Thread: NASA Reveals Plan For Permanent Moon Base: "We Want Lots Of Humans In Space"

Originally Posted by Airbornesapper07

Bezos Predicts 1 TRILLION humans in solar system...

Bezos is crazy. Who would even want a goal like that? NUTS!!!

Scientists say mysterious 'Oumuamua' object could be an alien spacecraft

Harvard researchers raise the possibility that it may be "a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization."



Artist's impression of Oumuamua.M. Kornmesser / ESO via AFP - Getty Images

Nov. 5, 2018 / 2:06 PM EST
By David Freeman

Maybe it's an alien spacecraft.
Scientists have been puzzling over Oumuamua ever since the mysterious space object was observed tumbling past the sun in late 2017. Given its high speed and its unusual trajectory, the reddish, stadium-sized whatever-it-is had clearly come from outside our solar system. But its flattened, elongated shape and the way it accelerated on its way through the solar system set it apart from conventional asteroids and comets.
Now a pair of Harvard researchers are raising the possibility that Oumuamua is an alien spacecraft. As they say in a paper to be published Nov. 12 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the object "may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization."
The researchers aren't claiming outright that aliens sent Oumuamua. But after a careful mathematical analysis of the way the interstellar object sped up as it shot past the sun, they say Oumuamua could be a spacecraft pushed through space by light falling on its surface — or, as they put it in the paper, a "lightsail of artificial origin."
Who would have sent such a spacecraft our way — and why?
"It is impossible to guess the purpose behind Oumuamua without more data," Avi Loeb, chairman of Harvard's astronomy department and a co-author of the paper, told NBC News MACH in an email. If Oumuamua is a lightsail, he added, one possibility is that it was floating in interstellar space when our solar system ran into it, "like a ship bumping into a buoy on the surface of the ocean."
Earthlings have launched simple solar-powered lightsails of our own, and Loeb is an adviser to Breakthrough Starshot, an initiative that plans to send a fleet of tiny laser-powered lightsail craft to the nearest star system. But the technology is in its infancy — at least here on Earth.



Artist's concept of a lightsail above Earth.Josh Spradling / The Planetary SocietyLoeb and his collaborator, Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, acknowledge that the alien spacecraft scenario is an "exotic" one. And perhaps not surprisingly, other space scientists have strong doubts about it.
"It's certainly ingenious to show that an object the size of Oumuamua might be sent by aliens to another star system with nothing but a solar sail for power," Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, said in an email. "But one should not blindly accept this clever hypothesis when there is also a mundane (and a priori more likely) explanation for Oumuamua — namely that it's a comet or asteroid from afar."
Coryn Bailer-Jones, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, voiced similar objections. "In science," he said in an email, "we must ask ourselves, "Where is the evidence?, not "Where is the lack of evidence so that I can fit in any hypothesis that I like?"
Bailer-Jones, who earlier this year led a group of scientists who identified four dwarf stars as likely origin points for Oumuamua, raised questions in particular about the object's tumbling motion.
"Why send a spacecraft which is doing this?" he said. "If it were a spacecraft, this tumbling would make it impossible to keep any instruments pointed at the Earth. Of course, one could now say it was an accident, or the aliens did this to deceive us. One can always come up with increasingly implausible suggestions that have no evidence in order to maintain an idea."
But Loeb called the conjecture "purely scientific and evidence-based," adding, "I follow the maxim of Sherlock Holmes: When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
The truth may be hard to establish, as Oumuamua has left the solar system and is no longer visible even with telescopes. In any case, Loeb said, the fact that we've observed one interstellar object like Oumuama suggests that others may be out there — and astronomers should begin a search for them.
"A survey for lightsails as technosignatures [of extraterrestrial civilizations] in the solar system is warranted," he said, "irrespective of whether Oumuamua is one of them."


https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science...epGos_lxfbv9rw

I hope all this nonsense is NOT taxpayer funded.

Rebuild our roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water and electric systems, sewer and cyber security!

Fix our healthcare and provide affordable housing!

Pandora, anyone? Russia plans to set up moon base inhabited by ‘avatar robots’

Published time: 6 Nov, 2018 12:19


© (L) avatarmovie.com; (R) Vladimir Sergeev / Sputnik


After unveiling an ambitious plan to install a permanent base on the moon, Russia’s space boss Dmitry Rogozin has now added a truly sci-fi-esque detail: humans will control it from Earth through sophisticated ‘avatar robotics.’
“We’re talking about creating a long-term base, not constantly manned, but visitable,” Rogozin, who leads Russia’s national space agency, ‘Roscosmos’ told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
The base will be chiefly managed by “robotized systems, avatars that will be executing tasks on the moon’s surface,” he said, noting that whole project will be larger than the US ‘Apollo’ program of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
READ MORE: Russia to have permanent moon base – space chief
Rogozin didn’t go into details of the ambitious plan leaving many to wonder how the lunar ‘avatars’ will look and function. The choice of words hints that he was inspired by James Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi blockbuster. The box office hit told the story of the distant jungle planet called Pandora. Since its air wasn’t breathable for humans, they roamed the planet by mentally ‘logging’ into ‘avatars,’ which mimicked the bodies of local humanoid race, the Na’vi.



via GIPHY

Undoubtedly, the moon’s greyish scenery looks bleak compared to Pandora’s vivid colors, but the main idea likely remains the same – humans using advanced tech for remote exploration. This sure fits in line with other peculiar things officials at Roscosmos recently envisioned, like repairing space equipment using spare parts, 3D-printed right from the lunar soil.
Whether the ‘avatar robots’ will ultimately look as appealing as the blue-skinned Na’vi or not, the current Russia space program envisages landing the first cosmonauts on the lunar surface in 2030-2031.
Scientists at the Russian Space Research Institute, meanwhile, recently confirmed that the nation has the means to set up the first lunar module around that time.

https://www.rt.com/russia/443196-rus...avatar-robots/

A new galaxy cluster has been discovered hiding in plain sight

(Natural News) Researchers have discovered an entire cluster of galaxies in one of the last locations anyone would have thought to check. The previously-unseen cluster was hiding within the blinding light of the quasar at its center, an article in Science Daily stated. A quasar is a supermassive black hole that gives off a lot of light. … [Read More...]

Tuesday, November 06, 2018 by: Edsel Cook
Tags: astronomy, black holes, Galaxies, galaxy clusters, Phoenix, Quasars, supermassive black holes, Surveys, X-Ray

730 Views

(Natural News) Researchers have discovered an entire cluster of galaxies in one of the last locations anyone would have thought to check. The previously-unseen cluster was hiding within the blinding light of the quasar at its center, an article in Science Daily stated.A quasar is a supermassive black hole that gives off a lot of light. The one at the heart of the new cluster is called PKS1353-341. In addition to being just 2.4 billion light years from Earth, it is also incredibly bright, being 46 billion times brighter than the Sun.
Its proximity and brightness led researchers to believe that PKS1353-341 and the singular galaxy it routinely fed on were alone in their corner of the universe. It turns out that the quasar was actually surrounded by hundreds of separate galaxies, whose light were drowned out by the energy given off by the hungry supermassive black hole.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers theorized that the new cluster has a mass equal to 690 trillion solar masses. To give you an idea of how massive that is, our Milky Way is a single galaxy that masses just 400 billion suns. (Related: Understanding massive black hole formation: Researchers believe supersonic gas streams from the Big Bang may provide the answer.)

How many galaxy clusters are masquerading as quasars or active black holes?


The galaxy cluster surrounding PKS1353-341 was not the first secret found by MIT researcher Michael McDonald. In 2012, his team discovered Phoenix, which was even bigger and brighter than the currently unnamed cluster.

Phoenix was also located in an easily-observed part of the sky. Yet it somehow escaped the notice of astronomers for decades. McDonald attributed this to strong preconceptions regarding the signal of a galaxy cluster. A cluster was expected to give off dispersed amounts of X-ray energies. However, Phoenix gave off a bright and pointy signal attributed to black holes and quasars. This was due to a very active and powerful black hole at the core of the recently-discovered galaxy cluster.
Inspired by this discovery, McDonald formed a new team to conduct the Clusters Hiding in Plain Sight (CHiPS) stellar survey. They used the Magellan optical telescope in Chile to reevaluate very bright point sources of X-ray energies in the sky. If a point source was surrounded by more galaxies than normal, it could be part of a galaxy cluster. The CHiPS team would then use NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory to look for a diffused source of X-ray energy around the much more precise point source.

New star survey reports finding its first galaxy cluster around a bright quasar

In a paper published in Astrophysical Journal, the MIT team talked about the very first galaxy cluster they found hiding in plain sight. They noted that PKS1353-341 was much brighter than the typical supermassive black hole or quasar.
McDonald thinks that the unnatural brightness is caused by an ongoing feeding frenzy. Whenever a black hole devours something, the remnants of the victim form an accretion disc of bright plasma around the black hole. The more mass is consumed, the larger and more intense this disk becomes. McDonald has no idea how long PKS1353-341 will continue to give off so much light, or if it is the only quasar that is stuffing itself full of stars.

His team will be combing through more X-ray data in search of galaxy clusters that are hidden by brighter sources of light. Not only will further discoveries reveal more information about the feeding habits of black holes, but they could also shed more light on the ongoing expansion of the universe.
Would you like more stories about supermassive black holes that might be hiding galaxies? You can find them at Cosmic.news.

Sources include:

ScienceDaily.com
IOPScience.IOP.org

https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-11-...ain-sight.html

The hottest known exoplanet found to have skies made out of iron and titanium

(Natural News) The atmosphere on Earth is made up of a mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases that sustain life. The skies of the distant extrasolar planet KELT-9b, however, are hotter than the typical star and filled with iron and titanium, an article on Scientific American reported. KELT-9b is the sole known planet of the KELT-9 … [Read More...]

Thursday, November 08, 2018 by: Edsel Cook
Tags: exoplanets, extrasolar planets, hot Jupiters, hydrogen, iron, KELT-9b, Space, space science, Titanium, ultrahot Jupiters

430 Views

(Natural News) The atmosphere on Earth is made up of a mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases that sustain life. The skies of the distant extrasolar planet KELT-9b, however, are hotter than the typical star and filled with iron and titanium, an article on Scientific American reported.

KELT-9b is the sole known planet of the KELT-9 star system, whose light takes 620 years to reach Earth’s corner of the galaxy. It is an “ultrahot Jupiter,” a gas giant that orbits very close to its parent star, making the massive planet much hotter than usual.
Ultrahot Jupiters are almost as hot as actual stars. To qualify as an ultrahot Jupiter, the atmosphere of a gas giant must attain a temperature of at least 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Celsius). For comparison, Jupiter’s atmosphere is a very chilly -234 degrees F (-145 degrees C). The temperature at its core, however, exceeds that of the Sun.
In addition to being twice as big and three times as heavy as Jupiter, KELT-9b regularly achieves temperatures of 7,800 degrees F (4,300 degrees C). It is hotter than the red dwarf stars that make up most of the stellar population in the universe. (Related: Astronomers say that Europa may have alien life, and it won’t be hard to find.)

The intense temperatures of an ultrahot Jupiter revealed iron and titanium

KELT-9b’s incredible heat made it possible for Swiss researchers to make an unexpected but very welcome discovery in its atmosphere. Researchers from the University of Bern (UB) reported the presence of iron and titanium atoms floating freely in the skies of the gas giant.

These two elements are some of the most plentiful substances in the universe. However, they are difficult to detect against cool backgrounds, which includes most planets, moons, and asteroids. Furthermore, iron and titanium are prone to combining with other elements to form oxide compounds. This reactivity helps hide their presence and greatly reduces the number of individual atoms floating around.
Titanium, for example, was discovered in 2011 in the skies of another hot Jupiter exoplanet around the star Kepler-13A. However, it appeared as titanium oxide instead of pure titanium.
KELT-9b is so hot, however, that clouds cannot form in its atmosphere. In that kind of heat, it is very difficult for oxides to form. Atoms of pure iron and titanium are therefore free to flaunt their presence.

An earlier hunt for hydrogen helps uncover other elements in KELT-9B

Researcher Kevin Heng led the research team looking for iron and titanium in KELT-9b. His efforts were aided by data from a University of Geneva (UG) study that also studied the exoplanet in search for a different element.
By studying the light reflected from the surface of KELT-9b, the earlier study found strong evidence supporting the presence of hydrogen in the atmosphere of the ultrahot Jupiter. It failed to catch the metals, however, as their analysis was skewed towards hydrogen. Heng’s team ran this old data through a supercomputer. They looked for the unique spectral signature of atoms of iron and titanium, which reflected certain frequencies of light while absorbing others. They were able to present conclusive evidence that pure samples of the elements could be found in KELT-9b. The reason for the find is attributed to the intense heat of the planet, which was vaporizing hydrogen in the atmosphere and sending it towards its parent star.
“It is possible that heavy metal elements are also escaping because the dramatic hydrogen escape can ‘drag’ heavy elements to very high [in the] atmosphere,” suggested researcher Fei Yan of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
Read more about the many exoplanets orbiting faraway stars at Cosmic.news.

Sources include:

ScientificAmerican.com
UniBe.ch


https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-11-...-titanium.html

A Giant Galaxy Orbiting Our Own Appeared Out Of Nowhere

November 12, 2018

Astronomers scanning the skies just got a huge surprise. They discovered a gigantic galaxy orbiting our own, where none had been seen before. It just came out of nowhere. So, just how did the recently-discovered Crater 2 succeed to pull off this feat, like a deer jumping out from the interstellar bushes to suddenly shock us?

Even though the appearance may seem sudden, the Crater 2 has been there all along. We just never saw it.



Milky Way, Image Credit: ESO / Serge Brunier, Frederic Tapissier via NASA

Now that astronomer know it’s there, though, there are a few other crushing facts that astronomers discovered. First of all, we can’t blame the galaxy’s size for its relative insignificance. Crater 2 is so massive that researchers have already identified it as the fourth largest galaxy orbiting our own. We can’t even blame its distance, either. Crater 2's orbit around the Milky Way puts it just precisely in our neighborhood.

That being said, the question arises, how did we still not know it was there? A new research paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society from astronomers at the University of Cambridge has an answer for us.

It turns out that, regardless of being huge and close, Crater 2 is also a pretty dark galaxy. Actually, it’s one of the faintest galaxies ever detected in the cosmos. That, along with some much perkier neighbors, let the galaxy that astronomers have nicknamed “the feeble giant” remain hidden from our eyes until now.

Now that we have observed Crater 2, nevertheless, the discovery yields some questions about what else could be out there that we are still missing.

Astronomers are already talking about starting a hunt for similarly large, dark galaxies near us. It’s a good thing that there’s still so much about cosmos that we still don’t know.

https://www.thescinewsreporter.com/2...WDqJ3AD8VVb6Xk

Russia's Moon Base Plans Could Lead To Moscow Mining The Asteroid Belt

Wed, 11/14/2018 - 22:25
33 SHARES
Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

Head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said that “this is about creating a long-term base, naturally, not habitable, but visited. But basically, it is the transition to robotic systems, to avatars that will solve tasks on the Moon surface”, which shows that Moscow is moving ahead with a general proposal that was first made a few years ago.



It’s an open secret that the world is in the midst of a new space race between the US, Russia, China, and even a few other countries that are trying to enter the field, with this process unofficially started by America after Trump declared the creation of his country’s so-called “Space Force”. The US claims that it needs to act in order to thwart Russia and China’s militarization of this domain, while those two multipolar Great Powers have consistently accused the US of actually being the one to break international law by secretly doing this all along.
Moving beyond the controversial rhetoric and into objectively recognized reality, however, there’s apparently no stopping the process that the US has unleashed, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that every manifestation of this race will be inherently militarized.
Russia’s proud history of exploring space is universally acknowledged after it was the first country to send a satellite and a man into orbit, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it still longs to send a man to the moon after the US beat them to it back in 1969 during America’s first victory in this race. There are practical reasons for doing this other than prestige and the sake of science because a moon base is thought to be required for facilitating the future mining of mineral-rich asteroids, something that still remains in the realm of science fiction for now but shouldn’t be discounted as a promising industry of the future.
President Putin also famously said last year that “whoever becomes the leader in the sphere (of AI) will become the ruler of the world”, and he also emphasized his nation’s prioritization of this technology and other related ones during a keynote speech that he made earlier this year ahead of Russia’s presidential elections, so it’s logical that his government would seek to pair this with space exploration and the potential mining of asteroids that might eventually follow in order to become a global leader in this respect.
That’s why Russia’s plan to construct a robot-built moon base is more sensible of an investment than it might initially seem to those who hadn’t thought it through, though the country first has to prove that it has the technology to pull off this feat before it becomes something that the rest of the world can take seriously.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...-asteroid-belt

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