NASA’s K2 Finds Dead Star Vaporizing a Mini “Planet”

Scientists using NASA’s repurposed Kepler space telescope, known as the K2 mission, have uncovered strong evidence of a tiny, rocky object being torn apart as it spirals around a white dwarf star. This discovery validates a long-held theory that white dwarfs are capable of cannibalizing possible remnant planets that have survived within its solar system.


“We are for the first time witnessing a miniature “planet” ripped apart by intense gravity, being vaporized by starlight and raining rocky material onto its star,” said Andrew Vanderburg, graduate student from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lead author of the paper published in Nature.

In this artist’s conception, a tiny rocky object vaporizes as it orbits a white dwarf star. Astronomers have detected the first planetary object transiting a white dwarf using data from the K2 mission. Slowly the object will disintegrate, leaving a dusting of metals on the surface of the star.

 

Credits: CfA/Mark A. Garlick

 

 

As stars like our sun age, they puff up into red giants and then gradually lose about half their mass, shrinking down to 1/100^th of their original size to roughly the size of Earth. This dead, dense star remnant is called a white dwarf.


The devastated planetesimal, or cosmic object formed from dust, rock, and other materials, is estimated to be the size of a large asteroid, and is the first planetary object to be confirmed transiting a white dwarf. It orbits its white dwarf, WD 1145+017, once every 4.5 hours. This orbital period places it extremely close to the white dwarf and its searing heat and shearing gravitational force.


During its first observing campaign from May 30, 2014 to Aug. 21, 2014, K2 trained its gaze on a patch of sky in the constellation Virgo, measuring the minuscule change in brightness of the distant white dwarf. When an object transits or passes in front of a star from the vantage point of the space telescope, a dip in starlight is recorded. The periodic dimming of starlight indicates the presence of an object in orbit about the star.

The diagram depicts a model of light curve shapes. The red line indicates the symmetric shape of a hypothetical Earth-size planet transit while the blue line is the asymmetric shape of the tiny disintegrating planet and its comet-like trailing dusty tail. The black dots are measurements recorded by the K2 mission of WD 1145+017.

Credits: CfA/A. Vanderburg

 

 

A research team led by Vanderburg found an unusual, but vaguely familiar pattern in the data. While there was a prominent dip in brightness occurring every 4.5 hours, blocking up to 40 percent of the white dwarf's light, the transit signal of the tiny planet did not exhibit the typical symmetric U-shaped pattern. It showed an asymmetric elongated slope pattern that would indicate the presence of a comet-like tail. Together these features indicated a ring of dusty debris circling the white dwarf, and what could be the signature of a small planet being vaporized.


“The eureka moment of discovery came on the last night of observation with a sudden realization of what was going around the white dwarf. The shape and changing depth of the transit were undeniable signatures,” said Vanderburg.


In addition to the strangely shaped transits, Vanderburg and his team found signs of heavier elements polluting the atmosphere of WD 1145+017, as predicted by theory.


Due to intense gravity, white dwarfs are expected to have chemically pure surfaces, covered only with light elements of helium and hydrogen. For years, researchers have found evidence that some white dwarf atmospheres are polluted with traces of heavier elements such as calcium, silicon, magnesium and iron. Scientists have long suspected that the source of this pollution was an asteroid or a small planet being torn apart by the white dwarf's intense gravity.


Analysis of the star's atmospheric composition was conducted using observations made by the University of Arizona's MMT Observatory.

Read more here:http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/nasa-k2-finds-dead-star-vaporizing-mini-planet

Red Wolf Still In Texas?

In case you've not checked the blog roll, Cryptomundo has posted  Red wolf-like animals still in Texas?  So if you are interested in canids check it out.
 

Is It Possible Scientists may have found the earliest evidence of life on Earth?

But you'll notice if you visit the page it's still "maybe"/"might not be"/"Could be"!

Julia Rosen

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/10/scientists-may-have-found-earliest-evidence-life-earth 

 

When did life on Earth begin? Scientists have dug down through the geologic record, and the deeper they look, the more it seems that biology appeared early in our planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. So far, geologists have uncovered possible traces of life as far back as 3.8 billion years. Now, a controversial new study presents potential evidence that life arose 300 million years before that, during the mysterious period following Earth’s formation.

 
The clues lie hidden in microscopic flecks of graphite—a carbon mineral—trapped inside a single large crystal of zircon. Zircons grow in magmas, often incorporating other minerals into their crystal structures of silicon, oxygen, and zirconium. And although they barely span the width of a human hair, zircons are nearly indestructible. They can outlast the rocks in which they initially formed, enduring multiple cycles of erosion and deposition.


In fact, although the oldest rocks on Earth date back only 4 billion years, researchers have found zircons up to 4.4 billion years old. These crystals provide a rare glimpse into the first chapter of Earth’s history, known as the Hadean eon. “They are pretty much our only physical samples of what was going on on the Earth before 4 billion years ago,” says Elizabeth Bell, a geochemist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and lead author of the new study, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  

Image by Robert Simmon, based on data from the University of Maryland’s Global Land Cover Facility

In the study, Bell and her colleagues examined zircons from the Jack Hills in Western Australia, a site that has yielded more Hadean samples than anywhere else on Earth, searching for inclusions of carbon minerals like diamonds and graphite. The mere presence of these minerals does not prove biology existed when the zircons formed, but it does provide the opportunity to look for chemical signs of life. The team eventually found small bits of potentially undisturbed graphite in one 4.1 billion-year-old crystal. The graphite has a low ratio of heavy to light carbon atoms—called isotopes—consistent with the isotopic signature of organic matter. “On Earth today, if you were looking at this carbon, you would say it was biogenic,” Bell says. “Of course, that’s more controversial for the Hadean.”


The authors list several nonbiological processes that could explain their findings, but they favor the idea that the graphite started out as organic matter in sediments that got dragged into the Earth’s mantle during the collision of tectonic plates. As the sediments melted to form magma, the elevated temperatures and pressures transformed the carbon into graphite, which eventually found its way into a zircon crystal.


If this story is true, and life existed 4.1 billion years ago, Bell says that the new results would corroborate growing evidence of a more hospitable early Earth than scientists once imagined. “The traditional view of the Earth’s first few hundred million years was that this was a sterile, lifeless, hot planet that was constantly being bombarded by meteorites,” she says. But partly thanks to the wealth of information revealed by the Jack Hills zircons in recent years, scientists have come to see the early Earth as much milder and more amenable to life.


“We know there was liquid water,” says Mark van Zuilen, a geomicrobiologist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics. “There’s nothing that holds us back from assuming life was there.” However, van Zuilen and others say they’re not sure the new study provides compelling evidence that it was.


Some of this circumspection has roots in recent history. In 2008, researchers announced that diamond-graphite inclusions in 4.3-billion-year-old zircons had potentially biological signatures, inspiring Bell and her team to start looking through UCLA’s own collection of Jack Hills crystals. But subsequent analysis showed the 2008 inclusions came from lab contamination, not early Earth. In the new study, the researchers took measures to prevent similar problems.


“That one negative experience doesn’t mean nobody should try again,” says John Eiler, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “But let’s just say, I’m cautious.” For one, he says, researchers need to settle some important debates, like whether the inclusions in Hadean zircons truly preserve original material, or if they’ve been altered, for example, during a later bout of metamorphism. He also questions whether organic matter can survive in magma chambers long enough to form graphite, casting doubt on the proposed mechanism.


Those issues aside, most scientists—including the authors—agree that the data do not yet exclude nonbiological explanations. Many abiotic processes can produce carbon with isotopic signatures similar to organic matter. For instance, the graphite could contain carbon from certain kinds of meteorites, which have light isotopic compositions. Alternatively, some invoke chemical processes, like the so-called Fischer-Tropsch reactions, in which carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen react with a catalyst like iron to form methane and other hydrocarbons. Such reactions probably occurred near hydrothermal vents in the Hadean, van Zuilen says, and can impart isotopic signatures that are indistinguishable from biological materials.


One way to settle the question that doesn’t rely on isotopes involves studying Mars, which, unlike Earth, still has rocks older than 4 billion years on its surface. “If we can find evidence for the existence of life on Mars at that time, then it will be easier to argue the case that it was also present on Earth,” says Alexander Nemchin, a geochemist at Curtin University in Bentley, Australia, and lead author of the 2008 study on diamond inclusions.


For now, scientists must make do with zircons, the only materials that preserve any record—however cryptic—of the Hadean eon. Bell acknowledges the need to test her team’s hypothesis on additional samples. She says researchers must make a concerted effort to find more Hadean carbon in Jack Hills zircons and see if it too has potentially biological origins. “Hopefully we didn’t just chance on the one freak zircon that had graphite in it,” she says. “Hopefully there is actually a fair amount of it.”

‘Floating City’ In The Sky?

If you read Some More Things Strange And Sinister you might recall Bristol -Seen In The Skies Of Alaska?

For decades it was reported that an image of the City of Bristol, England, appeared in the skies of Alaska at a certain location.  Various fake images were produced for Rickards, Phenomena A Book Of Wonders and though referred to over the years the actual photograph was said to be "lost" or "never existed".

This is what you read and hear when so called "experts" do not do any original research but crib from others -in this case the not always reliable Charles Fort.  After over 100 years I found the image in question.

But over the years we have not seen anything similar....until now!  Yes, thanks to technology we have an actual case -and footage- of a "city in the sky".

This from I F****** Love Science: http://www.iflscience.com/environment/what-caused-china-s-floating-city-sky

What Caused China’s ‘Floating City’ In The Sky?

by Tom Hale

Photo credit: Chung Ti'en Television/YouTube 

 

 

Thousands of residents from Jiangxi and Foshan in China reported seeing a "floating city" in the sky earlier this month. The images and grainy video footage appear to show towering skyscrapers poking out of the clouds and looming over the ground below.

Of course, the news has got people's imaginations turned up to overdrive when trying to figure out what was going on. Explanations for the event have ranged from a glitch in the matrix, alternate universes opening up and NASA attempting to establish a new world order through a plan called the "Blue Beam Project".

However, it appears the explanation is actually a rare type of mirage called Fata Morgana. It’s essentially an optical illusion caused by specific weather conditions bending light rays. As Wired explains, it occurs when the Sun heats up a layer of the atmosphere but the layer of air below it remains cool. When different layers of the atmosphere are different temperatures, a temperature gradient is generated. These different temperatures also mean differing densities between the layers.

When light hits a boundary between two layers of the atmosphere that are different temperatures and thus densities, it is bent, or refracted, and subsequently enters the next layer at a different angle. Our brain can't automatically account for this, so when light hits our eyes, our brain assumes that it traveled in a straight path. When it has been refracted, we therefore perceive the object is where it would be if the light had run straight – which is higher than it actually is.

Fata Morganas have been confusing people and messing with minds for centuries. They’re named after Morgan le Fay, a powerful enchantress from the tales of King Arthur. It’s believed they are the explanation behind the legendary ghost ship the Flying Dutchman and sailor’s stories of floating castles which lured men to their deaths.

So there you have it. Although, we’ve got our eye on you NASA…

And if you've not seen the footage:

Americans And Alien Hysteria

It really is nothing.  In the UK, particularly England, we've had aliens come and go regularly over the last century.  As with most foreigners we tend to "let them get on with it" but keep a careful eye on them just in case.

Here two London Bobbies allow two alien visitors to pass along without hinderance.

Stephen Hawking And Hostile Aliens and Scientific Gas

Above:http://forgetomori.com/2009/science/dawkins-hearts-reptilian-aliens/



At one point it was "universally accepted" that the Earthy and its position from the Sun was unique. A one off.  Chances of another planet -IF they existed- being in the same position were "zero".  Now we have a whole chunky list of solar systems with planets and also planets that seem to be in the "right" position from its sun.

At one point it was also accepted -it was scientific dogma- that water could not be found elsewhere...then we found out more about comets and Mars and Pluto and other planets/moons......water is no unique or confined to Earth.

At one point scientists stated that if -if- "intelligent life" existed anywhere else the problem of travelling huge inter-stellar distances was "insurmountable".  People suggested various types of nuclear, solar or even magnetically powered craft that might make the journey -but huge ships with crews that would need to breed the next generation of crew.  Or, cryogenically suspended "take over" crews.  Then came the idea of worm-holes and other ways of traversing huge areas of space.

At one point scientists totally lampooned the idea that life on other planets would be humanoid.  Now a great many think that human 'uniqueness' might not be so unique but might be the norm...even if not mammalian humanoid (ie. two arms, two legs and a body and head -mammalian, insectoid or reptilian it doesn't matter).  It is why some of us have hunter down the alleged UFO landings involving non humanoid entities.

When you read this article remember one thing.  one very important thing: we, on this planet, have never encountered extra-terrestrials that we can scientifically get data on.  We have never sat any extra-terrestrial down and asked a list of questions giving us more insight into its life cycle, mental processes or its ultimate needs/goals.  I am talking here about a full contact not UFO reports and certainly not what we read about "Greys".

To this you can add that we have never landed on a planet nor been beyond our solar system.  As we have found on Mars, Pluto, Venus -and various moons- when we land on those in our solar system scientists have to start re-writing the text books.  Pluto is NOT a huge snow-ball in space.  And there is more we could learn about our own Moon (or even our own oceans).

So scientists do what scientists do: they can claim "this" or "that" because no one knows.  It is mere speculation. Theory.  Hot air.  No more.






I recall Stephen Hawking writing that time travel was impossible even theoretically.  The flaw in his argument was obvious.  Yes, I did write him about this.  No I never got a reply -if he even saw the letter. But two years later he had changed his chance.  This is important because the average person thinks that Prof. Hawking is some totally infallible computer brained genius. He is human like the rest of us.  As are these scientists with their theories.

It's all "guessology".

Is Stephen Hawking Right About Hostile Aliens?

By Stephanie Pappas | LiveScience.com

 

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/stephen-hawking-hostile-aliens-111403178.html#RAWXoew

E.T. was the perfect extraterrestrial: Cute, smart and — best of all — a perfect pacifist.

Unfortunately, scientists aren't so sure that an actual intelligent alien would be so benign. In a recent interview with El País, famed physicist Stephen Hawking posited that an alien visitation would put Earthlings in the same position as Native Americans when Columbus landed on their shores.

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach," Hawking speculated.

The likelihood that intelligent life is out there is up for debate; less discussed are the conditions necessary to evolve a life-form that's both smart and nice. But the lessons from Earth suggest that intelligence and aggression might evolve hand-in-hand.

Evolving smarts

No one really knows how humans got to be so clever. What's clear is that hominin brains began expanding wildly about 2 million years ago. (Hominins include those species after the human lineage — the genus Homo — split from the chimpanzee lineage.) By around 100,000 years ago, humans made the never-before-seen leap to inventing language. And by at least 40,000 years ago, our ancestors were making art

.

"We have brains that are three times bigger than those of our closest relatives," said Mark Flinn, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri who has researched the emergence of human intelligence. Humans have unprecedented abilities to think about each other's thoughts and motivations, he said, to play out social scenarios in their brains and to think about the past and future.


"The general presumption is that this is just sort of a natural outcome of the evolutionary process, but that's really giving short shrift to the very special circumstances of human evolution," Flinn said.


Huge brains are expensive. They take an enormous number of calories to grow and function (up to 50 percent of intake in infancy and childhood, Flinn said) and make humans basically helpless for years after birth.


"Our babies are born as larvae, basically," said David Carrier, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah.

Many anthropologists and evolutionary biologists have tried to pinpoint the special circumstances that make these huge brains worth the expense. Charles Darwin suggested that perhaps males developed cleverness to attract females, much as a male peacock developed showy tail feathers to prove to potential mates that he could strut his stuff. But if brains were just for sexual display, scientists would expect to see big differences between male and female intelligence — females, not having to attract mates, shouldn't waste so much effort on their brains, much as peahens don't waste effort on growing shiny feathers (theirs are dull and brown). And female humans are just as smart as males.


Social pressure

Would smart aliens have energy-intensive brains? Hard to say — perhaps E.T. could evolve a more efficient, yet just as clever, organ. But if aliens were sending signals into space or building rockets, they'd have to have achieved an intelligence that far exceeds what is needed to survive.

Humans have done the same, and researchers can't quite figure out why. The brain could have evolved to allow humans to use tools, but chimpanzees use tools without developing complex languages, art and culture. One provocative theory holds that pathogens play a role: The brain is vulnerable to infection, wrote Hungarian researcher Lajos Rózsa in a 2008 article in the journal Medical Hypotheses. Showing off one's cleverness may be a way of showing off how resistant one is to infection. After all, if you're smart enough to invent language and art, you must be pretty good at battling brain parasites.


So perhaps intelligent aliens might be subject to alien parasites. Flinn and his colleagues favor another theory, though. They argue that humanity underwent a runaway cycle of brain evolution because of hominins' social nature.


The ecological dominance-social competition hypothesis works like this: Human ancestors reached a point in which their interactions with one another were the most important factor in whether they'd survive and pass on their genes. Finding food and shelter was still important, Flinn said, but it wasn't the main factor determining evolutionary success. The difference between clever humans and, say, caribou, is that intraspecies relationships drove evolution the fastest in humans, Flinn said. A herd of caribou has social interactions, to be sure: Males have to fight for mates, for example. But a more pressing concern would be avoiding predators and finding food. For hominins, these external issues became relatively less important, the theory goes, while their ability to form coalitions, to have empathy and to behave in such a way as to win friendships from others became key to their survival.


In this heavily social context, it became very important to be smarter than the competition. Each generation got a little smarter and a little better at building complex social relationships, which created a feedback loop in which even smarter brains were beneficial.


"The thing about social competition is it's a dynamic challenge and it's also creative," Flinn said. "You need to have the better mousetrap every time. The competition adjusts to the current winning model, so you need to be one better than the current winning strategy."


The model seems to work with other clever animals, too, he added. Dolphins, orcas and chimps all form social coalitions with each other and depend on their social groups to survive. It's possible that this social factor would hold for species on other planets, too.


The evolution of aggression
A key part of this theory is competition. Chimps form coalitions that battle against other chimps. And humans are far from peaceful. So if an alien species were to evolve intelligence, would aggression be an inevitable part of the package?

Perhaps. The evolution of aggression is a question unto itself. Fights to the death occur only in species where the options are mate or die, Carrier said.

"If you can walk away from a fight and reproduce another day, you do that," he said. "But if circumstances are such that your ability to reproduce is threatened by a competitor, in that situation it makes sense to fight."

Environmental factors may determine whether a mate-or-die system emerges. For example, chimpanzees are a particularly homicidal (chimpacidal?) species, Carrier said. Work by primatologist Richard Wrangham at Harvard University and colleagues finds that chimp "wars" arise from a chimpanzee's territorialism. Small groups of foraging chimps may come into contact with other chimpanzees; killing these competitors (particularly when the foragers have numbers on their side) can be beneficial by opening up access to more resources.


Deadly male-male competition is less of a way of life for bonobos, humankind's other closest primate ancestor. Male bonobos stick by their mothers and the species is less territorial than chimpanzees. Bonobo foraging groups are also larger, perhaps because their food sources are more abundant, studies have found. Would aliens act more like bonobos or chimps? Hard to say. Researchers are even split on whether humans are more inherently aggressive or inherently peaceful.

A controversial theory holds that aggression was a driving force in human evolution. The "Killer Ape" hypothesis argues that the human ancestors who thrived were those better adapted for fighting. For example, Carrier said, modern humans can form fists, which our closest primate relatives cannot. This particular hand configuration may have evolved primarily for better manual dexterity — but it also could have come in handy as a club. Likewise, when human ancestors started walking on two legs, their face bones also evolved to be stronger and less delicate. This could be due to diet, Carrier said, but male face bones are more robust than female face bones, a sign that male-male competition could be at play. In other words, thick facial bones could be a defense against the fist, a weapon that would have become available once human ancestors became bipedal.

Kind aliens
If intelligence evolves in the context of social competition, and aggression is the natural outcome of competition, it's hard to imagine that clever aliens could also be kind. Is this the end for hopes of sweet little E.T.?


Maybe not. The social competition model doesn't work without cooperation, after all. Humans fight, wage war and sometimes murder each other. But humans also form coalitions, care for each other and even build coalitions of coalitions, such as nation-states.


"There are two sides to our nature," Carrier said. "It's not that one is any more real than the other. It's just who we are."


Humans are unique among Earth life in forming long-lasting alliances between groups, not just individuals, Flinn said. Chimpanzees can't pull that off, he said, so it's not clear that aliens could, either.


"On Planet X, it may not be inevitable that social competition results in a morality and a creativity of the sort that allows these intelligent life-forms to negotiate with us for a mutually beneficial outcome," Flinn said.


On the other hand, chimpanzees don't explore space. Perhaps a civilization that can band together to reach for the stars has to be cooperative by definition. If that's the case, humanity might be a greater threat to aliens than aliens are to humanity. Luckily, evolution has given humans the tools for peace.

"We can, in effect, rise above the design, potentially," Flinn said. "If we understand what our brains are designed to do, we are going to be way more capable of rising above those tendencies that we have."

 

Above: see  http://listverse.com/2013/11/06/10-traits-aliens-must-have-according-to-science/

Is Buddha On Mars??

THIS is the sort of utter tripe that the "UFO Community" comes up with now.  Delusional -hey, remember yesterday I posted about that mystery object around a distant sun that SETI are looking at?  "Alien Hunters" have, uh, 'found it' -so I'd like to know the equipment they used?

None?

Matches their IQ....unless they have mental health issues and cannot help this?
********************************************************************************

Alien-Hunters Have Just Found A ‘Buddha Statue’ On Mars

Is this proof that intelligent life exists there?

Rob Waugh

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/alien-hunters-have-just-found-a--buddha-statue--on-mars-080348920.html#DvWlg5t

Alien-hunters have just spotted perhaps the most conclusive proof yet of intelligent life on Mars: a statue of Buddha.

The religious figure was picked out by the eagle-eyed UFO fans at UFO Sightings Daily - and hailed as ‘proof’ that intelligent aliens lived on Mars.

Scott C Waring of UFO Sightings Daily says, ‘This photo alone should be enough to convince the United Nations that intelligent life once existed on Mars, but NASA doesn’t want anyone to know the truth, because they will be asked to share the info and technology that they have found.’

‘This shows a face and head turned to its right, with breasts and a plump stomach, shoulders. Very remarkable detail in this photo.’

The Eastern religious figure was found by YouTuber Paranormal Crucible - and showcased by UFO Sightings Dailly, who are also behind recent sightings of a giant ‘crab monster’, a ‘dark lady’ and a floating spoon on Mars.

Seasoned alien-hunter Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research says, ‘Those that send them to me are generally quite excited, as they claim that these frequently resemble SOMETHING you wouldn't expect to find on the rusty, dusty surface of the Red Plane.

‘It's usually some sort of animal, but occasionally even weirder objects such as automobile parts. Maybe they think there are cars on Mars.

Shostak says it’s a basic human instinct to see patterns where none exist - a phenomenon known as ‘pareidolia’.