own solar system. This is important because it suggests that planetary compositions like ours could be typical across the galaxy.

It is thought to be an extremely dark object, absorbing 96% of the light that falls on its surface, and it is red. This colour is the hallmark of organic (carbon-based) molecules. Organic molecules are the building blocks of the biological molecules that allow life to function.

It is widely thought that the delivery of organic molecules to the early Earth by the collision of comets and asteroids made life here possible. ’Oumuamua shows that the same could be possible in other solar systems.

Its characteristics have been published by two independent groups of astronomers. The first group, led by Karen Meech, University of Hawaii, also found that ’Oumuamua was extremely elongated and roughly 400 metres long. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope(VLT) they also found that it rotated once every 7.3 hours.

The other group of astronomers, led by David Jewitt, University of California Los Angeles, estimated how many other interstellar visitors like it there might be in our solar system.
Surprisingly, they calculate that another 10,000 could be closer to the sun than the eighth planet, Neptune, which lies 30 times further from the sun than the Earth. Yet these are currently undetected.

Each of these interstellar interlopers would be just passing through. They are travelling too fast to be captured by the gravity of the sun. Yet it still takes them about a decade to cross our solar system and disappear back into interstellar space.

If this estimate is correct, then roughly 1,000 enter and another 1,000 leave every year – which means that roughly three arrive and three leave every day.

Using robotic telescopes such as Pan-STARRS, the one that detected ’Oumuamua, to look for asteroids is a priority for astronomers as they concentrate on discovering potentially hazardous objects that could impact Earth.

Imminent upgrades to these survey telescopes and improvements in data processing techniques mean that astronomers will soon be able to detect smaller and fainter objects. They expect a number of these to be interstellar interlopers like ’Oumuamua.

Wednesday 18th October 2017

Gold Was Likely Created By The Universe-Bending Explosion Between Two Neutron Stars

While it’s true that we are in fact all made of stars, tracing the origins of every element on the periodic table has led to us asking more questions than getting answers.

Gold, silver and platinum for example have always been hard to pin down, for them to be naturally created you need a cosmic event of frankly unimaginable power.

Well as it happens scientists have just been able to witness an event of this magnitude in the form of two neutron stars colliding.

Not only was the resulting explosion so powerful that it gave us our first live glimpse of gravitational waves, but it now appears as though it has answered one of the biggest questions in astrophysics. The gold we cherish and value so highly was almost certainly created from the explosion caused by two neutron stars colliding, also known as a kilonova.

In case you’re wondering just how much gold and precious metals are produced from an explosion like this, prepare yourselves.

The amount of gold produced was probably around 200 Earth masses, while the amount of platinum was even higher at 500 Earth masses.

Scientists are confident that in fact all the heaviest elements in the universe were probably created from explosions like this.

Tracking down the origins of the periodic table are easier said than done. We know that the lightest and simplest elements hydrogen and helium were created in the Big Bang, slightly heavier elements like carbon and oxygen were then formed in the cores of stars through fusion.

This process can only go as far as creating iron however. To go heavier you need a specialised environment where atoms are repeatedly bombarded by free neutrons.

To go as heavy as gold, platinum and uranium the science had to become theoretical as until earlier this year, we had no known event capable of producing these elements.
“For years the idea of a kilonova had existed only in our theoretical imagination and our computer models,” said Daniel Kasen, an associate professor of physics and of astronomy at UC Berkeley. “Given the complex physics involved, and the fact that we had essentially zero observational input to guide us, it was an insanely treacherous prediction ― the theorists were really sticking their necks out.” Of course the theory turned out to be right, something that for astrophysicists, is just about the best outcome you can hope for.

“No one had ever seen a neutron star merger up close before,” explained Brian Metzger, a professor of astrophysics at Columbia University.

“Putting together the complete picture of such an event involves a wide range of physics – general relativity, hydrodynamics, nuclear physics, atomic physics. To combine all that and come up with a prediction that matches the reality of nature is a real triumph for theoretical astrophysics.”

 

 

 

Monday 9th October 2017

The cradle of alien life’ discovery on Mars could prove the Red Planet was home to extraterrestrial organisms
Stargazers spot traces of underwater volcanos on the Martian surface. It’s believed life on Earth first developed in similar places at the bottom of our own oceans
NASA has made an astonishing discovery which could PROVE life once existed on Mars.

It has spotted what appears to be the remnants of ancient underwater volcanos in a basin in a region called Eridania, in southern Mars.

A Nasa image of Mars, which is believed to have once been covered with gigantic oceans

A Nasa image of Mars, which is believed to have once been covered with gigantic oceans
These structures may have once been similar to the volcanic “vents” at the bottom of oceans here on Earth.

Some scientists believe life on our planet originated near these vents, which spew out hot water and a soup of chemicals which may have led to the origin of the first lifeforms on our planet.

“Even if we never find evidence that there’s been life on Mars, this site can tell us about the type of environment where life may have begun on Earth,” said Paul Niles of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

“Volcanic activity combined with standing water provided conditions that were likely similar to conditions that existed on Earth at about the same time – when early life was evolving here.”

Currently, there is no water on Mars. Neither is there any volcanic activity.

But it’s believed the new discovery shows that volcanos were once active beneath a deep ancient ocean some 3.7 billion years.
This graphic shows what the sea might have looked like. The volcanos which may have been home to alien lifeforms can be seen at the bottom
The researchers believe the ancient Martian sea held about 50,000 cubic miles of water, which would have been “as much as all other lakes and seas on ancient Mars combined and about nine times more than the combined volume of all of North America’s Great Lakes”.

“This site gives us a compelling story for a deep, long-lived sea,” Niles added.

RED, BUT NOT DEAD Life DID exist on Mars and alien life forms may once have thrived on the Martian surface, shock discovery suggests

“It is evocative of the deep-sea hydrothermal environments on Earth, similar to environments where life might be found on other worlds – life that doesn’t need a nice atmosphere or temperate surface, but just rocks, heat and water.”

Scientists believe life on Mars may have been forced underground when a natural disaster turned the Red Planet into a “frigid desert”.

Dragons at China revealed yesterday Compton Verney.

Thursday 12th January 2017

Mysterious Planet 9 ‘is rogue world snared by our solar system’ and it could hold alien life
Newly discovered Planet 9 may have been captured by our Sun’s gravitational pull
ice planet that is so big it’s tilting our entire solar system may be a rogue world captured by our Sun’s gravitational pull.

Planet 9 is believed to be 15 times larger than Earth and is believed to be responsible for the odd behaviour of planets near to us.
Scientists have suspected that the hypothetical planet is disrupting the orbit of icy objects and could one day destroy Earth.

Although it is invisible to the naked eye, it can be spotted using advanced telescopes.

But now there are claims that the planet is a lone world that got caught up in our solar system – sparking hopes that it could hold alien life.

New Mexico State University said it was likely a “rogue planet” during a news conference.

James Vesper, an undergraduate at the University told the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas: “It is very plausible’ that Planet Nine is a captured rogue, a world that cruises through space unattached to a star.”
Mystery planet Nibiru will ‘smash into Earth’ in OCTOBER
Evidence of a Ninth Planet which is 20 times the distance from the Sun as our planet and a year lasts around 10,000 to 20,000 Earth years
The discovery of Planet 9 was hailed as a great feat for science, but came with a fatal warning.

The ice giant could destroy the solar system by causing devastating “death dance”, astronomers have warned.

It could one day hurtle through our solar system, sending planets “pinballing” into outer space or plunging into the Sun.

Dr Dimitri Veras of the Department of Physics said: “The existence of a distant massive planet could fundamentally change the fate of the solar system.
“The fate of the solar system would depend on the mass and orbital properties of Planet Nine, if it exists.”

Luckily for us, humanity has about seven billion years to prepare for this grim eventuality, which will take place when the Sun begins to die.

The Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object (either a collision or a near-miss) which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Planet X or Nibiru. The idea that a planet-sized object will collide with or closely pass by Earth in the near future is not supported by any scientific evidence and has been rejected by astronomers and planetary scientists as pseudoscience and an Internet hoax.

The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder describes herself as a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 (though that date was later postponed) causing Earth to undergo a physical pole shift that would destroy most of humanity. The prediction has subsequently spread beyond Lieder’s website and has been embraced by numerous Internet doomsday groups, most of which linked the event to the 2012 phenomenon. Since 2012, the Nibiru cataclysm has frequently reappeared in the popular media; usually linked to newsmaking astronomical objects such as Comet ISON or Planet Nine. Although the name “Nibiru” is derived from the works of the ancient astronaut writer Zecharia Sitchin and his interpretations of Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, he denied any connection between his work and various claims of a coming apocalypse.

Christmas 2016

 

Saturday 13th August 2016

For more than 50 years, we’ve been scanning the skies with king-size antennas, hoping to pick up a radio signal from space that would prove the existence of other technically adept beings. So far, our efforts have found only senseless static – it’s been a long fishing expedition without so much as a nibble.

ALf says that we have just not been looking hard enough or for that matter in the right place. Besides that 50 Earth years is but a trifle in the pink rabbit shaped blancmange that is space time. ALf as we know is 3.5 million Earth years old and he is the youngest of his planets generations. He says his great Uncle Gannss is 356 million Earth years old and still plays shurrump like a 10 million year old. That is Earth years of course.

Shurrump

Shurrump is a game played at night which lasts 10 Earth years on their home planet and is played very fast with two bent drinking straw type bats (Grurrs) one being 30 meters long and the other being 20 Cm long. The game has been known to last the full 10 years and the players are only allowed to use one leg to stand on. The ball (Yaaj) which is made of vaporous Loss floss enzymes is hit from one quadrant to the next quadrant with the larger bat and balanced on the smaller bat. There is a 5 thousand strong set of solo players and whoever get to the pinnacle of Mount Kiis which is at least  79.000 meters high and balances the Ball for two Earth years on the smaller bat without having it knocked from them is deemed the winner.

However, today there are people who believe that someone is tugging on the line. They suggest that the peculiar behavior of a nondescript star 8,000 trillion miles away could be tipping us off to a massive alien construction project.

That’s an exciting prospect, and not entirely fanciful. After all, tens of billions of biology-friendly planets speckle our galaxy. Surely at least some of those worlds house intelligent beings. If not, then Earth is a miracle, an explanation of last resort for science.

The star in question bears the unsentimental name, KIC 8462852, although is more colloquially know as Tabby’s star in a nod to the Yale University astronomer, Tabetha Boyajian, who led the team that discovered its strange behavior. Tabby’s star was observed by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope, and– thanks largely to the work of astronomy enthusiasts – was found to be a very erratic light source.

Over the course of days, this star can dim by more than 20%, something that ordinary stars never do. Then it will brighten, followed by a relapse of darkening weeks or months later. The amount of dimming is variable, and doesn’t occur with the regular cadence that would mark the presence of an orbiting planet.

When this odd behavior was first recognized, several possible explanations were offered by Boyajian’s team. The most favored was the presence of large clouds of dust from disintegrated comets around Tabby’s star. The orbiting detritus would occasionally mask its light.

But a more intriguing explanation was also proffered: perhaps this star shelters a planet boasting a civilization older and more technically adept than our own. And perhaps these advanced beings have embarked on a massive engineering project, building phalanxes of orbiting solar panels to supply the energy needs of their society. This space-borne construction could cause the dimming.

This idea is so appealing, it has convinced some that an alien megastructure not only accounts for this star’s eccentricities, but also constitutes the first credible evidence for extraterrestrials. This thesis was first broached by Pennsylvania State University astronomer Jason Wright, and was quickly picked up by an enthusiastic space media.

However, before alerting the United Federation of Planets, consider the historical record. Just about every time astronomers have found mysterious behavior in the skies, someone has claimed it’s the work of aliens.

In the 1960s, Cambridge astronomers found puzzling radio pulses coming from our galaxy – pulses as regular as the best clocks. They half-seriously suggested that these might be due to LGMs, or Little Green Men. In fact, they were natural signals from dead stars. At about the same time, some Russian astronomers noted erratic radio transmissions from distant galaxies, which they also dared to propose were caused by aliens trying to get in touch. In fact, they were just giant black holes doing their thing.

There are other examples, but the lesson of history is manifest: if you give aliens the credit for strange phenomena, you’re probably wrong.

Still, skepticism shouldn’t yield to cynicism. After all, the premise that someone is out there is supported by many scientists, and no reasonable evidence should be ignored. In the case of Tabby’s star, there are also new clues. A recent analysis of Kepler data by astronomers Ben Montet and Joshua Simon has shown that this object can slowly, and unevenly, fade over the course of just a few years. Again, this is not standard operating practice for stars. It also makes explanations of Tabby’s star based on either pulverized comets or ambitious aliens trickier.

The bottom line is that, at present, we still don’t know what’s going on in this star system. The safe bet, resting on precedent, is that we are witnessing a perfectly natural phenomenon; one that we don’t yet understand but will eventually fathom. The universe has shown itself to be endlessly creative in creating puzzles for our delectation and bafflement.

But there remains the chance that this is, indeed, something other than a work of unthinking Nature. And while the odds against Tabby’s star being a deliberate construction are long, so are the odds that the cosmic ocean is entirely sterile. So we’ll continue to cast our line into its murky depths.

As you can see we are just as busy as busy can be.

 

Wednesday 11th May 2016

Once again our posts have run away from us we have been here there and everywhere.

We have met a few people and now while its 2016 and has been the anniversary of William MilkShakespeare’s 300 death we are dressed in special Elizabethan clothe Lily made for us they are amazing and we look fab.

Spurs ground

Aston Villa Park with Yung Un.

Sunday 17th January 2016

The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is known as NGC 3597. It is the product of a collision between two good-sized galaxies, and is slowly evolving to become a giant elliptical galaxy. This type of galaxy has grown more and more common as the universe has evolved, with initially small galaxies merging and progressively building up into larger galactic structures over time.

NGC 3597 is located approximately 150 million light-years away in the constellation of Crater (The Cup). Astronomers study NGC 3597 to learn more about how elliptical galaxies form — many ellipticals began their lives far earlier in the history of the universe. Older ellipticals are nicknamed “red and dead” by astronomers because these bloated galaxies are not anymore producing new, bluer stars, and are thus packed full of old and redder stellar populations.

Before infirmity sets in, some freshly formed elliptical galaxies experience a final flush of youth, as is the case with NGC 3597. Galaxies smashing together pool their available gas and dust, triggering new rounds of star birth. Some of this material ends up in dense pockets initially called proto-globular clusters, dozens of which festoon NGC 3597. These pockets will go on to collapse and form fully-fledged globular clusters, large spheres that t the centers of galaxies like satellites, packed tightly full of millions of stars.

 

 

 

Friday 15th January 2016

Tim Peake says aliens are REAL and there’s ‘high chance’ of humans discovering extraterrestrial life
But the Chichester-born spaceman has said that his incredible journey is just one small step in a longer mission which could eventually result in humans discovering life on another planet.
Peake said he was confident scientists would soon crack the “big question” of whether we are alone in the universe.
“There is a high chance we will soon discover there was – or is – life in our solar system,” the 43-year-old told Mirror Online.
“I would be very surprised if there wasn’t life elsewhere in the universe.”
However, the astronaut said he didn’t expect little green men to suddenly pop up from the craters of the Red Planet.
“Single cell life forms might be found on Mars,” he continued.
Tim also suggested extraterrestrial organisms might be found on the moons of Saturn or Jupiter, some of which are thought to hide vast oceans of water.
He said: “Wherever there is water, there is the possibility of life.”

Friday January 1st 2016

Wow what a busy busy couple of weeks we have had over the Christmas period. Star Wars. Thriller. Sunny Afternoon. Playboy Club. Victoria’s Secret. Art Galleries. Gold Bars. Museums. Out with the Stuart and Old Fart and Ben and the Greek Goddess. Then Christmas with Helen, Lily, Yung Un and his new bird. Kali.